161–170 of 337 posts
"The launch of Spectacles, which has not generated significant revenue for us, is a good example. There is no guarantee that investing in new lines of business, new products, and other initiatives will succeed. If we do not successfully develop new approaches to monetization, we may not be able to maintain or grow our revenue as anticipated or recover any associated development costs, and our business could be seriou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their revenue ($400MM) is impressive for a messaging app, but honestly, the valuation it carries at this point is nuts. It's just an app and I personally don't believe it has a sufficient economic moat to justify that. Where's the ecosystem? How can we bolt on value from having that audience? Unlike Facebook, we won't have a billion people using Snapchat any time soon. Then again, I didn't believe Instagram was worth…
>Their revenue ($400MM) is impressive for a messaging app Compared to Line and Wechat its really not
Very interesting to see what they think of their competition: > We face significant competition in almost every aspect of our business both domestically and internationally. This includes larger, more established companies such as Apple, Facebook (including Instagram and WhatsApp), Google (including YouTube), Twitter, Kakao, LINE, Naver (including Snow), and Tencent, which provide their users with a variety of produc…
At least they're honest! Maybe it's the sector I'm in, but I rarely see this kind of candor in my sub-field of technology...
OK, their dirty laundry is about what I would expect it to be. They are required to list these things at this point to avoid being accused of hiding information later. Given all this, are you buying? If you owned stock day 1 would you sell it?
(But I don't short any tech stocks, even though they don't normally pay dividends; all you have to do is short the next Microsoft once, and then you're selling your house a decade down the line. I prefer to let other people do the gambling, in both directions, while I look for safer things. Similarly, I have no exposure to biotech, the other gambling part of the market.)
"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).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Come on, HN. How can nobody be mentioning some of the much cooler stuff available on Google Cloud? https://cloud.google.com/products/machine-learning/ It's a mistake to just compare Google with AWS, thinking in terms of basic storage and computing. That's boring and obviously there are tons of alternatives, including Snap Inc. building it themselves, for the amount of money cited. When it comes to cutting edge AI and…
"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).
So Snapchat is basically ~80% (or more) of the entire Google's cloud business (if exclude G Suite from the Google's cloud).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That both directions can seem like a good idea to a speculating outsider doesn't mean the decision is an arbitrary one. It means the deciding factors aren't something we're privy to.
Name and Principal Position
Year Salary Bonus(1) Stock Awards(2) All Other Total
Evan Spiegel
2016 $ 503,205 $ 1,000,000 $ — $ 901,635 $ 2,404,840
2015 363,715 1,000,000 — 344,756 1,708,471
Imran Khan
2016 241,539 5,239,460 — 14,658 5,495,657
2015 230,000 — 145,292,145 348 145,522,493
Timothy Sehn(6)
2016 400,152 1,000,000 40,000,020 8,348 41,408,520Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it not possible to build your own "alternative in the market" for $2 billion?
Not a businessman but who says its all about the infra. buy vs. build. It allies them with Google. It gives arguably the most powerful co. in the world a stake in Snap' growth and success.