Yes, I've seen that video. Increasing the price to slow growth is a separate tool from weighing pros/cons of VC money to grow huge. At the time of Sequoia's 2011 investment, WhatsApp was estimated to have ~30 million users. It seems that Jan Koum felt it made more financial sense to get $8 million from Sequoia rather than from his customer base. If JK could raise subscription prices higher ($2? $5?) without his customers complaining to "self-fund" that $8M, that would have been financially better than giving up 10-15% of company ownership to Sequoia. He must have liked the first vc financial deal because he went back to Sequoia again for another $52 million.

If JK is ever on stage again, maybe somebody can ask him why he didn't get that $60 million from his user base. It would be interesting to hear his thought process.