WhatsApp

19 statements across 17 episodes · 9 bullish · 1 bearish · 12 people on the record · first statement Jul 15, 2017 by Benedict Evans · said 129 times in 64 episodes since 2017 · across every show →

Mentions by year

brought up most by Sonal Chokshi (26), Benedict Evans (25), Chris Dixon (8), Ben Horowitz (5), Steven Sinofsky (4), Margit Wennmachers (4), Anu Hariharan (4), Anant Bhardwaj (4)

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020402017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
001.3202.5402017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 10 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
2025 15 mentions in 9 episodes 2 per episode
2024 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2023 4 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 89 mentions in 38 episodes 2 per episode
2018 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
2017 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about WhatsApp, oldest first

Jul 15, 2017 bullish
Assertion Supported
Evans: WhatsApp rivals global SMS volume with only 30 engineers
“Even more dramatically, WhatsApp is doing almost as many messages a year as an entire global SMS system, and it's doing that with just 30 engineers.”
Benedict Evans Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 4:23 Mobile Is Eating the World, 2014
Jul 15, 2017 positive
Assertion Supported
Evans: WhatsApp handles 50% more volume than global SMS with 40 engineers
“WhatsApp is doing about twenty billion messages a day, and the entire global SMS system of every mobile operator on Earth is doing about twenty billion. So WhatsApp is 50% bigger than SMS with 40 engineers.”
Benedict Evans Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 16:08 Mobile Is Eating the World, 2015
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Prediction Held up
Andreessen predicts WhatsApp, iPhone, and Android will reach 1 billion users
“And then like WhatsApp is going to do it, and then there's going to be a whole bunch of others. And I, you know, iPhone is going to do it, and Android is going to do it.”
Marc Andreessen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:12 a16z Podcast | Ben and Marc Explain (Practically) Everything – Part 1
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Assertion Supported
Evans: Facebook bought Instagram for 1% and WhatsApp for 10% of valuation
“They bought Instagram for whatever it was, one percent of the value of the company, and then they bought Facebook for, so then they bought WhatsApp for, say, 10% of the value of the company.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:59 a16z Podcast | Messaging is the Medium
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Opinion
Evans: Facebook Has Not Created New User Behavior Since News Feed
“Well, they haven't actually created any new behavior since the newsfeed. What they'done is they bought Instagram, and they bought it very early at what at the time everyone said was a ludicrously high price. At the time, it was, actually, it was a very good pr…”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:32 a16z Podcast | Messaging is the Medium
Jan 2, 2019
Assertion Contradicted
Evans: Global annual photos taken likely reaches 10 to 100 trillion
“Even if you just add up the numbers from Facebook and Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp and so on, you get to about eight or nine hundred billion photographs taken last year. And that's just, sorry, shared. So if there were eight or nine hundred bi…”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:30 a16z Podcast | For Google, Android is a Tactic and Cloud is a Strategy
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Assertion Supported
Evans: WhatsApp processes 50% more messages than global SMS with 40 staff
“WhatsApp going to seven or eight hundred million users with a team of 30 or 40 people, and WhatsApp doing 50% more SMSs than the entire global telecom system, sort of 50% more messages than the entire global SMS system with 30 or 40 people”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 24:44 a16z Podcast | The Rise of the Quasi-IPO
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Evans: Apple, Google, and Facebook won the smartphone and messaging wars
“The sort of, the feeling you have in mobile right now is we're kind of at the end of one wave, and we haven't got another wave coming up yet, so we've kind of had the smartphone wars, and Apple and Google both kind of won, and we've had the messaging wars, and…”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:41 a16z Podcast | What Comes After the Smartphone
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Prediction Held up
Knott Craig: WhatsApp has permanently won the messaging market in Africa
“As soon as the smartphone kind of wave started breaking, you know, WhatsApp just won the race. It has won the race. It will win the race.”
