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Zapier reached a $5B valuation with $1.3M of funding

forbes.com

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Re: Zapier reached a $5B valuation with $1.3M of funding

#71

Post by didibus »

supernovae wrote: post #69
didibus wrote: post #66

So Zapier is like a later competitor to IFTTT ? But basically the same thing?

IFTTT kinda gave up in comparison to Zapier - zapier has so many api/service/framework/tool interfaces where IFTTT kinda just went niche with home automation and basic stuff beyond that. For example, with IFTTT the RSS trigger is pretty stupid but with zapier you can trigger based on parsed fields with values and triggers on those values... I had hoped that Zapier would put some pressure on IFTTT to do more but it se…

I see, so similar idea, but they have more features with regards to triggers and maybe integration is more focused on business services then IoT and like consumer needs?

Re: Zapier reached a $5B valuation with $1.3M of funding

#72

Post by jtsiskin »

reducesuffering wrote: post #38
valuearb wrote: post #11

$5B is a pretty ridiculous valuation for a $140M revenues company.

No, it's not, because that isn't enough information to determine your conclusion. That's a 36x P/S ratio. Many established public companies are at or exceeding that, like Cloudflare and Crowdstrike. (those companies COULD be overvalued too, but it depends on something else) The most important factor or metric you're missing from the equation is growth (assuming eventual profit margins are normal). It doesn't matter w…

For some context, some other current P/Es: Google: 35.06 Apple: 32.54 Microsoft: 34.64 PayPal: 68.38 Amazon: 73.10 Shopify: 420.04 Square: 515.13 Tesla: 1,043.84

Re: Zapier reached a $5B valuation with $1.3M of funding

#73

Post by michaelbuckbee »

kritiko wrote: post #44
marketingtech wrote: post #28

Zapier joins Tealium and Segment on the list of billion dollar valuations for powering the next generation of ad tech. As cross-site cookies and browser pixels are increasingly blocked, ad platforms are moving from browser-based tracking to server-side data transfer. Like those other companies, Zapier provides a single integration point that funnels user and conversion data to dozens of marketing companies' server-si…

How is this CCPA / GDPR compliant?

CCPA/GDPR don't really prohibit you from doing things with data or sharing with 3rd parties you just have to be really upfront about it.

Say you were going to take the "Contact Us" form submissions from your website push those to Zapier to check if they were legitimate (before sending email to the addresses), you would need to disclose what 3rd parties you're using, what data is shared with them, etc.

Checkout this massive list of companies that PayPal "shares" your data with - https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/third-parties-list

(mostly for fraud + geo checking)

Re: Zapier reached a $5B valuation with $1.3M of funding

#74

Post by valzam »

throwawayyipyip wrote: post #70
ab_testing wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The valuation of current tech companies is way astronomical compared to what is considered normal for mature companies. The average price to sales for S&P used to be between 1.5-2.5 for many decades. However for these newly IPO companies the price to sales ratios are around 10-15. Similarly the P/E ratio for S&P companies used to be in the 15-25 range to the considered normal . However with these internet companies,…

Well, to some extent it is. You can argue both ways, and in Zapier's case, I'd say it's overvalued as the 10-15 range assumes obtaining a monopoly. I don't see how Zapier will do that since there's also IFTTT and other services I've tried. With that said, consider huge successes like Amazon. Huge successes like Amazon have been generating much more profit compared to what they were projected to earn in 2010 [1]. I pi…

However, Amazon never pays dividends. And you probably cannot really vote on anything with your stock either. So what's the point? There is an interesting article about Facebook with a similar opinion. Zuck owns the majority vote and they never pay dividends. What's the point of owning the stock?

Re: Zapier reached a $5B valuation with $1.3M of funding

#75

Post by tootie »

marketingtech wrote: post #28

Zapier joins Tealium and Segment on the list of billion dollar valuations for powering the next generation of ad tech. As cross-site cookies and browser pixels are increasingly blocked, ad platforms are moving from browser-based tracking to server-side data transfer. Like those other companies, Zapier provides a single integration point that funnels user and conversion data to dozens of marketing companies' server-si…

Zapier isn't necessarily just for ad tech. It can any kind of ad hoc automation between well-defined services. We use it for support ticket automation.

Re: Zapier reached a $5B valuation with $1.3M of funding

#77

Post by andrewmcwatters »

ab_testing wrote: post #61
artemonster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any other good sources, like books or articles ?

The valuation of current tech companies is way astronomical compared to what is considered normal for mature companies. The average price to sales for S&P used to be between 1.5-2.5 for many decades. However for these newly IPO companies the price to sales ratios are around 10-15. Similarly the P/E ratio for S&P companies used to be in the 15-25 range to the considered normal . However with these internet companies,…

> However with these internet companies, they usually do not turn a profit or if they do, their PE ratios usually lingers in from ~100 to 1000. And the market considers that normal behavior now.

That's not normal, it's pure stupid. So if you don't think there are people sitting on the sidelines watching idiots bid up shares way, way beyond the replacement value of companies, you're not watching the same thing happen that others are.

Do people even understand what these numbers mean? It means after expenses, assuming no future growth, that's how many years it would take to make back your investment.

Do you know why a P/E ratio of 15 was historically considered high? Because even with modest growth, no one wants to wait 15 years for corporate revenues and acquisition costs to break even. News flash, 15 to 25 years isn't normal.

The average company doesn't even make it 15 to 25 years these days.

Re: Zapier reached a $5B valuation with $1.3M of funding

#78

Post by newsclues »

jeremy_k wrote: post #65
alexashka wrote: post #30

This company reminds me of library vs service topic on here a couple of days ago. 5 billion dollars for what should've been a free set of libraries and competing UI interfaces to cater to different levels of tech savviness. It's crazy how complicated the simplest things are in tech that these companies even need to exist. Hopefully it's just growing pains, rather than consolidation and a swamp for decades to come, li…

Who are these engineers that would have built these free libraries?

They work for the companies selling the UI?

Re: Zapier reached a $5B valuation with $1.3M of funding

#80

Post by layoric »

reducesuffering wrote: post #38
valuearb wrote: post #11

$5B is a pretty ridiculous valuation for a $140M revenues company.

No, it's not, because that isn't enough information to determine your conclusion. That's a 36x P/S ratio. Many established public companies are at or exceeding that, like Cloudflare and Crowdstrike. (those companies COULD be overvalued too, but it depends on something else) The most important factor or metric you're missing from the equation is growth (assuming eventual profit margins are normal). It doesn't matter w…

I'm not that familiar with tech company revenue growth examples but can you point to many other $5B companies (or companies already making $100M revenue) that get 50% YoY growth for 10 years? As far as revenue goes? That kind of revenue growth would put them into the top 500 companies in the US by revenue, close to eBay [0]. To me this seems very optimistic but I only known the basics about Zapier, not their future direction etc so I'm likely missing info.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_t...

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