WhatsApp Founder Used Unchangable Airline Ticket To Pressure Facebook 144
McGruber writes "In a post on the Flyertalk website, WhatsApp founder Jan Koum provides another interesting detail about how he steered WhatsApp into a $16 billion deal with Facebook: 'we announced the deal with Facebook on wednesday after the market closed. during the process, we realized there was a chance we might not be able to get the deal wrapped up and signed on wednesday and it could delay. when the risk of the delay became real, i said: "if we don't get it done on wednesday, it probably wont get done. i have tickets on thursday to fly out to Barcelona which i bought with miles and they are not easily refundable or even possible to change. this has to be done by wednesday or else!!!"...and so one of the biggest deals in tech history had to be scheduled around my M&M award ticket."
Something doesn't add up (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey should give all 450 million customers a $1 refund.
They supposedly have 450 million users and charge $1 a year, but in 2013 they only had $20 Million in revenue. Either the 450 million users is an inflated meaningless number, or they have huge churn where only 4% of users stick around past the first year that's free.
Re:Really though? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's hard to think that FaceBook would take this threat seriously. It's a $10+ Billion deal. Throwing in some extra first class seats for a different day would be the equivalent of a give-a-penny-take-a-penny dish compared to this.
Indeed. I expect that the deal happened in spite of, and not because of, this 'threat'. Sure, Facebook's team would have had an "Oh shit!" moment--but it would have been "Oh shit, we're dealing with an unprofessional nitwit" and not "Oh shit, he might walk away". Given that Koum has apparently decided it's a good idea to broadcast his unprofessional nitwittery, I imagine that Facebook's first move will be to keep him as far away as possible from anything dealing with 'business' as they possibly can.
Re:Something doesn't add up (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all their users pay the $1 a year. Some of them get free renewals after their year is up, for instance.