321–330 of 392 posts
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Sweeping generalization.
Our ability to generalize is one of the key traits that makes us the dominant species on this planet. Describing that particular commenter's path is not nearly as informationally useful as describing the most common path. MBA is the business equivalent of " Specialist Certification" in engineering. It's for the second-rate.
Whatsapp had a great business model: $1 a year. With their current 1.5 billion users, that's nothing to sneeze at. It doesn't cost them $100M a month to provide the service. I wish more companies were like Craigslist - happy to make an great profit and a lasting business by providing basic information services for a reasonable price. Instead, a bunch of MBAs want to rule the world by focusing on growth at all costs,…
They didn't enforce payments. I remember they asked me money but the app still worked when I didn't pay. I was surprised, so when they asked me money again many months later I didn't pay again to see what happened. The app kept working. Months later they asked me money again and this time the app stopped working. But back then whatsapp was not as popular as it is now. I was still using SMSes with most of my contacts…
In the end customers are screwing themselves big time if they don't want to pay €. Software doesn't grow in trees.
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Engineer with an MBA here. My two cents: Back when I was writing code, my worldview was that if engineers ran every company, then the world would simply be a better, more rational place. Because engineering is hard and everything else is easy/squishy/learnable. During my b-school classes, it dawned on me that things are much more complicated than I had thought. Marketing and sales are very hard, very quantitative, an…
Just because it's hard, and the people running them are sharp and smart, doesn't make it any more righteous or normal. Back in the Colonial times, sharp smart lads went to prestigious military schools and learned the complexities of how to subjugate conquered people. How to efficiently run a slave camp. How to squeeze every unit of labor off the peasants, etc. People went to these schools were probably very cultured,…
Source? My understanding was military academies focus on tactical leadership, military conduct and often an engineering background.
It also depends on what you mean by colonial times, military academies didn't show up in the U.S. until the 1800s.
> Maybe squeezing profit off of people
I think the parent's point was significantly more nuanced than this characterization.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Engineer with an MBA here. My two cents: Back when I was writing code, my worldview was that if engineers ran every company, then the world would simply be a better, more rational place. Because engineering is hard and everything else is easy/squishy/learnable. During my b-school classes, it dawned on me that things are much more complicated than I had thought. Marketing and sales are very hard, very quantitative, an…
Just because it's hard, and the people running them are sharp and smart, doesn't make it any more righteous or normal. Back in the Colonial times, sharp smart lads went to prestigious military schools and learned the complexities of how to subjugate conquered people. How to efficiently run a slave camp. How to squeeze every unit of labor off the peasants, etc. People went to these schools were probably very cultured,…
Leading me to my question: is your post satire, or do you really consider charging money for a service to be morally equivalent to murdering natives?
Whatsapp had a great business model: $1 a year. With their current 1.5 billion users, that's nothing to sneeze at. It doesn't cost them $100M a month to provide the service. I wish more companies were like Craigslist - happy to make an great profit and a lasting business by providing basic information services for a reasonable price. Instead, a bunch of MBAs want to rule the world by focusing on growth at all costs,…
Glossing over the fact that they probably wouldn't have all of those 1.5 billion users if it had stayed a paid service. Even at $1, having to pay money pushes people off to other free platforms.
Every user of these so-called free platforms pay way more than $1 yearly for using them, via products they have been pushed and attention they have lost. If you're a potential high-wage earner, you're paying more than that in an hour!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because it's hard, and the people running them are sharp and smart, doesn't make it any more righteous or normal. Back in the Colonial times, sharp smart lads went to prestigious military schools and learned the complexities of how to subjugate conquered people. How to efficiently run a slave camp. How to squeeze every unit of labor off the peasants, etc. People went to these schools were probably very cultured,…
I believe the parent’s point was that running a business that is self-sustaining is actually a difficult endeavour, and doing what looks like ‘squeezing customers’ from the outside is actually what the business needs to do to survive. I think this is a reasonable point, considering that no matter what price point many services are offered at, customers will still complain that it’s too high. Leading me to my question…
I don't see any evidence for that - and in fact, GP proposed/reminded of an alternative business model for WhatsApp.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because it's hard, and the people running them are sharp and smart, doesn't make it any more righteous or normal. Back in the Colonial times, sharp smart lads went to prestigious military schools and learned the complexities of how to subjugate conquered people. How to efficiently run a slave camp. How to squeeze every unit of labor off the peasants, etc. People went to these schools were probably very cultured,…
> Back in the Colonial times, sharp smart lads went to prestigious military schools and learned the complexities of how to subjugate conquered people. How to efficiently run a slave camp. Source? My understanding was military academies focus on tactical leadership, military conduct and often an engineering background. It also depends on what you mean by colonial times, military academies didn't show up in the U.S. un…
That expertise had to come from somewhere.
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You are completely mistaken if you think adding a subscription-only would not reduce usage of WhatsApp by 10x at least. I am an Indian (WhatsApp's biggest market by far), and know for a fact that hardly 1% of people using it right now in India would be able/willing to set up a payment system AND willing to pay $1 for it (which is not as inexpensive as you think) when there are so many free alternatives. And then it i…
If you can't charge people even $1 for your product, then I would argue that you might as well close up now. As others pointed out, ads won't work either, because if you can't afford to pay $1 for WhatsApp, then I'm not going to be able to profit from showing you ads. Ads aren't magical things you can slap on a product to make it profitable. For ads to work you need an audience that technically could pay for you prod…
Shit, I just convinced my parents to use WhatsApp instead of SMS. Time to start looking for an alternative. What's Telegram's business model? (yes, a good UI is a requirement and no, Signal isn't there yet).
Telegram just raising $1.7B in a crypto sale, which means it is the largest chat app not owned by a major corp or government. Plus familiar interface to Whatsapp, they won't even know you switched them.
Not even counting the ICO, which is suspect in itself.
Shit, I just convinced my parents to use WhatsApp instead of SMS. Time to start looking for an alternative. What's Telegram's business model? (yes, a good UI is a requirement and no, Signal isn't there yet).
Straight from the FAQ:
https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-you-going-to-make-money-o...