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I'm marginally in the IT space... Is there anything to my reaction that at least in dollar terms this is a multiple of the dollar amount of what Whatsapp was ac

I'm marginally in the IT space... Is there anything to my reaction that at least in dollar terms this is a multiple of the dollar amount of what Whatsapp was acquired back in the day, which was a large consumer facing product that I could see was quite literally taking over messaging all over the world, and this is a... platform I've never heard of? I'm just trying to make sense of the numbers.

yen223 2y ago
I don't think WhatsApp had the same kind of revenue that Wiz has, even normalised for 2014 numbers.
- disgruntledphd2 2y ago
  Revenue and profit are very different. Like, it's easy to pump revenue at a loss. I don't really see the benefits of this acquisition for Google, but congrats to the Wiz team!
  - noboostforyou 2y ago
    > I don't really see the benefits of this acquisition for Google At the very least it's a giant book of sales leads.
    - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
      Yeah, I see that but it doesn't really feel like $32bn worth of value.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- atemerev 2y ago
  WhatsApp purchase was for that sweet sweet data of everyone's contact lists (this was their original innovation for onboarding — just give us access to your phone book and we'll tell you who else is on WhatsApp). Their earnings were completely irrelevant in price discussions. The billions were paid for the dataset.
  - WhyNotHugo 2y ago
    Indeed. It's not just an incredible dataset, it's a self-updating one too.
  - Marsymars 2y ago
    I'd expect a lot of the money was also to prevent a competitor with WhatsApp's ubiquity from existing. (Or selling to another competitor.)
    - atemerev 2y ago
      That too, of course. WhatsApp itself was a work of art at that point, its success should be studied and hopefully emulated.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - dataflow 2y ago
    Any idea what profitable things they do with that data?
    - atemerev 2y ago
      Mostly ad targeting (you can infer a lot of things from the global graph of contacts). Meta is an attention routing company.
      - guappa 2y ago
        How do they spend insane amount of money in targeted ads and all the ads I get are useless? I constantly get ads to learn how to code. Ok I've been doing that professionally for over a decade and I have a real degree from a real university… why would I do some online programming course?
        2y ago
IshKebab 2y ago
True, but the vast majority of people spend zero money on WhatsApp. I actually have no idea how I would give them money. There are no adverts, the metadata is not valuable, and no companies even use WhatsApp business, at least in the UK. Their UK revenue is basically 0, despite 100% market share. This is an enterprise product in a space where companies spend millions of dollars. Still seems like an insane amount though.
- quantumwannabe 2y ago
  Whatsapp when it was acquired cost $1/year (with a year long free trial) and had a billion users and 55 employees. They were printing money.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    As far as I remember they didn't ever really collect that money though. I certainly never paid it. I'm not sure they ever even implemented payment on Android. Obviously hard to source this old stuff but I found an old Reddit comment that backs up my recollection: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsapp/comments/xesw29/comment/ioifnzf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsapp/comments/xesw29/comment/io...
    - SushiHippie 2y ago
      I'm fairly certain that I paid once for WhatsApp back in the day (on Android) EDIT: just checked my payment history and in November 2013 I paid €0.89 for "One Year Service"
    - guappa 2y ago
      They were collecting. Everyone I knew was paying.
- zck 2y ago
  Just to respond to the Whatsapp part of the comment, apparently Whatsapp made about $1.7 billion in 2024. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/whatsapp-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/whatsapp-statistics/
zck 2y ago
Whatsapp was $1/person/year for a license. Wiz is "contact sales for pricing". Presumably that's more than $1/year. According to Amazon's Wiz integration (https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-ibgbkrqusncsm https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-ibgbkrqusncsm), the lowest cost they have is $24,000/year.
- craigkilgo 2y ago
  It's based on your workload you are using it for basically. So its not a set price.
seanhunter 2y ago
Valuation multiples for a free direct to consumer messaging company are very different to a paid-for b2b cybersecurity company. It doesn't really matter whether you've heard about Wiz, the important thing is every CISO has heard of it and many of them are prepared to pay actual money for the product.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Wiz is enterprise software aimed at and popular with large companies that need to check all the compliancy boxes, and according to sources used by >40% of the Fortune 500 companies. It's also only 5 years old, so that's a ridiculously fast growth.

