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They 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
by noahmbarr 8y ago
They 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.
- pgm8705 8y agoHow long ago? My group of friends switched to Signal a few weeks back and there have been no issues with push notifications for me on iOS. It might be worth another look if it's been a while.
- rorykoehler 8y agoOnly a couple of months ago (second time I tried, both times same issue). This was on Android btw. To be clear I meant the push notification on my own device didn't work (reading back I can see what I said could be misinterpreted). I suspect it had something to do with aggressive background process management but even switching everything to low power efficiency settings/ always on didn't work consistently. I've moved on.
- hpbd 8y agoNobody actually paid for WhatsApp. At least, nobody I know off. They supposedly required you to pay 1€ a year after the first year, but everybody kept using it for free forever. I'd say they never made any money.
- gsich 8y agoThis. But not on iOS, they had to pay.
- hpbd 8y agoThey made it free on iOS too one year before they were acquired by Facebook: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/whatsapp-on-ios-now-free https://www.wired.co.uk/article/whatsapp-on-ios-now-free
- kylemclaren 8y agoYep, been using it on iOS for years and have never paid a single cent.
- rorykoehler 8y agoThey had $7m in the bank (from this $1 fee) when they were acquired if memory serves me correct.
- octorian 8y ago> Nobody actually paid for WhatsApp. At least, nobody I know off. People did pay. Its just that the charging was somewhat selective. Obviously you and your friends weren't in the group that was selected. Originally, it was a paid app ($1) on the iPhone. Eventually, that was dropped in favor of using in-app billing to actually charge the $1/year on Android... but this was only enforced in a few selected countries at first. Once the Facebook acquisition happened, this effort was dropped. If it hadn't happened, then charging users would have expanded gradually over time.
- emptyfile 8y agoOr people would just mass jump to Viber or Telegram or any other messaging app... I can tell you with confidence that very few users in eastern Europe would pay even an euro for an app that used to be free and has free alternatives. In fact my friends and I discussed that exact particular scenario when we once got a notification from WhatsApp about future payments.
- segmondy 8y agoSure, but they took VC money. :-( VC and Wall Street money are poison to privacy products.