
When WhatsApp was acquired a few days ago for $US19 billion, it had a fairly small team.
55 people work for WhatsApp; 32 of them are engineers. The rest mostly handle customer support.
We rounded up some of the earliest WhatsApp’s employees on LinkedIn. These people are responsible for creating the fastest growing social network ever. 450 million people use WhatsApp every month.
Many of the early employees were former Yahooers, just like WhatsApp co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton.
Which employees did we miss? Leave the names in the comments.

Co-founded WhatsApp in February 2009
Role: CEO and 'Senior Tweet Manager'
Previous Job: Infrastructure Engineering for Yahoo

Joined WhatsApp: February 2009 -- Present
Role: Software Engineer
Previous Job: iPhone developer at Injoit
Julia Reznikov was only at WhatsApp for a handful of months so she might not have gotten WhatsApp stock. She joined Federated Media then Google

Joined WhatsApp: March 2009 -- August 2009
Role: Marketing/PR Coordinator
Current Job: Platform Account Manager at Google
Charles Kung wasn't ever employed by WhatsApp, but he was an advisor who may have participated in WhatsApp's $US250,000 seed round.

Kung was a former Yahoo engineer-turned angel investor who started advising WhatsApp in March 2009. His LinkedIn profile says he's 'semi-retired.' Maybe now he'll be fully retired.
Chris Peiffer was an old friend of Koum's who was hired to build WhatsApp's Blackberry version. 'I was sceptical,' he told Forbes thinking, 'People have SMS, right?'

Joined WhatsApp: October 2009 -- April 2013
Role: Engineer
Current Job: Engineer at Touchpoint Restaurant Innovations
Brian Acton joined WhatsApp a few months after Jan Koum launched it but he's still considered a WhatsApp co-founder.

Joined WhatsApp: June 2010 -- Present
Role: Mobile app developer
Previous Job: Senior Software Engineer, QVT
Alexander Lin can't escape WhatsApp. He left WhatsApp in 2011 and joined Facebook. Now they'll be reunited.

Joined WhatsApp: June 2010 -- July 2011
Role: Android Developer
Current job: Software engineer, Facebook

Joined WhatsApp: November 2010 -- Present
Role: Software Engineer
Previous Job: Yahoo
Kevin Christensen worked for language translation app MyGengo before joining WhatsApp in early 2011.

Joined WhatsApp: March 2011 -- Present
Role: Customer Support
Previous Job: Translator, MyGengo

Joined WhatsApp: October 2011 -- Present
Role: Software Engineer
Previous Job: Engineer, Cobham Analytic Solutions

Joined WhatsApp: November 2011 -- Present
Role: 'Business Guy'
Previous Job: Google

Joined WhatsApp: November 2011 -- Present
Role: Software engineer
Previous Job: Software engineer, Microsoft
Bonus: Jim Goetz led multiple rounds of financing in WhatsApp and made giant returns for Sequoia Capital.
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