
The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp - prattbhatt
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive-inside-story-how-jan-koum-built-whatsapp-into-facebooks-new-19-billion-baby
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rmason
I think what is amazing about their story is that it goes counter to
everything you read in the press about how to do a Silicon Valley startup.

1\. They didn't try to raise venture capital. Yet venture capitalists ended up
courting them and they raised money without even putting together a deck. The
attention from the VC's came because they were executing.

2\. There was little or no buzz around them, they didn't seek press attention
even going so far as to not even have a sign on their door. Yet attention
arrived because they were executing.

3\. No vanity metrics, they only counted active users. Once users became
dependent on the product they charged them. They didn't even need to spend
their VC money because they were cash flow positive. This was because they
executed.

Makes me wonder why Zuckerberg even courted SnapChat.

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dodyg
WhatsApp are primarily used outside the US - this probably accounts from the
lack of 'flairs' and vanity coverage on them.

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plinkplonk
I found it interesting that he is an older founder (37, from the article)and
so a bit of a counterweight to "you have to be in your teens/early twenties to
get funded/build a winning product" myth.

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nemothekid
>"you have to be in your teens/early twenties to get funded/build a winning
product" myth.

This has almost always been a myth. Other than Snapchat/Tumblr & Facebook,
what other 1B+ founders can you point to?

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vonmoltke
Amplified by the fact that news reporting gets much more mileage out of the
20-year-old college sophomore building a multimillion dollar business on a
laptop in his dorm room than they do out of the 38-year-old who leaves the
BigCo he has been working at for the past 15 years to build a multimillion
dollar product to scratch a market itch the BigCos ignore (the classic
Innovators Dilemma scenario).

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ojbyrne
"He and Koum worked out of the Red Rock Cafe, a watering hole for startup
founders on the corner of California and Bryant in Mountain View."

Prediction: The huge movement of startups (or more properly the hype about
movement of startups) from the South Bay to San Francisco is now going to be
reversed.

And the reporter is kind of geo-challenged. Red Rock is at the corner of Villa
& Castro.

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argonaut
WhatsApp indicates nothing about the migration of startups from the Peninsula
to SF. As far as I can observe, that migration started going full steam after
2011. WhatsApp was founded in 2009.

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ojbyrne
I think its mostly a press thing, but subject to perturbations. Saying the
biggest (and smallest in terms of employee count) acquisition in recent memory
was right in the heart of MV will transport the press from SOMA to University
Ave in PA and Castro Street in MV overnight. Sorry guys, tough commute.

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myth_drannon
Is it just a pure coincidence that the article was released yesterday or the
newspapers have well prepared bios on founders of hot start-ups in case they
get really famous, in similar fashion of having prepared obituaries on still
alive politicians?

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integraton
It was likely orchestrated by Facebook PR. One way it often works is to have
the reporters work closely with a company's PR people to prepare the article,
then have it embargoed until the date of the announcement. This is the case
for many similar events, including product launches.

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antimatter
Why does this article say the deal was for $19 billion where it is $16 billion
everywhere else?

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adamnemecek
"The deal is being cut for $12 billion in Facebook shares, $4 billion in cash
and an additional $3 billion in RSUs for employee retention."

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chubot
Um, it seems like every employee will get at least $10m to $100m. Does adding
a few million on top of that really change anything? Either way they don't
ever have to work again.

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NKCSS
Nice story. Only think I think they are missing out on are the tablets. We
(social circle) use hangouts more and more, because it's available to the few
that use dumb phones in combination with an iPad.

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shortsightedsid
The interesting thing about whatsapp is that it works on feature phones too.
It's not targeting smartphones vs. ipad users, but getting smartphones (all
platforms), and features phones on a single messaging system for just $1 a
year.

Sure I would kill for an ipad or a desktop version but does iMessage work when
your friend uses Android or Windows? What about Grandpa using an old Nokia?
How about those old friends who moved away to another country? Moving from the
US to another country isn't very common, but it's fairly common for the rest
of the world - born in Dubai, Schooled at Cairo, works in France is very
likely.

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wuster
good for Jan! Hat tip to an immigrant success story.

