Facebook agrees to buy WhatsApp for $16 billion

[RobP]

Just checked my Youtube subscriptions and a successful entrepreneur I follow put out a short video about this big sale and made a great point about what the WhatsApp mega sale means for all of us: There's never been a better time in all of history to achieve your Fastlane goals and lifestyle with such speed.

Really worth watching for a quick hit of inspiration and motivation: Now is your chance!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[oddball]

Not bad...not bad...

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-rich-are-whatsapp-employees-now-2014-2

 

[Ryllban]

omfg....O**G......just amazed.

F*ck...haha 16 billion. This is just amazing...

Great app by the way. Used this everyday when I was backpacking and talked to friends/family on the other side of the planet.

 

[DeletedUser9]

Funny thing is $3,000,000,000 worth of restricted stock will be awarded to the 50 odd employees at whatsapp.

Thats an average of 60,000,000$ each but obviously some have higher equities than others.

Early employees are said to have up to 1% stakes = $160,000,000

One investment company who invested $60,000,000 is said to make a 50x return on the investment

Reminds me of broadcast.com, I hope the employees sell their stock and don't do what the employees at broadcast.com did and hold on to them and watch the value plummet.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Jonleehacker]

FB stock up 2.3% today, so obviously the market doesn't seem to feel that they overpaid.

 

[Magik]

Some things worth noting:

-The app is expected to grow to over a billion people within the next 2 years.
-Costs $1.00 per year after the first year
-WhatsApp is huge in emerging markets and has been kicking FB's a$$, so FB just decided to buy the users
-Facebook did not hand them 19 billion in CASH, roughly 20% of that is cash, and the rest is STOCK. A huge difference. Also, some of that stock is not vested until 4 years from now. By doing this, FB hedged their risk a little bit.
-What's are the two ways to have a monopoly? Either put everyone else out of business, or BUY everyone out. If John Rockefeller was alive, he'd be smiling (after all, monopoly laws are largely due to him)
-The biggest one of all... DATA. Information is king. The ability to predict trends before they happen is worth billions of dollars.

Time will tell if this was a smart move or not. In the long run, I don't think FB will lose out on this. I guess it depends on how we measure it.

 

[smarty]

Here's what Kevin O'Leary thinks, lol http://finance.yahoo.com/video/shark-tanks-oleary-facebook-whatsapp-203400185.html

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[RyanC]

Well they aren't all new, some of them use Facebook already.

Sure they are, but all about WhatsApp is "private". On Facebook you present yourself in the best way possible to all your "friends". Only upload the pictures from partying all weekend at the best clubs in town, showing your pictures from your last holiday and how awesome it was.
In WhatsApp you share your more private moments about your boring (slowlane) life with your closest friends and family. You send them more private pictures, discuss the more boring topics and now Facebook has all the data which are more private than the one collected from Facebook.
It also known, that younger people tend to leave Facebook and go to more private networks, e.g. WhatsApp. So I believe they made a great buy here. If it's worth 19 Billion? Probably