The only way I could look at SnapChat as a startup is that their market isn't consumers, it's Mark Zuckerberg plus a few people who are trying to compete with F

The only way I could look at SnapChat as a startup is that their market isn't consumers, it's Mark Zuckerberg plus a few people who are trying to compete with Facebook. We know that Facebook is willing to buy things perceived as threats to their business model, or perhaps to buy large sets of users they've failed to capture. It's a stupid business to go into, in that the odds of success are really bad: low barrier to entry, lots of interest, lots of competitors, a winner-take-all game. But if you win the lottery you can get zillion-dollar offers from Zuck and feel like a genius. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the Instagram acquisition as crazy. Isn't Instagram now used by most teenagers, and sometimes preferred over fb?