
WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus - munchor
https://www.fastcompany.com/40459142/whatsapps-cofounder-on-how-it-reached-1-3-billion-users-without-losing-its-focus
======
firefoxd
Here are some numbers i can't find. The number of users chatting on yahoo,
aim, facebook, msn messenger, and all the random others combined when it was a
thing not to care which people were using.

At my job in 2011, every single member of my team was on using a different
client, i was on ubuntu using Empathy.

The point is, chat was already resolved, and it didn't require some sort of
"quiet room or distraction free office" to get it where it was.

Kudos to the WhatsApp team for having this many users, but let's not forget
that we had no problem chatting until the facebook, yahoo, googles broke the
old protocol in favor of restricting users to their own systems.

~~~
avip
We hear this rant on every chat-related thread. WhatsApp brought the amazing
innovation of using your phone number for "login" (and later on - your native
contacts as its contacts list). This enabled zero-BS onboarding, and that's
why they have so many users. Thanks WA for helping humanity deprecate that
horrible XMPP. I don't miss it.

~~~
chrischen
People wanted free text messaging, so they used whatsapp.

If they were so great it would have caught on in the US, but it didn’t.

~~~
paganel
It caught on in almost all the rest of the world but because it didn't catch
on in the US it means that it is shit. Yeah, talk about living in a bubble...

Back on topic, I've avoided using WhatsApp for about a year, even though
everyone around me was using it. When I've finally gave in I found out that it
was really, really easy to use, even on my relatively crappy iPhone4 (I'm
talking about ~2014-2015, at which point that type of phone was seen as a
museum artifact; I'm still using it). Sending photos was damn easy,
notifications were always "right" (not the crappy shit that Skype calls
"notifications") and the "last seen" future was the central point of many
personal relationships (still is). Unfortunately WhatsApp stopped functioning
for me about one year and a half ago (after the FB acquisition), but you can't
dismiss it just because it hasn't caught up in the States.

~~~
nihonde
You can add Japan, South Korea, and China to the list of places that don’t use
WhatsApp.

~~~
chrischen
Also North Korea, Taiwan, Canada.

------
rvr_
WhatsApp's success here in Brazil can be attributed to very few reasons: 1)
Worked in every single smartphone (I started using it on a very resource
constrained 2010's Nokia running s60) 2) SMS was and still is very expensive
here. 3) Zero friction to use: it uses your phone number as your ID and your
catalog list as its own.

It was a killer combination, almost everybody here in Brazil uses it, no
matter how young or how old, no matter if it is a rich kid with the latest
IPhone or the poor with the cheapest phone. Even the telcos had to bend to
WhatsApp strength by offering "unlimited WhatsApp usage" on very limited data
plans.

~~~
elboru
Same scenario in Mexico, people in the US didn't leave SMS as fast as us
because they had unlimited SMS plans. A lot of people in our countries didn't
have that option, we had to pay around 20 US cents per SMS that was just
insane

~~~
scorpioxy
Same in Lebanon and several other countries in the middle east. 15 cents per
SMS, now around 9 I believe. So people started using WhatsApp for all their
messaging. When audio messages became a feature, people stopped using their
phone service and switched to this annoying method of communication. Many
people now default to WhatsApp calls for regular calls as well.

When I was there, my monthly bill was over $50 USD per month for very minimal
usage of both data and calls. That's ridiculous...

------
pmontra
> all of its attention has gone into making the app as simple as possible to
> get started with

And they succeeded. I've been using it for years and the only new feature I
remember is end to end encryption, despite they probably added new features. I
don't care about status and stories, if they're still there they managed not
to make them in the way of people that only want a SMS alternative. This is
great design.

My only wish is that they stay using the very same chatbot backend of
Messenger. WhatsApp is the only major chart platform without chatbots and
given it's the number one in many countries, included mine, I'm a little tired
to tell customers, yes but your customers will have to use Messenger or
Telegram (which many people don't even know to exist.)

~~~
krrrh
The other significant feature added was voice chats. The fact that it's easy
to forget or not notice is a strong indicator of how much humanity has adopted
text chatting as the primary mode of remote communication.

~~~
jacalata
"Humanity" may be overstating it. In Brazil people very commonly use WhatsApp
to send short spoken messages, for instance.

