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A comment on Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round. Parent comment

Re:Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round by partiallypro on Friday May 27, 2016 @12:44AM (#11783951)
I think it's more probable that their value will come down from bubbling heights and someone will buy them. To me chat models aren't sustainable without it working in line with your other verticals. It's too hard to monetize. IMO no chat platform can survive without being attached to another product or service; or just a vertical that is similar. Not in the mobile age it's not. There are too many chat apps as it is. FB Messenger, SnapChat, WeChat, Slack, Skype, iMessenger, WhatsApp, Viber, Hangouts, GChat and that's not even all of them. There's no way there is enough market room for all of those. The sector will consolidate and imo will come back to the mean of there being maybe 4 big companies behind them. Really, if I'm Twitter and want to stop my stock from tanking, I get a line of credit and buy SnapChat. It actually makes sense with their model more than any other.

Though I have heard the SnapChat CEO is a bit of an egotistical assclown, so he might ride it out alone until the bitter end. He also despises Microsoft, so that rules out one buyer.

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Re:Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round by sangnoir on Friday May 27, 2016 @02:23AM (#11784266)
> IMO no chat platform can survive without being attached to another product or service;

I sincerely believe WhatsApp could have survived independently with a $1/yr subscription. They hit a sweet spot of having a 9-digit user base, a small team and not raising crazy amounts of venture capital.

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Re:Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round by partiallypro on Friday May 27, 2016 @07:53PM (#11789907)
I think paid providers can survive, but not ad backed ones. Skype has a paid offering for example and has a business platform, Hangouts has a business platform integration. Hard to do that with something like SnapChat, if you ask me. Eventually if everyone is collecting data, that data is going to become less valuable per user, so using that for valuation becomes nonsensical.
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Re:Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round by jakelarkin on Friday May 27, 2016 @02:01AM (#11784181)
"Really, if I'm Twitter and want to stop my stock from tanking, I get a line of credit and buy SnapChat"

Twitter's valued at only $10 Billion. Snapchat just raised at rumored $18 Billion valuation.

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Re:Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round by partiallypro on Friday May 27, 2016 @10:15AM (#11786171)
It's equity value is not all that relevant during a buyout, there are different swap methods, etc. It's not unusual for a company with a smaller market cap to buy a larger one. A lot is to be considered, ebitda, debt, liabilities, cash flow, book value etc. I also said that their valuation will eventually fall. We are in a private equity bubble, but credit is still easy to come by.
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