You're the PM for WhatsApp and you have $1B to invest. What would you do?

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You're the PM for WhatsApp and you have $1B to invest. What would you do?

Asked at Microsoft over a year ago

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naruto · Answer 1 · 2020-07-06T08:38:51+0000

Strengths :

WhatsApp has become the default messaging tool for majority of internet users in developing countries specially in Asia, and Africa
- Network effects. Almost all of the people in the family and office are already present
Video calls and audio calls have also picked up
Has recently begun the whatsapp for business

Weaknesses:

Has not innovated much since the launch.
- Telegram taking over the group chats or community
- Has to catered to most use cases which are in demand
  - No way to schedule the events (people want to call each other at a particular time)
  - messaging in group sucks ( no way to thread or fork )
  - Navigation and organisation of chat is really bad
    - No filtering
Has stuck to primarily focused on B2C, where it is finding hard to make money

Competition :

Telegram has taken over the group discussions
Google Meet and Zoom have taken over the group calling
Slack and teams have taken over the professional groups
Google Pay has disrupted markets like India.

Opportunity :

Given the Covid situation,

Work from home will continue to see more adoption, everyone will prefer virtual hang outs than in person meetings.
- Video/Calls for official and personal reasons has seen the spike. it would continue to increase
- Slack and teams have seen excessive hike in the adoption
Digital payments will see a spike in adoption
- P2P contact less payments will continue to see the spike
- Transactions with merchants will see adoption of digital mediums
E-commerce is picking up, and engagement will increase in this space
- Users want to be in constant touch with the seller for any queries
- May want to directly buy things from whatsApp

Recommendations :

Two pronged strategy to invest 1 Billion USD more wisely

Retain the lead in the existing P2P communication in the developing countries
- Invest 10% of 1 Billion of USD in improving the product to avoid churn
  - Proposals mentioned above are :
    - Improving the filtering, discoverability etc
    - Improving group discussions
    - Events in whatsapp
Invest in new categories aggressively to catch up with leads and take over the market. In remaining 90% of the money left, 30% of the money can be spent on the following domains.
- Invest in Video/audio calls along with facilities for event and calendar creations
  - will directly hit google meet and zoom
  - Check if any new start ups like Loom or airmeet can be acquired.
- Aggressively purse in Whatsapp payments
  - Adopt UPI in india more aggressively for P2P payments
    - Spend marketing money to get more customers
    - Build features in the product to ensure all the basis use cases are taken care of
      - Ledger to know my expenses
      - Track the payments to my peers
- Invest in enabling businesses through WhatsApps : Give this feature free of cost to businesses to attract,
  - Customer support can be enabled to begin with
  - Businesses can take order in the next phase

SuperCalling · Answer 2 · 2024-08-07T17:44:37+0000

Clarification questions :

1. what are the major headwinds that Whatsapp is facing today ?

assumption - although WhatsApp has a good DAU, profitability is a challenge

Whatsapp's Goal: To drive whatsapp as a private commerce platform.

Meta's goal: to drive community building and bring the world closer.

Current Biz

Text Chat
Video and audio
Communities
AI integrated search
Payments
B2B accounts and basic biz messaging tools, catalog

Strengths :

User Base:
- Sticky customer base in P2P
- Emerging as a critical channel in B2B
UX: Very smoooth customer experience for
Payments: Payments available with a smooth UX

Weakness:

B2C base is small and current monetization has limited avenues
Audio and video chats have internet bandwidth constraints
Text communication is contrained in several ways ( emotions ) and user groups such as differently enabled

Competition: / Threats

telegram is competing well for group discussions
Audio and video calls - Zoom and Loom
Business communication - G-chat and Teams

Trends and Opportunities

Customer trends: Get Z and mellenials are more expressive ( use a lot of emoji’s) and have less attention span .
B2B Trends - Growth of MSMEs and D2C players: need direct interaction with customer
New tech
1. :AI : rapid advancement in natural language understanding
2. AR/VR

3. World over: growth in South east asia , political stability in India

4. New biz: Ecommerce is a growing industry

Options

Sustain Current DAU : reduce churn , add capabilities for new customer acquisition
Build for future : In view of the goal to make a private commerce platform ,
1. invest in D2C - enable tools for ease of biz
2. Invest in direct ecommerce
3. AI Led innovation
Invest in moonshots:
1. AR/VR Chats
2. friends status updates /feeds
3. snapchat type of filters in camera etc

Goal: sustain the current user base and growth , invest in opportunities of future to secure future growth and monetization

Evaluation

	Goal Alignment	Revenue Opportunity	Ease of adoption	Effort	Stack Rank
Reduce Churn	Very high	Medium	NA	Low	1
Sustain Growth	Very High	Medium	NA	Low	1
Invest in B2B tools	High	High	High	Medium	2
Direct ecomm	High	High	Low	Very High	5
AI Led innovation	High	Low	High	Medium	3
Moonshots	Medium	Low	Low	High	4

