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Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp

startupschool.org

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Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp

#51

Post by plinkplonk »

dirtyaura wrote: post #43

The talk raised interesting points about hiring. Jan said that most of the early hires were people from their own networks that currently were "unemployed" or goofing around and that's why it was easy to hire them. So it sounds that they hired people that they knew and trusted but who, for an outsider, would look like were not great at execution. And yet, Whatsapp is clearly a startup that excelled especially at the…

(without reading the article/listening to the talk) I suspect "unemployed" meant something like

"worked at yahoo for double digit years, cashed out shares, and so don't have to take dumb jobs for eating money, so free to tackle new challenges"

not

"so bad at programming they couldn't find a job in a hot market"

Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp

#52

Post by penetrarthur »

jankoum wrote: post #18
mtgx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BBM had huge potential as well in the early days. Blackberry practically invented this "SMS-alternative" type of chat application. It was being quickly adopted in emerging markets as a replacement for SMS, which was much more expensive. However, Blackberry screwed that up by keeping BBM Blackberry-only for so long. The BBM should have been available on the iOS and Android stores (and probably on Symbian/Java) since 2…

yes of course - because having a random 8 digit hex pin was so user friendly, easy and intuitive :)

Have you tried using Telegram? What do you think about it? I don't care about all the security battle that is going on, but I feel that Telegram has more fluent UX.

Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp

#53

Post by garysieling »

ramblerman wrote: post #47

This was interesting, and well presented. So my beef isn't with Jan but more so with the startupschool initiative. (focus on school) How do you learn anything tangible from this? It's just a bunch of successful people talking about what they did. Without more context this is just survivorship bias, most of these aren't even serial entrepreneurs.

I find that seeing about how someone else thinks about / breaks down a complex problem is helpful. Sometimes you can also see where the speaker has a blind spot - an interesting thought experiment is to consider how you'd compete with their company.

Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp

#56

Post by Markoff »

iopq wrote: post #49
ryandrake wrote: post #36

Super congratulations for successfully reading the "messaging" tea leaves and capitalizing on the trend. I admire the vision. I would have never in my wildest imagination predicted the extent to which text messaging became a killer app on mobile--to the point where we have dozens (hundreds?) of different apps to choose from. I still don't see the appeal of messaging apps, but their popularity is undeniable. People do…

We had XMPP, but Google and Facebook decided to kill it.

i just don't understand why we don't replace it with universal email, everyone has it and it is certainly possible to build chat on top of it

Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp

#57

Post by MrGrillet »

I enjoyed this talk and took away something slightly different to others on the talk...

For me, what was clear is that they listened to feedback and took action relatively quickly. I remember when they first launched the Blackberry version and emailing the team about bugs - I think I got a response the following day and they clearly implemented something by the following release.

It wasn't about being devoted to a vision of a particular product they were passionate about. They saw a market/ problem and solved it using their technical ability.

Yes, they had a lot of luck on their side - being in the market early enough to gain the visibility. Also, people naturally promoted the app so they didn't need to spend much on marketing. Other apps that came after it, weren't so lucky. Being well connected and having cash to provide initial runway probably made this easier for him than it would be for most but I think it's fair to say he built up his rep at Yahoo - which probably helped when he needed to raise cash.

Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp

#58

Post by TorKlingberg »

Matthias247 wrote: post #46
amygdyl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp

#59

Post by anubisresources »

ramblerman wrote: post #47

This was interesting, and well presented. So my beef isn't with Jan but more so with the startupschool initiative. (focus on school) How do you learn anything tangible from this? It's just a bunch of successful people talking about what they did. Without more context this is just survivorship bias, most of these aren't even serial entrepreneurs.

It's the reason business schools teach through case studies and is the reason Warren Buffett mainly reads biographies. Learning what other people did or did not do and why can help you in your decision making processes.

Re: Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp

#60

Post by mifeng »

jankoum wrote: post #27
a_d wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mentioned in one of your talks about a small loophole in the early days of the App Store where apps were showcased under "new and noteworthy" if one made an update to the app - Q1: is this true? And Q2: when you say "took off on its own" does it mean folks learned about WhatsApp only from word of mouth with no effort from the WhatsApp team? Q3: what impact did charging for the app have on the company finances and…

1. yes, i believe so - of course it was eight years ago.. i think if you submitted new version of the app and changed the name, it would show up under "new" category 2. yes, word of mouth only... but we helped people spread the word by putting "Tell A Friend" functionality into the app :) 3. it helped us pay for office space, salaries and server bills without eating much into VC or angel money we had in our bank acco…

Re #2: I remember hearing about WhatsApp from my friends in 2009 or 2010. They said, "it's basically BBM that lets you communicate with non-Blackberry phones for free." Since those of us who had Blackberries used BBM non-stop, it was a no-brainer to get WhatsApp.
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