Back
Harsh Dwivedi
•
Medial • 3m
WhatsApp founder Jan Koum explains why he charged $1 for the product to intentionally slow growth Sam Altman recalls: “I remember in 2011, people would say WhatsApp is never going to work because they charge a dollar and it’s a viral app and that’s just going to kill it right there.” But Jan explains that charging $1 was a very intentional lever WhatsApp used to slow growth: “I know it sounds very counterintuitive - why would you want to slow your growth? We wanted to slow our growth so we could better support our existing users. So we could build servers that don’t crash. So that we could build a product that doesn’t drop messages. So that we could answer their customer support emails.” A lot of people told Jan and the WhatsApp team this was a bad strategy, but Jan compares it to what Facebook did in the early days: “They were doing colleges only, and they weren’t open to the entire world.” WhatsApp wanted to do the same thing: “We wanted to make sure that we have our existing users happy, and that when people sign up, they have a great experience, and that the app works, and it’s fast, and the servers are up and running all the time. And I think that worked for us because we were really able to focus on the product.” Video source: @ycombinator (2014)
Replies (4)
More like this
Recommendations from Medial
Mohit Singh
19yo ✨ #developer le... • 1y
Meet Jan 😉, Jan is an open-source ChatGPT alternative that runs completely offline on a computer. It democratizes access to AI technologies and prioritizes user ownership, privacy, and ethical design. Jan aims to enable humans 👫 and AI 🤖 to work t
See More
Anonymous
Hey I am on Medial • 1y
I've developed a community platform with minimal features. Right now, advertising could be the only revenue stream, but I need to grow the community significantly to make it viable. Growth has been slow, and I am managing most aspects myself: creatin
See More
Zain Abdullah
Cyber Security Analy... • 2m
The Vision "You can't secure what you can't see." When I started building Barqen, I wasn’t trying to create another vulnerability scanner. I wanted visibility, full visibility. What’s running. What’s exposed. What’s misconfigured. What’s risky.
See More
Jayant Mundhra
•
Dexter Capital Advisors • 7m
We are set to lose our fancied tag of “FASTEST GROWING ECONOMY” this year 📛📛 And we won’t have our media and business world talk about this. Thus, placing it out. Vietnam’s Government is going all out, having publicly announced that it shall “DRA
See More
Download the medial app to read full posts, comements and news.