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Twitter Raises $35 Million Series C From Benchmark and IVP, Others
- vaksel 18y agojust goes to show, that its much easier raising cash when you don't need it
- jfornear 18y agoTwitter is growing significantly and will continue to grow in order to reach mainstream usage, but that requires expanding their infrastructure and hiring more employees - hard to do without additional funding.
- jacquesm 18y agoWhen you're spending money like there is no tomorrow and you still have to really find your business model I don't think that qualifies as being in a state where you don't need external cash. Twitter needs it worse than a junkie needs a fix, without external money flowing in they would probably not last another 6 months.
- fallentimes 18y agoI wonder how much equity the founders have now.
- blader 18y agoAbout 15% less than they had before this round.
- bkbleikamp 18y agoBut still enough to get rich...again.
- tdavis 18y agoJust when I thought it couldn't become any more ludicrous...
- kleevr 18y agoHave they gone to plaid?
- agotterer 18y agoWhat are they going to spend this money on?
- misuba 18y agoMy guess is that they aren't, by and large. This is a recession-insurance round, to make sure they have all the runway they need even if things get so fucked that their first shots at revenue generation don't take.
- agotterer 18y agoFair enough... But what have they spent any money on thus far? They have a small team and a bunch of servers. I'm having trouble placing the need for this amount of money plus the other rounds.
- agotterer 18y agoTo follow up... According to their crunchbase page they have raised $55M. Their website says they have 33 employees (more then I thought).
- josefresco 18y agoI thought VC money was funding to build your idea before you had enough revenue from your users. Twitter is built, has millions of users and still need funding to continue? When is the honeymoon over? Apparently never for the chosen few.
- axod 18y agoYou can't really rely on VC money forever, at some point someone will actually want a business model. IMHO I'd be really surprised if anyone buys twitter, but who knows. If someone does, it'll probably be another VC backed site with no business model either.
- bkbleikamp 18y agoThe real time reporting of news is a very interesting thing, as well as their real time search results. There are multiple ways a company like Google could use that. There is also the communication aspect, etc. that lots of companies would be interested in (i.e. communicating with users for web companies). If you don't see business models for Twitter, you're not thinking hard enough. There are plenty of ways for them to make money.
- drusenko 18y agoYou understand that with a 250M valuation, the sale is going to have to be at 500M minimum. What "VC backed site with no business model either" is going to be able to afford that?
- axod 18y agoGood point, idk facebook? :/
- vicaya 18y agoDon't know where do you get that understanding from. Google's current market cap is 112B, its total revenue (2008) is 21B. It used to be that price/sale ratio is 10 for startups, which means they need 25M revenue to be valued at 250M. Even if P/S is massively compressed these days, they still only need about 50M to worth that valuation. 50M sale for twitter given the usage is definitely feasible.
- nir 18y agoSo it's somewhere between $7-35 per active user?
- okeumeni 18y agoIs Twitter actually just money burning machine?
- herval 18y agoNo! It also allows you to tell the world what you're doing - in 140 characters or less..
- sachinag 18y agoBREAKING: Twitter files to become a bank holding company, in line to receive TARP funds. MORE TO COME /siren
- johnrob 18y agoFor all the comments about twitter being a money burning machine, you have to admit they are in many ways "upstream of revenue" (http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html - second paragraph under examples). They have a lot of users. That's only half the equation, but it's one more half than most companies have.
- jacquesm 18y agosecond that. I personally don't even 'get' twitter but I'm happy they got their investment and I'm sure that if they play their cards wisely they'll do just fine. Everybody that is second guessing them here should go and prove that they can do a better job, for now the twitter folk are doing a better job than 99% of anybody bitching about them. You wished you were in the possession of even a small share of that money burning machine. They've been very selective about the rate at which they dillute which is showing quite a bit of restraint, they've already rebuffed several buy out offers so it looks like they know what they're doing and they are playing their cards very close to their chest. Watch and learn.
- tokenadult 18y agoTwitter's blog entry on this news: http://blog.twitter.com/2009/02/opportunity-knocks.html http://blog.twitter.com/2009/02/opportunity-knocks.html
- popschedule 18y agoThis twitter business is a joke. Over-hyped much?
- sammyo 18y agoTwitter is in the news a lot. At the Davos summit it seemed to be the only positive story in the entire world (twitter being used by legit journalists). It just works for a whole lot of folks. I suspect the new investors current opinion is that they just got the best deal of 09.