Jan Koum Quotes & Sayings

“Advertising isn't just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data.”

“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.”

“I didn't have a computer until I was 19 - but I did have an abacus.”

“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.”

“I grew up in a society where everything you did was eavesdropped on, recorded, snitched on. I had friends when we were kids getting into trouble for telling anecdotes about Communist leaders.”

“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?”

“Communication is at the very core of our society. That's what makes us human.”

“Marketing and press kicks up dust. It gets in your eye, and then you're not focusing on the product.”

“No one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they'll see tomorrow.”

“I only have one idea, that is WhatsApp, and I am going to continue to focus on that. I have no plans to build any other ideas.”