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Snap Inc. S-1

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Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#131

Post by dragonwriter »

leothekim wrote: post #18
stuckagain wrote: post #8

"We have committed to spend $2 billion with Google Cloud over the next five years and have built our software and computer systems to use computing, storage capabilities, bandwidth, and other services provided by Google, some of which do not have an alternative in the market." There's some numbers for you that Google wouldn't have provided (as far as I have seen).

Is it not possible to build your own "alternative in the market" for $2 billion?

If there's an adequate supplier, why take the risk and time to develop second-mover competition to them rather than just buying from them and building your core business?

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#132

Post by ladybro »

vineetch wrote: post #19

They spent $890,339 on security for Evan Spiegel in 2016? Why does he need that much security? Who is trying to hurt him?

Lots of Venice Beach locals are not happy that Snap is buying up prime property / increasing rents / bringing in yuppies etc. I wouldn't be surprised if he's received threats and is most focused on security while in and around the office.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#133

Post by fullshark »

ktta wrote: post #86
sagivo wrote: post #16

> Snap Inc. is a camera company interesting statement from a company that just released their first camera (Spectacles) few months ago. i'm not sure if their users see them as a camera company.

Maybe it has to do with how investors view hardware vs. software companies. Social networks are much more volatile than hardware products and hardware companies are more stable. Of course, labelling themselves as camera company isn't going to fool HN, but it might be viewed in a different light by investors.

I'd rather be seen as the next big social network than the next GPRO

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#134

Post by mdb333 »

charlesdm wrote: post #109
EnFinlay wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree about the value they are offering to advertisers. Offering a platform where targeted users actually engage with the ad is huge. I'm no advertiser, but that sounds kind of like the holy grail - the user is not only engaging with the ad, they are then sharing that ad + engagement with their friends.

Is it worth $25bn? Seems like a (massive) stretch, but maybe. Can it still realistically increase in value from this point? Probably not.

agree this reeks of ca 2000 burstage... so you have a bunch of eyeballs you sell ads to. Big f'in deal, that's not a $25B business unless you can continue to scale 10x (profitably). The rest is simply tech-fad novelty junk.

I'd still buy into the IPO and ride it up a bit though.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#135

Post by milesward »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #12
stuckagain wrote: post #8

"We have committed to spend $2 billion with Google Cloud over the next five years and have built our software and computer systems to use computing, storage capabilities, bandwidth, and other services provided by Google, some of which do not have an alternative in the market." There's some numbers for you that Google wouldn't have provided (as far as I have seen).

I find the "do not have an alternative in the market" comment interesting - is there really anything which AWS does not have the GCE does?

I'll just leave this here... https://www.google.de/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&es...

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#136

Post by scarmig »

carlisle_ wrote: post #31
leothekim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not possible to build your own "alternative in the market" for $2 billion?

It is absolutely possible to build a stellar internal alternative to Google's offerings in 5 years with 2 billion dollars. edit: I should point out that this doesn't account for ramp-up. It would obviously take awhile before things would be to a point where it would be even comparable.

Oracle is spending way more than 2 billion dollars on its cloud team in an attempt to catch up to AWS, GCP, and Azure.

Would you consider Oracle's cloud endeavor a fair test of how able a company is to reproduce GCP's offering with a fistful of money?

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#137

Post by urs2102 »

charlesdm wrote: post #100
urs2102 wrote: post #23

> We have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability. Also having only 158 million daily active users up from 150 million in June is definitely interesting and a lot smaller growth jump than I had expected. Revenue up from $58MM in 2015 to $405MM despite a loss of $515MM last year. Wishing them best of luck, but I wonder how m…

158M DAU is not bad, but I would guess they are to some extent limited by the amount of iOS and Android devices in circulation? How are they going to get that number to 300M, or 500M? My best guess is they won't, ever.

Yeah I'm not so surprised by that, as much as I'm surprised by the 8MM user growth from June to now. That's what's seems weird to me. Is that not indicative of a plateau?

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#138

Post by acchow »

charlesdm wrote: post #100
urs2102 wrote: post #23

> We have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability. Also having only 158 million daily active users up from 150 million in June is definitely interesting and a lot smaller growth jump than I had expected. Revenue up from $58MM in 2015 to $405MM despite a loss of $515MM last year. Wishing them best of luck, but I wonder how m…

158M DAU is not bad, but I would guess they are to some extent limited by the amount of iOS and Android devices in circulation? How are they going to get that number to 300M, or 500M? My best guess is they won't, ever.

They are hardly limited by that.

There were over 1 billion active iOS devices globally according Apple Q1 2016 report [1]. Android has even more.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/26/10828134/apple-earnings-re...

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#139

Post by charlesdm »

urs2102 wrote: post #137
charlesdm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

158M DAU is not bad, but I would guess they are to some extent limited by the amount of iOS and Android devices in circulation? How are they going to get that number to 300M, or 500M? My best guess is they won't, ever.

Yeah I'm not so surprised by that, as much as I'm surprised by the 8MM user growth from June to now. That's what's seems weird to me. Is that not indicative of a plateau?

I didn't actually read that part. If they only added 8MM DAU from June -> now, then it deserves to tank on its first trading day. Sounds like a decent short actually, once it cools down.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#140

Post by OrwellianChild »

sbov wrote: post #65
leothekim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not possible to build your own "alternative in the market" for $2 billion?

This, and related topics, always makes me laugh a bit. Mostly because people and companies will defend either move, with terms such as "focusing on the core business" or, opposite that statement, as "vertical integration". From my mostly uninformed POV, a company can do whatever they want with respect to this and be on good ground, making it an arbitrary decision with little basis in actual objectivity.

Things scale differently in different markets and products... It might be trivial to spin up extra cloud capacity within Google's system and benefit from all the robustness and redundancy they've already designed out. Meanwhile, Amazon is building their own UPS competitor because their infrastructure needs in the real world are specialized enough to be able to benefit.

Each case is different and the details drive the decision.

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