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WhatsApp's chief business officer Neeraj Arora is leaving the company
- dkobia 8y agoCurious what the role of a business officer at WhatsApp is considering it doesn't currently have a business model.
- whatshisface 8y agoThey had him around in a bid to come up with one, but now he's leaving because they all agreed it was time to give up. ;)
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoThe business model of start-ups like WhatsApp is centered around M&As, and here the result for WhatsApp has been spectacular.
- Irishsteve 8y agoProbably working with carriers and hand set manufactures to try and get WhatsApp installed by default.
- TremendousJudge 8y agoWhere I live (in South America), carriers give WhatsApp traffic for free to their clients. I guess this is probably the case in other countries as well.
- fatnoah 8y agoThere's also the B2C communication side of things. Businesses would be willing to pay to communicate with their customers via WhatsApp. Disclaimer: Until this year I worked for a company building apps to let businesses communicate with their customers via SMS and Facebook. Support for WhatsApp was the next most asked-for platform from our customers and prospects.
- daemin 8y agoWhatsApp did have a business model when it was independent - charge a small subscription fee for its service. When Facebook bought it, the business model was to turn its users into the product.
- noahmbarr 8y agoThey had ~50 people at time of acquisition. Assuming a steep expense level of $18,500/employee/month, total run rate cost was at ~$11M/year. At a $1 a new user (were at 600M users and growing fast), WhatsApp was almost definitely cash flow positive at time of acquisition.
- zimablue 8y agoI wish I could get myself to take the hit and uninstall all my surveillance capitalism but I'm taking a middle road approach => install signal, try to talk to my friends on signal > whatsapp > messenger, try to persuade people to move to signal. Has worked sometimes. I ask anyone else too weak to go detox to try the same thing.
- Vinnl 8y agoI made a clean break (never installed WhatsApp in the first place, in fact). I got many friends to install Signal and use it to contact me, but only since other people have started using it as their preferred messaging app as well is it reaching critical mass - friends who are not on Signal are now starting to use it due to FOMO. So what I'm trying to say is: I've seen your strategy working, so it's a good one that doesn't require you to make too many personal sacrifices.
- rorykoehler 8y agoI tried Signal and it was hopelessly broken unfortunately. No matter what I did I could not get it to consistently send push notifications when I received a message which is practically the second most important feature of a chat app.
- 8y ago
- Dirlewanger 8y agoAnd the bleed continues. Who important is still left? Soon enough it will only be the good little corporate grovelers that will implement whatever Facebook tells them.
- octorian 8y agoThe bleed shouldn't actually surprise anyone who knows how the acquisition actually happened. It only surprises tech reporters who are universally oblivious to this part. If someone said: "We're buying the company you work for, and you're going to get $$$$$ out of the deal. You get some of it up-front, and the rest dolled out over the next four years." Well, now the four years are up. Do you stay and continue to simply work for $, or do you take a break and find something new to do with your life?
- Sylos 8y agoConsidering that they worked for $ beforehand and will likely not get more than $ at other places, there is at least the theoretical possibility that it didn't all turn to shit and that they would choose to continue working at the company for the same reason they initially started working there.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]