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Re: Facebook

#41

Post by jaredsohn »

rahij wrote: post #34
k-mcgrady wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "a team of 32 engineers (~ $500 million/engineer)" Only if you consider the other employees worth/value to be $0.

An article mentions that Whatsapp spent $0 on user acquisition and marketing. If that's true, then yes, it's around $500 million/engineer.

Even if the company had nonengineers, it doesn't affect the ratio between revenue and engineers. The statistic usually does not imply that engineering is solely responsible for the success. Further, it generally can be hard to determine what portion of revenue is due to engineering versus marketing/sales, since the functions work together in a dependent way to make money.

Re: Facebook

#43

Post by bigje54 »

Viber has 200M users as of May 7, 2013. Rakuten purchased them for $900M on Feb. 14, 2014.

Very similar apps. Although WhatsApp does ask for $0.99 after 1 year usage. Not sure that is worth the $18.1B difference in price?

Re: Facebook

#45

Post by monsterix »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #17
monsterix wrote: post #5

That's splendid news! I firmly believe that it is consumer apps, and consumer apps alone, that can give blazing home runs like this one. Despite the risk, numerous deaths, blood and corpses all over the place. Somehow valley since last September had been running after enterprise junk but that's not where the gems lie (My opinion of course!). There is money in enterprise but no home run possible over there. Edit: I li…

It depends what you consider a 'home run'. I consider building a sustainable business that will generate revenue and create products for the next 10/20/30 years a home run. I would consider building an app, having no business model (admittedly Whatsapp app was generating revenue although I doubt it was much), and being lucky enough to get acquired by a company willing to pay stupid amounts of money to kill a competit…

Agreed. But a home run for most VCs would likely be 10X+ return stories than a revenue generating machine that would mature up in 10+ years.

Re: Facebook

#46

Post by loceng »

bigje54 wrote: post #43

Viber has 200M users as of May 7, 2013. Rakuten purchased them for $900M on Feb. 14, 2014. Very similar apps. Although WhatsApp does ask for $0.99 after 1 year usage. Not sure that is worth the $18.1B difference in price?

WhatsApp is dominant player, and so they can leverage a higher ask. Not sure it's going to save Facebook in the end though.

Re: Facebook

#48

Post by dpiers »

tomphoolery wrote: post #26

Ah yes, this reminds me of that old joke... > Why did Facebook buy WhatsApp? Because Snapchat isn't for sale.

Or because the daily messaging volume through Facebook-owned services now surpasses global SMS volume.

Re: Facebook

#49

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

123412341234123 wrote: post #33
GuiA wrote: post #4

I ask, cause I'm not sure- do anybody make real companies anymore?

No. Most companies are conceived with an explicit exit strategy in mind from day one, and that strategy is usually: SELL OUT TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, AND RETIRE EARLY, WHILE SOME OF US ARE STILL YOUNG ENOUGH TO ENJOY LIFE.

You might have a point if they hadn't previously turned down a $1billion bid from Google.
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