Why Selling WhatsApp To Facebook Would Be The Biggest Mistake (2012)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/12/03/why-selling-whatsapp-to-facebook-would-be-the-biggest-mistake-of-jan-koums-and-brian-actons-lives/1

by mathrawka • 12 years ago

25 9 12 years ago

forbes.com

dhoulb• 12 years ago

NINETEEN BILLION DOLLARS can do quite a bit of world changing.

crazypyro• 12 years ago

Everything about this screams that the author was imagining a much lower price point. I especially liked the part where he mentions that they won't have another idea like this for the rest of their lives. Guess what? They don't need anything for the rest of their lives, as they are billionaires. Haha.

steve19• 12 years ago

I would happily make $16 billion mistakes.

lucaspiller• 12 years ago

Go halves?

tomasien• 12 years ago

Turned out to be true - they 19x'd what they would have gotten had they sold in 2012. I think everyone is missing the fact that this was 1.5 years ago - this article is proven CORRECT by today's acquisition, not wrong.

sephiria• 12 years ago

The author has some seriously flawed reasons. "How long would you last reporting to a 28 year old like Zuckerberg?" What's at stake isn't your pride, it's the life of your company, what you've spent X number of years building, the employees that believe in you, your users that you want to serve. Who cares how old Zuck is?

adventured• 12 years ago

"1. Had they stayed independent, these founders would have overseen businesses that would have been vastly more powerful than they were then and perhaps more than they are now under new management."

Had YouTube stayed independent, it would have been crushed under the foot of the media industry's juggernaut lawsuit machine and political ties. Not to mention it was bleeding to death, with no viable business model at the time (it would take the king of advertising years to figure out how to begin to monetize YouTube properly).

"3. Selling WhatsApp to Zuckerberg in 2012 would be like Zuckerberg selling Facebook to Yahoo in 2006."

Not hardly. WhatsApp got roughly 19 times what Yahoo was willing to pay for Facebook. Not comparable scenarios. Even in 2012 it's likely they would have received net value far exceeding the 2006 Yahoo offer, accounting for the increased stock valuation.

"4. You will never have a better business idea than WhatsApp for the rest of your lives."

That's probably true for Koum and Acton, and they just received roughly $8.55 billion and $3.8 billion for their best business idea. On what scale is one going to argue they didn't just pull off a financial coup?

"5. How long would you last reporting to a 28 year old like Zuckerberg?"

$8.5 billion in pocket, this question no longer matters. Go do whatever you want a year or two from now, including buying the NY Yankees if you feel so inclined.

"8. WhatsApp has a much brighter future as an independent company than Instagram did."

Approximately 19 times brighter apparently. And?

"9. You can be the “next Facebook” – but only if you stay independent."

Know when to walk away, know when to run. The WhapsApp crew pulled off the perfect deal.

dhawalhs• 12 years ago

The author seems to write a lot of negative/link bait articles on Facebook. Some examples:

1) Why Silicon Valley Tech Wunderkinds Will Only Ever Have 1 Good Business Idea During Their Entire Lives

2) Here's My Fix for Facebook: Make Facebook a Subsidiary of Instagram With Zuck Reporting to Systrom

3) Why Facebook Doesn't Have Mobile In Its Founding DNA - and Why That Spells Disaster

4)Why Peter Thiel Should Be Ashamed - And Resign From Facebook's Board Immediately

leggo2m• 12 years ago

"Facebook didn’t become Facebook by being the next Google or the next MySpace. It became the first social network that really appealed to people in a broad way and didn’t overdo it with ads."

So Facebook was totally different from Myspace, except it was exactly the same but with less ads. Gotcha.

Why Selling WhatsApp To Facebook Would Be The Biggest Mistake (2012)

Related Stories