Facebook bought Whatsapp – I have mixed feelings

Posted byVijay VijayasankarPosted inUncategorizedTags:

I don’t exactly know what to make of Facebook’s acquisition of Whatsapp for about $19B . Like many others – it was a jaw bropping moment for me. And since then, I have been trying to rationalize it in my mind, with limited success.

There are some things that work in favor of this deal for sure

1. Facebook has a big inflated market cap. So it is a good time to buy someone if part of the investment is in stock.

2. What is the biggest risk for Facebook? I guess it is the scenario of growth stagnation and a loss of stickiness. On both counts , Whatsapp is THE new facebook . They would have hit a billion users one day soon with their growth rate.

3. If Facebook didn’t buy them – it is possible that Whatsapp might have ended up with a competitor like Google. In fact I cannot believe that there is no indication so far of anyone else bidding up the price for this $19B valuation to make sense.

4. Facebook is smart in looking for inorganic and risky moves to grow and keep potential competitors at bay. That is admirable for such a young company , especially one that has so many bright engineers working for it.

5. The only financing the company took was $8M from Sequoia. They got a VERY good deal – but it makes it easy for Facebook to not have to deal with a lot of deal complexity and negotiations.

6. Whatsapp shows that you can support 450 Million users with 32 engineers. I don’t know any enterprises or consumer companies who have that kind of ratio. It is unheard of – and something Facebook can hopefully learn from as they grow.

There are also some things I don’t quite like about the deal

1. Historically, there are many such big acquisitions that have not worked out quite well for the acquiring company – like Microsoft buying Skype for about $8B or so. And skype does have a model to make real revenue unlike Whatsapp

2. Facebook doesn’t make revenue to match its market cap. How exactly does adding a very pricey Whatsapp that makes very little money on top make economic sense beats me. Especially since the impression is that Whatsapp will continue to not get into monetization via advertisements.

3. How much of competition can Facebook buyout ? at some point – it gets very expensive, and the share dilution for Mr.Z might not make it attractive .

4. What is the rationale behind this valuation? Will more low revenue startups now use this to convince the market of higher valuation? Will be constantly be jumping from one bubble to another ?

In general , I am none the wiser. But of course what I think doesn’t matter – it is Facebook’s money – they can do whatever they please 🙂

Published by Vijay Vijayasankar

Son/Husband/Dad/Dog Lover/Engineer. Follow me on twitter @vijayasankarv. These blogs are all my personal views - and not in way related to my employer or past employers

5 thoughts on “Facebook bought Whatsapp – I have mixed feelings”

  1. Here is the devils advocate (rationalization)

    Trends

    a. Family and friends have bought as much if not more at Facebooks stores than at Ebay. I am not sure if Facebook gets any money as yet.
    b. As you have already noted, at 32 engineers, Facebook would not run out of cash maintaining the company, and a company that does not run out of cash does not go bankrupt. They have time to think and do something about it.
    c. Most people I know of, even though they have facebook account, seldom login, but are active in WhatsApp.
    d. The hope would be for them to figure out monetization later on.

    All this is rationalization. The valuation at the moment does not make much sense. But then to me the valuation of Facebook is quite crazy.

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