&gt; I&#x27;m going to assume that yes -- their business model was based on annual revenue.<p>Then you&#x27;d assume wrong. The goal of the board is to maximize return for investors. In WhatsApp case, it&#x27;s not hard to see that their goal was to grow as fast as possible, revenue be damned, so they could be a very attractive takeover target for a company like Facebook who <i>could</i> eventually hope to monetize that user base.