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Snap falls to IPO price

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Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#181

Post by beager »

skewart wrote: post #71
beager wrote: post #8

What does $SNAP need to do to deliver on the hype? Is there anything that can make $SNAP a good investment for anyone other than the parties involved in trading the IPO? I tend to be bearish on $SNAP in general, but I'm interested in the discussion. How do they right the ship and boost back up to that $25-30 range? What's their play?

Given the product and strategic path they're on the only thing they can do to create value is restart user growth. Their business model depends on them becoming a powerful brand advertising platform (brand advertising is when companies want to spread general awareness of their brands and influence the public's overall impressions of what a company stands for, even if it is far removed from any actual moment of purcha…

Facebook is an example of a company that continued user growth very well. Facebook was originally just for college students and had a very dating-site-ish feel (at least as I experienced it), but as Facebook grew, they transitioned the platform to accommodate all users from all walks of life, and now their usage numbers are astronomical. I don't see Snapchat doing this very well, their design is very insider-y, their marketing and communications seem to continue to target western millennials, and there's no clear path to adding features or platform dynamics that will bring others in.

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#182

Post by jonwachob91 »

jnisenbom wrote: post #97
skywhopper wrote: post #7

As skeptical as I am that Snap will ever be a moneymaker, this data point is not meaningful in any way. Facebook traded below (often _well_ below) its IPO price for the first 15 months on the market.

As of 2015 YouTube reportedly hadn't turned a profit but was breaking even [1, 2]. If the world's number 2 website's business model wasn't turning profits after 9 years... we can probably expect the same for snap. Definitely makes you wonder about the viability of the ad revenue model. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-f... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-still-doesnt-make-goo.…

Youtube didn't try to go public before becoming profitable.

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#183

Post by dsacco »

jacquesm wrote: post #32
davidw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was oversubscribed tho, so I got half the quantity I wanted and sold shortly after opening. This seems like a pretty good reason to auction the shares in order to maximize the amount of money the company takes in. That they very rarely do has always seemed kind of dirty to me.

That would stop the issuers from making a bundle on just about every IPO and we can't have that now, can we?

You need incentives to encourage price discovery. It doesn't just happen. The system may not be perfect but that "bundle" is (in part) what allows the public market to retain the efficiency it does have.

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#184

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

gruez wrote: post #94
korzun wrote: post #13

I think it is safe to say that the IPO was a total scam. The company was never profitable, and numbers never made any sense. I have a bridge in Brooklyn up for grabs (cheap) if you still think the valuation was based on ridiculous data points such as active users, etc. People already lined their pockets up and you will be reading another P.R piece on how great of a businessman Evan is within the next couple of months…

Is it really a scam if there was no deception and every buyer knew what they were getting into?

is pyramid scheme a scam?

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#185

Post by dingo_bat »

nikkwong wrote: post #19
beager wrote: post #8

What does $SNAP need to do to deliver on the hype? Is there anything that can make $SNAP a good investment for anyone other than the parties involved in trading the IPO? I tend to be bearish on $SNAP in general, but I'm interested in the discussion. How do they right the ship and boost back up to that $25-30 range? What's their play?

+1 this. I've asked multiple people and ideas are mostly mixed on what Snap's strategy should be going forward. Being a social app will definitely be a difficult play. IMO they could try to leverage their AR expertise to do, well, something. But social definitely seems like it will be tough. Good luck to the team though. It must be a stressful time there.

> AR expertise to do, well, something

Is it really a big expertise now? I think it was a big deal when they started those face filters but now even small players have that stuff. For example, hike: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bsb.hike

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#186

Post by dntrkv »

azinman2 wrote: post #106
dntrkv wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Plus was a very real competitor when they launched (right around the time of Facebook's IPO), it was a very similar situation to that of Snapchat vs Instagram. Huge user growth very quickly, but most of it due to it being attached to Gmail. Not saying Instagram won't remain a real competitor to Snapchat, but it's possible that over time users will go back to their previous habits. Personally, I never post anyt…

IG has a much more active and diverse audience than plus ever did. In fact they are the king within their own world, where as plus was a me too product. I just think they’re different worlds, with diff goals. Snap is more about your honest moment / communication thru pics where as IG is your idealized life.

