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Questions for Alex Fishman
- Big-picture overview of things I'm curious about:
- Questions about WhatsApp
- Questions about before January 2009
- When did you get an iPhone?
- What iPhone projects had you worked on with Igor?
- Did Jan have any kind of smart phone (like a Blackberry) before he got an iPhone?
- Questions about those first six-twelve months (2009)
- I'm just very interested in what that period from January to June 2009 looked like. I don't feel like I have a very clear picture of what was going on in that period.
- Coming up with the idea
- Did Jan get the idea for a messaging service only afterÂ
- How familiar was Jan with the messaging
- How close was Jan to those other friends that you had at those get-togethers?
- How long did it take to create the first version of the app? ~1-2 months? More?
- Early adopters
- How many early adopters were there?
- What did that growth look like in the first few weeks?
- How were people finding out about it?
- What would someone use the app for if no one they knew was using it?
- Early versions of the app
- Does he have pictures of it?
- What actions, exactly, could a user take?
- What was the thinking for the MVP? Just statuses?
- Coming up with the idea
- Questions about the second six months
- The Forbes(?) article suggests that the first version of WhatsApp that included push notifications didn't have person-to-person notifications; is that right? It was only Twitter-style, one-to-many notifications?
- Managing / hiring
- What he looks for in developers / how he knew that Igor was a good developer.
- On the other hand, it looks like the SMS-fee problem they were solving was so painful for users that the execution wasn't crucial. So they just needed someone reasonably competent and reliable.
- How to manage remote developers / how to work with remote developers - What exactly does his process look like?
- What he looks for in developers / how he knew that Igor was a good developer.
- How Alex / Jan were able to get people to use the initial version.
- Although it seems that apps are often able to get a bunch of people using their initial versions; the issue is that those apps often aren't fixing an ongoing problem, and so people don't return to the app. Whereas with WhatsApp, people were already using SMS, and paying those SMS fees was an ongoing annoyance. So users had a strong incentive to switch.
- I'm just very interested in what that period from January to June 2009 looked like. I don't feel like I have a very clear picture of what was going on in that period.
- Questions about before / after that period
- Questions about before January 2009
- Questions not about WhatsApp
- Questions about Alex's start-ups
- Ask Alex if he's heard about Aubrey de Grey, see if he can get Jan to look into it.
- Questions about WhatsApp
...