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Comment by addicted | Hacker News Reader

Let’s not forget that WhatsApp was an app that was profitable without ever showing ads or destroying its users’ privacy before being bought by Facebook.

They built up a massive user base while still charging several dollars for their app.

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They charged only 1 US Dollar, after the first year. That was removed after the Facebook acquisition. https://www.cnet.com/news/whatsapp-kills-1-subscription-fee/

And this was never really enforced. I don't know anyone who paid for it.

I remember when I paid the $0.99 after the first year a friend told me "if you uninstall the app and reinstall it, you get another year for free".

My father was one of its earliest adopters, even before I was. He paid for it. I joined maybe sometime in 2012 or 2013. WhatsApp kept renewing my subscription for free. Also, fun fact, my first version of WhatsApp was on a Nokia phone... With the Symbian OS.

We have really come a long way since then.

Any source on them being profitable vs having revenue? IIRC they were very inconsistent in charging users, depending on the country, platform, time you signed up, etc.

They had roughly 6 employees and 20 beefy servers when they sold to Facebook. They were solidly profitable. Sort of wish they went the Craigslist route rather than taking Facebook billions.

I’m seeing 55 employees when I google

This is very wrong. I worked as an intern at WhatsApp in 2013 and they had over 30 employees, a lot were actually customer support. And “customer support” doesn’t do it justice. Every feature shipped was translated across 30 languages and CS was made up of people who could do a lot of the translation in house as well as provide actual support. I was an engineer on the website that dealt with all the support articles and translation, but the platform teams were all two engineers per platform, and then the backend engineers who worked magic with erlang.

So, no source and you’re just guessing, based on no actual data?

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