7 ms·

Snapchat Discloses $650M Private Placement

32 points by abetaha 11y ago

tomkin 11y ago
When it comes to a new article being behind a paywall, I would rather not know the news than have to make an account to view it. Can we ban wsj.com from HN?
- aw3c2 11y ago
  https://archive.is/IYtQX https://archive.is/IYtQX
- txttran 11y ago
  You could save a bookmarklet that allows you to bypass the header: https://gist.github.com/jashkenas/9a4d9e648eb11aab394e https://gist.github.com/jashkenas/9a4d9e648eb11aab394e Or you could just skip the article when you see it. I don't see why we'd ban wsj.com just because you have trouble reading it.
  - shehaaz 11y ago
    Try this. It's the URL from a Google Search for the article :) https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fsnapchat-discloses-650-million-private-placement-1432913945&ei=ep1oVc_yFtKXyAT22IDgBA&usg=AFQjCNHfTXJb1kZI-fwr-IajoyKXq3IrIQ&sig2=NOSH_0bpdszL4uumdVWm5A https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
  - dang 11y ago
    > just because you have trouble reading it Please don't make comments needlessly personal.
- ghshephard 11y ago
  You don't have to create an account. Just google the title. WSJ breaks enough good stories, and it takes all of 2 seconds to view the articles through google that it would be counter productive to suggest "banning" them.
- foobarqux 11y ago
  HN should implement a feature to optionally hide paywalled articles for those who don't want to see them.
- kidgorgeous 11y ago
  I actually agree with you much to the chagrin of the majority of the board. Clicking a link and hitting a paywall is a bit of a nuisance, and if people are going to submit a link to this site or any other link aggregation site, they should make sure that "everyone" can read it.
entee 11y ago
I'm curious given these kinds of deals, what the point of an IPO is anymore? For some of these companies the valuations are so high, and private capital so available that it seems incredibly unlikely that they'd get a better deal on the public markets. Who wants to abide by public market standards if you can avoid it? I wonder if there's a new model, kind of like large privately held companies such as Mars or Cargill, but with multiple investors. Granted, many of the tech companies getting these valuations have unclear economics, but what if they had real revenues, profits and paid a dividend? Honest question, why go public at all these days?
- mathattack 11y ago
  3 major reasons: 1 - After a certain point in time (based on # of shareholders) it becomes more onerous to be private, and you wind up with all the reporting responsibilities of being public. 2 - It's easier for a public company to engage on both sides of M&A. There's less quibbling about theoretical valuations since the company has a price. (When one private firm buys another with stock, there's 2 theoretical prices that need to be negotiated) 3 - For enterprise deals (not Snapchat) some customers prefer the stability of public ownership.
  - entee 11y ago
    Cool, thanks! That said I wonder if 1 will always be that big an issue. What if you structure it so that you have a small number of large shareholders that represent larger groups? For example, in the case of stock options, a sort of labor union owns the stock, sits on the board and is responsible for distributing dividends to employees following a schedule of percentages. 2 is clearly troublesome, but perhaps more in the M than the A. If you acquire small companies, you may be able to do it in cash or again as some sort of contract entitling people to percentages of dividends. After all, that's kind of what a stock certificate used to be in practice, not just theory (yes oversimplification, but it seems people care far more about stock price than dividend these days). I wonder whether these issues will always be as troublesome. As these kinds of mega deals become more common, it seems quite possible that a sort of parallel private market could emerge. Anyway, thanks for the reasoning!
kvcc01 11y ago
Snapchat is doing well. I sometimes get on the bus around the same time when the local high school is dismissed, and watch in amazement all the kids pull out their phones and work through their accumulated snaps for the day. Some have hundreds. It's a 45-minute ride to my stop and they’re still watching when I get off. Few months back I got jealous and installed Snapschat myself. It conveniently scanned my contacts, and found that none of my friends are on it. (I’m late 30s.) To this day, the only snap I received is the default welcome message they send to everyone. They’re doing a good job of confining their appeal to their target age group. The minute I and my peers appear on Snapchat, it's time to get worried. And then there's snapchat.com, which is another enigma. I consider myself a reasonably competent technologist but Snapchat makes me feel like an ape trying to figure out a mysterious monolith.
- rebelidealist 11y ago
  these kids must have parents that spoil them with unlimited mobile data. That's the main reason why i'm not active on it.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- kissickas 11y ago
  You're sure they aren't watching one of the featured stories about a city or an event? At a 10 second maximum, that gives a minimum of 270 snaps - not too impossible but I think there might be more going on there if you're not too familiar with the platform.
  - kazazes 11y ago
    Some of the more fanatical users I'm acquainted with have a 200+ second story, every single day. Three minutes a user gets you to 45 pretty quickly.
joshdance 11y ago
I am 29 and a lot of my friends and I use SnapChat. I don't love it, but it is useful enough that I post pretty regularly to it.
- mooreds 11y ago
  What do you use it for?
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    I ask the same question. What can snapchat do that mms cant? Edit: So they took a service that was as simple and flexible as could be, put arbitrary restrictions on it, and wrapped it in pretty UI. Kids are dumb man. (I'm 26)
    - rezistik 11y ago
      Do it's best to guarantee that a post will be removed. In a world where everything you do is recorded and stored long term the promise of something fleeting is a beautiful promise.
    - lotso 11y ago
      It is also a lot faster. App owns to the camera. Tap to take a picture. You can add a caption or a doodle and send it to multiple people. MMS doesn't even come close to that experience.
    - tedunangst 11y ago
      Not send a picture already taken. There's a sense of immediacy on the sender side (and urgency on the viewer side, before it goes poof) that reinforces the nowness. If you're into that.
    - joshdance 11y ago
      Doodling on the photos is surprisingly useful. To do that via mms you would open the camera app, take the picture. Open the drawing app, draw it save it. Open the texting app, load the picture and send. Snapchat is snap, doodle send.
randomname2 11y ago
Bloomberg: Snapchat Said to Be Valued at $16 Billion in New Fundraising http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/snapchat-said-to-be-valued-at-16-billion-in-new-fundraising http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/snapchat-s... Any bets on what market cap this will get to at IPO time?
- foobarqux 11y ago
  > Investors in the latest round include Access Industries, York Capital Management, Glade Brook Capital Partners and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Besides Alibaba I have never hear of any of these funds.
AndroidJunky 11y ago
unbelievable :) $32B at IPO
espitia 11y ago
A year or two ago I saw my little brother and sister on Snapchat (16 and 15 respectively). I didn't understand it at all. Soon enough I was on it and let me tell you, it is used far more than Instagram and if not more, the same as Whatsapp. It is because you can share real moment of your normal everyday life. They mentioned how on Instagram most of the pictures they see there are uploaded celebrities/funny accounts/etc. Normal people don't have amazing moments to share everyday. Plus, they would be embarrassed to share what they share on Snapchat in any other network (i.e. funny faces, what you cooked, the funny kid on the school bus, your boredom). I believe they are in unchartered territory thus comparing it to anything else is just a shot in the dark. If you could wave a magic wand and ask for the best way to share moments of your life you would probably get a hologram of your friends to show them that instant of you life that you wanted to share. Snapchat gets closest to this. Moments come and go, not all moments should be forever saved, moments should be only for those you intend to share with, moments should be feel lively (video/images) not text, etc. Also: Discovery feature - I give Snapchat so much credit for this. They got the younger demographic watching 'TV' again. Snapchat accommodated the channel these kids are using (mobile) to connect with the big media outlets in a way that they actually consume content. That is, by short clips of < 5-10 minutes.