~~~
krrrh
You're right, China too. I should have said asynchronous messaging rather than
text messaging. Whether short voice, text, gif, or emoji messages, the
synchronous phone call is increasingly secondary.

~~~
Markoff
but reason in china is overcomplicated writing system. now young people have
no problem to write in pinyin, but older generation will rather send voice
message, since it's the easiest way to communicate, 2nd would be handwriting,
my father in law is exactly like this, not sure what kind of keyboard use my
MIL, my wife is fully westernized in this aspect using google pinyin with
QWERTY (!) keyboard, which is rare even by CN standard when most young people
still use T9 keyboard

------
r_singh
I'm kinda surprised to read that WhatsApp hasn't really caught on in the US—in
the sense that not everyone you know uses it (on the contrary, very few do).

Here in India, the term 'whatsapp' has creeped its way into regular hinglish
(mix of hindi and english) that most working professionals speak in. All
schools, colleges, offices and even parents use WhatsApp groups to
communicate. It has simply been embraced as the default place to communicate.
Even drivers and servants on my contact list put up WhatsApp stories and send
broadcasts; the intuitiveness of its adoption truly amazes me!

------
somberi
In India, Whatsapp is HUGE. I would go as far as to say if it were to go down
for a day, we will see a dip in the per-day GDP. It is not that so much
business is conducted on it, but also it is the dominant social messaging
glue.

Whatsapp probably has about 220 million users in India[1] and also because of
dwindling mobile data prices, it also has now become the alternate voice
channel [2]. Also I read that 90% of all smart phones in India have Whatsapp
installed.

(1) [http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/whatsapp-
hits-...](http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/whatsapp-hits-200-mn-
user-milestone-in-india/article9559045.ece) (2)
[https://www.medianama.com/2017/05/223-indian-whatsapp-
users-...](https://www.medianama.com/2017/05/223-indian-whatsapp-users-video-
call-for-50-million-minutes-per-day/)

~~~
tim333
>so much business is conducted on it

WhapsApp could probably monetize there by tacking on a payments system,
possible a bit paypal like. Could make money and not annoy existing users much
beyond an extra button they don't use.

~~~
govg
This is in the works, as far as I remember. They plan to plug into the UPI
(financial service by the government) to bring P2P payments. Will be quite the
gamechanger, especially with how popular Paytm (another p2p payment method /
wallet app) has become with shopkeepers and the like.

------
benevol
Which is cool in itself.

What is deeply regrettable is the fact that they ended up selling to Facebook
and thereby contributing to Facebook's aggressive and relentless mass
surveillance system.

~~~
inciampati
I wonder if they also cut themselves a raw deal in selling. They could have
built a whole platform on top of WhatsApp without any innovation more subtle
than copying WeChat.

~~~
charlesdm
Nobody is going to complain about selling for $19bn. Sometimes you just need
to take the money.

~~~
njarboe
And sometimes you don't. Zuckerburg famously had the chance to sell out for
billions quite a few times [1], and basically said, "I'm doing what I want to
be doing. If I sold out I would just start another social network company and
I already own the best/biggest one."

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-companies-that-
ever-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-companies-that-ever-tried-
to-buy-facebook-2010-5/#in-june-2004-an-unnamed-financier-
offered-10-million-1)

edit: Closer and better quote. Thiel's paraphrase of Zuckerburg, "I don't know
what I could do with the money. I'd just start another social networking site.
I kind of like the one I already have."

[2] [https://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-
zuckerberg...](https://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg-
luck-day-facebook-turned-down-billion-dollars.html)

~~~
eecks
Did anyone offer him 19 billion?

