WhatsApp, every mention

46 scenes · ← back to WhatsApp

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every year anyone Ben Gilbert 22David Rosenthal 18Jason Calacanis 2Anu Hariharan 2Packy McCormick 1

Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where WhatsApp comes up

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The NFL: How small-town teams became America's most valuable sports empire (Audio) · Acquired Jan 27, 2026 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 1:37:06 Ben Gilbert So think on the phone, in chat, SMS, WhatsApp, ChatGPT, email, all in over 30 languages.

Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired Aug 26, 2025 · 6 mentions

Google Part I: Origins of Search. How the Best Business in Human History Happened (Audio) · Acquired Jun 30, 2025 · 2 mentions

Indian Premier League Cricket (Audio) · Acquired Mar 24, 2025 · 2 mentions

Meta (Audio) · Acquired Oct 28, 2024 · 25 mentions

  • ▶ 2:36 Ben Gilbert Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and now Threads.
  • ▶ 1:12:44 Ben Gilbert WhatsApp did this.
  • ▶ 3:26:27 David Rosenthal And messaging, you know, this WhatsApp thing is super cool, like maybe I'll just use that for messaging.
  • ▶ 3:49:29 David Rosenthal By the way, Will is the head of WhatsApp today, and Boz, of course, is the CTO of Meta and head of Reality Labs.
  • ▶ 4:06:38 David Rosenthal During this period, you've got Snap and you've got WhatsApp, both of which are like pretty big deals.
  • ▶ 4:06:46 David Rosenthal We've covered both of those pretty fully on separate episodes that you can go listen to, but I think ultimately what they represent, and obviously Snap was more a competitor and WhatsApp turned into an acquisition and is now a big part of…
  • ▶ 4:08:32 David Rosenthal And Snap and WhatsApp were both really interesting data points about this.
  • ▶ 4:08:35 David Rosenthal WhatsApp obviously with private messaging.
  • ▶ 4:09:26 Ben Gilbert You know, Snap represents the idea that people are sharing way more if it's ephemeral, and WhatsApp represented the idea that people are shifting the places they communicate from more public to more private, and from larger groups to…
  • ▶ 4:11:45 David Rosenthal Either way, Onavo ended up being, like, a hugely important acquisition for Facebook, because it really tipped them off to WhatsApp and Snap, too.
  • ▶ 4:17:40 Ben Gilbert WhatsApp didn't have a feed.
  • ▶ 4:18:34 Ben Gilbert WhatsApp is actually kind of different.
  • ▶ 4:24:55 Ben Gilbert Step two is this is where it's nice to have WhatsApp.
  • ▶ 4:25:17 David Rosenthal I will share that on WhatsApp, or I will share that on iMessage, or I will share that on, you know, whatever my, my actual friend living room network of choice is.
  • ▶ 4:39:38 Ben Gilbert And this is just like what Meta did with threads, with WhatsApp.
  • ▶ 4:39:49 Ben Gilbert We'll figure out the right monetization strategy, just like we did with WhatsApp.
  • ▶ 4:51:17 David Rosenthal WhatsApp exists.
  • ▶ 5:13:39 Ben Gilbert In February of 2014, they opened up the purse strings and paid nineteen billion dollars for WhatsApp.
  • ▶ 5:25:35 Ben Gilbert WhatsApp and Instagram are in the neighborhood of two billion monthly active users.
  • ▶ 5:25:39 Ben Gilbert WhatsApp has a hundred million now in the US, which this is sort of a big narrative violation that WhatsApp will never catch on in the US, and iMessage is dominant, and even after that it's, you know, text message.
  • ▶ 5:25:53 Ben Gilbert A hundred million people a month in the US use WhatsApp now.
  • ▶ 5:28:29 Ben Gilbert Why is it that WhatsApp and Instagram are both increasing in user engagement over time?
  • ▶ 5:42:41 Ben Gilbert It is an application that Meta has that uses Llama in the background, but provides meta-specific AI experiences, some of them bundled into apps, like in WhatsApp chat or in Instagram.
  • ▶ 5:52:10 Ben Gilbert They bought WhatsApp.
  • ▶ 5:57:34 unnamed speaker Myspace and Friendster, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp.

Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg) · Acquired Sep 30, 2024 · 1 mention

The Mark Zuckerberg Interview · Acquired Sep 18, 2024 · 1 mention

Visa (Audio) · Acquired Nov 27, 2023 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 1:38:25 Ben Gilbert Yeah, and it's worth a moment on Amex here because I would have thought just like Facebook or WhatsApp or Google, when you have this sort of winner-take-all massive network effect business that the single centralized player network effect…

ACQ Sessions: Jason Calacanis · Acquired Oct 4, 2022 · 2 mentions

The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company Stories · Acquired Jun 20, 2022 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 15:48 Ben Gilbert So, of course, this trend led Sequoia to go on to invest in Google, WhatsApp, Airbnb, Meituan, ByteDance, global markets.

Arena Show Part I: Idea Dinner + YC Continuity · Acquired May 12, 2022 · 3 mentions

Standard Oil Part II (Extended Cut) · Acquired Oct 19, 2021 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 2:16:54 Ben Gilbert Yeah, this is why I was saying that Facebook is the most similar thing to Standard Oil, and just to be extremely blunt about it, Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp is a lot like Standard Oil's Cleveland Massacre and, um, you know, the…
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