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Brian Acton is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is the co-founder (with Jan Koum) of WhatsApp, a mobile messaging application which was acquired by Facebook Inc. in February 2014 for US$19 billion. He was formerly employed at Yahoo Inc.
Acton grew up in Michigan and graduated from Stanford University in 1994 with a degree in computer science. He earlier studied at the University of Central Florida and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1992 he became a systems administrator for Rockwell International, then a product tester at Apple Inc. and Adobe Systems. In 1996 he became the 44th employee hired by Yahoo Inc.
In 1998 Jan Koum was hired by Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer. Shortly afterward he met Acton while working at Ernst & Young as a security tester. Over the next nine years, they worked at Yahoo. Acton invested in the dotcom boom and lost millions in the dot-com bubble of 2000. In September 2007 Koum and Acton left Yahoo and took a year off, traveling around South America and playing ultimate frisbee. Both applied, and failed, to work at Facebook. In January 2009, Koum bought an iPhone and realized that the then seven-month old App Store was about to spawn a whole new industry of apps. He visited his friend Alex Fishman and talked about developing an app. Koum almost immediately chose the name WhatsApp because it sounded like “what’s up,” and a week later on his birthday, Feb. 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Acton
Acton grew up in Michigan and graduated from Stanford University in 1994 with a degree in computer science. He earlier studied at the University of Central Florida and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1992 he became a systems administrator for Rockwell International, then a product tester at Apple Inc. and Adobe Systems. In 1996 he became the 44th employee hired by Yahoo Inc.
In 1998 Jan Koum was hired by Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer. Shortly afterward he met Acton while working at Ernst & Young as a security tester. Over the next nine years, they worked at Yahoo. Acton invested in the dotcom boom and lost millions in the dot-com bubble of 2000. In September 2007 Koum and Acton left Yahoo and took a year off, traveling around South America and playing ultimate frisbee. Both applied, and failed, to work at Facebook. In January 2009, Koum bought an iPhone and realized that the then seven-month old App Store was about to spawn a whole new industry of apps. He visited his friend Alex Fishman and talked about developing an app. Koum almost immediately chose the name WhatsApp because it sounded like “what’s up,” and a week later on his birthday, Feb. 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Acton