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How WeChat grew to be the #1 app in the world : YC Startup Library | Y Combinator

ycombinator.com · 3,566 words · saved by 1 readers

Here is a deep dive into the growth strategy that led to WeChat scaling to over a billion users.

Tencent made a bold decision: it put together a small skunkworks team from the QQ Mail team, its core product at the time, to a new mobile app that could potentially compete with other product teams from other divisions within Tencent. This team of only seven engineers went on to create the first version of WeChat in just three months. WeChat launched in January of 2011 as a simple messaging and photo sharing app. This lean and relentlessly focused team very quickly launched what would become the most transformational mobile service in China. WeChat was not the first mobile messaging app…

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