~~~
Mahn
Are you suggesting they never had a chance to sell for 19 billion? Because I'm
pretty sure all Zuckerberg had to do was pick up the phone in 2009, or even
earlier.

~~~
1123581321
It's plausible. They crossed $20BB valuation roughly at the end of 2009. At
that time they had 400MM users. This is about the same growth rate as WhatsApp
since founding.

However, Facebook had 400MM largely North American and European users and had
$1-1.5BB revenue with obvious potential for much more. WhatsApp's revenue was
a couple orders of magnitude less after five years, with lower potential on
its own to grow since it lacked Facebook's ability to collect and exploit
data.

So, it seems like WhatsApp should be valued less than Facebook, i.e. less than
$20BB, at the same stage in its life. That doesn't mean Facebook overpaid;
WhatsApp's users were nearly a perfect complement to Facebook's geographically
and Facebook, unlike a company like Google, had the organizational ability to
allow WhatsApp to grow while benefitting from Facebook resources.

[https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/tracking-
facebooks-v...](https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/tracking-facebooks-
valuation/)

------
fwdpropaganda
I think they're losing focus.

I've started seeing cracks in WhatsApp's UI:

\- Some times when inserting a single emoji on a single line, in between
pressing send and the message being sent, the keyboard flickers.

\- There seems to be a mysterious space between the Euro symbol and the next
character...? That space isn't displayed on the webapp.

\- I had a third one that I forgot.

Also bad decisions:

\- Logs shouldn't be backed-up to Google Drive.

\- Bloat. "Status"? No one cares. Why does swiping left allows me to take
pictures? I have a camera app that I like using.

\- Sharing metadata with Facebook will be WhatsApp's undoing, mark my words.

Signal on the other hand is being developed by 1 guy and has 5M installs.

~~~
482794793792894
WhatsApp's UI is a complete mess. Trying to explain it to my mum has been
near-impossible.

Starting a new conversation is done with an unlabeled FAB on the main-screen.
She had no idea that that was even a button.

Then there's four tabs across the top. One for taking pictures, because the
Camera-App and the camera-shortcut in the conversation view apparently weren't
enough, one for actual chats, one for setting your status, because that's
clearly a similar action to chatting and should therefore be placed in a tab
next to it, and one for calls, no idea why that's not just a button in the
contacts list.

Then when you go into the conversation view, at the bottom you have a generic
attach media icon, a take-picture-and-send-it-shortcut and then separate from
that the send-voice-message button, sharing its place with the actual send-
message button. That might've been clever design at some point in the past,
but now you have those other buttons right next to the send-voice-message
button, so it should share the look with those as it does a very similar
thing.

Also, the unlabeled movie-camera-icon at the top does not mean sending a
video, it means starting a video call. You could sort of guess that by the
location of that button, but that's still not just obvious, especially not for
my mum.

Where you can however now send videos from, is the Emoji-selector. Or well,
it's rather GIFs. Reaction-GIFs, even. Which is why I'm not completely opposed
to them having placed it there instead of in the attach-media-dialog, but now
you have 9 tabs at the top of the Emoji-selector and three tabs at the bottom
(also including the search), as well as a delete-key, which does not behave
like a tab. And two of these tabs even share the same icon.

Moving on, when you mark a message for selection, you get 5 icons at the top.
Two of those are the exact same arrow-icon just mirrored. One means "Reply",
the other means "Forward". Even knowing that there's a difference, I couldn't
tell you which one means which without first long-pressing on them, which my
mum won't know to do.

Also, one of those 5 icons is a star and when you long-press on it, it
literally says "Star". Not "Favourite", not "Remind me", not "Mark as
Important". I don't even know what it does myself, so I can't tell you what it
should say there.

Some of these problems are hard to avoid or hard to get right, but many of
these are there, because they absolutely did not focus on being a chat
application and instead had to turn the whole thing into everything and the
kitchen sink, and then they're even making the individual features compete for
a spot in the directly visible GUI, no matter how much it clutters things up,
just because they want people to use them.

~~~
barbs
All of those things are pretty minor and employ fairly standard design
patterns. I think you're exaggerating a bit here.

The app is quite streamlined, especially compared to other apps like Facebook
Messenger or Skype. I think if you were to remove any of the main features at
this point, people would complain and jump ship to another app.

------
ikeyany
Why do we adhere to the assumption that number of users is the ultimate metric
of software success?

I would like to hear from devs who aren't interested in expanding for the sake
of expanding, who still consider their apps to be very successful.

