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Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

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Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#111

Post by jpatokal »

anilshanbhag wrote: post #34

Lost in all this is an important distinction that Snapchat wanted to make: they wanted to separate friends from influencers / celebrities / media. It was a good change. Another important thing Snapchat does is it doesn't show likes / followers publicly - when the whole world is chasing these numbers Snapchat has taken stance against it. The general philosophy they follow makes me think this is short term pain and the…

Why did Snapchat feel so strongly that it was necessary to separate them? Neither Instagram nor Twitter separate friends from influencers/celebrities/media, and that seems to work fine.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#112

Post by ryanwhitney »

Snapchat’s biggest value to me is that they aren’t owned by facebook. So many jumped to Instagram and use it as a cross-platform messenger now as well—I don’t want to use Facebook (Instagram) messenger.

I would love a more legit chat feature. It’s great that you can keep messages around for longer now. A safer UI that prevented accidentally adding the wrong friend to an image share would be awesome, as would as unsends.

Unfortunate that their main revenue source seems to be really, really bad clickbait stories.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#113

Post by bilbo0s »

Animats wrote: post #108
sireat wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing is that it applies to many other companies these days, most notably Facebook, Google et al. Why do people buy common shares which give them no voting rights as a shareholder? Sure while company is minting money (or debt and marketshare) you can find a greater fool to offload your shares. However when things turn the Zynga way, what recourse do you have with these no vote shares? At least Bond holders an…

I think we're going to see less of that. A few companies with founder control through multiple classes of stock have screwed up badly. It's now a negative with investors. For many decades, the New York Stock Exchange refused to list stocks that had multiple classes of stock, except for a few companies such as Ford Motor that were grandfathered in. But they no longer have enough clout to make that stick. Google and Fa…

>Google and Facebook got away with it because they were highly profitable before the IPO. Snap was not like that...

So basically, we'll see it with the companies that are profitable at the time of their ipo's, but we won't see it with the companies that are unprofitable, (and maybe even losing money), at the time of their ipo's.

Sounds to me like the future Facebooks and Googles of the world will continue to set up structures like these. Before anyone jumps down my throat, I'm not complaining. I know, it's the founder's company. I get that. I'm free not to invest if I don't like the terms. I just wanted to point out that HN User "Animats'" conclusion that founders will choose this structure less and less is flawed. It really does seem to me that this structure is just going to be more and more of a reality in the future for any of the startups that are actually worth buying into. (ie - Any of the startups that actually make money.)

In the end, the founders of the winning companies don't want their money or power diluted.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#114

Post by dannyw »

sireat wrote: post #95
asmithmd1 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then the board should absolutely give him the boot in the next 24 months. Very funny, Snapchat has two classes of stock and he owns enough of the kind that matters that no one can oust him. I looked through the S-1 when they were going public and decided owning the shares they were selling to the public was the equivalent of a "board observer" seat. You are free to watch him run his company, but it is still his com…

The sad thing is that it applies to many other companies these days, most notably Facebook, Google et al. Why do people buy common shares which give them no voting rights as a shareholder? Sure while company is minting money (or debt and marketshare) you can find a greater fool to offload your shares. However when things turn the Zynga way, what recourse do you have with these no vote shares? At least Bond holders an…

The indexing and exchange listing changes have meant that it’s less and less likely to see multi class shares now.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#115

Post by profalseidol »

tigershark wrote: post #101
asmithmd1 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then the board should absolutely give him the boot in the next 24 months. Very funny, Snapchat has two classes of stock and he owns enough of the kind that matters that no one can oust him. I looked through the S-1 when they were going public and decided owning the shares they were selling to the public was the equivalent of a "board observer" seat. You are free to watch him run his company, but it is still his com…

Exactly, I was going to write the same thing, although with a small, but perhaps quite important correction: “You are free to watch him ru i n his company, but it is still his company”

And ruin the lives of it's employees. Long live our most honorable Capital Feudal Lords!

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#116

Post by profalseidol »

akira2501 wrote: post #74
iamleppert wrote: post #16

They had a working thing and then ruined it. I’m not sure how they managed to do that with a product change. Didn’t they have a way to release changes and measure impact before just forcing it on their entire user base? Once a company gets to this level, they need to recognize the role that luck played into their original product and design. They hit a resonance with people, and it was probably more luck and timing t…

> they need to recognize the role that luck played into their original product and design. That's a strong lesson I've learned in life. Successful people _rarely_ know the precise reasons that they are successful, almost exactly for this reason. You may be aware of many of the components of your success, but you won't be aware of all of them and it will be impossible for you to rank their importance correctly. Keep t…

The hand that was dealt to you when you were born is probably the biggest luck factor of all.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#117

Post by dhnsmakala »

I am just surprised that a publicly traded, multi-billion dollar company either did not think to A/B test major changes to the product or did not know how to properly conduct A/B testing.

I assumed every one of the top apps/websites did this automatically, but I guess I was wrong.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#118

Post by Silhouette »

bootloop wrote: post #93
askafriend wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. There were reports that came out from several sources that Evan ignored all feedback from product and design including hard numbers from early tests. There were apparently several groups internally that tried to stop the massive changes from dropping without adequate testing and iteration. Those groups were overridden by Evan in favor of "vision" and that apparent lack of di…

Personal emotions and business don't work well together. They are great to sell an idea but the same person shouldn't be in charge of actually executing it because they will still do it even when everybody else tells them it's crap. I had to experience it and I think it's actually one of the greatest dangers in startups.

There are two sides to that idea, though. You can make incremental improvements through data and metrics and objective thinking, but no amount of selective user testing of incremental improvements would have, say, created the iPhone and subsequently turned Apple from an almost fallen star into the biggest company in the world.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#119

Post by ma2rten »

Most of the incremental growth in our core markets like the US, UK, and France will have to come from older users who generate higher average revenue per user.

Changing the design language of our product and improving our marketing and communications around Snapchat will help users understand our value

Aging-up our community in core markets will also help the media, advertisers, and Wall Street understand Snapchat.

To be honest, this seems like wishful thinking to me. It's going to very hard for them to regain momentum in their current demographic. It's going to be close to impossible to create a network effect outside of their current demographic.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#120

Post by dreamcompiler »

abakker wrote: post #92
dwighttk wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe Google finally gets their social network

Maybe Apple. They’ll just pull most of the ads and make it “privacy focused”. If they gave people an alternative to Facebook it would be a big move.

Apple's not going to buy an app with a significant Android user base unless it's such a compelling app that it causes people to abandon Android and buy an iPhone. Snapchat ain't that app.
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