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> In 2023, the company’s revenue was $804.0 million. Research and development, at $438.3 million, was more than half, an awfully big number for a company of thi
by gizmo 3y ago
> In 2023, the company’s revenue was $804.0 million. Research and development, at $438.3 million, was more than half, an awfully big number for a company of this age. Total costs and expenses were $944.2 million. The net loss was $90.8 million, which at least is an improvement over 2022, with its $666.7 million in revenue and $158.6 million in losses. [1]
These expenditures blow my mind. But if reddit can grow revenue to 1200m and cuts expenses to 300m, the story looks totally different. A turnaround like that might only take a couple of years. Reddit is an incredibly sticky product, just badly mismanaged. With some new management, it could even be a buy at 5bn.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2024/02/26/reddits-ipo-filing-shows-lots-of-losses-after-nearly-20-years/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2024/02/26/reddits-...
- ActionHank 3y agoBest place to cut costs would be to retrench their whole video player team. At this point I am not even sure how it is possible to make a product that so routinely fails to function for so many people.
- gizmo 3y agoYou also have to fire a lot of management that allowed the org chart to explode in the first place. Maybe take a few lessons from the Elon Twitter playbook.
- quickslowdown 3y agoLooking to musk for intelligent, thought-through business decisions is definitely an interesting strategy.
- gizmo 3y agoI'm no fan of Musk but his business acumen is undeniable.
- mingus88 3y agoIf you say so. He single-handedly destroyed one of the best brands of the modern online era (tweet, Twitter, the bird logo) only to replace it with a brand identity that was stale 20 years ago and is commonly associated with porn. The site’s traffic continues to plummet and his investment is worth billions less since he unleashed his acumen.
- doublepg23 3y agoYet I still can’t go a day without being sent a Twitter link or seeing comments on HN. Twitter will be dead when people stop talking about it dying.
- lobsterthief 3y agoIt’s already dead to me.
- more_corn 3y agoWhat is twitter? I think maybe you mean the social media company called X.
- gizmo 3y agoMusk has also made what I consider bizarre and impulsive decisions with SpaceX and Tesla. The gullwing doors of the model X almost bankrupted the company, for instance. Or take the blast pad incident during a recent starship launch. Experts warned him this would happen. Musk making unforced errors isn't new. His businesses do incredibly well regardless.
- calciphus 3y agoIt's almost as though many of his companies succeed in spite of, not because of, his leadership. Get enough money and smart people on a problem and they can survive most leadership foot-gunnings. He was very good at raising money when money was free. Unclear if all the other things about him add up to a net positive for his companies now.
- more_corn 3y agolol, let’s see how it pans out for them.
- appplication 3y agoThe video player is what drove me to use Apollo instead, and then killing Apollo was enough to drive me away entirely. It’s a great idea but management incompetence is huge. How many other major websites regularly piss of their users so much?
- nh23423fefe 3y agothey killed RiF. i stopped going there entirely on mobile which was 90% of my visits. i never look at reddit when im bored now. on desktop, if RES and old.reddit stop working. ill never go back
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoRiF still works but you need to patch the APK with your own api key. There's guides online.
- slumberlust 3y agoNo thanks.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoThat's fair, it's a hassle and reddit isn't worth it.
- causal 3y agoWas also shocked by those numbers. And supposedly each DAU even generates more revenue than Pinterest and Snap - what is Reddit doing to make operations that much more expensive?
- bigyikes 3y agoThey’ve put a lot of research into making their mobile website unusable. These kinds of innovations aren’t cheap.
- mamonster 3y agoSimple answer: 2000 employees for a social media website doing 800 mil in revenue is too much(remember that mods are also not being paid which should technically be a tailwind to profitability). IMO once this is out in the open there will be no way around 30% headcount cut over 2-3 years. The monetization has also been very bad historically(selling awards is really dumb), so there are definitely ways to pump revenue up fast as well. But once again, headcount cuts will probably accelerate once its public
- mikequinlan 3y ago> 2000 employees Reddit software developers are maintaining at least 5 different user interfaces: 1. Old Reddit (old.reddit.com) (no longer maintained, I guess) 2. New Reddit (new.reddit.com) (also no longer maintained?) 3. New New Reddit (aka Twitter Reddit, sh.reddit.com) 4. Mobile browser Reddit 5. Mobile app Reddit It takes a lot of work to keep all of those user interfaces crappy, slow, and hard to use.
- greggsy 3y agoI wonder what proportion of that (ridiculous) R&D figure consisted of infrastructure - I can only imagine that it was justified as an investment in network and compute infrastructure, rather than marketing research and development in the web apps (which is notoriously unstable and unusable on mobile)