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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

#111

Post by [deleted] »

narrator wrote: post #103
superbcarrot wrote: post #29

Sometimes I get shocked by these numbers and it reminds me how little I know about business. Like if you showed me the wikipedia page for Zapier and asked me give it some value, I would be way off. Or if you pitched the business idea to me, I would tell you do something better with your time.

>Sometimes I get shocked by these numbers and it reminds me how little I know about business. This is because you lack the most overlooked and most difficult to teach skill in investing: empathy. Zapier lets non-programmers, the vast majority of the planet, do things that programmers do. Many programmers have poor empathy and thus make bad salespeople and investors. If you can understand how most of the planet thinks…

[deleted]

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

#112

Post by s1artibartfast »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #77
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,…

> 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…

>News flash, 15 to 25 years isn't normal.

I think it is fair to say 15-25 is pretty normal. The average P/E on the NYSE has been above 15 for the last 30 years, and most of it's 90 year history.

https://www.macrotrends.net/2577/sp-500-pe-ratio-price-to-ea...

An easy reality check is other asset classes like bonds or real estate. If you are doubling your money after inflation in less than 15 years you are either gambling or outsmarting the the market.

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

#113

Post by konjin »

>And in January, investors found a way into the business, just not through Foster. Sequoia and Steadfast Financial bought shares at a $5 billion valuation from some of Zapier’s original investors.

How many? There's a difference between buying 1 share at $5000 and 50,000 at $5000.

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

#114

Post by ByteJockey »

chii wrote: post #109
valzam wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What's the point of owning the stock? to sell for capital gains when it is higher in the future. Dividends aren't the only way to generate a profit. And for a lot of high income earners, dividends are very tax inefficient as well.

There's a term for when everyone buys something just because you can sell it to someone else for more later.

It's called a bubble.

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

#115

Post by mgdev »

vincentmarle wrote: post #99
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…

> powering the next generation of ad tech > Zapier provides a single integration point that funnels user and conversion data to dozens of marketing companies' server-side APIs I think that conclusion is a little far-fetched. If you've used Zapier you know how expensive it is to run tasks, so in my experience Zapier is used more to automate little bits of your business that you don't necessarily want to bother your en…

Except it's not far-fetched at all [1]. If you optimize for conversions, and the value of those conversions is large enough, the returns readily cover the costs.

[1]:https://zapier.com/apps/facebook-conversions/integrations

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

#116

Post by swyx »

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…

i'm sorry but you, an account named marketingtech, are extremely blinded by your perspective right now. Zapier charges $599 usd for 100k "tasks" per month. you want to use Zapier for adtech?

LOL.

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

#117

Post by alvah »

hooande wrote: post #95
djrogers wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not surprised that people on a developer focused forum would find little to no value in something that enables automation without programming. Y’all can probably automate interactions with hundreds of web based services in your sleep, using multiple languages, with unit tests, and a Turing complete ML-based proxy server for high availability. For the rest of us, Zapier is a little like magic. Granted there are ot…

why wouldn't someone just hire a developer to do this? My understanding is that the market for contractors is oversaturated right now. You could probably pay someone hundreds of dollars to write software that interacts with web services etc if you look hard enough Like the grandparent comment, it's hard for me to imagine that there are enough people in need of this service to justify a $5B valuation

Because you don’t “just hire a developer”, and you certainly don’t do anything close to that for most of the needs Zapier addresses.

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

#118

Post by toomuchtodo »

syndacks wrote: post #96
toomuchtodo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Khan Academy has an amazing collection of videos on finance. I highly recommend it for understanding cash flows, enterprise value, etc. It's helped me transition (one foot out the door) from tech to finance.

Curious to hear why you left one for the other. Not too often you hear that move. How is it going so far?

I fell out of love with tech, and found more leverage in finance. I still write code (Python) for myself for fun, but would rather live in Excel versus VS Code and k8s 50 hrs a week (I squeeze in commits on my open source projects when the family has gone to bed).

I’m semi retired in my late 30s, so it’s gone well. I am so extraordinarily thankful for the experiences and opportunities I’ve had, but recognize when it’s time to close a life chapter.

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

#119

Post by devoutsalsa »

hooande wrote: post #95
djrogers wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not surprised that people on a developer focused forum would find little to no value in something that enables automation without programming. Y’all can probably automate interactions with hundreds of web based services in your sleep, using multiple languages, with unit tests, and a Turing complete ML-based proxy server for high availability. For the rest of us, Zapier is a little like magic. Granted there are ot…

why wouldn't someone just hire a developer to do this? My understanding is that the market for contractors is oversaturated right now. You could probably pay someone hundreds of dollars to write software that interacts with web services etc if you look hard enough Like the grandparent comment, it's hard for me to imagine that there are enough people in need of this service to justify a $5B valuation

When I was a non-programmer trying to build a business that needed software, the last thing I wanted was to rely on something I couldn’t maintain myself. For example, I could wire up DNS by hand, but the last thing I’d want is to have to learn Terraform just so I could update my email MX records. Using Herkou because I didn’t want to manage a server was another example. Using something like Zapier to add a row to a spreadsheet or send an email is also amazing.

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

#120

Post by wombatmobile »

superbcarrot wrote: post #29

Sometimes I get shocked by these numbers and it reminds me how little I know about business. Like if you showed me the wikipedia page for Zapier and asked me give it some value, I would be way off. Or if you pitched the business idea to me, I would tell you do something better with your time.

The $5b valuation is speculative. Only $1.3m has been raised, which is less than 0.02% of that valuation.
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