Alan Knott Craig Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 31:23 a16z Podcast | Things Come Together -- Truths about Tech in Africa
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Knott Craig: WhatsApp is the primary tool for community anti-crime organizing in South Africa
“In South Africa, we have a massive crime problem. So security is a big concern for a lot of people in South Africa. And WhatsApp has become the de facto means of communities organizing against crime.”
Alan Knott Craig Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 32:49 a16z Podcast | Things Come Together -- Truths about Tech in Africa
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Opinion
Horowitz: Tesla and WhatsApp require fundamentally different employee option plans
“Tesla's option plan cannot be the same as WhatsApp's, or it probably should not be.”
Ben Horowitz Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 21:51 a16z Podcast | Beyond One Size Fits All for Startup Employee Options
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Assertion Supported
Jordan: Premier networks like Facebook and WhatsApp skip paid user acquisition
“A lot of the best networks that are platformed here aren't spending anything on, on acquisition. I mean, it's just, it's kind of an interesting thing in marketplace. Facebook, no. WhatsApp, no. Medium, no. You know, just OpenTable, no. Just, you know, just, th…”
Jeff Jordan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 31:13 a16z Podcast | Getting Network Effects
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Disclosure
Attar: Displaced Syrian families rely on WhatsApp groups to stay connected
“I don't know any Syrian family, including my own, that doesn't have their family WhatsApp group, because that's the only way that you can actually see each other because people don't meet each other anymore inside Syria.”
Lena Sergi Attar Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 18:28 a16z Podcast | Mobility and the Global Refugee Crisis
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sinofsky: Facebook operates WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus as independent entities
“You know, between WhatsApp and Instagram, Oculus, and so on, that are run as very distinct entities, and they don't overlay some grand strategy about what's going to go where, and who's going to do what, when, and tie all the pieces together.”
Steven Sinofsky Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:03 a16z Podcast | The Strategies and Tactics of Big
Aug 29, 2019 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Dixon: Crypto will reinvent Airbnb, WhatsApp, and Lyft by 2030
“Hospitality, services like Airbnb, messaging, things like WhatsApp, ride sharing, services like Lyft, you know, I think all of these, I believe we'll see over the next decade, all of these things kind of reinvented.”
Chris Dixon Aug 29, 2019 ▶ 12:36 Social Networking in 2030: How Could Crypto Change Things?
Nov 9, 2022
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Karen X Cheng Predicts AI Platform Consolidation via Startup Acquisitions
“Most companies will have different strengths, and then they'll continue to be able to differentiate by sort of specializing in that, but I do imagine that some of these companies are gonna buy other companies, and then so they'll like, you know, kind of have m…”
Karen X Cheng Nov 9, 2022 ▶ 21:34 AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng
Jun 10, 2025 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bhardwaj: Indian bank conducts entire lending process conversationally over WhatsApp
“I was working with a bank in India, and now given that AI is, has become reasonably reliable, they are offering entire lending over WhatsApp.”
Anant Bhardwaj Jun 10, 2025 ▶ 16:20 Giving New Life to Unstructured Data with LLMs and Agents
Jul 30, 2025 neutral
Insight
Hayes: Users are fleeing public feeds for private group chats
“The move from public posting to group chat is, I think, a hundred percent driven by that, right? So like, You know, more and more of all the traffic and Instagram talks about this all the time is happening in private messaging. Things are happening in private …”
Chris Hayes Jul 30, 2025 ▶ 11:59 AI Content and the War for Your Attention
Apr 6, 2026
Insight
Acharya: People open smartphone apps to satisfy specific emotional states
“I've always had this theory that people open apps on their phone because they want to feel a feeling. You know, and I think, of course, there's some like functional set of needs, which is why you open calendar or something. But I also think that, you know, Wha…”
Anish Acharya Apr 6, 2026 ▶ 7:28 OpenClaw, Claude Code, and the Future of Software | Peter Yang on The a16z Show
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