When news broke that Facebook paid a massive $16 billion and offered $3 billion in restricted stock to acquire WhatsApp, many thought the move was foolish. It was a bold move afterall, since Facebook paid a huge slice of its own worth to acquire a messaging app that only has 55 employees.
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| The Harvard dropout sees far into the future with this acquisition. |
Keyboard warriors even took to Twitter and Facebook to lash out on the move. Why would Facebook pay such a staggering sum to acquire WhatsApp, who received a revenue of only $20 million in 2013?
Here are my top 5 reasons:
- WhatsApp could potentially be Facebook's largest competitor. Offense is the best defense here. With WhatsApp's incredible growth rate (1 million new users a day), it could eventually gobble Facebook's business. Yahoo once made this mistake by passing on the opportunity to acquire Google for $5 billion in 2002. Today, Google is worth