Yes, IG is king of the general photo sharing social networks, which is different from what IG Stories and Snapchat do. That's why I brought up the comparison to Google Plus, Google did a lot of stuff that Facebook did, and Google Plus was an attempt at bringing a lot of these services together and create a Facebook competitor.

Like IG Stories, Google Plus had crazy fast growth at first, they hit almost 30 million users in the first month which was insane for that time and even today. They also had a very diverse audience. But, just like Instagram Stories, those numbers were only so high because most of their users were "users" because they were already partly on the platform through Gmail, like most IG Stories users were already IG users.

Look, I'm not saying IG Stories isn't a real competitor, but saying that Facebook didn't have competition during their IPO like Snapchat does is not true. Many people were predicting that Google Plus could kill Facebook. Read some articles from that time period, there was a lot of talk about that.

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#187

Post by sytelus »

chimeracoder wrote: post #121
davidw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was oversubscribed tho, so I got half the quantity I wanted and sold shortly after opening. This seems like a pretty good reason to auction the shares in order to maximize the amount of money the company takes in. That they very rarely do has always seemed kind of dirty to me.

> This seems like a pretty good reason to auction the shares in order to maximize the amount of money the company takes in. That they very rarely do has always seemed kind of dirty to me. There's nothing dirty about it. Public investors prefer to have a single price, because that's, well, how public markets generally operate after an IPO. They don't want to have to participate in an auction. The purpose of underwriti…

Why one need underwriter at all? Why certain investors are offered lower unfair price?

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#188

Post by [deleted] »

dntrkv wrote: post #92
skinnymuch wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fb also bought IG at their IPO time and WhatsApp 2 years later. Both combined should be worth over $100B today. Compared to the roughly $20B spent. Obviously FB is still worth over $300B if we hypothetically chop $100B off. Far above IPO still. Just saying that FB had multiple things go very well for them to go from merely profitable at IPO to being the giant it is now -- mainly mobile exploding, but other things too…

Google Plus was a very real competitor when they launched (right around the time of Facebook's IPO), it was a very similar situation to that of Snapchat vs Instagram. Huge user growth very quickly, but most of it due to it being attached to Gmail. Not saying Instagram won't remain a real competitor to Snapchat, but it's possible that over time users will go back to their previous habits. Personally, I never post anyt…

[deleted]

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#189

Post by [deleted] »

dntrkv wrote: post #92
skinnymuch wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fb also bought IG at their IPO time and WhatsApp 2 years later. Both combined should be worth over $100B today. Compared to the roughly $20B spent. Obviously FB is still worth over $300B if we hypothetically chop $100B off. Far above IPO still. Just saying that FB had multiple things go very well for them to go from merely profitable at IPO to being the giant it is now -- mainly mobile exploding, but other things too…

Google Plus was a very real competitor when they launched (right around the time of Facebook's IPO), it was a very similar situation to that of Snapchat vs Instagram. Huge user growth very quickly, but most of it due to it being attached to Gmail. Not saying Instagram won't remain a real competitor to Snapchat, but it's possible that over time users will go back to their previous habits. Personally, I never post anyt…

[deleted]

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#190

Post by thaumasiotes »

gomox wrote: post #124
thaumasiotes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More to the point, this "killer feature" is easily cloned by a competitor This doesn't really agree with > The problem is that this killer feature is easily subverted Let's let one company implement the feature before we decide it will be easy for competitors to implement it too.

WhatsApp, Instagram and FB all have it now. TBH I only see widespread use of it on Instagram, but everyone around me seems to have stopped giving a crap about Snapchat since.

You missed my point. Do WhatsApp, Instagram, or Facebook Messenger have working ephemeral messages? Or do they have marketing that claims they have ephemeral messages?

The feature is fundamentally impossible in exactly the same way as DRM, because it is DRM. You're sending someone a bunch of data and saying "now, you promise not to look at this, right? Except once."

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