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1.8B. 1,800 Million, right? Stop me when the math goes wrong. Divided into bundles of 200k: 9000x. Let's say each member of a team costs 200k/yr. High for

1.8B. 1,800 Million, right? Stop me when the math goes wrong. Divided into bundles of 200k: 9000x. Let's say each member of a team costs 200k/yr. High for some, low for others, whatever. 1.8B dollars is enough money for a team of OVER NINE THOUSAND people. What... exactly is taking that much effort, here? What is this money fueling? I honestly boggle to imagine.

dboshardy 10y ago
That math holds if they are planning to only spend money on hiring those people for 1 year only. More realistically, the money is probably for tech overhead. Server space, software licensing, money for keeping all their servers working for a while (support, replacement servers/drives) etc.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Not being adversarial: What kind of software licensing is Snapchat paying? Dev tools, ok. Some BI/reporting stuff? I'd imagine everything else would be open source, right?
  - askafriend 10y ago
    They run fully on Google App Engine and obviously they have to store all of that heavy video data somewhere so bandwidth costs will be crazy. So a combination of them not having their own infra like FB does, and just the nature of the data they are responsible for is very heavy.
mathattack 10y ago
I suspect it's for a lot of other things: Advertising, technology (HW & SW), customer support, paying off initial investors, space, etc.
- hamana 10y ago
  > paying off initial investors Here comes Charles Ponzi ...
  - mathattack 10y ago
    When companies defer their exits, it becomes reasonable for seed investors to ask for their money back. This happens quite a bit in Private Equity, where investors resell companies every 5-7 years.
OJFord 10y ago
They probably spend more on infrastructure than salaries.
gjolund 10y ago
"Growth Hacking" In reality it is just everyone trying to get their foot in the door so that they can get a piece of that sweet "unicorn" pie.

dboshardy 10y ago

That math holds if they are planning to only spend money on hiring those people for 1 year only. More realistically, the money is probably for tech overhead. Server space, software licensing, money for keeping all their servers working for a while (support, replacement servers/drives) etc.

MichaelGG 10y ago
Not being adversarial: What kind of software licensing is Snapchat paying? Dev tools, ok. Some BI/reporting stuff? I'd imagine everything else would be open source, right?
- askafriend 10y ago
  They run fully on Google App Engine and obviously they have to store all of that heavy video data somewhere so bandwidth costs will be crazy. So a combination of them not having their own infra like FB does, and just the nature of the data they are responsible for is very heavy.

mathattack 10y ago

I suspect it's for a lot of other things: Advertising, technology (HW & SW), customer support, paying off initial investors, space, etc.

hamana 10y ago
> paying off initial investors Here comes Charles Ponzi ...
- mathattack 10y ago
  When companies defer their exits, it becomes reasonable for seed investors to ask for their money back. This happens quite a bit in Private Equity, where investors resell companies every 5-7 years.

OJFord 10y ago

They probably spend more on infrastructure than salaries.

gjolund 10y ago

"Growth Hacking" In reality it is just everyone trying to get their foot in the door so that they can get a piece of that sweet "unicorn" pie.