WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum — both former employees of Yahoo!
In September 2007, they took about a year off for traveling around South America. After buying an iPhone, they saw opportunity in the growing App Store.
In February 2009, they incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California.
After many bugs and failures, the app suddenly started to gain momentum. With growth, however, the costs quickly started to add up, so they occasionally switched the app from "free" to $0.99 so they wouldn't grow too fast.
A few years later, in February 2013, WhatsApp’s user base had grown to about 200 million active users and 50 employees. Sequoia would invest $50 million, valuing WhatsApp at $1.5 billion.
In February 2014, just a few months after Sequoia’s round, Facebook, Inc. announced it was acquiring WhatsApp for US$19 billion — its largest acquisition to date.
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