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Snap Inc. S-1

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Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#251

Post by [deleted] »

applecore wrote: post #204
fastball wrote: post #180

My takeaway was that Snap has 1,859 employees... huh? Why does a company with a single product, which is a mobile app (so what is that these days, three platforms?) need almost two thousand employees - am I missing something? No wonder they lost $514mil in 2016, that's an absurd amount of overhead for a company with a single, not very cumbersome product.

That's $10 million per employee (at a $20B valuation). That's not a lot of when you consider they're building a product that will book billions of dollars in advertising revenue.

[deleted]

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#252

Post by gareim »

charlesdm wrote: post #145
acchow wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Just a few ideas: on iOS, the app requires at least iOS8. I dare bet more than half of those active devices won't be running at least iOS8. Second, you also won't convert 50% of those iOS users to use one app. Just not going to happen. Do you honestly see Snapchat growing to 300 or 500 million DAU?

> I dare bet more than half of those active devices won't be running at least iOS8.

https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/

Looks like ~94% of users are on iOS 9 or iOS 10.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#253

Post by stuckagain »

harryh wrote: post #217
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.

Facebook has over a billion mobile DAUs. There are a lot of reasons that Snapchat might not grow. Lack of people with smartphones isn't one of them. I don't think you have a good understanding of just how ubiquitous iOS and Android devices are.

I once bought a $5 candy bar style feature phone with what appeared to be a 128x128 pixel LCD display, and it came out of the box with Facebook. Facebook is not limited by the number of ultra-high-end smartphones in circulation.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#254

Post by ehsankia »

user5994461 wrote: post #249
leothekim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It doesn't matter the amount of money you have, it's basically impossible. Everything at Google is an internal Google secret made by Google for Google. ALL the software and ALL the hardware that's running it. Services rely on lower-level services. If you want to copy the high level service yourself and executes it at the same level Google does, you'd need to have everything it depends on. Too bad for you, each piece…

That's really the thing with Google. They have this huge empire and they build on top of their other work. This is why Apple Maps could never come close to competing with Google Maps. This is why Google Home at launch already did a far better job at understanding queries than Alexa which has been out for 2 years.

They're so well situated, with a years worth of technology and tools, so it's really hard for a new comer to compete.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#255

Post by katowulf »

devanti wrote: post #213
unoti wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there really anything which AWS does not have the GCE does? Firebase is the killer here. AWS and Azure don't have it or anything comparable for realtime data. If they do, please tell me about it because I'd love to know about it! I'm particularly interested in this because I'm building a product supported by Firebase and will have the same lock-in described in this filing.

DynamoDB?

Was that intended to be humor? DynamoDB is to Firebase as a CSV file is to a personal computer.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#256

Post by mikeyouse »

moxious wrote: post #248
ejcx wrote: post #15

Am I reading this right? I'm no banker... Their losses for 2016 were ~$500m? That's very steep, but it looks like revenue grew almost 700%. Wow. Insane numbers. I don't think anyone on the planet knows what's going to happen with them but I am sure interested in finding out.

Insane is right. They lose that much money, and don't have a plan for profitability. If you lose money on each customer and scale the business...well, uh, losses scale too. I guess I'm just old fashioned, here I thought the point of businesses was to make money, at least eventually. This quote is a killer: "We have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never ac…

All of the same criticisms could be applied to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc while they were at that stage. Some turn out to make pallet-fulls of money, some (Twitter) never quite crest.

The quote at the end is just boiler plate language they need to include in their S1 so they aren't sued by shareholders in 10 years.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#257

Post by JBlue42 »

joycey wrote: post #181
synaesthesisx wrote: post #25

Is anyone else seeing these numbers? How are they pushing for such a high valuation with those kind of losses? I suspect that Snap is merely capitalizing on traditional advertising metrics (engagement, CTR) which don't translate over on their app, and the advertisers just haven't caught on yet. People play with filters because they're funny/amusing, but those impressions don't convert into purchases in the same way o…

> To generate excitement for X-Men: Apocalypse, 20th Century Fox ran a Sponsored Lens campaign that let users turn themselves into the iconic characters in the upcoming movie. In one day, people spent a collective 56 years playing with the Sponsored Lenses, which also featured the mutants’ powers. They also incorporated the Sponsored Lens into Snaps they shared with their friends, which yielded over 298 million views…

>"drove a 25% lift in theater-watch intent"

Intent is not action.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#259

Post by dangoldin »

dynofuz wrote: post #258

It doesnt make sense that it would be worth more than twitter or even instagram. Even if ads are more effective, there's 5x the interest to advertise on those platforms than snap ( https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=snapchat%20ads,twitt... ). I say its worth more like ~3B market cap

Part of this can be explained by Snapchat not having a self serve product (AFAIK) so a lot of the search results might be individuals/smaller businesses looking for help/advice to get started. I know the major brands are spending fairly significantly on Snapchat and doubt they contribute much to the Google trends data.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#260

Post by user5994461 »

zbruhnke wrote: post #142
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, it's highly unlikely that you could match Google's hardware for $2 billion ever, much less in 5 years. Keep in mind that Google's revenue in 2015 was $75 billion. Their hardware and software know-how is fundamental to their ability to make this kind of revenue, so you better believe they're investing more than a measly $400M per year (Snap's $2 billion over 5 years) back into their hardware. This Snap…

Key point: You dont have to match all of their hardware nor all of their software - just what you are utilizing and some of that could be done from existing open source projects - Snap certainly does not utilize every piece of hardware in existence for Google Cloud Platform

Be serious for a minute.

First, the open source world is a pile of crap that doesn't work and doesn't stick together. It's not remotely comparable to any of the offering from AWS or Google, let alone their combination of offerings put together.

Second, they definitely use EVERY piece of software and hardware. Just like anyone who has over 100m daily users.

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