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Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

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Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#61

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

bqe wrote: post #42
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more immediate than a text, less intrusive than a call. With a snapchat, you're more likely to open it and respond quickly than a text message, because just like the time limit on images, once the time has passed, the moment is gone. It keeps you hooked in.

Sometimes I worry about a dystopian future of tech where each startup is making small incremental improvements on various minor aspects of life ("It's slightly easier than sending a text!") only to be disrupted by a newcomer with another small improvement on it ("It's even more slightly easier to send than a text than the last startup!"). The big breakthroughs never happen. We just continue to iterate and A/B test ou…

It's worth remembering that on a human scale, the Internet is still in its infancy. It took a looooooong period of industrialization before we had anything close to a mass railway system.

The Snapchats of today are just looking to do things differently enough to make some coin before the real next big thing arrived. It's like how much customization for AIM and other desktop messenger accounts existed before smartphones, but then after smartphones became ubiquitous, there is no "profile" or anything that takes up real estate. Just your name and your messages.

Going back to industrialization, just look at bikes. There were zillions of kinds of bikes in that era but nowadays we only really know 2: on-road and off-road. So even if things seem crazy now, it will only be crazy in retrospect as we live through a more technologically reasonable future.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#62

Post by Phlarp »

freyir wrote: post #43
Phlarp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More and more it seems the entire excersize is just elaborate cover for Evan and Mark to have a dick measuring contest. Evan: "I'm coming for you, you know you'll have to buy it all sooner or later, try not to insult me with your next offer!" Zuck: "In your dreams kid!"

That's an interesting interpretation. I think Zuckerberg is extremely paranoid about Facebook being displaced. Facebook knocked MySpace off the throne, and everyone predicted Facebook would suffer the same fate. It hasn't happened because Zuckerberg has been strategically paranoid. Even after getting a slow start in mobile, he threw ridiculous amounts of money at the situation until they were back on top. I think the…

Zuck tried to do the same with Snapchat a long time (2012 or 2013?) ago but most accounts of the situation have Evan scoffing at the $3 billion offer.

Surely he (Zuck) will run out of cash and stock with which to make $20 billion dollar acquisitions sooner rather than later?

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#63

Post by runako »

edgyswingset wrote: post #46
underyx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>needing 2 billion They probably don't need 2 billion but can grow faster by making use of this money instead of going for some aggressive monetization. I don't get why everyone acts like Snapchat is unable to monetize the platform — they just don't want to if they don't need to yet.

> I don't get why everyone acts like Snapchat is unable to monetize the platform — they just don't want to if they don't need to yet. I'm not convinced that's true. Reportedly, in 2014 they made 3.1 million in revenue and -128 million in net income [0]. I don't think a difference that's two orders of magnitude is a function of "not wanting" to monetize the platform. I'm convinced they're a [0]: http://gawker.com/snap…

From TFA:

"the company has estimated that revenues will be between $250 million and $350 million for 2016, and between $500 million and as much as $1 billion for 2017."

Incorporating your numbers, what I see is a business that is plausibly on a path to grow from $3m to $1b in revenue (~30,000% growth) in 3 years.

If you an investor targeting growth companies and you pass on an opportunity like this, you should be fired. Snapchat isn't General Mills, and it should not be valued using the same approach.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#64

Post by runako »

traviswingo wrote: post #31
jdross wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminds me of this incredibly wrong post by DHH: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2585-facebook-is-not-worth-33...

Alright, touche. Facebook is actually worth what the market claims it to be worth, because of the large amount of people in one place, all willing to tell the world exactly what their interests are. Its a marketing heaven. Snapchat might be worth a lot, but I'm just sick of companies like this being valued so high, simply because they provide literally no benefit to society. If Snapchat went down tomorrow, would it r…

I generally agree with your post, but this part:

"they provide literally no benefit to society"

broadly could apply to lots of industries. Movies, TV, pro sports, music, tourism, etc. People will take issue with the inclusion of some of these, but that's the point: "no benefit to society" is entirely subjective. Another way to look at it is the benefit to society is "fun", and that people value fun things.

