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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

#221

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…

I actually see Discover as their only redeeming feature. The interface is fantastic for mobile. They should just publish a set of Discover tags that sites can use to format their content for it, and let people use Snapchat as a browser. As a messenger, it's...just another messenger.

Snapchat is not similar to any messenger I know of. There have been numerous failed attempts to clone Snapchat, however.

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some engineers like working on hard engineering problems. Others like working on products used by millions of people, and making that product as good as it can be. The existence of the one doesn't invalidate the other. There's plenty of room in this industry for both types.

I suspect that connecting 10s of millions of people to each other to share ephemeral photos in real time actually does pose some interesting engineering problems.

Not really, scale is pretty much a solved problem at this point.

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

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think making movies is "trivial" and not solving a "real problem"? I don't think making movies is trivial. It has a large effect on culture and really at the end of the day, as humans, all we have that's uniquely ours is culture (for various broad definitions of the term). Think about how much Sci-Fi movies, novels, and similar ideas contributed to our drive to go to the moon - as a society, not just a country…

Your points all well taken, I consider any talented employee at SnapChat to be doing this world a net disservice due to the wasted opportunity costs of other issues they could be attacking. "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters."

It saddens me that many of the greatest programmers of my generation are just trying to get people to click ads.

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

#225

1.8B. 1,800 Million, right? Stop me when the math goes wrong. Divided into bundles of 200k: 9000x. Let's say each member of a team costs 200k/yr. High for some, low for others, whatever. 1.8B dollars is enough money for a team of OVER NINE THOUSAND people. What... exactly is taking that much effort, here? What is this money fueling? I honestly boggle to imagine.

"Growth Hacking"

In reality it is just everyone trying to get their foot in the door so that they can get a piece of that sweet "unicorn" pie.

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

#226

Every single person here seems negative about Snapchat. I am 30+, use it occasionally, and see more and more of my older friends signing up. Especially those friends far away from the echo chamber. This fundraising feels smart for investors who want a great return and for the company to use to get to an IPO. If you don't use Snapchat, or haven't used it in a few years, it is probably time you take a second look.

People on tech forums are typically negative about social media apps and platforms. It's pretty interesting.

I can only speak for myself here.

I have no problem with snapchat the app. I think it is dumb, and don't enjoy using it, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't exist.

What I do have a problem with is Snapchat being put on a pedestal, and perpetuating the SV cash grab business model. Get a bunch of users with a trendy app, data mine the shit out of them, and serve them ads until the app folds. There is no lasting value, and it is just the kind of rampant speculation that collapsed our industry in the past.

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

#227

Every single person here seems negative about Snapchat. I am 30+, use it occasionally, and see more and more of my older friends signing up. Especially those friends far away from the echo chamber. This fundraising feels smart for investors who want a great return and for the company to use to get to an IPO. If you don't use Snapchat, or haven't used it in a few years, it is probably time you take a second look.

I think people are negative about the profit potential of Snapchat ever coming close to justifying the multi-billion dollar valuations. As a fun and sticky social media service I think most can recognize Snapchat is killing it, but as a business it seems sketchy. I think Snapchat can be profitable at some point but it would have to be a blockbuster in terms of revenue/profit to justify an 11-digit valuation.

Bingo. The numbers just don't add up.

You would think people would be a little more skeptical after watching the twitter downward spiral.

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why use cases 1 and 2 wouldn't just send a text message picture. Why would you bother with a 3rd party app that erases them? With that said, that is probably the least percentage reason as to why people use it. The greatest being for sending half naked photos to strangers.

Snapchat removes the hesitation about what you are sending. People don't worry about picture quality, etc. It's a temporary message. It really is about the content.

Or lack thereof.

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worth more, honestly. Probably $100-200B. That sandbox is a lot bigger than the sandbox you & I like to inhabit. The set of folks interested in technical programming & startup-related news probably numbers under 100K. I was an admin for a Harry Potter fansite in college that had 100K registered users, close to 1M when guests were counted, and we were far from the largest Harry Potter fansite. The set of…

Are you honestly suggesting that a company with fewer than 200 employees is worth more than: * GM * Ford * Honda Combined. That is ridiculous and just highlights how big a bubble is brewing in SV. We value a couple hundred million fickle users more than hundreds of thousands of actual employees, physical factories, and entire supply chain industries.

This is a misunderstanding of where shareholder value comes from.

The valuation (market cap) of a company is a reflection of the value of the assets that the company owns. That includes IP, trademarks, brand assets (somewhat perversely, this also includes user habits), business relationships & contracts, any resellable physical goods or cash that the company owns, and all future cash flows that will accrue to the company. Basically, the stuff that an employee, supplier, or customer could not take with them if they chose to do business with someone else.

Now, there's also the concept of economic value, which is the value that customers of a company (or industry) are willing to spend on its product. This can be reasonably proxied by the total revenue of the industry - for your GM + Ford + Honda example, that's about $150B each, or $450B (and leaves out the 800 lb. gorilla, Toyota). That's a lot larger than the total $60-80B market for all brand advertising.

But building cars has a long & large value chain. GM + Ford + Honda can't do it all on their own. They each employ roughly 200,000 people, many of whom are relatively highly paid thanks to union agreements. They have literally thousands of suppliers that they buy parts from. These suppliers themselves need to buy parts and supplies from labor-intensive industries like mining. As a result, the company captures comparatively little of the profit from all of this work. Facebook, for example, makes about $6B in net income off $20B in revenue, while GM makes $10B in profit off $150B in revenue. This also implies that further growth will benefit companies like Facebook or SnapChat much more than it would companies like GM: if margins stay the same, Facebook gets to $10B in profits with $30B in revenue, while GM would have to get to $300B in revenue (probably not happening) to get to $20B in profits.

It's a plus, from a shareholder value perspective, that SnapChat only employs 200 or so people, and their largest expense is paying Google for AppEngine bills. It means that whatever value SnapChat creates, the shareholders will capture almost all of it. Indeed, based on how often car commercials appear on TV, it's likely that a good portion of GM & Ford's revenue will become SnapChat's profit, just like how a good portion of SnapChat's revenue becomes Google's profit.

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

#230

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…

I don't think anyone is debating the popularity of Snapchat.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "I think there is legitimate reason to be doubtful about the appeal of these products because they have nothing to do with chatting with friends".

In my opinion, when Snapchat is truly forced to monetize (such as twitter/fb after ipo) it will dillute the core product to the point that people will search for alternatives.

At that point a competitor will get some VC funding after grabbing some users and start the cycle again.

I view this behavior by SV to be just as damaging to the state of the tech industry as housing derivatives were to the housing industry.

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