Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
Jan is the entrepreneur that I admire the most. Here are some of the reasons:<p>1. He was so focused on building the product that he just ignored all emails from carriers and investors. Sequoia partners had to hunt down Whatsapp's office just to get in touch with him. Most entrepreneurs would be easily distracted by investor attention.<p>2. He didn't care about the press (despite a ton of inbound interest). I don't know how or why he could resist the temptation, but he did for a long time. In fact at one point he tried to consciously stay out of press because he wanted to "manage" growth and didn't want competitors to get wind.<p>3. Very balanced outlook towards global users - even though SV (or even US) didn't recognize their traction, he always understood that there is a big world out there where not everyone has an iPhone.<p>4. Focus on infrastructure and reliability.<p>5. Focus on being "lean". For a long time the team was quite small - but the thing I find most telling is the fact that he didn't have "business people" for a long time - anyone who didn't build the product. At acquisiton I think they had a GC and a business operations guy. It it amazing to be able to resist the temptation to build an empire.<p>Whichever way you look at it, he comes across as someone who is able to resist common temptations and had a great balanced head on his shoulder.<p>There is Lot to learn from Jan