Brian Acton and Jan Koum are making millions of dollars annually from their text messaging app, WhatsApp. But they could be making so much more if they advertised, which seems to be an unlikely route for the pair because they hate advertising.

WhatsApp generates money from charging a once off installation fee of $0.99 for iPhone users and $0.99 every year after the first year for Android users. According to reports in the Wall Street Journal over 250 million people use the popular text messaging app monthly. From these numbers it’s clear that the pair are making millions.

With little to no outside investment and 30 employees, their current millions could so easily be transformed into billions. Some reports are suggesting the pair could make over a billion if they sold their app to Google or Facebook. Another option would be for the company to take venture capital investments. But neither of those roads have been taken.

Acton and Koum have not detailed any reasoning for not taking those paths but a recent blog post entitled “Why we don’t sell ads” may have something to do with it. An excerpt from the blog post:

When we sat down to start our own thing together three years ago we wanted to make something that wasn’t just another ad clearinghouse. 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. We knew we could do what most people aim to do every day: avoid ads.

A Silicon Valley industry source said that without outside investments WhatsApp is unlikely to be a “real business” under Silicon Valley standards. It does seem though, that Acton and Koum are not bothered with what Silicon Valley thinks. Both former Yahoo! employees could easily have gained a very comfortable financial cushion but are focusing on their company as it is.

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[Source: Business Insider]