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I think that there investors wanted $10bn from the IPO, they wanted it because they could (and did) get it, but this meant that Twitter needed to heavily moniti

by sgt101 10y ago

I think that there investors wanted $10bn from the IPO, they wanted it because they could (and did) get it, but this meant that Twitter needed to heavily monitize and therefore hire and army of folks to sell adverts and so on. I think that in 2009 Twitter had ~300 employees. Now it's ~4000, I think it actually needs ~500 (based on the products and a realistic need to create revenue). At that scale it will be worth ~$2bn, which would not inspire the current shareholders, so this cannot happen. But at that scale it would be a profitable and sustainable company, and it would last for the next 50 years.

felipeerias 10y ago
This is one of the essential problems of financialization: companies are able to grow extremely fast, but they can not stay viable if they ever stop growing. Twitter could be a perfectly fine company where a few hundred employees serve a few hundred million users, but there is not enough profit to be made in that, so it won't happen.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > but they can not stay viable if they ever stop growing Lots of fine low-growth companies regularly paying their dividends. You can't promise lots of growth, pump up your valuation, fail to deliver and then expect to keep that valuation.