4 ms·

Really interested in learning if Snap is more Facebook or Twitter. This could be a big litmus test for the tech IPO. 2 things I'm very interested in: 1) If t

Really interested in learning if Snap is more Facebook or Twitter. This could be a big litmus test for the tech IPO. 2 things I'm very interested in: 1) If the rumors are correct that they are looking to raise 4 Billion at a roughly $40 Billion valuation. If you assume that their absolute pie in the sky max valuation ever is similar to what facebook is now, roughly 340 Billion, then that's not alot of upside for investors for a company that probably isn't yet profitable. 2) I've heard that the founders have locked up voting control. I'm always half watching companies like this to find out just how far they can push wall street before wall street says no more. Mark Zuckerberg and the Google founders have done a great job of managing their companies while maintaining voter control. I want to see a tech company where the founders own voting control but manage the company like Twitter, this is not a positive reference. If Snap get's their rumored IPO price but can't grow revenue then they could be the poster child for SEC minority shareholder reform, but then again President Trump has said he wants to remove regulation in the markets so..... Twitter had a very dedicated and professional audience, journalists, investors, etc who used their product and they couldn't live up to expectations. Snap now has to better than twitter and they'll have to do it by taking advertising dollars from Google and Facebook. That's a tough fight to get into.

serge2k 10y ago
> the Google founders have done a great job of managing their companies while maintaining voter control. They moved aside and let Schmidt be CEO for a while though, because Page was not ready.
tenpies 10y ago
I wish we could get some visibility as to how many Snapchat users are adult content creators. This is a segment that everyone seems to ignore, but I think we would be surprised to learn its scale and the amount of money flowing through it. It's also probably the group of users which most use Snapcash and driver huge numbers across all metrics.
- Jordrok 10y ago
  I would be very interested to know this too, but of course it's all technically against the ToS[1] and so I doubt Snapchat will ever even acknowledge it, much less give numbers on it. Don't want to offend those delicate advertisers! [1] http://www.dailydot.com/debug/snapchat-porn-banned/ http://www.dailydot.com/debug/snapchat-porn-banned/ (The article is over a year old, but not much has changed since then.)
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  Hot much underage porn does Snapchat carry. What's the potential liability on that given (in UK) ISPs are starting to filter porn by default. Snapchat's rose in the mass media as the app children were using to send images of their body parts. Not just that, mean/bullying messages and "pranks" too. Of course you can do those things on other apps or through other media, just Snapchat's transient messages seemed designed for it.
  - tajen 10y ago
    It's force of the platform: A reaction to parents asking to overview the teenager's activity on the mobile phone – "Can't show you the messages I've received or sent, dad, they're timebombed!" Actually I've never gotten over the idea that Snapchat was for porn, especially since their icon looks like the shadown of an exhibitionist opening his coat...
photogrammetry 10y ago
>1) If the rumors are correct that they are looking to raise 4 Billion at a roughly $40 Billion valuation. Was under the impression Snapchat was given a $3-5 billion valuation. I find it hard to accept that Snapchat is worth the same as Tesla and SpaceX combined. In other words, is [a 400-employee company whose core product works only on cell phones to show annoying ads to teenagers as they send each other photos, and whose annual income is barely $100m] worth the same as [a 15,000-employee company that produces autonomous electric vehicles, with a net income of a few billion/year] and [a 5,000-employee aerospace company that builds self-landing rockets, with income of a few billion/year] combined? I don't bloody think so, especially given what an asshole Evan Spiegel has been in public lately. If anything, this is a sign that we're in a soon-to-pop bubble. If Snapchat ever goes public, it deserves to die the same slow death on the stock market as Twitter did earlier this year, or a violent pets.com style death.
- huac 10y ago
  Tesla and SpaceX aren't worth that much for much the same reasons you've outlined - they have massive capex requirements, high employee overhead and retention costs, and really real technology risk (it's literally rocket science).
  - pixelcloud 10y ago
    At least they have something they can sell afterwards...
    - tscLegend 10y ago
      If I sell you a Book for a million dollars, I make 1 million dollars. If I sell a million books for a dollar each, I make a million dollars. My Company is worth a million dollars. It makes no difference to the quality or what i am selling.
      - photogrammetry 10y ago
        That's not how valuation works, and that's not how revenue models of companies work. Please make less useless comments.

serge2k 10y ago

> the Google founders have done a great job of managing their companies while maintaining voter control. They moved aside and let Schmidt be CEO for a while though, because Page was not ready.

tenpies 10y ago

I wish we could get some visibility as to how many Snapchat users are adult content creators. This is a segment that everyone seems to ignore, but I think we would be surprised to learn its scale and the amount of money flowing through it. It's also probably the group of users which most use Snapcash and driver huge numbers across all metrics.

Jordrok 10y ago
I would be very interested to know this too, but of course it's all technically against the ToS[1] and so I doubt Snapchat will ever even acknowledge it, much less give numbers on it. Don't want to offend those delicate advertisers! [1] http://www.dailydot.com/debug/snapchat-porn-banned/ http://www.dailydot.com/debug/snapchat-porn-banned/ (The article is over a year old, but not much has changed since then.)
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
Hot much underage porn does Snapchat carry. What's the potential liability on that given (in UK) ISPs are starting to filter porn by default. Snapchat's rose in the mass media as the app children were using to send images of their body parts. Not just that, mean/bullying messages and "pranks" too. Of course you can do those things on other apps or through other media, just Snapchat's transient messages seemed designed for it.
- tajen 10y ago
  It's force of the platform: A reaction to parents asking to overview the teenager's activity on the mobile phone – "Can't show you the messages I've received or sent, dad, they're timebombed!" Actually I've never gotten over the idea that Snapchat was for porn, especially since their icon looks like the shadown of an exhibitionist opening his coat...

photogrammetry 10y ago

>1) If the rumors are correct that they are looking to raise 4 Billion at a roughly $40 Billion valuation. Was under the impression Snapchat was given a $3-5 billion valuation. I find it hard to accept that Snapchat is worth the same as Tesla and SpaceX combined. In other words, is [a 400-employee company whose core product works only on cell phones to show annoying ads to teenagers as they send each other photos, and whose annual income is barely $100m] worth the same as [a 15,000-employee company that produces autonomous electric vehicles, with a net income of a few billion/year] and [a 5,000-employee aerospace company that builds self-landing rockets, with income of a few billion/year] combined? I don't bloody think so, especially given what an asshole Evan Spiegel has been in public lately. If anything, this is a sign that we're in a soon-to-pop bubble. If Snapchat ever goes public, it deserves to die the same slow death on the stock market as Twitter did earlier this year, or a violent pets.com style death.

huac 10y ago
Tesla and SpaceX aren't worth that much for much the same reasons you've outlined - they have massive capex requirements, high employee overhead and retention costs, and really real technology risk (it's literally rocket science).
- pixelcloud 10y ago
  At least they have something they can sell afterwards...
  - tscLegend 10y ago
    If I sell you a Book for a million dollars, I make 1 million dollars. If I sell a million books for a dollar each, I make a million dollars. My Company is worth a million dollars. It makes no difference to the quality or what i am selling.
    - photogrammetry 10y ago
      That's not how valuation works, and that's not how revenue models of companies work. Please make less useless comments.