Hacker News Reader

> 3. Very balanced outlook towards global users - even though SV (or even US) didn't recognize their traction, he always understood that there is a big world out there where not everyone has an iPhone.

This impressed me the most, because at the time whatsapp went mainstream globally - it was available on all platforms including the old BlackberryOS, BlackBerry 10, Symbian (S60), Windows Phone and even some candy phones!! which was unlike any other messaging platform and I have a good reason to believe it was instrumental in their success given how many of my friends switched to whatsapp just because everyone in the group could use it (we had WP, Android and iOS users and one oddball BB10 user [me]).

And that is why they succeeded imo. Because Facebook bought Whatsapp for it's 1 Billion users, and Whatsapp would never have hit that mark had it not been for the fact that they focused on market outside the US (where cheaper phones with android, candybar and other OSes were more popular).

While Whatsapp is still not as big in the US, it's literally the defacto mode of communication in countries like India, Brazil etc. to the point where "Msg me" would automatically mean "Msg me on Whatsapp"

That + the fact that it was tied to your phone number was in my opinion genius. I for a thousand years would not have though too much about Global Market (because I'd be focused on revenue and users in 1st world countries would be generally the ones with spending cash for messaging apps).

> That + the fact that it was tied to your phone number was in my opinion genius.

This is an important aspect. Having accounts and contacts based on phone numbers allowed my mother and her friends to use the service in no time - those are the kind of people that don't know their own email address (if they have one at all) and would never register for an account on their own. Phone numbers, however, is the system they already knew since using SMS.

Did not early WhatsApp use a covert channel in sms signalling, just like you can get 2.4kb/s across the x.25 "D" channel of ISDN?

I've no idea if true or not, my memory unreliably tells me I found some kind of confirmation, but common sense tells me not to rely on such recollections.. but I often pondered if such channels exist in the GSM spec, back in the day, when I was shocked to receive a sms, the service having been given free to early subscribers in the UK, I literally had the first (edit)model Nokia GSM handset, and was most sceptical :D

I think you are mixing that up: SMS uses a signaling channel of GSM. It was originally not intended to become that big and just used otherwise unused resources. Therefore it could have been given out for free or very cheap. Later on telecom providers saw that people like text messages and that it has an enormous business potential, so they started to make huge charges for it.

The "otherwise unused" isn't true. Any time your phone is transmitting, it is using some of available bandwidth in the air. It does go other the control channel is GSM rather than setting up a data channel, and is was originally just for testing, carrier announcements etc. The per-SMS charge is far higher than actual costs, but so is everything. Mobile networks are almost entirely fixed costs in building the network.

Not to take any credit away from Jan, it is however worth noting that his background (and that of many of the early employees) is in Infrastructure / Backend at Yahoo! The side-effect of that is that reliability/uptime is already in his DNA, as also, just "getting things done without enjoying any of the limelight", and he's done a great job carrying over lessons/behaviors learnt in that previous life over to WhatsApp.

I hate to sound cynical, but these are only admirable if these features are the most valuable to users/customers. I see way too many entrepreneurs enamored by technology to find a year later there's no one using their software.

I know this might feel sad for software engineers to hear, but there's a lot more Benioff's than there are Jan's in the world.

He's pretty lucky that he was able to just focus on product and not really worry about the actual business much. Many builders just build in obscurity and the world never knows what they made. I'm jealous.

I agree about Jan. I do admire what he and his small team did with Whatsapp and the sheer mind boggling scale they achieved.

But this is also success bias. If he didn't succeed the same points would be used against him. Winners make their own rules and hindsight is a bad teacher.

These same points he avoided for instance partnerships and press may have worked for other successful founders.

WhatsApp launched at a time when SMS was a paid feature in Europe. It's pretty rare to have such a massive virality in your product. Not only is there a large network effect, your competitor is also charging a large amount compared to your free and superior product.

SMS is still paid in many countries of Europe and even more across world, so unlimited sms are still exception, not rule

Regarding #5, Whatsapp ought to have one of the most impressive employee:user rates ever.

WhatsApp and Netflix are the only companies who actually have interesting performance engineering solutions instead of throwing incredible sums of money at Yak shaving shenanigans that actually amount to digging themselves deeper.

In other words, he passed the marshmallow test.