32 points by abetaha 11y ago

When it comes to a new article being behind a paywall, I would rather not know the news than have to make an account to view it. Can we ban wsj.com from HN?

aw3c2 11y ago
https://archive.is/IYtQX https://archive.is/IYtQX
txttran 11y ago
You could save a bookmarklet that allows you to bypass the header: https://gist.github.com/jashkenas/9a4d9e648eb11aab394e https://gist.github.com/jashkenas/9a4d9e648eb11aab394e Or you could just skip the article when you see it. I don't see why we'd ban wsj.com just because you have trouble reading it.
- shehaaz 11y ago
  Try this. It's the URL from a Google Search for the article :) https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fsnapchat-discloses-650-million-private-placement-1432913945&ei=ep1oVc_yFtKXyAT22IDgBA&usg=AFQjCNHfTXJb1kZI-fwr-IajoyKXq3IrIQ&sig2=NOSH_0bpdszL4uumdVWm5A https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- dang 11y ago
  > just because you have trouble reading it Please don't make comments needlessly personal.
ghshephard 11y ago
You don't have to create an account. Just google the title. WSJ breaks enough good stories, and it takes all of 2 seconds to view the articles through google that it would be counter productive to suggest "banning" them.
foobarqux 11y ago
HN should implement a feature to optionally hide paywalled articles for those who don't want to see them.
kidgorgeous 11y ago
I actually agree with you much to the chagrin of the majority of the board. Clicking a link and hitting a paywall is a bit of a nuisance, and if people are going to submit a link to this site or any other link aggregation site, they should make sure that "everyone" can read it.

entee 11y ago

I'm curious given these kinds of deals, what the point of an IPO is anymore? For some of these companies the valuations are so high, and private capital so available that it seems incredibly unlikely that they'd get a better deal on the public markets. Who wants to abide by public market standards if you can avoid it? I wonder if there's a new model, kind of like large privately held companies such as Mars or Cargill, but with multiple investors. Granted, many of the tech companies getting these valuations have unclear economics, but what if they had real revenues, profits and paid a dividend? Honest question, why go public at all these days?

