WhatsApp builds a product, not a company

The idea for WhatsApp stemmed from co-founder Jan Koum’s annoyance of missing phone calls at the gym. Because of this, he and co-founder Brian Acton then decided to build an app that could let their friends know of their “status” when they were unavailable.

As Koum once explained it, “We didn’t set out to build a company. We just wanted to build a product that people used.”

The beauty of WhatsApp is its single-minded product focus. It’s a simple platform that is well-built and reliable, all while maintaining the privacy of the users. 🔐

WhatsApp’s priority from early on was to create a clean, lightning fast communications service that works flawlessly.

Although the app didn’t take off right away, they later added the messaging aspect of the product and it started to gain traction.

And gain traction it did: it’s estimated that more than 1 million new users join WhatsApp and 55 billion messages are sent on the platform every day. 😱

On top of that, users also share 4.5 billion photos and one billion videos per day.

That’s a lot of messages

Unlike most startups, this growth was achieved without any marketing. And despite these crazy numbers, WhatsApp is still operating with less than 100 employees (save for whatever resources Facebook is now allocating to them).

From day one, WhatsApp has focused on making the best messaging app possible — every feature and improvement that has followed has been with this goal in mind.

As Koum once pointed out, “WhatsApp’s extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide.”

The co-founders also haven’t been ones for fame and attention. Koum and Acton wanted a different company from the beginning — they didn’t even have a sign outside their office door.

In an interview with Wired, Acton said, “We’re the most atypical Silicon Valley company you’ll come across. We were founded by thirtysomethings; we focused on business sustainability and revenue rather than getting big fast; we’ve been incognito almost all the time; we’re mobile first; and we’re global first.” 🌎