From Business Insider (June 23, 2013) — Two Ex-Yahoos Are Making Millions — And Turning Down Much More Because They Hate Ads
Interesting story about two former Yahoo engineers who set out to build an app that relied on its own mertis rather than adveristing for revenue. As the story states:
Former Yahoo engineers Brian Acton and Jan Koum are making millions of dollars per year.
They could make hundreds of millions of dollars – maybe a billion or two.
All it would take is a relatively brief flurry of paperwork, signatures, and handshakes.
But so far, Acton and Koum have chosen not to.
What’s really admirable is their approach to building their product:
We wanted to spend our time building a service people wanted to use because it worked and saved them money and made their lives better in a small way. We knew that we could charge people directly if we could do all those things.
Focusing on the user. Providing value by making the user’s life better and easier. Sounds like a good model to me.