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Comment by saosebastiao | Hacker News Reader

Part of the reason it sold for $19B was because Google, Facebook, and Microsoft were interested. Narrow that down to one bidder, and all of a sudden you have an app that sells for millions instead of billions. The power that comes with being wanted by more than one party is incredible...it is the reason why Mozilla was able to triple their payout from a company that had already built a worthy competitor.

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While multiple bidders juiced the price, saying it would be millions instead of billions is just terrible logic.

WhatsApp had incredible value just through the user base alone, especially considering its diversity in the global market (relative to FB who is strong in what we consider the 'west' but not the far east).

If there are no other bidders it still sells for many billions and probably north of 10.

If there are no other bidders, it either sells for what the founders/VCs value it at, or it doesn't sell at all. So you are right, that if Koum/Acton valued it at billions and could convince some company that it was worth billions (while not having the "proof" that anybody else valued it at billions), then it would sell for billions. Not having proof is a pretty poor negotiating position through.

They were profitable and cash-flow positive, so they just wouldn't sell at all and choose to remain independent.

The story of how they sold the company has been reported in the press, and the valuation was arrived at via comparison with Twitter's $30B public-market valuation. WhatsApp had roughly 2/3 as many users as Twitter; they are in similar industries, so it makes sense that its valuation should be roughly 2/3 as much.

Supply and demand is pretty sound logic to me.

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