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Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

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Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#11
post #6
post #4

SNAP IPO should herald the death of dual share class listings. They sold billions in equity to the public, but gave the shares 0 voting rights. So now investors have no recourse to push for changes at the board level.

How about Buyer Beware? There's nothing illegitimate about raising money without selling voting rights. You want voting rights, want to play active investor? Buy another stock.

You want to raise money without voting rights? Sell bonds.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#12
post #3

What is Evan doing? facepalm

Better question- why is the Board allowing his incompetence to run this company into the ground?

Maybe because the board has no control over his decisions - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/snap-10-k-annual-report-show...

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#13
post #4

SNAP IPO should herald the death of dual share class listings. They sold billions in equity to the public, but gave the shares 0 voting rights. So now investors have no recourse to push for changes at the board level.

> So now investors have no recourse to push for changes at the board level.

Dig for securities fraud and encourage the SEC to require voting rights as part of a settlement agreement?

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#14

I'm going to be devil's advocate here but the CEO (especially of a troubled company like Snap) needs to take the best decisions for the company and stretch solvency and viability for as long as possible. Of course, it's unpopular to promote someone, then rescind that offer and hire someone else. But in this case, the tradeoff seems reasonable. Hiring a well connected, veteran exec who comes from a company known for i…

I think you're probably right, but I'd be very surprised if Snap survives - they've been outplayed by Facebook and Zuckerberg is a better CEO.

If you're looking for a stock to short Snap seems like a good choice - I'd bet on failure in a few years or some sad acquisition on poor terms.

The only other tech company I'm pretty confident will fail is Magic Leap, but unfortunately they're private so hard to bet against.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#15
post #6
post #4

SNAP IPO should herald the death of dual share class listings. They sold billions in equity to the public, but gave the shares 0 voting rights. So now investors have no recourse to push for changes at the board level.

How about Buyer Beware? There's nothing illegitimate about raising money without selling voting rights. You want voting rights, want to play active investor? Buy another stock.

[deleted]

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#16
post #3

What is Evan doing? facepalm

Better question- why is the Board allowing his incompetence to run this company into the ground?

I don't think the board has much say. The co-founders have control over all stockholder decisions and even if they were fired (which would only happen if they turned on each other) they would still exercise the same control of stockholder decisions. So I don't think the board really has any leverage...

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#17

I'm going to be devil's advocate here but the CEO (especially of a troubled company like Snap) needs to take the best decisions for the company and stretch solvency and viability for as long as possible. Of course, it's unpopular to promote someone, then rescind that offer and hire someone else. But in this case, the tradeoff seems reasonable. Hiring a well connected, veteran exec who comes from a company known for i…

I think you're probably right, but I'd be very surprised if Snap survives - they've been outplayed by Facebook and Zuckerberg is a better CEO. If you're looking for a stock to short Snap seems like a good choice - I'd bet on failure in a few years or some sad acquisition on poor terms. The only other tech company I'm pretty confident will fail is Magic Leap, but unfortunately they're private so hard to bet against.

I’ve made a good amount of cash shorting SNAP, I can’t understand who is buying when they have provided guidance of decreasing DAU’s for at least one more quarter. I hope employees at SNAP are negotiating more stock or salary, they could do so much better at other firms.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#18
post #11
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Buyer Beware? There's nothing illegitimate about raising money without selling voting rights. You want voting rights, want to play active investor? Buy another stock.

You want to raise money without voting rights? Sell bonds.

Sure, you can do that too. The comment you're replying to is arguing that all these options are legitimate, and buyers are adults who can buy something that matches their investment theses.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#19
Rather than focus on the bad focus on the good part. He got someone he thought was better and decided to go with that. From a business perspective and if you remove the short term way it looks (or his reputation impact) it is a good move. Of course a writer for a blog or news site doesn't see it that way. Because of course (to take an extreme) if you just started working at the local paper and the New York Times offered you a position you'd turn it down, right?

Back in the day a long long time ago I remember someone who had taken a job at Sun. Two weeks later he left because Apple came through with an offer and he really wanted to work for Apple. I thought it was really rude because I would have never had the guts to do that. I would have felt obligated to stay at the job that I had because that is the way I was raised. But when you consider that Sun would have let him go at the drop of a hat if it suited their business purpose it actually made sense and I learned from that event and seeing what happened later because he went with Apple.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#20

I'm going to be devil's advocate here but the CEO (especially of a troubled company like Snap) needs to take the best decisions for the company and stretch solvency and viability for as long as possible. Of course, it's unpopular to promote someone, then rescind that offer and hire someone else. But in this case, the tradeoff seems reasonable. Hiring a well connected, veteran exec who comes from a company known for i…

It's important to note that Kristen O’Hara was also an outsider who is a "well connected, veteran exec." She had only been with Snap for 2 months.

Characterizing her as a "good employee, but ultimately an employee with no new insights or inputs" is probably not accurate.

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