Signal co-founder Brian Acton in talks with ET Now | StartUpCentral | EXCLUSIVE

He co-founded Whatsapp, sold it to Facebook; later had a tiff with Mark Zuckerberg over privacy and left Facebook, even though it cost him $850mn. After that he co-founded Signal, an instant messaging service which is used by Edward Snowden and Elon Musk. He is Brian Acton and he is on ET Now! We couldn't have gotten this interview at a better time. Signal has raced to the the numero uno spot onApple's AppStore in 40 countries and in 18 countries on Android this week after Whatsapp changed its "take it or leave it" privacy settings that come into effect in February 2021.
In this interview, Brian Acton talks about Signal not being intimidated by Big Tech's Big Bucks, and dismisses any notion of not being able to scale up Signal on account of lack of capital.
"If you're smart and engineer well, then you will realise it doesn't cost as much money as you think to run & operate a service. With good engineering you can on a small budget run a service for millions & billions of people," said Signal Foudation's Executive Chairman Brian Acton.
What helps Signal in this regard is that its not a publicly traded corporation or even a privately held one with big ambitions of reporting extraordinarily high profits. Signal is a non profit organisation.
"Its easier to run a non-profit organisation sustained by grants & donations from all sources. We will continue to build a product that people want to give money to. Wikipedia is a fantastic example of a service that is being run on grants & donations. We talk to Wikipedia a lot & share notes; they exemplify what is good about the internet. A community can build something for the world that is not focussed on big bucks, big profits," said Brian Acton.
So, what's the big lesson learn from Whatsapp? Brian Acton says its to not build an America-first product but instead a global-first product. He in fact went on to say, "If you build for India, you can build for the world."
Now coming to India. Its far too big a market for Signal to not focus on, given Whatsapp has already amassed 400 million users. Signal is already in 10 Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu, and its looking to have many more on board.
"Whatsapp is the dominant player in India and I am ot going to dispute that. The opportunity in India is to teach that privacy is important in how you use the internet and apps. Also important for SIgnal to learn from India what is important to people in protecting their provacy," Brian Acton said in his interview.
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[@dongaokar]

This is a must watch interview. After watching this I am inspired to delete WhatsApp and shift to Signal immediately. This only happens if many others do it too

[@jayeshsharma1176]

Brain Acton Is A Legend

[@jayeshsharma1176]

Interviewer is very unexperienced ! Could have been a better interview, do your homework.

[@nitinkumar29]

Satayamav Jaytae ... Truth always Triumph ... Signal triumph over Whatsapp is exactly that!

[@finehumanbeing3506]

Seems like a guy one can trust

[@happyf7717]

19 miljard dollar and Brian has no good camera on his laptop.. wtf.. where all your money goes to?

[@RTM849]

It's actually $22 Billion. They sold whatsapp in 2014 for that price.