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Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

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Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#181

Post by ethanbond »

cyan_atrus wrote: post #154
ethanbond wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users' appetite for more ads will, in 100% of cases, diminish before shareholder appetite does.

spoken like someone who hasn't used the product. snapchat's ads fit the format amazingly well, and now that snapchat is also paying for content directly everyone's incentives are aligned to make a deeply engaging product that monetizes well without alienating users.

I have. I'm saying that especially when public, there is no such thing as enough profitability. There's no number of ads that will satisfy shareholder demands. They'll have to squeeze more and more and the only possible signal that "more" has become "too much" is necessarily when users start walking away from the service.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#182

Post by flukus »

adamnemecek wrote: post #6
serg_chernata wrote: post #2

When a company like Uber is raising insane amounts of money I think to myself - "ok, they're working on vehicle automation and other ambitious projects, it makes sense". When a company like snapchat is looking for 4B in addition to existing funding I am left completely dumbfounded. Can someone please explain why they would need this much cash?

They have captured an important segment of the market (12-2x years olds). I also think that people In this age group find it a ton more engaging than the alternatives.

Is it that important? That age group isn't known for it's disposable income.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#183

Post by sib »

user5994461 wrote: post #117
ambicapter wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was Twitter's playbook and I thought Twitter wasn't doing so well recently...I'm not saying massive amounts of users isn't valuable, but you still need to play it right.

Twitter is massively profitable. It makes billions in advertising. (for every $1 twitter make, it spends $2, so their accounting is deep in the negative. But if they fire half the people (who are useless anyway) and stop spending money like madmen, they'll be positive, VERY POSITIVE. thanks to advertising revenues.)

Twitter is massively unprofitable. 12 months ending 2015-12-31: loss of over USD500MM. 3 months ending 2016-06-30: loss of USD107MM.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#184

Post by sib »

foolfoolz wrote: post #118
ambicapter wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was Twitter's playbook and I thought Twitter wasn't doing so well recently...I'm not saying massive amounts of users isn't valuable, but you still need to play it right.

twitter is worth 11B and makes 2.6B/yr. The playbook works

Twitter loses over USD600MM / yr. The playbook is yet to be proven. If they were earning 2.6B / yr, news articles and market perception would be very, very different.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#185

Post by AndrewKemendo »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #172
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineering community is sleeping on Snapchat, but shouldn't be. My life is AR. I'm the CEO for an AR company, I speak write and live and breathe all things AR. Snapchat is poised to be the most important AR company around for several reasons. 1. They have a MASSIVE userbase that is comfortable with sharing their lives 2. That userbase has already shown an interest in AR - and yes whether you like it or not their…

Andrew I think you're too optimistic about spectacles given no one has even proven it's a viable market, let alone that Snapchat will have a successful implementation. What's your best guess of how many pair will sell through to actual customers?

At a minimum 100k, which is enough to start proving the market out and getting some virtuous cycles building.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#186

Post by drawnwren »

beambot wrote: post #134
simooooo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're trying to convince yourself very hard, as you're all about AR. But nobody will wear those dumb glasses.

Famous last words. Reminds me of the old adage: "640k of memory is all that anybody with a computer would ever need." I already know a lot of younger folks that are pumped about the Snapchat glasses... (I'm not saying you're wrong... I just wouldn't make such steadfast predictions about the future either. But then again, I don't understand SnapChat and am not their target audience.)

I agree with both of you. The glasses are silly, don't seem that technically complex, and I think they are poised to be a huge hit with Snapchat's base audience. Google Glass was a technically well made device that forgot product, I think those stupid glasses hit their product-market fit quite well. The recording indicator and their 'retro' style are both what I consider to be key components in this assessment.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#187

Post by wslh »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #29
serg_chernata wrote: post #2

When a company like Uber is raising insane amounts of money I think to myself - "ok, they're working on vehicle automation and other ambitious projects, it makes sense". When a company like snapchat is looking for 4B in addition to existing funding I am left completely dumbfounded. Can someone please explain why they would need this much cash?

The engineering community is sleeping on Snapchat, but shouldn't be. My life is AR. I'm the CEO for an AR company, I speak write and live and breathe all things AR. Snapchat is poised to be the most important AR company around for several reasons. 1. They have a MASSIVE userbase that is comfortable with sharing their lives 2. That userbase has already shown an interest in AR - and yes whether you like it or not their…

But don't you think that because AR is just starting to have a place in our mobile phones it is open to a lot of newcomers? This is not a mature market sector like social networks, ads, or search.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#188

Post by niftich »

flukus wrote: post #180
capkutay wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do facebook and Google make money? Selling ads in social network and search land. Having an enormous, religiously active user base has proven time and time again to be a huge cash cow.

Google ads are something we only see when searching on google. They're easy to tolerate. No one will put up with virtual ads in AR.

I'm not so sure. Even with their rudimentary pre-AR camera filters, some were pretty popular and successful [1]. The Gatorade dunk filter generated 160 million impressions and the company was very pleased [2] -- and people seemed to like it.

The filters are also interesting because they involve user choice: the ads are not unsolicited; rather, they are picked by the users. That's pretty interesting.

We've had in-game advertising in video games for a while; certain games that mimic realistic urban environments lend themselves well to this. In some settings, AR could include a density of advertising -- passive or interactive -- similar to the real world without much trouble. In fact, an AR setting devoid of any commercial presence may be unsettling on its own.

[1] https://medium.com/comms-planning/11-branded-snapchat-filter...

[2] http://digiday.com/brands/inside-gatorades-digital-ad-playbo...

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#189

Post by longboardcat »

komali2 wrote: post #121

I tried to get back into snapchat last week. "Surely they've made the Android app usable by now." Why is the android app so trash? Why is the UI so convoluted? I want to like and use snapchat because clearly everybody is "getting" something that I'm not, but I genuinely cannot figure out the UI or take more than a few pics without the thing crashing.

Exploratory UI. Teenagers can figure it out, but their parents sure can't.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#190

Post by PartTimeZombie »

serg_chernata wrote: post #2

When a company like Uber is raising insane amounts of money I think to myself - "ok, they're working on vehicle automation and other ambitious projects, it makes sense". When a company like snapchat is looking for 4B in addition to existing funding I am left completely dumbfounded. Can someone please explain why they would need this much cash?

The key line to me is: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs are leading the offering They are the people who will the make the real money. They always do.
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