mathattack 11y ago
3 major reasons: 1 - After a certain point in time (based on # of shareholders) it becomes more onerous to be private, and you wind up with all the reporting responsibilities of being public. 2 - It's easier for a public company to engage on both sides of M&A. There's less quibbling about theoretical valuations since the company has a price. (When one private firm buys another with stock, there's 2 theoretical prices that need to be negotiated) 3 - For enterprise deals (not Snapchat) some customers prefer the stability of public ownership.
- entee 11y ago
  Cool, thanks! That said I wonder if 1 will always be that big an issue. What if you structure it so that you have a small number of large shareholders that represent larger groups? For example, in the case of stock options, a sort of labor union owns the stock, sits on the board and is responsible for distributing dividends to employees following a schedule of percentages. 2 is clearly troublesome, but perhaps more in the M than the A. If you acquire small companies, you may be able to do it in cash or again as some sort of contract entitling people to percentages of dividends. After all, that's kind of what a stock certificate used to be in practice, not just theory (yes oversimplification, but it seems people care far more about stock price than dividend these days). I wonder whether these issues will always be as troublesome. As these kinds of mega deals become more common, it seems quite possible that a sort of parallel private market could emerge. Anyway, thanks for the reasoning!

kvcc01 11y ago

Snapchat is doing well. I sometimes get on the bus around the same time when the local high school is dismissed, and watch in amazement all the kids pull out their phones and work through their accumulated snaps for the day. Some have hundreds. It's a 45-minute ride to my stop and they’re still watching when I get off. Few months back I got jealous and installed Snapschat myself. It conveniently scanned my contacts, and found that none of my friends are on it. (I’m late 30s.) To this day, the only snap I received is the default welcome message they send to everyone. They’re doing a good job of confining their appeal to their target age group. The minute I and my peers appear on Snapchat, it's time to get worried. And then there's snapchat.com, which is another enigma. I consider myself a reasonably competent technologist but Snapchat makes me feel like an ape trying to figure out a mysterious monolith.

rebelidealist 11y ago
these kids must have parents that spoil them with unlimited mobile data. That's the main reason why i'm not active on it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
kissickas 11y ago
You're sure they aren't watching one of the featured stories about a city or an event? At a 10 second maximum, that gives a minimum of 270 snaps - not too impossible but I think there might be more going on there if you're not too familiar with the platform.
- kazazes 11y ago
  Some of the more fanatical users I'm acquainted with have a 200+ second story, every single day. Three minutes a user gets you to 45 pretty quickly.

joshdance 11y ago

I am 29 and a lot of my friends and I use SnapChat. I don't love it, but it is useful enough that I post pretty regularly to it.

mooreds 11y ago
What do you use it for?
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  I ask the same question. What can snapchat do that mms cant? Edit: So they took a service that was as simple and flexible as could be, put arbitrary restrictions on it, and wrapped it in pretty UI. Kids are dumb man. (I'm 26)
  - rezistik 11y ago
    Do it's best to guarantee that a post will be removed. In a world where everything you do is recorded and stored long term the promise of something fleeting is a beautiful promise.
  - lotso 11y ago
    It is also a lot faster. App owns to the camera. Tap to take a picture. You can add a caption or a doodle and send it to multiple people. MMS doesn't even come close to that experience.
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    Not send a picture already taken. There's a sense of immediacy on the sender side (and urgency on the viewer side, before it goes poof) that reinforces the nowness. If you're into that.
  - joshdance 11y ago
    Doodling on the photos is surprisingly useful. To do that via mms you would open the camera app, take the picture. Open the drawing app, draw it save it. Open the texting app, load the picture and send. Snapchat is snap, doodle send.

randomname2 11y ago

Bloomberg: Snapchat Said to Be Valued at $16 Billion in New Fundraising http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/snapchat-said-to-be-valued-at-16-billion-in-new-fundraising http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/snapchat-s... Any bets on what market cap this will get to at IPO time?

foobarqux 11y ago
> Investors in the latest round include Access Industries, York Capital Management, Glade Brook Capital Partners and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Besides Alibaba I have never hear of any of these funds.

AndroidJunky 11y ago

unbelievable :) $32B at IPO

espitia 11y ago

A year or two ago I saw my little brother and sister on Snapchat (16 and 15 respectively). I didn't understand it at all. Soon enough I was on it and let me tell you, it is used far more than Instagram and if not more, the same as Whatsapp. It is because you can share real moment of your normal everyday life. They mentioned how on Instagram most of the pictures they see there are uploaded celebrities/funny accounts/etc. Normal people don't have amazing moments to share everyday. Plus, they would be embarrassed to share what they share on Snapchat in any other network (i.e. funny faces, what you cooked, the funny kid on the school bus, your boredom). I believe they are in unchartered territory thus comparing it to anything else is just a shot in the dark. If you could wave a magic wand and ask for the best way to share moments of your life you would probably get a hologram of your friends to show them that instant of you life that you wanted to share. Snapchat gets closest to this. Moments come and go, not all moments should be forever saved, moments should be only for those you intend to share with, moments should be feel lively (video/images) not text, etc. Also: Discovery feature - I give Snapchat so much credit for this. They got the younger demographic watching 'TV' again. Snapchat accommodated the channel these kids are using (mobile) to connect with the big media outlets in a way that they actually consume content. That is, by short clips of < 5-10 minutes.