~~~
kemiller
For a messenging app, with classic network effects, it’s a very relevant
metric.

~~~
amelius
With the network effect, if you are above a certain threshold then suddenly
everybody will use your app. So the number of users is either low, or it is
near the maximum number of users. This means that there is little information
in the actual number of users.

------
gumby
> “Images tell a much better story than text,” he says. “And videos tell a
> much better story than images.

Seems like the evidence of WhatsApp itself, not to mention my own experience,
is directly contradictory to this.

A video is rarely preferable to an image, and an image is rarely preferable to
a bit of text.

------
sadlyNess
I think WhatsApp is where Twitter was during their Ascend-to-protocol Vs Just-
push-Ads phase[1], only that WA is dead-set on not going down the Ad route.
IMO their options are whether to become an app platform for businesses(Service
delivery, payments, shopping) or to become a user-data source for FB. KIM that
they are naturally competing with IG & FB.com in generating revenue for FB Inc
and subscription isn't working for them(mostly because of almost zero app-
buying & digital payments culture in places where WA is popular).

[1] [http://daltoncaldwell.com/what-twitter-could-have-
been](http://daltoncaldwell.com/what-twitter-could-have-been)

------
mbesto
It's super easy to focus on a single metric (user growth) when you have a
seemingly unlimited amount of capital and have no immediate pressure to turn
_any_ revenue/profit. This article does a massive disservice to those who are
not as fortunate who will inevitably be lead into failure.

Note, this should not discredit the more interesting and glorified aspects of
WhatsApp (strong leadership, technical aptitude, tech stack, etc).

~~~
wpietri
Did you read the article? They're explicitly _not_ focusing on user growth:

"But while Facebook has long prided itself on the way its growth team has
turned attracting new members into a science, Koum is equally proud of the
fact that WhatsApp has not done so. Instead, all of its attention has gone
into making the app as simple as possible to get started with—it doesn’t even
require you to create a user name or password—and so useful that you’ll tell
friends and family about it."

And that's consistent with what I've read of their pre-FB approach. During
that period, they definitely didn't have an unlimited amount of capital. They
got to 250m users (as of June 2013) [1] on only $8.3 million [2].

So no, I don't think this does a disservice. Especially when you compare it
with things like Juicero, which rode a wave of hype into a $120m failure
(14.5x what WhatsApp spent). Hype can get you money, but unless you focus
intensely on user experience and user value you won't build the audience you
need to succeed.

[1] [https://www.statista.com/chart/2614/monthly-active-
whatsapp-...](https://www.statista.com/chart/2614/monthly-active-whatsapp-
users-worldwide/)

[2] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/whatsapp/funding-
rou...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/whatsapp/funding-rounds)

~~~
CharlesW
> _Did you read the article? They 're explicitly _not* focusing on user
> growth:*

I also RTFA, and it's hard to understand how someone could think user growth
wasn't the focus.

— "…all of its attention has gone into making the app as simple as possible to
get started with…" [Hint: They did this to improve virality.]

— "All along, he adds, the company's goal has been 'getting every single
smartphone user on our network and getting them to use WhatsApp.'"

Plus, they'd said as much elsewhere as well. From
[https://www.wired.com/2016/01/whatsapp-is-nearing-a-
billion-...](https://www.wired.com/2016/01/whatsapp-is-nearing-a-billion-
users-now-its-time-to-find-the-money/):

— "Continued growth, it turns out, was one of the main reasons Koum agreed to
the Facebook acquisition. The deal allowed WhatsApp to concentrate on growth
without worrying too much about revenue."

~~~
wpietri
To me there's a giant difference between people focused on growth for the sake
of growth and people trying to make a valuable product that is then rewarded
with growth.

As an example, look at Google in the early days. They were mainly focused on
making a great, valuable product. Growth was a consequence of that. In
contrast, look at all the people that glued gamification, growth hacking, etc,
onto mediocre mediocre products. As with things like MLMs, a growth-first
focus can get business results, but I think it's a very different mindset
than, "Let's make a product people love."

Growth is surely a useful metric for them, and from that quote, it looks like
it's a goal. But a goal is different, broader thing than what one focuses on.
Compare people who want to be, say, great athletes (and therefore famous) with
people who just want to be famous. The former will focus on doing the hard
work; the latter will be more inclined to chase self-promotion and attention
directly.

