Entrepreneurial Experience of WhatsApp: Strategies for Success

This report analyzes the journey of WhatsApp from inception, characteristics of successful entrepreneurship skills, identification of entrepreneurial spirit and leadership, and positioning strategies for gaining strategic advantage. It also discusses the implementation of innovation used in WhatsApp. Subject: Entrepreneurship, Course Code: NA, Course Name: NA, College/University: NA.

Running head: ENTREPRENEURIAL EXPERIENCE
Entrepreneurial Experience
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Executive Summary
The report has helped in analyzing the different kinds of innovative strategies that can be
adopted by the WhatsApp in adopting an effective strategy. Furthermore, the strategic
advantage that can be gained by WhatsApp has been analyzed in an appropriate manner as
this helped the company in becoming successful in the competitive environment.
Additionally, WhatsApp tried to analyze the innovative strategies applied by the other
competitors in the economy and tried to position themselves appropriately in the competitive
environment as well.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Journey of WhatsApp from Inception........................................................................................2
Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurship Skills in Reference to WhatsApp...................3
Identification of Entrepreneurial Spirit and Leadership.............................................................5
Positioning Themselves for Gaining Strategic Advantage........................................................7
Implementation of Innovation Used in WhatsApp....................................................................9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................12
References................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction
The report helps in analyzing the journey of WhatsApp from the time of inception
along with analysis of the different characteristics of the successful entrepreneurs in reference
to WhatsApp enterprise has to be done in an effective manner. Furthermore, the position has
to be analyzed as this will assist WhatsApp in positioning themselves for the strategic kind of
advantage. Furthermore, the usage of innovation is required to be analyzed effectively as this
will help in focusing more on innovative strategies.
Journey of WhatsApp from Inception
WhatsApp Enterprise was founded in the year 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum
who were the former employees of Yahoo!. Jan Koum is Ukrainian-American inventor of
internet and the computer programmer. He is CEO along with the co-founder of WhatsApp
along with Brian Acton which is the messaging application that was required by Facebook
Inc in the month of February 2014 for US$19 billion. It has been seen and noticed that both
the founders of WhatsApp previously worked with Yahoo and they left that respective job as
there was huge issues related to the different payments and other legal issues.
However, it has been noticed that after Koum was included in the different start up
ideas, at that respective point of time it was noticed that Acton was still unemployed and this
was the time when both of them started to work together as a joint venture and it was
successful as well. Furthermore, in WhatsApp, it has been noticed that it is applicable in
sending different replies to one another and there is privacy in the messages that is being sent
to the individuals who uses WhatsApp on a regular basis as well (Block, Fisch and Van Praag
2017).
Furthermore, in February 2014, after venture capital financing around $1.5 billion,
Facebook has announced that it was acquiring WhatsApp for US$ 19 billion. Furthermore, in

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July 2013, WhatsApp was made free with an annual kind of subscription fee of $1after the
first year. In August 2014, it was seen that WhatsApp was globally popular kind of
messaging application with more than 600 million users who are active in different social
media sites.
In November 30, 2015, client of Android for WhatsApp started making different kind
of links named Telegram that is uncopiable and unclickable. In the present scenario, it was
noticed that founder of WhatsApp Jan Koum announced that the services provided by them
will no longer be chargeable as there were different barriers faced by the various users who
did not have credit card facility available with them. In June 2016, there were more than 100
million voice calls that were made per day on the WhatsApp application and this was seen as
per the blog of the company. In February 2017, WhatsApp started and introduced new feature
regarding the status and it was quite familiar to Snapchat and Facebook.
Additionally, it was seen that on May 2017, it was being reported that the European
Commission was fining Facebook for around €110 million for misleading it as this happened
during the takeover of the WhatsApp application. Currently, in January 2018, it was seen that
WhatsApp has been able to launch the WhatsApp business for usage pf small business
activities that will help them in maintaining their position in the market effectively.
Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurship Skills in Reference to WhatsApp
There are different characteristics of the successful entrepreneurship Skills in
reference to WhatsApp. The entrepreneurs are the ones who set up business with taking
different kinds of financial risks in the hope of profit. There are different characteristics of the
successful entrepreneurs that are required to be maintained by them in order to gain more
successful and competitive advantage in the economy.

