Questions for Alex Fishman
- Big-picture overview of things I'm curious about:
- Questions about WhatsApp
- 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.
- 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?
- 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 those first six-twelve months (2009)
- Questions not about WhatsApp
- Questions about WhatsApp
Of course, also, check out my medium blog on medium.com/@fishman. I think I have 8-9 stories there. Probably the most relevant ones here are
1. My Cofounder Said “I love what we’re doing” And We Shut Down Our Startup (this one went viral on hacker news, WSJ and tons of other places)
2. How to Shut Down a Startup in 36 Hours
3. A Post About Post-Post-Mortem
4. The Deciding Deep Dive