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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

#101

Post by vonklaus »

alaskamiller wrote: post #96
vonklaus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

look, I am all for giving snapchat the benefit of the doubt (or I did a long time ago) it was actully the classic zuckerberg boardroom story peter theil tells all the time, except zuckerberg was yahoo to snapchat(i think yahoo was the aquirer but IDRP). Mark Zuckerberg was a the full package, a super talented developer and shrewd business man. Maybe he was cocky, maybe he was super clever, but he doubled down on hims…

All those grafs and you still can't figure it out. Say you have a Snapchat account and follow 25 of your friends. Each of them are active and contribute 30 second snap stories maybe 4 times a day. That means it's 50 minutes of footage. A day. Say it's not just friends anymore but you're also following brands or brands pay your friends to act out something as well. Snapchat is the new MTV. With instant ability to chat…

look i have crazy theories which I think are sane and correct(they are) so I am willing to give this a shot. Can you please walk me through the next 5 years of how you see this progressing. As I said a lot, I am not a user but I don't find it compelling personally but i honestly would love to be proved wrong. If you could even do it high level, I would be really interested in core growth and monetization strategies. Even far out ones. 5 years I believe is the farthest out you can map a startup and be even pointed in the correct direction still. I just want to know what you think could be pushing their sails that I am missing.

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

#102

Post by cassieramen »

imaginenore wrote: post #94
cassieramen wrote: post #78

How are snapchat employees making out here? It seems like share dilution and even more investors getting exit preference has got to be eroding value like crazy. Perhaps someone with some experience can shed some light here, if you joined snapchat 2 or 3 years ago are you seeing all of your supposed value evaporating away?

You're forgetting that the valuation of the company has been growing exponentially https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_800_800/AAEAAQAAAAA... With this latest round it exceeds $20 billion.

This is part of what I'm asking. The valuation is growing, as is the amount of money their taking. That means the company now has to exit for that much more in order for employees to see any return. If I'm an early employee I now have to hope they exit for $X billion for my shares to be worth anything. If they exit for less there's a chance I see nothing after investing years of my life and watching them pass on a $3 billion offer.

I hope that's not the case.

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

#103

Post by alaskamiller »

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…

You know people researching and working on the cure for cancer don't even have a tenth of the sanctimonious attitude of yours.

They're busy working.

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

#104

Post by eightysix_four »

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 deal with the three "major" networks like so:

Facebook - Accomplishments/events I want shared out to a broad network. Highly "filtered" view of my life (and my friend's lives).

Twitter - Less content but less filter, more off the cuff thoughts or broadcasting something I find interesting to a broad network of followers.

Snapchat - High content, no filter. Snapchat photos can be "bad", things in them can be mildly inappropriate, and the broadcast distance is relatively small.

If you don't personally see the value of a low/no filter network with your friends, then it probably isn't for you.

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

#106

Post by gonehome »

vonklaus wrote: post #98
jtmarmon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If a snapchat clone came out tomorrow, snapchat wouldn't be as sticky" there have been plenty. facebook even launched one

I outlined my thoughts, a large social network would have to do it. linkedin, google, twitter, microsoft or facebook. LinkedIn, twitter, facebook being the most profitable. Maybe apple, for the security, weird FBI hacking thing although their software has gone down hill. I digress, what was the Facebook snapchat clone? I haven't heard of a large scale effort to clone snapchat yet. If I were to build a comparable univ…

It was called FB Poke and was built in 12 days after Zuckerberg flew out to talk to Evan and Evan turned his offer down. When it launched it was basically better than snapchat in every category, but people didn't switch to it.

Then Evan responded by copying Apple and saying 'Welcome Facebook, Seriously'. On an unrelated meta note I found this annoying because it originally came from people building personal computers and not dumb ephemeral messaging apps.

Maybe Snapchat can do what Facebook and Google have done and become a real technology company, but so far feels more like twitter (lots of users, but unclear vision).

Its launch: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/21/facebook-poke-app/

A comparison with snapchat: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/21/facebook-poke-vs-snapchat-w...

Its death: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/9/5700732/facebook-poke-is-de...

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

#107

Post by lyschoening »

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.

It's fun to come up with snaps that are as outlandish as possible and get friends' reactions as they try to match you. You can stay engaged with people even if you don't have anything in particular to discuss. I am not sure Snapchat is worth $20B, but they have discovered a new medium and they've implemented it well.

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

#108

Post by chresko »

cassieramen wrote: post #102
imaginenore wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting that the valuation of the company has been growing exponentially https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_800_800/AAEAAQAAAAA... With this latest round it exceeds $20 billion.

This is part of what I'm asking. The valuation is growing, as is the amount of money their taking. That means the company now has to exit for that much more in order for employees to see any return. If I'm an early employee I now have to hope they exit for $X billion for my shares to be worth anything. If they exit for less there's a chance I see nothing after investing years of my life and watching them pass on a $3…

The company doesn't have to exit for billions in order for early employees to make a substantial return. Being employed now is a different scenario, though.

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

#109

Post by AndrewKemendo »

cassieramen wrote: post #102
imaginenore wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting that the valuation of the company has been growing exponentially https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_800_800/AAEAAQAAAAA... With this latest round it exceeds $20 billion.

This is part of what I'm asking. The valuation is growing, as is the amount of money their taking. That means the company now has to exit for that much more in order for employees to see any return. If I'm an early employee I now have to hope they exit for $X billion for my shares to be worth anything. If they exit for less there's a chance I see nothing after investing years of my life and watching them pass on a $3…

There are other ways of making employees benefit before a liquidity event, but generally what you describe is how all this works, and has worked since the beginning. That's the risk everyone is taking.

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

#110

Post by alexggordon »

milesokeefe wrote: post #84
argonaut wrote: post #35

People need to stop focusing their criticism on how stupid the app is or how they're going to lose all their users. It's almost a meme by now of how people say this every time Snapchat is brought up. By now it's a foregone conclusion, and requires active ignorance and not really caring to keep an open mind, to continue to hold onto that belief in the face of tremendous evidence that 1) Snapchat is very popular, 2) Sn…

Perhaps it doesn't scale well, but their sponsored face filters seem to be getting a good reception. It's rare for people to find ads fun.

This. The sponsored filters show up in my friends stories all the time. I also see sponsored filters based on events and location. I actually find myself watching the sponsored stories pretty regularly too. It's a great way to fit news into small bitesized chunks, and I can't imagine the buy in for those is cheap.
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