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Proper passion and motivation is essential in nature and this is one of the essential
traits of a successful entrepreneur as this helps in understanding the risks involved in the
tasks that is performed by them. It is required to be analyzed that the entrepreneurs are being
able to take various risks as their main motive of the entrepreneurs are to take risks and they
are the risk takers. However, this has been seen that risk takers are successful kind of
entrepreneurs and creativity is the main idea that helps in analyzing the uniqueness into the
business effectively.
Furthermore, the communication skills and self-discipline are the other issues that
have to be analyzed in an effective manner that will help the entrepreneurs in handling the
situations in an effectual manner. The passion about learning among the entrepreneurs is the
other major characteristics that is required to be inbuilt in them as this will help them in
gaining important information and learn from their own mistakes as well. The entrepreneurs
need to be passion driven and not money driven as money is not the primary kind of
motivation and this will not be required to invent or make an amazing product.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Jan Koum did different menial jobs such as
mopping or cleaning at various grocery stores. At this point of the life, both Jan and his
mother were dependent on different kinds of allowances from the government. Furthermore,
Jan signed the agreement with Facebook on door of social services and both he and his
mother used to stand in queue to collect the food stamps as well. From such instances, it can
be analyzed that in becoming a successful entrepreneur, this is essential to be stable in their
own motives as this will help in becoming a successful entrepreneur in an effective manner.
Furthermore, it has been seen that the individual or the entrepreneur needs to be
passion driven in nature and not money driven in nature. It is essential in nature and it has
been learnt from Jan Koum that the products that will be sold to the customers would require

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to meet the needs of the individuals in an effective manner and this will help the entrepreneur
in becoming more successful in the near future as well. According to Jan, money was not the
primary motive and this is essential in nature to build a product and his main motive was not
to create money and was to meet expectations of the customers.
Identification of Entrepreneurial Spirit and Leadership
Innovation is one of the specific tools of different entrepreneurs and this is one of the
means by which they help in exploiting the change as one of the opportunity for different
business or different kind of service. Furthermore, the different entrepreneurs are required to
search purposefully for the different sources of innovation that helps in indicating the
opportunities present in successful kind of innovation. Furthermore, it has been noticed that
the entrepreneurial leadership is defined as the group of different individuals to achieve a
common goal using the proactive entrepreneurial behavior by optimizing the risks and
managing the change in an effective manner.
WhatsApp was first started by Jan Koum and Brian Acton and they tried to be
successful in the respective venture in an appropriate manner as well. Furthermore, it has
been known that Koum was eating into $400,000 in savings from Yahoo and drifting.
Furthermore, in January 2009, he bought an iPhone and he tried to realize that the seven-
month-old application will be changing and it is about to spawn whole industry of apps as
well. Jan Koum visited home of a Russian friend who suggested Jan Koum with different
suggestions during movie night at a friend’s place.
Jan Koum enrolled his name at San Jose State University and started working at Ernst
and Young as security tester. He tried to gain knowledge on different aspects of computer
networking and this helped them in managing the same in an effective manner. Furthermore,
it was seen that after six months, Koum interviewed at Yahoo and he cracked the position of

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infrastructure engineer. Over the next nine years, both the founders of WhatsApp watched the
ups and downs of WhatsApp together as well. Additionally, in the year 2007, both Acton and
Koum left Yahoo and they tried to decompress themselves and started travelling around
South America and played ultimate frisbee.
The entrepreneurial spirit of both Koum and Acton was that both of them struggled to
perform their best in managing their different innovative ideas and this has helped them in
being successful as well (Schaltegger, Lüdeke-Freund and Hansen 2016). The leadership
quality of Koum was astounding as the main idea of opening WhatsApp was watching a
movie at his friend’s place and he tried to guide Acton who is the co-founder of WhatsApp in
an efficient manner as well. Koum immediately chose the name WhatsApp as it sounded like
What’s Up and on his birthday that is on February 2009, he tried incorporating WhatsApp in
California.
From this aspect, it can be analyzed and learnt that the approach applied by Koum
was thorough and he was a professional kind of leader who had the entire idea of different
computer networks and he was successful in the venture as well (Schaper 2016). Koum made
WhatsApp unique as the login in it was done by the phone number of users, however it was
noticed that Action was still unemployed and then both of them started working together for
free for first few years and the largest cost was sending verification code texts to the users.
From this scenario, it can be analyzed that the leadership capabilities and the entrepreneurial
capabilities were astounding in nature as they were successful in their venture.
Positioning Themselves for Gaining Strategic Advantage
WhatsApp messenger is one of the free apps that helps the individuals in sending
messages to the with videos and photos from the smartphones along with bypassing the
wireless carrier’s messages and MMS charges as well (Phillips et al. 2015). The WhatsApp

