Page 64 - Forbes Magazine-October 31, 2018

SELLER’S

REMORSE

Facebook’s blockbuster $22 billion WhatsApp purchase
instantly made Brian Acton one of the richest people in America.
But as with his Instagram peers, his idealism clashed with Mark
Zuckerberg’s financial juggernaut, leading to perhaps the
most expensive moral stand in history. For the first time,
Acton explains why he walked away from $850 million.

BY PARMY OLSON

hatsApp cofounder Brian Acton, 46, sits in the cafe at the glitzy Four Seasons Hotel in Palo
Alto, California, and the only way you’d guess he might be worth $3.6 billion is the $20 tip
he briskly leaves for his coffee. Sturdily built and wearing a baseball cap and T-shirt from
a WhatsApp corporate event, he’s determined to avoid the trappings of wealth and runs
his own errands, including dropping off his minivan for maintenance earlier that day. An
SMS has just come in from his local Honda dealer saying “payment received.” He points
to it on his phone.
“This is what I wanted people to do with WhatsApp,” he says of the world’s biggest messaging service, which is
used by more than 1.5 billion people and provides ad-free, encrypted messaging as a core feature. “This was infor-
mational, and useful.”
The past tense and wistfulness hang in the air. More than four years ago, Acton and his cofounder, Jan Koum,
sold WhatsApp, which had relatively insignificant revenue, to Facebook for $22 billion, one of the most stunning
acquisitions of the century. A year ago he left Facebook, saying he wanted to focus on a nonprofit. Then in March,
as details of the Cambridge Analytica scandal oozed out, he sent a Tweet that quickly went viral and shocked his
former employers, who had made him a billionaire many times over: “It is time. #deletefacebook.” No explanation
followed. He hasn’t sent another Tweet since.
Now he’s talking publicly for the first time. Under pressure from Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to mon-

ROBERT GALLAGHER

OCTOBER 31, 2018 FORBES | 53