------
7ewis
Sorry but I don't agree with the statistic of the Status feature.

> the company announced that 250 million people—a quarter of all members—were
> using it daily

Just had a quick look, and I have around 150 contacts on WhatsApp (mainly the
Snapchat/Instagram users age group) and not a single person has set one of
these photo statuses right now. I only ever recall seeing one once, since the
feature launched.

If I open up Snapchat/Instagram I will literally see hundreds. Unless it's
become very popular within a certain country, or another age group I find it
hard to believe that it's reached anywhere near the size of Snapchat's user
base.

~~~
fat-chunk
Are you in the States? I have heard that Whatsapp is much more popular outside
the US.

I live in the UK and everyone I know uses Whatsapp as their main method of
communication while Snapchat activity seems to have dropped very quickly,
perhaps in favour of Instagram, in my experience anyway.

------
leog7
How much profit increase does a new user bring can i see that?

------
alicef
my mobile phone has no webcam...

------
ransom1538
I think i see a pattern:

WhatsApp: circumvent cellphone texting charges

Airbnb: circumvent hotel laws

Uber: circumvent taxi laws

Amazon: circumvent state taxes

Facebook: circumvent people's anonymity online

Google: circumvent copyrights (take people's content slap on ads)

~~~
pjc50
Of those description, whatsapp is the one that's actually the classic "how
capitalism is supposed to work": provide a comparable or better service for a
lower price.

Amazon's era of sales tax evasion is mostly over. And if anyone is monetising
copyright infringement it's not Google (who are somewhat conscientious about
this after some lawsuits) but Tumblr (literally made of copyright infringing
photos)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
You mean the Sears-Roebuck era of tax evasion.

~~~
pjc50
I meant something very specific: [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/24/the-holiday-
is-over-amazon-w...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/24/the-holiday-is-over-
amazon-will-collect-sales-taxes-nationwide-on-april-1.html)

(The era of Amazon posting things from Jersey to UK and other destinations for
similar reasons ended ages ago)

I was also restricting myself to the question of sales taxes; tax
evasion/avoidance among the internet tech monoliths is a wider question.

------
samuel1604
why all the girls on the picture have laptops and the guy only a book? feels
like this is the person who was left out from the lan party :)

------
philliphaydon
The messaging app no one uses in Asia?

~~~
Jagat
Are you serious? Everyone and their grandma in India uses WhatsApp. It's so
pervasive that it's almost like the only means of communication for people
with smartphone and internet access.

~~~
bernadus_edwin
Whatsapp is no 1 market share in every country. If not no 1, only lost from
wechat

~~~
ddeck
While I agree that Whatsapp is the dominant chat app in Asia, it's not number
1 everywhere.

Notably - as you mentioned - Wechat in China, but also Kakao in Korea, Zalo in
Vietnam and Line in Japan and Taiwan, where very few people use Whatsapp.

~~~
bernadus_edwin
Agree with this one. Only local startup can compete whatsapp. Asia, rusia and
africa.

------
cerealbad
icq, aim, msn messenger, google talk (DOA), skype, wechat. besides widespread
business adoption, what's special about this one? it's seamless to uninstall
an app and get a new one. why would there be customer loyalty to this business
model?

ot, i don't understand why anyone would want to get anywhere near mobile.
people are too stupid to use these internet devices in moderation and it will
destroy all social cohesion. it's a cash grab to the bottom as it devolves
into radical groupthink, a breakdown of dialogue, and mass segregation of
populations.

how is arguing about anything and everything productive or useful without
domain specific expertise? how is mindlessly consuming hours and hours of
infotainment benefiting anyone?

but i can instantly communicate to anyone around the world in a matter of
milliseconds! your life is not that interesting, a letter sent by post every
other month would probably be more fruitful to developing ideas, advancing
discourse and carefully articulating thoughts. it's like correspondence chess
vs 1 minute bullet matches. one is excited screaming and shouting, the other
is a measured conversation and exchange. pretty sure e-mail hit that sweet
spot decades ago, with bulletin boards and irc filling the less personal and
more immediate gaps.

