I see a bag of hurt on the horizon here. Even with their nascent AR stuff, there's just not enough magic sauce to justify that valuation.
Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO
191–200 of 261 posts
Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with the Snapchat glasses is their re usability and if it catches on. If your friends aren't using them and you're the only one with a pair you'd be less inclined to wear them. Everyone thought Google Glass was going to be the future but those glasses made you look like a total douche. Hopefully the Spectacles wont be branded as such.
I would posit: your perception of "total douche-ness" (your words, not mine) are largely driven by marketing and/or culture. Glass definitely failed in the marketing, branding, and roll-out departments (among others) -- but they're no more or less doofy (to me) than many other perfectly-accepted fashions: baggy pants, beats headphones, crocs, etc.
>(to me)
That is a fairly small focus group.
Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO
#193When 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…
Yet another example of a massive amount of user collected and provided data that is only available to one company.
I wish that there were more open data laws. A lot of startups would benefit from having the data volumes that more massive companies have.
Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but what precisely are they planning to spend $4B on?
My 2 cents, with no inside information: 1) They're losing a ton of money. They barely have any revenue, and have over 1,000 employees, many of which are high paid engineers. They also have large technical overhead costs. My guess is they want to sock away 3-4 years of cash since they don't want to go back to the market too often. 2) M&A. Perhaps they buy some technology companies. Or Twitter? Or who knows? 3) They ma…
Snapchat buy Twitter!? They might need more than 4b$
Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO
#195When 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…
"Their Spectacles release has the potential to build the largest real world image dataset on the planet"
With Google (and now Uber) cars driving around numerous places to capture data specifically for map imagery, satellite imagery and Android/iOS phones taking tons of photos + videos I highly doubt Snap will be the one to build the world's largest image dataset. The rest of your argument makes sense though.
Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO
#196Earlier 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…
You're trying to convince yourself very hard, as you're all about AR. But nobody will wear those dumb glasses.
And nobody would carry Palm Pilot PDAs. Well they didn't wind up carrying them from Palm, but Apple and Samsung sure have something awfully close. Snap may or may not be the AR disruptor, but AR will be the new smartphone. Whoever owns it will be the new Apple.
Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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.
I'm going to use it to block IRL advertising, not replace it.
Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
My 2 cents, with no inside information: 1) They're losing a ton of money. They barely have any revenue, and have over 1,000 employees, many of which are high paid engineers. They also have large technical overhead costs. My guess is they want to sock away 3-4 years of cash since they don't want to go back to the market too often. 2) M&A. Perhaps they buy some technology companies. Or Twitter? Or who knows? 3) They ma…
Snapchat buy Twitter!? They might need more than 4b$
Not at the rate Twitter is headed downwards. :-) Also, it could be a combo of cash and equity.
Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO
#199Earlier 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.
The fairy ad business model. Don't know about Facebook (never been) but I keep hearing about this fabled Google Ad business and honestly, not only I can't recall the last time I even noticed one, needless to say have never even clicked on one. Some interested party wants to keep these surveillance cum social networks afloat and the fairy ad business model and overblown evaluations and VC cash is the front for funding…
> I keep hearing about this fabled Google Ad business
The one that makes 19 billion dollars per quarter?
Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but what precisely are they planning to spend $4B on?
My 2 cents, with no inside information: 1) They're losing a ton of money. They barely have any revenue, and have over 1,000 employees, many of which are high paid engineers. They also have large technical overhead costs. My guess is they want to sock away 3-4 years of cash since they don't want to go back to the market too often. 2) M&A. Perhaps they buy some technology companies. Or Twitter? Or who knows? 3) They ma…
> They barely have any revenue
At this second? Sure, but they're project for pretty explosive growth (~ $1 billion in 2017):
https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Snapchat-Ad-Revenues-Reach...