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Terrible article. Yes it bounced back off of the lows but it’s still not close to profitable and well under the IPO price. Most of the employees got burned and

by mcot2 7y ago

Terrible article. Yes it bounced back off of the lows but it’s still not close to profitable and well under the IPO price. Most of the employees got burned and have not recovered.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
Well, it isn't news. It's PR.
- jayparth 7y ago
  Link for those who haven't read: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
adventured 7y ago
> Yes it bounced back off of the lows but it’s still not close to profitable and well under the IPO price. The primary concern is long-term survival and growth, not immediately getting to profitable. They have plenty of cash at $2.2 billion. Last three quarters of gross profit improvement: $116m -> $172m -> $223m Gross profit margin for those quarters: 36% -> 44% -> 50% Operating expenses for those quarters: $432m -> $477m -> $451m Meanwhile quarterly sales went from $320m to $446m. That's exactly what the market wants to see. Their path to ending the losses is extremely clear at this point.
- ecf 7y ago
  Shouldn’t they have figured out all that BEFORE they went public? Call me naive, but I’m still of the opinion that a business shouldn’t be business if it can’t sustain itself.
  - adventured 7y ago
    Not necessarily, no. Biotech companies, as one example, frequently can't sustain themselves when they IPO. They IPO as a means to raise capital to pursue sustainability, to grow the business - develop product etc - using investor money. That's one of the reasons the public markets exist, to expose investors to potential upside. Tesla is very clearly a business and has lost money every year of its existence. Amazon lost money for its first seven years, including for several years following its IPO. Workday and ServiceNow have been money losing businesses for their entire histories. ServiceNow took 15 years to get to profitability in its most recent quarter. They ran losses in the pursuit of faster growth. Atlassian and Shopify have piled up annual losses for most (all?) of their histories. Would investors be better off without exposure to Shopify at a $3.x billion market cap at its IPO? It's now $36 billion. Investors get to ride their tremendous business growth (with some obvious risk), which is likely to result in eventual solid profitability.
    - wil421 7y ago
      Most of the companies you named have a product I can name. Workday and ServiceNow both have large enterprise contracts and it’s not easy to move off of them, much easier than Oracle or SAP. I work with both of them are the company I work for has spent millions and will spend millions more. ServiceNow started as a PaaS and it was hard to sell. Companies didn’t know what to do with it and it wasn’t until they did ITSM (IT Service Management) that it took off. They ate the lunch of their competitors like BMC Remedy. Snap is just another ad company that can fail quickly of users leave.

by mcot2 7y ago

Terrible article. Yes it bounced back off of the lows but it’s still not close to profitable and well under the IPO price. Most of the employees got burned and have not recovered.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

Well, it isn't news. It's PR.

jayparth 7y ago
Link for those who haven't read: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

adventured 7y ago

> Yes it bounced back off of the lows but it’s still not close to profitable and well under the IPO price. The primary concern is long-term survival and growth, not immediately getting to profitable. They have plenty of cash at $2.2 billion. Last three quarters of gross profit improvement: $116m -> $172m -> $223m Gross profit margin for those quarters: 36% -> 44% -> 50% Operating expenses for those quarters: $432m -> $477m -> $451m Meanwhile quarterly sales went from $320m to $446m. That's exactly what the market wants to see. Their path to ending the losses is extremely clear at this point.

ecf 7y ago
Shouldn’t they have figured out all that BEFORE they went public? Call me naive, but I’m still of the opinion that a business shouldn’t be business if it can’t sustain itself.
- adventured 7y ago
  Not necessarily, no. Biotech companies, as one example, frequently can't sustain themselves when they IPO. They IPO as a means to raise capital to pursue sustainability, to grow the business - develop product etc - using investor money. That's one of the reasons the public markets exist, to expose investors to potential upside. Tesla is very clearly a business and has lost money every year of its existence. Amazon lost money for its first seven years, including for several years following its IPO. Workday and ServiceNow have been money losing businesses for their entire histories. ServiceNow took 15 years to get to profitability in its most recent quarter. They ran losses in the pursuit of faster growth. Atlassian and Shopify have piled up annual losses for most (all?) of their histories. Would investors be better off without exposure to Shopify at a $3.x billion market cap at its IPO? It's now $36 billion. Investors get to ride their tremendous business growth (with some obvious risk), which is likely to result in eventual solid profitability.
  - wil421 7y ago
    Most of the companies you named have a product I can name. Workday and ServiceNow both have large enterprise contracts and it’s not easy to move off of them, much easier than Oracle or SAP. I work with both of them are the company I work for has spent millions and will spend millions more. ServiceNow started as a PaaS and it was hard to sell. Companies didn’t know what to do with it and it wasn’t until they did ITSM (IT Service Management) that it took off. They ate the lunch of their competitors like BMC Remedy. Snap is just another ad company that can fail quickly of users leave.