Hacker News Reader

Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

The fairytale for startup employees is probably Microsoft and its 10,000 millionaires. But that was two generations ago. A generation ago, it was 'The Google Chef' and far fewer millionaires though several thousand. While WhatsApp created a lot of wealth, it did not create a lot of wealthy people. That seems to be the trend.

View on HN

To be realistic, Whatsapp is massive and popular, but totally incomparable to Microsoft or Google as a company. Whatsapp is a chat app, Microsoft is the operating system and office software of 1.25 billion computers around the world.

you're underselling it. yes, it's a 'chat app', but one that runs on a billion phones in every country on the planet

But it is still just an app, a messaging app at that. AFAIK no one I know has ever got the voice call function to work to a minimum standard. So whilst it is a useful and pervasive chat application that's all it really is.

Voice calls on WhatsApp are simply fantastic. I'm not sure how you are measuring, but this is based on my experience in Brazil over Wifi and 3Gish 4G

Yup, WhatsApp voice calls beat Skype, hangouts, FaceTime audio, Slack audio. I don't know why, but I've tried them all. Somehow WhatsApp seems so much better.

Second this. WhatsApp uses the least data and can work well in network connection transition. Most importantly, it is binded to your phone number and can call people regardless of country (unlike Skype) .

If I remember correctly since 2016, WhatsApp is completly free from any fee charge? How is facebook planning to use that? Finally integrate with facebook?

You're not seeing it. It is, to some or other partial-but-very-noticeable extent, a Skype killer, an SMS killer, a GSM/CDMA voice call killer, an email killer, a Hangouts killer, a Facebook killer (yes i know they bought it), [insert many others here]. Communications are very important, this app is a beast. The voice calls work perfectly for me.

I don't think that the technical scope of the software or the company behind it were what was being measured against the notion of a "fairytale startup" by the parent, or the grandparent. They spoke of "greenfield tech", "mind-boggling earn out", "10 000 millionaires" but the product didn't have to be an entire operating system. A game could be a fairytale startup then. Flappy Bird would have done it for me

I guess, but if we're talking about the number of millionaires to come out of a startup, then I think the scope and size of the company is very relevant.

Remember when Zynga clawed back options because "unimportant" employees were going to make money? Heck, remember Zynga?

Nowadays the 'google chef' would be an underpaid temp supplied by an agency.

You don't need a huge team to build WhatsApp or Instagram. Guess software is eating the world- including itself.

But you need a group of highly skilled team players. Which is a hard problem.

The reason for the trend, of course, is that companies are staying private longer to maximize returns for early investors and VCs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com