Who Owns WhatsApp And Why Was It Value $19 Billion?

In February 2009, former Yahoo worker Jan Koum conceived the primary draft of WhatsApp after being amazed by the prospects of the rising iOS App Retailer. Named after the phrase “What’s up?” early-stage WhatsApp did not supply messaging as a service however allowed customers to share quick statuses. It was initially solely launched on iOS and made accessible for BlackBerry telephones within the following months. Help for Android and Symbian did not arrive till mid-2010, however Koum stored bettering WhatsApp for iOS.

In June 2009, an important Apple replace allowed iOS apps to ship push notifications, and WhatsApp was instantly up to date to ship a notification each time somebody up to date their standing. This enabled early customers to share frequent updates and deal with the function as a bunch chat.

Koum realized WhatsApp’s potential as an immediate messenger and added direct messaging in August 2009. It turned immensely in style as a result of the one different different on the time with no restrict on the variety of messages (keep in mind while you solely acquired 500 texts a month?) was BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), which, too, was restricted to BlackBerry telephones. Immediate messaging catapulted WhatsApp to having 250,000 customers.

In November 2009, Koum’s shut good friend and former colleague from Yahoo, Brian Acton, turned a co-founder by bringing seed funding price $250,000 from 5 different ex-Yahoo staff. In December, WhatsApp added the flexibility to ship images on iOS, making it a richer model of MMS with out a lot high quality loss.