Recommendation

Invest 40% in Reducing churn and sustaining growth
1. Includes 10% in AI led innovation and pilot tests
Invest rest of the 40% in B2B Tools
Invest rest of the 20% in moonshot ideas like AR/VR community , friends status updates /feeds , snapchat type of filters in camera etc

Krishna · Answer 3 · 2024-07-27T15:54:38+0000

Clarifying questions:

When you say invest, do you prefer short term investment or long term investment strategy or mix of both.
As the amount provided is high, is there any underlying objective that is very important to act upon? like losign market share or losing revenue or losing user engagement?

Goal of fb an whatsapp:
Connecting people around world in meaningful ways irrespective of distance

Product:
There are many messengers available. Whatsapp is one such leading messnger where you can message anyone as long as you have their mobile number and they are registered on whatsapp.

Company and external factors

Is FB mobilising resources to support any initiative like supporting communication in war stricken countries?
Did FB say something that is insensitive and is now trying to repair it ? or did it release features that are bad and is now trying to pump money to fix it

Internal factors:

Is it that FB is forced to generate revenue from Whatsapp due to investor push or because facebook.com is not generating enough revenue and hence trying to come up with features that could generate revenue?

Disruption:

Is it that people behavior is changing? like the way they communicate has changed ? As whatsapp already have video call feature what is it new ways of communication that people are adopting where whatsapp is lacking
Is there a new competitor that has dirupted the market and whatsapp needs to repond?

SWOT:
Strength:

large userbase
customer loyalty -- due to easy and simple to use interface
always have cash ready from parent facebook
leader in p2p communication

Weakness:

problems with innovation due to trying to aligning with facebook strategy
recent development of features like channels are taking focus away from its easy to use interface

Opportunities:

can innovate in new space like AR/VR it is the next tech that makes connections more lively

User groups:

Whatsapp users who like to text/video
Whatsapp users who want to connect in VR/AR space
users who want to connect in VR/AR space but are not yet on whatsapp
users who use iMessage or other services due to being
- used to them or
- due to lack of innovative features on whatsapp
- due to their family/friends being on platform other than whatsapp

For this interview, I would prioritise users who want to be on VR/AR space and those who are not on whatsapp yet

Needs:
VR/AR:

I want to connect more lively in AR/VR space so as to be more conencted to my people
I want to be able to share VR moments on platform with others

other platform users:

I left whatsapp due to lack of seamless innovative features that are no present on iMessage or telegram
I want to be able to easily migrate all my chats/data from these platforms -- although not possible from iMessage but provide a way from whatsapp side to have this feature like an API
I want to be able to be on a platform where all my frinds and family are
I am not on whatsapp due to everyone using zoom/Facetime/google meet for video calls; telegram for grup chats

Priroitise:
I would prioritise pain points related to users who are on other services, as although VR/AR space is growing, it still needs a push in adoption of VR devices.

Strategic options/ solutions:

Short term: marketing efforts

I would recommedn to invest a lot in marketing efforts so that everyone and their closed ones are on platform -- by opening up the platform to connect via APIs, so that whatsapp can be integrated for chat purposes,
- this way all websites can integrate whatsapp api to connect for chatting purposes
- and most improtantly we can tap into gaming market where discord is currently reigning
I would acquire any competitor that is rising in the space and integrate its features into whatsapp

Long term:

I would recommend to invest in new features where whatsapp is lacking--- in video call space and make it go to platform for video calls for individuals and large groups;
I would invest money in new development features related to VR space so that i can disrupt connectivity space when infra is available
I would develop somehting like "Whatsapp forums" where people can comment and discuss in large groups like reddit so as to expand to this space and make whatsapp ubiquitous with login via whatsapp number(option to hide their number) or email login(slowly phase it out to increase whatsapp registrations) to overcome ecosytem barriers created by Apple via iMessage
I would look at feasibility of integrating whatsapp with instagram as many are on insta so as to bring them onto whatsapp. One way is to provide login option via whatsapp and use whatsapp api for comemnting in instagram to make users get used to feel and ease of whatsapp. then conduct special trivia quiz kind of events etc sponsored by insta where discussion is happening on whatsapp

prioritise strategic choices:

Attributes based on which i would prioritise are: user engagement, user acquisition
Based these, I would prioritise
- marketing efforts
- opening Whatsapp via APIs to be used like discord or chat option on websites
- Whatsapp forums -- to make whatsapp ubiquitois and increase number of users
- development of new features which are lacking in whatsapp but on platforms like google meet/telegram
  - video call
  - group chats