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has gained strategic advantage in the entire competitive market as they have three compelling
qualities that has helped them in managing their position in the market effectively. Proper
positioning is essential in nature for all the organizations in the economy or the competitive
market as this will help them in maintaining their strategic position in the entire economy.
There are different strategic drivers that is used by WhatsApp that has helped the
company in their growth is keep growing as this has assisted them in maintaining proper
competitive spirit in competing with the other companies in the market. The different
technological innovations that has been applied by WhatsApp has helped them in becoming
successful and this has assisted them as well in planning for the different future endeavors as
to become successful in performing the tasks effectively (Caneque and Hart 2017).
The wide ranging cross platform support is the first criteria wherein it has been
noticed that WhatsApp messenger is available for Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows and
Symbian. However, on the other hand, Kik Messenger which is one other messaging
application which is possible only on few platforms. In this regard, WhatsApp Messenger
receive kudos in such regard and this is one of the point that has helped WhatsApp in
positioning themselves in an effective manner. The WhatsApp messenger has tried to upfront
about the no-ads policy and they have been successful in nature that helps them in
maintaining their strategic position in the market. Furthermore, it has been seen that BBM,
Apple Messenger that is the free iMessage services are limited to the users who only uses
iPhone and this is not suitable for the ones who uses other handsets (Schumpeter 2017).
Secondly, there are lot of users is the other criteria and the positioning strategy that
has been adopted by WhatsApp. This is the other major reason wherein currently it is seen
that there are more than 450 million monthly users. The number of messages that is shared by
WhatsApp is nearly equal to entire SMS messaging in the entire globe (Zahra and Wright

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2016). For instance- it has been seen that Viber that is the messaging app has about 300
million and BBM has 80 million users.
From this, it can be analyzed that WhatsApp has more than 450 million users in the
present scenario and more than 320 million individuals log into the specific application daily
as well. Furthermore, there are different statistics in which this has been noticed that
WhatsApp has tried to position themselves in such a manner that the application has become
popular in Latin America, Europe, Asia as well as in India (Kuratko, Hornsby and Hayton
2015).
Lastly, there is less number of advertisements is the other main top reason wherein
Facebook has spent more mega dollars on WhatsApp messenger is the user base. Currently, it
has more than 450 million dollars monthly users (Scarborough 2016). On the other hand,
there are different other free messaging applications such as WeChat in Asia and this includes
advertising and this will be the other strategic advantage that can be gained by WhatsApp in
an effective manner. When advertising is involved, this will create huge problems for the
different messaging applications and this will be negatively impact the company in a negative
manner. The advertisements are the major reason for WhatsApp to become more popular in
the competitive market as well (Edwards-Schachter et al. 2015).
Therefore, these are the different strategies that can be adopted by the respective
company WhatsApp and this has helped them in gaining competitive advantage in the entire
competitive economy (Leyden and Link 2015). It was essential in nature for Apple to gain the
strategic position in the market in such a manner that this will assist the entire organization
appropriately. WhatsApp has tried to positioned themselves in such a manner that has helped
them in managing their respective position effectively in the competitive environment
effectively and efficiently as well (Huggins and Thompson 2015).

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It has been noticed that the proper entrepreneurship qualities are essential as to make
the different tasks more innovative in nature. It was noticed that there are different kinds of
qualities that are required to be adopted by an entrepreneur as this will help them in being
more successful in the ventures that is performed by them (Kuratko 2016). Furthermore, it
can be noticed that the confidence is essential in nature that is inbuilt among the entrepreneur
as to establish the goals effectively and solve the different queries effectively as well (Turner
and Pennington 2015).
Factors of Strategic Advantage Through Innovation
The different factors that are used as the strategic advantage are as follows:
Sustainable Competitive Advantage:
 The customer base of WhatsApp is huge and strong in comparison to the other
competitors in the market such as Vibe and WeChat
 It helps in easily sending different documents and images in an easy manner
Core Competency:
 It is free for the different users
 Available for all the platforms
Business Model:

