OK, that's mean. WhatsApp and its success is not vaporware. And they DID charge money at the time they were sold to FB, albeit pitiful amounts from virtually nobody. But the asking price was so high and so out of whack with the financial potential of the app, that I hesitate to describe Koum as a traditional businessman. "Sell my app to a company that's terrified of anything that smells social being successful without them" is still not a business model, not even now.
Your comment made me curious about what their actual revenues and costs were leading up to the sale. Putting (massive) stock-based compensation expenses aside it looks like their revenues and operating costs were actually pretty close[1]. That's not delving into potential revenue growth connected to payments and B2C interaction following the path which was already being laid out by wechat[2]-Facebook has decided to attempt this with messenger instead of whatsapp. I'm not saying that they would have quickly found enough revenue to justify a $20B valuation, but that it resembled a traditional business a lot more than many other social startups, and they were kept lean and probably better positioned to capitalize on growth than others.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/28/whatsapp-revenue/ "For the year ending December 31, 2013, WhatsApp had $10.2 million in revenue … net cash used in operating during this period was only $9.9 million"
[2] http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui-t...
I'm not aware of that actually existing outside of an extraordinarily tiny enclave. The rest of America does not make such vaporware failures into any kind of role models.
Quite the opposite probably, I see far more mockery than anything. Such failed start-ups are constantly made fun of in the business press. For years now, essentially every major business publication has been waiting with bated breath for the latest bubble crash so they could mock what ultimately became the unicorn bubble.
Zenefits for example has been getting lambasted, and they're not even vaporware, they actually have a real business of some caliber in a serious business category. Color was vaporware, and it was endlessly, and universally mocked. I can't think of good examples of college kids becoming role models for pushing vaporware.
Citation needed...
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/facebook-security-wall-mark-z...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/12/17/facebo...
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-security-flaw-leaks-...
http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
It's also important that he's speaking out in opposition to these government tactics. Hopefully Zuckerberg will follow suit but if history tells us anything it's that Facebook is rather compliant and doesn't take security seriously.