No Ads. No Games. No Gimmicks.
American. Yahoo engineer for twelve years. Co-founded WhatsApp with Jan Koum in 2009 after we both got rejected from Facebook and Twitter. Wrote one rule on a sticky note next to the desk: "No Ads. No Games. No Gimmicks." Ran the whole thing on that rule. Fifty engineers, four hundred and fifty million users. Sold to Facebook in 2014 for nineteen billion dollars and watched them violate every sentence of the sticky note one by one. Walked away in 2017. Used the payout to fund Signal -- encrypted messaging with no ads, no corporate owner, just the rule. Lesson I keep: the values you bake in get unbaked when someone else owns the code.
Scaling messaging systems
Engineering · 20y
Saying no to bad money
Leadership · 20y
Protecting values under pressure
Leadership · 25y
Ultimate frisbee
Sports · 30y
One-hour talk. What we did. What we did NOT do (hint: most of it). Erlang decisions, database decisions, the sticky note. Also: how I said no to ads for five years.
A small team that says no twenty times a day ships better than a big team that says yes.
€30 per_session
The literal sticky note. Yellow, faded, my handwriting. "No Ads. No Games. No Gimmicks." Framed in a simple black frame. Borrowable for a week so you can put it on your own desk and remember.
A promise on paper outlives a promise in a slide deck.
€5 per_day
One hour. Bring your encrypted-messaging question. I will not charge you. If you can, donate the fee to the Signal Foundation. That was the whole point of the second act.
If you can fix the thing you regret, you are lucky. Fix it.
Palo Alto, CA, US
Exported from La Piazza · 2026-04-24