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Resources and Capability:
 Financial Resources that has helped the company in becoming successful
 WhatsApp is made of more than 132600 employees and they have different channels
and they mainly focus on the entire growth of the company
Implementation of Innovation Used in WhatsApp
The founders of Jan Koum and Brian Acton launched the organization with a
straightforward proposition (Eesley and Miller 2018). They tried to create the application in
such a manner that had no advertisements and this attracted more individuals towards the
application as well. In WhatsApp, it has been noticed that the group chat feature in particular
is the fist main feature that has helped them in becoming more innovative in nature.
Furthermore, it is seen that the best reason to use WhatsApp for the business is that the many
customers are using it and there are already using it in an effective manner.
The users of WhatsApp along with similar kind of services are willing to engage with
the different businesses in an appropriate manner. In addition, WhatsApp make the easy to set
up groups so that the messages can be sent to the entire group (Phillips et al. 2015). The other

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innovative technology that has been used by WhatsApp is of the strong privacy and strong
security policy that has got huge attention in the present scenario and this has assisted them in
maintaining proper and innovative position in the market as well. These are the different
innovative techniques used by the company in order to gain more competitive advantage in
the economy (Drucker 2014).
On the other hand, there are different other messaging applications like WhatsApp
that includes the different kind of other messaging applications such as BBM, Vibe along
with WeChat and all these applications have different kinds of innovative technologies and
this helped them in gaining more competitive advantage. It can be seen that in BBM, which
was introduced earlier did not have the group chatting facility for the different users who
used Blackberry phones or handsets (Parker 2018).
On the other hand, it has been noticed that in Vibe and WeChat, there were no such
facilities that is included in WhatsApp and this was ineffective in nature as well.
Furthermore, it was noticed that in WeChat, there is WeChat shake and this is one of the
simple concepts that can be used by them that has far reaching consequences as well.
Furthermore, there are different kinds of payments that can be made by WeChat and this is
the idea that is adopted by Facebook in the recent times wherein the individuals or the users
of Facebook can send money through the respective application and this is one of the biggest
innovative strategy adopted by Facebook in the recent times (Dees 2014).
WhatsApp has made the sharing of different documents easier for the different
individuals who uses the respective application (Chatterji, Glaeser and Kerr 2014).
Furthermore, it can be noticed that there are different PDFs, spreadsheets and others that can
be sent from one individual to other in an effective manner and this has helped them in
becoming one of the successful platforms in the entire world. Furthermore, it has been

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analyzed and noticed that there is end to end encryption and this has been inbuilt in the latest
versions of WhatsApp used by the individuals (Bruton et al. 2016).
WhatsApp can be used by the individuals both in desktop or in phones and there is an
option for group chats wherein the messages or the different images can be shared by them
effectively and this is hassle free as well (Galindo and Méndez 2014). There is an additional
implementation of both voice or video calls options available for the users and this is one of
the unique selling propositions of WhatsApp that has helped them to succeed in comparison
to the other applications present in the Google Play store. It has been noticed that there are
different applications that is required to be analyzed by WhatsApp in order to become more
popular in the coming scenario as this will help them in gaining more competitive advantage
in the near future as well (Burns 2016).
Both Koum and Acton have tried their best in developing different strategies that has
assisted them in becoming successful entrepreneurs in the entire world. Both of them tries to
apply their different strategies in such a manner that this has assisted the company WhatsApp
which is the parent company as well in gaining competitive advantage by developing
different innovative techniques appropriately (Bruton et al. 2016).
Furthermore, it has been noticed that WhatsApp has created strong privacy and
security policy that is getting huge attention in the present scenario as this will be helping the
company in gaining strong customer base who uses WhatsApp for their business as well as
personal use than any other messaging applications present in the Google Play Store.
Additionally, WhatsApp has gained more importance by introducing the group chat options
for their friends and family members as this will allow them to be more popular among the
youths and the ones who own business or performs business effectively with the usage of
WhatsApp.

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Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that proper innovative strategies are required to be
adopted by WhatsApp have helped them in managing the innovative procedures in an
effective manner. It has been noticed that the WhatsApp has gained competitive advantage in
the economy by analyzing the position of the other competitors in the market and this has
helped WhatsApp in becoming the most successful messaging applications in the entire
world.
Furthermore, it has been seen and noticed that there are different growth opportunities
applied by WhatsApp wherein it was seen that there are different security and privacy
policies applied by them and the different messages that have been sent by the individuals to
one another were deleted by the WhatsApp entity itself as well.
Lastly, it can be concluded that WhatsApp has tried to include different growth
strategies as to monetize their target audiences effectively and they tried to make sure that the
existing audiences are not being lost by them by including the different types of innovative
techniques while developing the application in an effective manner.

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