“I worry about what [an acquiring] company would do with our population: we’ve made such an important promise to our users — no ads, no gimmicks, no games — that to have someone come along and buy us seems awfully unethical. It goes against my personal integrity” That was WhatsApp founder Brian Acton not too long ago. From WiredUK: WhatsApp: The inside story.

+ WhatsApp’s CEO Jan Koum lived on welfare and foodstamps in the 1990s. He couldn’t afford calls home to Ukraine. In the long run, that turned out to be a good thing.

+ And looking back, Brian Acton is probably pretty happy he got rejected when he applied for jobs a few years back. Twitter said no. And Facebook said no.