-
If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn't have done it.
Jan Koum -
The message growth rate in Brazil - it's not like a hockey stick: it's like a vertical line.
Jan Koum
-
At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That's our product, and that's our passion. Your data isn't even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it.
Jan Koum -
The encryption genie is out of the bottle.
Jan Koum -
We're obsessed with making sure that voice and video work well even on low-end phones.
Jan Koum -
A lot of what I experienced growing up in the U.S.S.R. and coming to the U.S. as an immigrant actually reflects itself in Whatsapp. Experiences from our youth shape what we do later in life.
Jan Koum -
A lot of my time, effort, and focus is spent on 'WhatsApp'. And that, to me, is more valuable and rewarding than to work on anything else.
Jan Koum -
Pavel Durov only knows how to copy great products like Facebook and 'WhatsApp'; he never had and will never have original ideas.
Jan Koum
-
I grew up in a country where I remember my parents not being able to have a conversation on the phone. The walls had ears, and you couldn't speak freely.
Jan Koum -
Our team has always believed that neither cost and distance should ever prevent people from connecting with their friends and loved ones, and won't rest until everyone, everywhere is empowered with that opportunity.
Jan Koum -
People have SMS, right? It stinks. It's a dead technology, like a fax machine left over from the Seventies, sitting there as a cash cow for carriers.
Jan Koum -
No one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they'll see tomorrow.
Jan Koum -
A lot of times, people start out with a lot of good ideas, but then they don't execute. They lose the purity of their vision. You end up running around in circles.
Jan Koum -
Our focus remains on delivering the promise of WhatsApp far and wide so that people around the world have the freedom to speak their mind without fear.
Jan Koum
-
Ironically, I grew up watching Indian movies as a kid in Russia. I am quite familiar with Bollywood. I grew up watching 'Disco Dancer;' I watched it some 20 times as a kid.
Jan Koum -
Utilities get out of the way. Can you imagine if you flipped a light switch and had to watch an ad before you got electricity? Can you imagine if you turned on a faucet and had to watch an ad before the water came out?
Jan Koum -
As long as our user base continues to grow, at some point it will have critical mass, and at some point it will tip, and at some point, people will just have to use WhatsApp because their friends are using WhatsApp.
Jan Koum -
Experiences from our youth shape what we do later in life.
Jan Koum -
The F-word here is focus.
Jan Koum -
In some ways, you can think of end-to-end encryption as honoring what the past looked like.
Jan Koum
-
The argument can be made: Maybe you want to trust the government, but you shouldn't because you don't know where things are going to go in the future.
Jan Koum -
Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo - there's a common theme. None of these companies ever sold. By staying independent, they were able to build a great company.
Jan Koum -
When I was a kid trying to communicate with family in the Soviet Union, it was very difficult. You had to go through the long-distance phone companies like MCI, which were difficult to navigate and expensive to make calls through.
Jan Koum -
I grew up watching Indian movies as a kid in Russia. I am quite familiar with Bollywood.
Jan Koum