"Just think – verification by SMS for all of the potential users would be millions of dollars even at a few cents per SMS."

What? They received $147,210 from 10074 backers, even if every SMS sent costs you $0.04 (pricing from twilio for my country) you can send 50 millon before it's costing you "millions of dollars".

Do you really think that 10k backers is going to translate into whatsapp-scale from launch?

Maybe try blaming it on server prices next, because the thousands of servers you will surely need are going to cost you millions too.