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

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

#81
post #54
post #16

Congrats to the founders for not taking much funding but for employees... this has to suck unless they get to sell their shares to Sequoia as well. (If they even got any options...) Maybe they don't compete for SV talent and most employees aren't used to even getting options as part of compensation. Is there a specific reason a company would have IPO in mind but wouldn't say they are looking to do an IPO eventually?…

I believe only a few of the original Zapier folks have options (I don't hold any myself, for example but I joined when they were around 70 people).

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

#83

So on paper they are billionaires, but in fact they only have a bit over 1M - just enough to pay bills for 6 months.

They have only raised $1.3m, which they most likely spent a long time ago. They have been profitable (self-sustaining) for years. Sure their stock is not liquid, but there is a strong case that they could move towards liquidation (IPO) at a $5 billion or higher valuation.

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

#85

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?

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

#87

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,…

> 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…

This argument is based on the idea that stock markets should price rationally based on value, but evidently that's not really how the markets work. Share prices have -- and need -- very little connection to any "true" value of the business whose stocks are being traded. For the basic investment strategy of trying to buy low and sell high, investors win if the stock subsequently goes up and lose if it subsequently goes down. The reason for the change, if there is any logical reason at all, is largely irrelevant.

Assuming any sort of pricing rationality risks the well-known problem that the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. It should never have been possible in a rational market for the recent WSB pump-and-dumps to work, yet many billions changed hands as a result. Not that I have much sympathy for the losers on that one, because it should also never have been possible in a rational market for the short-selling strategy that left them vulnerable to work either. Both groups got away with something dodgy for a while and then some of them lost a lot of money when the house of cards fell.

Whether this disconnection of prices from real value is a healthy way for stock markets to operate as a key element in our financial systems is a separate question, and it's one that a different and probably much smaller group of people care about.

As a footnote, it's probably worth mentioning that some businesses, including tech stocks, don't necessarily follow the traditional models for either growth or dividend payments. So although those P/E ratios might be considered very high by traditional standards, those traditional rules of thumb aren't necessarily useful in these cases, even if we only look realistically at the potential for future profits. A high-growth tech startup might have low earnings in the early days and rely on some big investments for funding instead if it's building a huge user base without yet having a firm strategy for monetization, for example. That doesn't mean it won't have genuine potential to earn a huge amount of money from that huge user base later on if it does find the right monetization strategy.

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

#88

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,…

So the theoretical reason for the high values of tech companies is that margin is one of the biggest drivers of value in a dcf, due mostly to the non linear nature of division. However, many of the tech companies we’re seeing don’t have near those margins, they are in fact negative.

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

#89
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The point is that (a buyer expects that) the value of the stock itself is increasing. Whether it pays dividends is not the pertinent question.

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

#90

> Last summer, Zapier reached $100 million in annualized recurring revenue; it’s passed $140 million by now $1.3M in $140M RR is like a paper change. So, they can't find that amount somewhere in their revenue stream?

They raised 1.3M in funding from outside sources.

They have many more millions available to them internally.

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