Brian Acton Biography (Founder of Whatsapp)

 Brian Acton Biography (Founder of Whatsapp)

Brian Acton is an American Internet entrepreneur and computer programmer best known as the co-founder of WhatsApp. A graduate of computer science from the Stanford University, Acton began his career as a system administrator for Rockwell International. Moving on, he worked with companies like Adobe systems, Apple and Yahoo Inc. He invested in the dot-com boom but lost millions during the 2000 dot-com crash. He left Yahoo along with his colleague Jan Koum and eventually went on to develop the mobile messaging application WhatsApp with the latter. The duo, who once applied for jobs at Facebook but faced rejection, sold WhatsApp to Facebook in February 2014 for US$19 billion, the largest acquisition of Facebook till present. In September 2017, Acton left WhatsApp to start a non-profit organization with American computer security researcher Moxie Marlinspike, called ‘Signal Foundation,’ which was founded in February 2018.

 

 

 

Childhood & Early Life

 

Brian was born on February 17, 1972, in the US state of Michigan to a working middle class family. His mother who inspired him to start his own business ran a freight shipping firm.

 

Brian was raised in Central Florida where he attended comprehensive four-year high school called Lake Howell High School. He joined University of Pennsylvania after getting a full scholarship to study engineering, however left it a year later to attend Stanford University. In 1994, he completed his graduation and obtained a degree in computer science from Stanford.