
WhatsApp's chief business officer Neeraj Arora is leaving the company - shalmanese
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/11/27/whatsapp-employee-number-4-joins-mass-exodus/
======
daemin
WhatsApp 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
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.

~~~
hpbd
Nobody 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.

~~~
octorian
> 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
Or 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.

~~~
hpbd
Same here in Spain.

I mean, let's be honest, it's just a chat application. It is almost trivial to
build and maintain. And since it uses your phone number, there is no friction
to switch to another app--if they decided to charge for it, Telegram would eat
it alive in months.

~~~
code_sloth
> It is almost trivial to build and maintain.

I'm interested to know what you've made or helped to make that is more complex
and more difficult to maintain than whatsapp.

~~~
octorian
I find it amusing just how many people make this assumption up-front. Probably
because its one of those "problems" that seems simple on the surface, until
you start digging deeper. This gets especially true once you take into account
offline delivery, presence management, delivered/read receipts,
group/broadcast use cases, efficient use of the network, complexities of
reliable/efficient cross-platform media transfer across a variety of formats,
and... robust end-to-end encryption.

------
Dirlewanger
And 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
The 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
Considering 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.

------
dkobia
Curious what the role of a business officer at WhatsApp is considering it
doesn't currently have a business model.

~~~
Irishsteve
Probably working with carriers and hand set manufactures to try and get
WhatsApp installed by default.

~~~
TremendousJudge
Where 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.

