Alex Fishman (WhatsApp)

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 after
        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?
    - 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?
    - 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.
  - Questions about before / after that period
- Questions not about WhatsApp

Medium - @fishman
- 2015.07.28 - Thoughts on Dishero
- 2016.06.16 - My Cofounder Said “I love what we’re doing” And We Shut Down Our Startup
- 2016.07.16 - How to Shut Down a Startup in 36 Hours
- 2016.08.09 - Imagine Yesterday
  - "You can analyze successes of others all day long, but the reality is — there are no recipes for these things."
  - "before smiling will have any impact, you must have something interesting to say. (...) You may A/B test “Buy” vs. “Buy Now” on your checkout button. However, if your customers aren’t interested in your product — it won’t matter. You may optimize the size and the location of your share button. However, if you do not have shareable content — it won’t matter. On the flip side, if you do have shareable content — people will find a way to share it. Growth hacking and A/B testing are important only once you have a large user-base, where every percentage point uptick in conversion results in a significant impact. And then, only then, size and colors of the buttons start to matter. As well as timing of the push notifications. (...) Your time is better spent building a hit product, that customers use and tell their friends about."
    - Main idea: Don't pre-optimize / over-engineer.
  - "if you have 10 daily active users today, and your engagement grows daily by 1%, you’ll have 14,276 DAU in two years."
    - Main idea: Small optimizations that lead to 1% growth per day aren't going to lead to huge numbers of users.
  - Success recipes: There are none. All we know is the four required ingredients:
    - Hard work
    - Conviction
    - Patience
    - A bit of luck
  - "I once attended a conference where a prominent speaker explained the meteoric success of WhatsApp. He attributed it to the human psychology, yearning for communication, the intimate nature of messaging, and the timing of push notifications. The claim seems quite plausible on its face. However, here is what the speaker was forgetting in his analysis: 1) There’re scores of other messaging apps with a similar feature set, 2) SMS existed a decade beforehand, 3) On the day WhatsApp was just born, we all were already sending billions of intimate SMS messages every single day. It was painful to see him reducing WhatsApp to a red notification indicator. The speaker then explained how infinite scroll, with its easiness and addictiveness, was instrumental to Facebook and Instagram’s successes. Again, such a gross oversimplification of these services."
  - "I’m not saying album covers or packaging aren’t important or easy to design. Nor I am saying that studying others’ work isn’t inspiring or necessarily a waste of time. My main point is — none of it will actually help you to compose a timeless piece. There are no recipes for that."
- 2016.08.11 - Song References
  - This is just a list of song references in the "Imagine Yesterday" article.
- 2016.08.29 - A Post About Post-Post-Mortem
- 2016.08.31 - How NOT to Raise Money
- 2016.09.01 - Raising Money — Where to Start?
- 2013.09.13 - Camera-Killing Smartphones And Their Killer Cameras
- 2016.10.28 - The Deciding Deep Dive
- 2016.11.16 - App development, bug reporting, and more in this GeekSpeak podcast with Bugsee

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