WhatsApp never had a real business model. Its peak revenue, disclosed by Facebook at the time of acquisition, was ~$1.5 million/year, and this was when they had 500 million active users. It was always running on VC cash.
Not sure where you got that number, but in 2013 (before aquisition) they reported ~$10 million in revenue. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680114...)
They brought in $15 million in the first half of 2014. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680114...)
They only had 55 employees at acquisition.
They might not have become a unicorn... but there most definitely was a path to profitability.
Also that document shows a net loss of $230 million in that same period, so not exactly on a strong path to profitability.
- A large chunk of the world (especially people in developing countries) will be unwilling to pay anything more than $0.
- Even if they want to pay, most of those users won't have a payment method set up. How many of their 2 billion+ users have a credit card or even a bank account?
I agree that their losses were surprisingly high at the time... especially given how lean their engineering team and operations were supposed to be. (https://blog.whatsapp.com/1-million-is-so-2011/?lang=en)
Even just giving paid users some small extra features or a little icon by their name or something small would have been enough to get people willingly give a dollar rather than their approach of trying to charge people.
They only charged some users, not everyone, because they couldn't figure out how to do it.. and who got charged was relatively random.
Those that did get charged could just complain and the subscription fee would just go away.
Value is one thing, but only charging a fraction of your customer base at what seemingly felt like random was never going to gain public acceptance.
I don't even think they even had a plan for how to deal with poorer nations in Africa where the app is exremely popular.