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Snap Inc. S-1

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Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#301

Post by puranjay »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #300
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to movies, what Rotten Tomatoes has to say is usually more persuasive than a Snapchat lens

How many people actually care about Rotten Tomatoes ratings though? I know of plenty of movies that have terrible ratings from professional critics, but got great box office earnings and all my friends who watched it really enjoyed. There's also plenty of movies with great ratings that I disliked. Outside of your programmer/hacker/related friends, how many actually look at at the Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic ratings be…

I was using Rotten Tomatoes mostly as a placeholder for all the movie reviews/discussions on sites like Reddit, niche film-focused communities, etc.

I personally go by the Reddit discussion on /r/movies. It usually tells me if the movie is going to be worthy my time or not

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#302

Post by tempestn »

thinkloop wrote: post #287
obulpathi wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time the other company builds infrastructure, some other company would have built the product that Snap wants to build.

That's the point I'm trying to make. Snap has, say, 100 employees + $2b. The 100 employees are working on features. The $2b can now go to Google, or to purchase "focus" for in-house infrastructure, there is no slow down in developing features. Now if they can't technologically duplicate what they need using $2b is a different story which I have no opinion on.

They don't just have to build it though; they have to build it fast enough to handle their growth. $2B might not be enough (or it might not even be possible for any amount) to build what they need fast enough to not hamper growth.

Also, by buying from Google, they hedge against lower than expected growth too. If growth doesn't meet expectations, while they're still obligated to spend the $2B, they can re-sell the services for likely close to cost, given they'll be getting a discount.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#305

Post by sireat »

d4l3k wrote: post #5

> Although other U.S.-based companies have publicly traded classes of non-voting stock, to our knowledge, no other company has completed an initial public offering of non-voting stock on a U.S. stock exchange. We cannot predict whether this structure and the concentrated control it affords Mr. Spiegel and Mr. Murphy will result in a lower trading price or greater fluctuations in the trading price of our Class A commo…

In a way it is refreshing.

SNAP is coming out immediately and saying you are not going to have ANY say in how SNAP is being ran.

Facebook, Google and others have shown that general investing public does not care about having voting rights.

Why anyone would pay a similar price for non-voting stock versue a regular stock/super voting stock is something that I have trouble understanding.

I understand buying bonds, preferred shares, but this apparent anomaly in non-voting share pricing is beyond me.

In my view when you buy a share with diluted or non-existing voting power you are getting the worst of all worlds, no real say in the company and still you are the last in the line should something go bad with the company.

Basically you are placing infinite faith in those with the voting stock without any recourse. (Build a ten billion campus, sure, build a new base on the moon, build a mega dungeon, sure, etc etc)

Is there a good book out or coming out on the rise of non-voting stock?

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#306

Post by kgwgk »

wayne wrote: post #291
kgwgk wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Facebook spends $5mn on security for its CEO and $1m for its CFO. http://nypost.com/2016/04/28/facebook-has-spent-14-5m-on-zuc...

$1.3M for its COO (Sheryl Sandberg), not CFO.

True, sloppy copying. I guess the CFO is safe as long as the stock performs well :-)

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#307

Post by afarrell »

OrwellianChild wrote: post #140
sbov wrote: post #65

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.

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…

To clarify: is Amazon designing their own Uninterruptible Power Supply for AWS, or their own parcel shipping service?

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#308

Post by Keyframe »

obulpathi wrote: post #240
leothekim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Expert on Cloud Computing here. Short answer is "No". Here is why. Google Cloud has infrastructure that scales to petabytes of data and millions of users. Google primary uses this infrastructure for storing, processing and communicating the Internet. Add the services like Pub/Sub, Dataflow, BigQuery, TensorFlow & CloudML and things like security, communication backbone, ... its near impossible to build Google Cloud o…

Of course it's damn possible to build that with $2 billion. Will it be robust as google's infrastructure? No. Will it have (unlimited) scale as Google has? No. Will it have network connectivity and geographical distribution as Google has? No.

So, if you set scope on expectations and dedicate time and resources, it's definitely possible. Reasonable? Probably not.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#309

Post by charlesdm »

spoinkaroo wrote: post #265
charlesdm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$50 it'll tank like Twitter. (And to the people downvoting me, please explain why you think it won't tank like Twitter - thanks!)

So why not short the stock? You will likely have to wait until after the IPO and may pay an arm and a leg for the privilege with limited initial float, but it's entirely up to your discretion. Even more appealing if snapchat does well on the first day of trading.

The same reason you don't use margin if it costs you 10% per year: risk vs reward and potential upside.

Re: Snap Inc. S-1

#310

Post by brangalina4eva »

d4l3k wrote: post #5

> Although other U.S.-based companies have publicly traded classes of non-voting stock, to our knowledge, no other company has completed an initial public offering of non-voting stock on a U.S. stock exchange. We cannot predict whether this structure and the concentrated control it affords Mr. Spiegel and Mr. Murphy will result in a lower trading price or greater fluctuations in the trading price of our Class A commo…

Snap have found the weakness of passive investing. Once they're listed, even if larger active investors don't buy the stock, the ETFs will hoover them up just like everything else.

ETFs only work when they piggyback on active investors' analyses and reactions to companies IMO. If everything is passive, there'll be no sense in the markets.

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