> You can't achieve that scale, feature-set and UX quality without a lot of engineering manpower.
I'm not sure thats true. At the time of their acquisitions Instagram had 13 employees and WhatsApp had 55. Both of those are extremely small when compared to the size of Facebook. And given the size of the acquisition price tags i'd wager facebook felt like both were existential threats.
Both raised millions before being acquired, and likely would need to raise 100s of millions to start today. Facebooks has reached both network effect and economy of scale which is very hard to unseat.
I'm not sure thats true. At the time of their acquisitions Instagram had 13 employees and WhatsApp had 55. Both of those are extremely small when compared to the size of Facebook. And given the size of the acquisition price tags i'd wager facebook felt like both were existential threats.