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Actually in one of their interviews after the acquisition Koum said that they still had every single penny of their VC money, they hadn't spent it. He even showed the bank statement showing it was all there before they took a second round of financing from Sequoia. Jim Goetz said they were the only startup we'd ever dealt with that was paying income tax before taking any money.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive...

It does not take much money to run a messenger, especially one that does not store conversations or files server-side once they are delivered.

Doesn't matter if revenue is less than costs.

I paid 79p for a lifetime subscription but yeah that probably wasn't going to cover costs. They used charges partly to limit uptake when the servers were struggling I think.

I paid for it.

yeah so did I and all my friends. $1 whatever.