So while I am in general agreement overall, I think it's not really fair to single out tech companies for being exceptionally efficient at providing the "fun" benefit to society.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#65

Post by edgyswingset »

runako wrote: post #63
edgyswingset wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't get why everyone acts like Snapchat is unable to monetize the platform — they just don't want to if they don't need to yet. I'm not convinced that's true. Reportedly, in 2014 they made 3.1 million in revenue and -128 million in net income [0]. I don't think a difference that's two orders of magnitude is a function of "not wanting" to monetize the platform. I'm convinced they're a [0]: http://gawker.com/snap…

From TFA: "the company has estimated that revenues will be between $250 million and $350 million for 2016, and between $500 million and as much as $1 billion for 2017." Incorporating your numbers, what I see is a business that is plausibly on a path to grow from $3m to $1b in revenue (~30,000% growth) in 3 years. If you an investor targeting growth companies and you pass on an opportunity like this, you should be fir…

That's good for them that they can pitch that to investors! But what are their actual numbers?

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#66

Post by brahmwg »

bqe wrote: post #28

Can someone who uses Snapchat routinely tell me why you use it routinely? I've been using it for a few weeks to send a picture or two to the few people I know who use it, but it seems pretty limited. I follow a few "famous" people on it, and they basically just post random images of them walking around NYC or them traveling. I don't yet see the benefit.

I've found it to be particularly useful for sending cat videos to friends.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#67

Post by xhrpost »

I've been denying the "bubble" hype for a few years now, but seeing numbers like this makes me start to wonder. However, perhaps this is not the effect of a bubble, but simply the effect of companies looking more to raise IPO level money from the private VC sector. http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying-marc-a...

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#68

Post by runako »

edgyswingset wrote: post #65
runako wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From TFA: "the company has estimated that revenues will be between $250 million and $350 million for 2016, and between $500 million and as much as $1 billion for 2017." Incorporating your numbers, what I see is a business that is plausibly on a path to grow from $3m to $1b in revenue (~30,000% growth) in 3 years. If you an investor targeting growth companies and you pass on an opportunity like this, you should be fir…

That's good for them that they can pitch that to investors! But what are their actual numbers?

1) Investors in growth companies care about what's next, not what's past. The past numbers are important to lend credibility to projections, but nobody values growth companies based on (presumably much smaller) numbers from the past.

2) Also from TFA: "Snapchat’s revenues in 2015 were $59 million (recall that there was no real monetization effort in the first part of the year, and only the beginnings of it in the latter part of the year)."

I'm not privy to any internals at Snapchat, but based on the other metrics in the article, the projections are not implausible at all. But yeah, it's still not appropriate for people whose idea of risk is owning Procter & Gamble.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#69

Post by slackstation »

Snapchat and the like are low hanging fruit. Someone should start a DAO where users can either see ads or pay a small annual fee to pay for the service and also invest in their own security and sanity.

There are programmers who are interested, there is a public that could be convinced. All we need really is to solve the human problem or aligning money with incentives.

There should be a high quality social network where you use personal filters rather than relying on central intelligence to do the heavy lifting.

Rather than be beholden to people who are willing to invest billions in a free product so that they can traffic ads and/or data mine.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#70

Post by niftich »

bqe wrote: post #28

Can someone who uses Snapchat routinely tell me why you use it routinely? I've been using it for a few weeks to send a picture or two to the few people I know who use it, but it seems pretty limited. I follow a few "famous" people on it, and they basically just post random images of them walking around NYC or them traveling. I don't yet see the benefit.

I have two dozen friends on Snapchat, which I'm guessing is below average. Most of them are mutuals, the ones who aren't are internet famous. Most are friends I've made online in other communities, but a few are people I've known for longer in real life. Ages range from 16 to 26. All of them were added by hand, I never uploaded my contacts to the server for contact matching. Half of them are also in my phone address book with numbers.

I mostly:

- (text) chat

- receive selfies, cat pics, random day-in-the-life stuff

- send selfies, cat pics, random day-in-the-life stuff

- occasionally screenshot a snap, the other person immediately gets notified

- view people's stories (i.e. a public snap)

- sometimes directly reply to a specific story (they see the story in question)

The 'Discover/LIVE' section, for sponsored content, I basically never use, so I can't comment on it. Once, I clicked the LIVE for Formula 1 in Dubai, and it was a compilation of short videos and snaps from other users at the Grand Prix, which was cool.

I like that several UI/UX decisions are geared towards positive reinforcement:

- everything is private, friends-only, recipient-only, ephemeral by default

- each recipient has to be selected manually, so you if you get a snap you know they specifically selected you

- you can see who viewed your story

- you can't see who views other people's stories, so you won't compare yourself with popular people like on Instagram

- you get symbols next to your friends' names that show how frequently you interact (https://support.snapchat.com/a/friend-emojis)

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