The Four Numbers That Remind Every Startup How To Become A Billion Dollar Company
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Ten months after its $19 billion acquisition by Facebook, mobile messaging startup WhatsApp still has great lessons for startup founders who want to succeed.
Sequoia’s managing partner Mike Goguen explained why at the Wharton Entrepreneurs Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.
He stressed the importance of finding a company that is ”obsessively driven, metric focused, and fixated on thrilling customers.” WhatsApp is one of the few companies that had all the characteristics he described.
More important, WhatsApp did all this without spending a lot of money. It was the epitome of a lean startup.
Goguen brought up these four numbers to make that point: “450, 32, 1, 0.”
Here's what he meant:
- WhatsApp had 450 million monthly active users at the time of its acquisition.
- It only hired 32 engineers to grow that fast.
- It charged only $1 per year to use its service.
- Most important, it spent absolutely zero dollars on marketing.
Sequoia was the only investor in WhatsApp and it raked in about $3 billion on the deal. You can read more about it in a blog post by Sequoia partner Jim Goetz.
Here’s a graph that shows WhatsApp’s insane growth:
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Eugene is Business Insider’s Chief Tech Correspondent, where he leads coverage of Amazon. His reporting spans the company’s retail operations, AWS, Alexa, and its secretive internal work culture.Previously, he worked at CNBC, Fortune Magazine Korea, and Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun. He holds degrees from NYU and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.In 2022, Eugene broke a story uncovering Amazon’s practice of deceptively enrolling customers in Prime and deliberately making cancellation difficult. A year later, the Federal Trade Commission sued the company, citing his reporting. That case culminated in a record $2.5 billion settlement in 2025.His reporting has earned multiple honors, including the SF Press Club’s Bay Area Journalism Award and SPJ NorCal’s Excellence in Journalism Award.Eugene lives in the Bay Area. Contact him via email at ekim@businessinsider.com, or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. ExpertiseAmazon, Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, e-commerce, and cloud computing.Popular ArticlesAmazon:Internal Amazon emails give an exclusive look at how CEO Andy Jassy has started to run the company, with obsessive attention to the retail business and what some employees feel is micromanagingAndy Jassy will be the next CEO of Amazon. Insiders dish on what it's like to work for Jeff Bezos' successor, who built AWS into a $40 billion business.Internal documents show Amazon has for years knowingly tricked people into signing up for Prime subscriptions. 'We have been deliberately confusing,' former employee says.Inside Amazon's flailing brick-and-mortar ambitions: missed projections, pressure to cut costs, and a war with Whole FoodsInside Amazon's complex employee-review system, where workers feel left in the dark and managers expect to give 5% of reports bad reviewsAfter 28 years, 'Day 2' finally arrives at AmazonAWS, Alexa, healthcare:Inside Amazon's struggle to break into the lucrative market for SaaS business applications, including an internal pitch to buy $38 billion HubSpotInside Amazon's struggle to crack Nvidia's AI-chip dominanceAmazon's AI data center dream runs into the reality of 'zombie' facilities, higher costs, and labor shortagesAmazon is gutting its voice assistant, Alexa. Employees describe a division in crisis and huge losses on 'a wasted opportunity.'Amazon is working on a new 'Remarkable Alexa,' but internal politics and technical issues plague the projectAmazon projected huge losses from its healthcare business in 2024, but strong sales growth, internal document reveals
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