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Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

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GuiA

I ask, cause I'm not sure- do anybody make real companies anymore?

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Bow in the presence of a great acquisition.

http://rapgenius.com/Kanye-west-stronger-lyrics#note-40415

No.

Most companies are conceived with an explicit exit strategy in mind from day one, and that strategy is usually:

  SELL OUT TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, AND
  RETIRE EARLY, WHILE SOME OF US ARE STILL YOUNG ENOUGH TO 
  ENJOY LIFE.

You might have a point if they hadn't previously turned down a $1billion bid from Google.

How does a rejection of a significantly smaller offer disprove the point?

$1B isn't a small offer, though.

It just means they were hungry. 1B is a relatively small offer in the world of IT IPOs nowadays.

What's your definition of a real company which excludes WhatsApp?

One that generates revenue?

They charge $1/year/user, though the first year is free.

One year ago they had 200m users. That number has not shrunk.

There is a free year, and then it seems like "everyone" gets a free year renewal.

I would not be surprised if 10% of their userbase or less had ever paid. Which is still a good number, but not the one you make it out to be.

Revenue is a part of it, but also remember that it's only a proportion of generated value. The fact that so many people use the app to communicate indicates that it's providing them with substantial value, even if the company chooses not to capture more of that value.

The numbers are staggering: 450 million users in less than three years. That's a real company. That's more users than most startups will ever see in a lifetime of use let alone daily usage.

Yea, whatsapp has a nosebleed valuation because of it's user base size and lock in effect(zuck hopes at-least, vulnerable to changes in ios and android default messenger), but i'd say its definitely real. I respect them a lot more than say groupon, because they are actually a reasonable size(just 32 engineers) for the complexity of their tech, and they provide a really useful service. Compared to say groupon which hires thousands of salespeople and provides a marginally useful service. Their success has and will continue to drive down sms price gouging, and I think that's a good thing.

That's apples to orange, you are comparing the tech employees of a tech company to the sales employees of a marketing company that needs to call its customers and prospects all over the world again and again.

I have no love for Groupon but that comparison is nonsense.

I'm just saying groupon it's a stupid company that wastes capital IMO(obviously everyone has a different idea of how capital should be put to use). If groupon actually had a good product, retailers would be calling them.

Having close to a half a billion MAU isn't a real company?

I own a metal working company and car parts stores. I jumped from software developing to metal fabrications, I can assure you that being able to administer everything from my own erp at almost no cost is the key of my success.

This is a real company by any measure. Their revenue comes from charging users for using their app. Maybe the sentiment you are really expressing is that their revenue doesn't seem, ignoring all other aspects of the company's value, to justify the price of acquisition?

Yes, Whatsapp does.

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