They had fantastic product-market fit.
They had fantastic product-market fit. As dleslie and that_guy_iain have mentioned, it was expensive to send an SMS text back then, especially in Europe when your friends have different country codes. So WhatsApp was a free alternative that tapped the unmet need for millions. And signing up with only a phone number seems like a nobrainer nowadays, but the mindset of the time was still email + password. Sure, Microsoft could have launched a competitor, but they would most certainly require you to use an MSN account, thus adding friction to adoption.
Posted by et-al on Oct 25, 2021, 7:40 PM
Tags
Related issues
- Everything is too expensive for European bureaucrats.
- Yeah, the plan is far too expensive for what it provides.
- Crashed demand after one of the big AI labs (probably Anthropic because they focus way too hard on expensive frontier models) become inso...
- /dev/random is much too expensive for this.
- Yeah, this always bugged me.
- A year ago, I had the opinion that it'd be too expensive for developers to support offline mode, peer to peer, or community servers after...
Raise real-world problems, find people facing the same issue, and discuss solutions.3,000 issues0 comments
pricing (Other)
Everything is too expensive for European bureaucrats.
NewYeah, the plan is far too expensive for what it provides.
NewCrashed demand after one of the big AI labs (probably Anthropic because they focus way too hard on expensive frontier models) become inso...
New/dev/random is much too expensive for this.
Yeah, this always bugged me.
A year ago, I had the opinion that it'd be too expensive for developers to support offline mode, peer to peer, or community servers after...
The weird thing about this product is that its biggest competitor is "an old ipad." I feel like most of their target customer base alread...
There's a talk from Travis Kalanick recently on a podcast about this.
They had fantastic product-market fit.
They had fantastic product-market fit. As dleslie and that_guy_iain have mentioned, it was expensive to send an SMS text back then, especially in Europe when your friends have different country codes. So WhatsApp was a free alternative that tapped the unmet need for millions. And signing up with only a phone number seems like a nobrainer nowadays, but the mindset of the time was still email + password. Sure, Microsoft could have launched a competitor, but they would most certainly require you to use an MSN account, thus adding friction to adoption.
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Start the discussion.