Sequoia Capital, the only venture firm to invest in WhatsApp, offered four numbers on Wednesday that it says explain why Facebook just agreed to pay $19 billion for the instant messaging company.
Sequoia invested $8 million in the Mountain View company’s only publicly announced venture round in 2011 and partner Jim Goetz is the only VC on its board. TechCrunch cited sources on Wednesday that said Sequoia was involved in later rounds, too, that brought total funding to about $60 million.
That would mean Sequoia could be in line to get as much as $3 billion from the deal.
Here are the numbers Goetz offered in a blog post after the sale was announced:
— 450 million: That’s how many active users WhatsApp claims, a number that Sequoia says no other company has ever reached in such a short time. More than 1 million people a day are installing the app. “Incredibly, the number of daily active users of WhatsApp (compared to those who log in every month) has climbed to 72 percent. In contrast the industry standard is between 10 percent and 20 percent, and only a handful of companies top 50 percent.”
— 32: That’s how many engineers WhatsApp has. That means each WhatsApp developer supports 14 million active users, a ratio Sequoia says is unheard of in the industry.
— 1: That’s the number of dollars per year users pay after their first trial year of using the service., with no SMS messaging charges. Sequoia says this saves the typical user about $150 a year.
— Zero: That’s how much money WhatsApp invested in marketing. “The company doesn’t even employ a marketer or PR person,” Goetz wrote in his blog. “Yet like the world’s greatest brands, it’s created a strong emotional connection with consumers. All of WhatsApp’s growth has come from happy customers encouraging their friends to try the service.”
Goetz also sais that WhatsApp founder Jan Koum’s experience as a 16-year-old emigre from Ukraine when it was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics helped determine how WhatsApp was developed.
“Jan’s childhood made him appreciate communication that was not bugged or taped. When he arrived in the U.S. as a 16-year-old immigrant living on food stamps, he had the extra incentive of wanting to stay in touch with his family in Russia and the Ukraine,” Goetz wrote. “All of this was top of mind for Jan when, after years of working together with his mentor Brian (Acton) at Yahoo, he began to build WhatsApp.”
(Source: Bizjournals)
