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Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index

⬅ # 710 Nithin Kamath|# 712 Ronald Wanek ➡

# 711 Brian Acton 

$4.61B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 6/21/2024
$12.0M (0.26%)

# 711 Brian Acton 

$4.61B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 6/21/2024
$12.0M (0.26%)
OccupationCofounder, WhatsApp
Source of WealthWhatsApp
Age52
ResidencePalo Alto, California
Marital StatusMarried
Children1
EducationBS, Stanford University
Age-Adjusted Net Worth$7.91B
Brian Acton
Brian Acton
United States
Net worth: $4.61B

Self-Made Score 

Wealth History

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Biography

Overview

Brian Acton became wealthy as the co-founder of WhatsApp, a mobile messaging app he created with Jan Koum in 2007. The app was later acquired by Facebook for $22 billion in 2014, with Acton receiving around $3 billion for his stake.
He is most known for his role in developing WhatsApp and for his subsequent philanthropic efforts, particularly his support for the Signal Foundation.

Early Life Education

Acton grew up in Michigan and later moved to Central Florida, where he graduated from Lake Howell High School.
He received a full scholarship to study engineering at the University of Pennsylvania but transferred to Stanford University, graduating in 1994 with a degree in computer science.

Career Yahoo

In 1996, Acton joined Yahoo Inc. where he worked for over nine years.
He initially worked as a product tester at Apple Inc. and Adobe Systems before joining Yahoo.
During his time at Yahoo, he met Jan Koum, with whom he later co-founded WhatsApp.

Whatsapp

Acton and Koum sold WhatsApp to Facebook in 2014 for approximately $19 billion in cash and stock.
After the acquisition, Acton continued to work at WhatsApp until September 2017.
He led a funding round for Trak N Tell in 2016, raising $3.5 million along with two other investors.
Acton left WhatsApp over a dispute with Facebook regarding the monetization of the app and concerns about user data privacy.
Following his departure, Acton co-founded the Signal Foundation dedicated to private communication.

Signal Foundation

In 2018, Acton committed $50 million to the Signal Foundation, which he co-founded with Moxie Marlinspike.
Signal, an encrypted messaging app developed by the foundation, is widely used by journalists and human rights activists.
Acton's investment in Signal reflects his commitment to supporting private communication and encryption technology.

Philanthropy

Since 2014, Acton and his wife Tegan have established a philanthropic network through various foundations, including Sunlight Giving, Acton Family Giving, and Solidarity Giving.
Sunlight Giving, founded in 2014, focuses on supporting low-income families with young children in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Acton Family Giving and Solidarity Giving foundations were also established to support charitable causes.
Forbes reported in 2019 that the Actons had given over $1 billion to charitable causes over their lifetimes.

How long would it take you to become as rich as Brian Acton?

If you started with $10,000 and invested an additional $500 each month at a 44.13% CAGR, it would take you 5 years to reach Brian Acton's net worth of $4.61B.

Is this realistic? It depends how closely the VIX-TA-Macro Advanced model performs to its history in the future. Since Grizzly Bulls launched on January 1, 2022, it's returned 48.35% compared to 16.28% for the S&P 500 benchmark.

Enter data in all but one field below, then calculate the missing value

Brian Acton is very wealthy, but what's stopping you from reaching that same level of success? As summarized in our five fundamental rules to wealth building, becoming wealthy in a modern capitalist economy is not complicated. There's actually only three variables:

  1. Your starting capital
  2. Your earnings after expenses
  3. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of your savings

Most people start with zero or very little, so if you weren't born into wealth, don't fret! The majority of the fortunate folks listed in our Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index came from middle class or lower backgrounds. The most distinguishing characteristic of the group is their ability to consistently earn a high CAGR on their savings.

Every billionaire has a unique strategy to achieve high CAGR. For Brian Acton, WhatsApp is the primary source. Whether you choose to invest your savings in your own businesses or the businesses of others is not as important. The salient piece of the puzzle is ensuring that your hard-earned savings are generating sufficient CAGR to reach your long term goals.

Most people simply invest their money in index funds and call it a day. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it guarantees relative mediocrity. To achieve greatness, you need to invest your money to earn higher than average returns. In the long run, better investors will always finish ahead of better earners.

Source: Grizzly Bulls reporting

Methodology: Grizzly Bulls' Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world's billionaires and richest people. Grizzly Bulls strives to provide the most accurate net worth calculations available. We pull data from public equity markets, SEC filings, public real estate records, and other reputable sources.

The index is dynamic and updates daily at the close of U.S. stock market trading based on changes in the markets, economy, and updates to Grizzly Bulls' proprietary algorithm of personal wealth calculation. Stakes in public companies are tracked daily based on the relevant closing prices of the underlying securities. Additionally, stakes in private companies, cash, real estate, and other less easily valued assets are updated periodically through careful analysis of insider transactions, comparable public company sales / EBITDA multiples, etc.

Edited by: Lee Bailey