Brian Action is the executive chairman of the Signal Foundation and is also one of the co-founders of the popular messaging app, Whatsapp. He started his journey at Yahoo before he started Whatsapp. The messenger was subsequently acquired by Facebook, and that’s when Action decided to call it quits.
There are reports that at some point, Action did try to work at Facebook, but for some reason, it did not materialize.
Now, coming to the Signal project itself, it’s interesting to note that the founders knew what Signal was going to be, even before they decided on the name. The concept of cryptography was shunned out with experts claiming that it is not something theoretical, and not many people would end up using it in this age. The people at Signal, however, though different.
The idea of Signal was to make cryptography simple, and usable for individuals. They started off with a team of 7 people, with no VC funding of any kind. However, the workload soon started taking its toll, and the decision was made to expand this to an organization that would be better equipped to maintain the platform and the ever-growing user base.
The Signal Foundation started off with initial funding of $50,000,000, which eventually enabled them to dream bigger and have more resources at their disposal. Today, Signal is growing stronger and the team is committed to the project for the long run, which means the messenger that is receiving so much love, is officially here to stay.
