for the cynics who will invariably pile on with "survivorship bias," would you mind sharing what choices you consciously made that were different from other messaging apps?
there were a few and i probably won't be able to list all of them, but here are some:
- build for multiple platforms. most of our competitors did iOS and Android only and called it a day.
- keep the app simple. most of our competitors complicated not only the sign up flow but also the in-app experience
- look native. our thinking was that hundreds of millions of people use native apps thousands times a day and if we use native look and feel in our app, it will feel comfortable and intuitive for our users.
- focus on speed, performance and reliability. it is easy to build an app that sends images quickly on 4G but you also have to work efficiently in the EDGE environments.
- localization. we translated into as many languages as we could as quickly as we could.
- support. for the longest time Brian and myself were the only two guys answering customer support emails.
- focus on organic growth as it makes your network stronger
there are probably a bunch of other things we focused early on that escape me at the moment...
I remember a few years ago when people bought 10MB. And WhatsApp for a whole week.
In fact, till today, my dad doesn't subscribe for data. He uses WhatsApp on a PAYG basis which would be financial suicide with other apps or browsing the web.
For instance, Skype can eat 1mb+ just by launching it on Windows.
WhatsApp is fast and easy on resources. I know someone who still uses WhatsApp on blackberry bold!
Skype on the other hand takes forever to open and a few more to connect on a 1GB ram phone.
The only time skype beat WhatsApp on speed of launch was when it was baked into the bareboned SMS app on WP.
One area where WhatsApp stands heads above the rest for me is notification. It's timely, and doesnt get lost. Notification counts are accurate unlike skype which always displays (1) pending even if you have 10 new messages - even On desktop.
WhatsApp understands the market better than the rest who mistakenly believe that the rest of the world has similar high, reliable, cheap network speed/ fast devices.
It makes me wonder why they all collect usage, device info, network data... at all.
You covered product decisions pretty well, but I was curious about organizational decisions. Based on your talk, it seems like you existed mostly outside the SV bubble and seemed to maybe even avoid it. Nonetheless, many of your employees came from the network you developed in SV and it seems you were based in SV at the time.
Do you feel that it helped to have started there? Do you feel at this point that you can build a successful company "where you are," given modern tools (AWS, etc.), or does it still help to do your time in SV first?
thanks so much! keeping whatsapp simple and focused on replacing SMS/MMS seems like the key differentiator. was there ever internal conflict about making whatsapp more complex or "instagram-y"?
do you mind also sharing what the burn rate per MAU/DAU was around the acquisition?
- build for multiple platforms. most of our competitors did iOS and Android only and called it a day.
- keep the app simple. most of our competitors complicated not only the sign up flow but also the in-app experience
- look native. our thinking was that hundreds of millions of people use native apps thousands times a day and if we use native look and feel in our app, it will feel comfortable and intuitive for our users.
- focus on speed, performance and reliability. it is easy to build an app that sends images quickly on 4G but you also have to work efficiently in the EDGE environments.
- localization. we translated into as many languages as we could as quickly as we could.
- support. for the longest time Brian and myself were the only two guys answering customer support emails.
- focus on organic growth as it makes your network stronger
there are probably a bunch of other things we focused early on that escape me at the moment...