yen223 2y ago

I don't think WhatsApp had the same kind of revenue that Wiz has, even normalised for 2014 numbers.

disgruntledphd2 2y ago
Revenue and profit are very different. Like, it's easy to pump revenue at a loss. I don't really see the benefits of this acquisition for Google, but congrats to the Wiz team!
- noboostforyou 2y ago
  > I don't really see the benefits of this acquisition for Google At the very least it's a giant book of sales leads.
  - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
    Yeah, I see that but it doesn't really feel like $32bn worth of value.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
atemerev 2y ago
WhatsApp purchase was for that sweet sweet data of everyone's contact lists (this was their original innovation for onboarding — just give us access to your phone book and we'll tell you who else is on WhatsApp). Their earnings were completely irrelevant in price discussions. The billions were paid for the dataset.
- WhyNotHugo 2y ago
  Indeed. It's not just an incredible dataset, it's a self-updating one too.
- Marsymars 2y ago
  I'd expect a lot of the money was also to prevent a competitor with WhatsApp's ubiquity from existing. (Or selling to another competitor.)
  - atemerev 2y ago
    That too, of course. WhatsApp itself was a work of art at that point, its success should be studied and hopefully emulated.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- dataflow 2y ago
  Any idea what profitable things they do with that data?
  - atemerev 2y ago
    Mostly ad targeting (you can infer a lot of things from the global graph of contacts). Meta is an attention routing company.
    - guappa 2y ago
      How do they spend insane amount of money in targeted ads and all the ads I get are useless? I constantly get ads to learn how to code. Ok I've been doing that professionally for over a decade and I have a real degree from a real university… why would I do some online programming course?
      - 2y ago

IshKebab 2y ago

True, but the vast majority of people spend zero money on WhatsApp. I actually have no idea how I would give them money. There are no adverts, the metadata is not valuable, and no companies even use WhatsApp business, at least in the UK. Their UK revenue is basically 0, despite 100% market share. This is an enterprise product in a space where companies spend millions of dollars. Still seems like an insane amount though.

quantumwannabe 2y ago
Whatsapp when it was acquired cost $1/year (with a year long free trial) and had a billion users and 55 employees. They were printing money.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  As far as I remember they didn't ever really collect that money though. I certainly never paid it. I'm not sure they ever even implemented payment on Android. Obviously hard to source this old stuff but I found an old Reddit comment that backs up my recollection: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsapp/comments/xesw29/comment/ioifnzf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsapp/comments/xesw29/comment/io...
  - SushiHippie 2y ago
    I'm fairly certain that I paid once for WhatsApp back in the day (on Android) EDIT: just checked my payment history and in November 2013 I paid €0.89 for "One Year Service"
  - guappa 2y ago
    They were collecting. Everyone I knew was paying.
zck 2y ago
Just to respond to the Whatsapp part of the comment, apparently Whatsapp made about $1.7 billion in 2024. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/whatsapp-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/whatsapp-statistics/

zck 2y ago

Whatsapp was $1/person/year for a license. Wiz is "contact sales for pricing". Presumably that's more than $1/year. According to Amazon's Wiz integration (https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-ibgbkrqusncsm https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-ibgbkrqusncsm), the lowest cost they have is $24,000/year.

craigkilgo 2y ago
It's based on your workload you are using it for basically. So its not a set price.

seanhunter 2y ago

Valuation multiples for a free direct to consumer messaging company are very different to a paid-for b2b cybersecurity company. It doesn't really matter whether you've heard about Wiz, the important thing is every CISO has heard of it and many of them are prepared to pay actual money for the product.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

Wiz is enterprise software aimed at and popular with large companies that need to check all the compliancy boxes, and according to sources used by >40% of the Fortune 500 companies. It's also only 5 years old, so that's a ridiculously fast growth.