There's Only One Lucky Investor Who Got A Piece Of $16 Billion WhatsApp

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sequoia capital jim goetz

Flickr via Dow Jones Events

Sequoia Capital venture capitalist Jim Goetz

Facebook just bought messaging app monster WhatsApp in a $16 billion deal.

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WhatsApp never raised much outside funding, except from one lucky VC firm: Sequoia Capital.

In 2011, Sequoia Capital put $8 million into an obscure messaging app called WhatsApp.

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The deal was led by Jim Goetz, who also invested in AdMob and Palo Alto Networks. To date, Sequoia is the only venture partner in WhatsApp. The company hasn't raised any more money.

WhatsApp is extremely quiet on the PR front. The company doesn't even have a marketing person in place. But it's a massive company that processes more than 27 billion messages in a day.

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In October, WhatsApp's CEO Jan Koum revealed that the service had 350 million monthly active users, up from 300 million in August. That's bigger than Twitter. Now the app has over 400 million monthly active users.

The Santa Clara-based company was founded by two former Yahoo employees, Brian Acton and Koum, in 2009.

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