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So the idea it is a scam is stupid.
European investors are all ex-banking / private equity spread sheet modelling morons who do not understand risk capital and are looking for risk free bets.
When you have this lens u eschew anything that can harm you holding onto your career. That is why.
B2B businesses have a very clear path to revenue / margin / profit.
A B2C business is effectively a punt, yes a punt, US VCs arent some sort of fucking oracles. If you look at the analysis Social Capital did for who backed the biggest co's at the series a level its effectively spread evenly so there is no "science" here.
Evidence please?
There was one test conducted with 600-700k users (out of 2 billion plus). This is negligible and honestly not statistically significant enough.
Plenty of reasonable concerns around political advertising, bad actors, transparancy into who is funding / buying ads are largely things to be concerned about.
However, errant ranting as above is not exactly helpful to this debate.
Also calling $FB not successful is laughable? On what grounds can you actually say this?
There is almost no evidence that the ad product actually influenced america (it was more likely TV). If you need to be educated about advertising i'm happpy to help you here but as someone who does this for a living I can categorically tell you this - the ads did not sway the election based on the pseudo-science bullshit from Wylie, Nix and anyone else in CA.
I've worked on every single vertical and 3rd party data / Partner Categories is rarely used by big or small advertisers a like.
The cost of the advertising increases i.e. higher CPMs for using this data. I've spent north of $40ml across all digital ads with a large chunk being on $FB and it isn't the main kind of targeting that is used and its the most expensive kind as well.
I am not hugely convinced this will dramatically affect $FB given there are so many other targeting options out there it isn't much of a concern in my eyes just a shame this is one avenue that will now be closed but its one of so many marketers can use.
3 white stripes? Adidas Swoosh? Nike Golden Arches? McDonalds
Everyone clicks, buys and is influenced by ads. Dont be arrogant and mindlessly believe "it doesnt impact me"
I would expect a bit more from a Bloomberg presenter but then again superficiality is clearly what she needs to sell her book.
This is honestly nothing new at all unless you're a prude
Also, given that I am a target customer that interacts with Snapchat and runs their ads and invests reasonably heavily I am better placed to judge than you are.
The ad products need a lot of work, no doubt about it, but the engagement and earned media generated is super high for a product that doesnt have a biddable solution in place just yet. My clients would agree with me.
The lack of data is being worked on, as I mentioned there are partnerships with Millward Brown and Nielsen. The business will also end up buying 3rd party data and matching it against its user base in order to provide a competitive solution to FB.
The difference is Snapchat doesn't want to collect every single datapoint about a user like FB does.
Despite a set of ad products that are far from the best they can be, this hasnt stopped advertisers wwanting to use the platform for campaigns. Early results are very positive and improvements will come leaps and bounds. Plenty of my most talented peers / colleagues have recently joined snapchat. They wouldn't if the company wasn't doing well, it is.
I am betting it will succeed where Twitter has sadly failed based on the fact it has created a completely different form of communication and expression.
No. This isn't really that true, the business has placed a great deal of investment on the following: hiring sales people, partnering with measurement (millward brown, nielsen) selling ads like crazy at a premium to the largest F500 brands in the world.
The biggest content creators, celebrities and normals are on the platform. They are creating new forms of expression which have been copied by incumbents namely Instagram.
They have made their first steps into hardware with spectacles which have generated similar type of hype as Yeezys.
So your arguments are not strong enough, its actually laughable you think it lacks revenue. When the S-1 document is public and the gross margins and employee count are revealed we'll see all the risk factors clearly.
Given that the founders most likely own most of the stock, this is a company that is definitely going to succeed as so many people want to work with them.
For an internet marketer you are woefully off the mark with comments like the above.
Do you know how to read 3 financial statements because this is a well run business that not only is printing money but it has created so much economic value around the world via jobs it has created in other industries.
A Deloitte report explained FB has created $40bn of economic value across the world. Let me explain to you how:
- People are selling shit on social all day everyday - Every organisation markets themselves using social - social media is where most attention on mobile is - All social media platforms make ads - Ads are charged on CPM (Cost per 1000) - Trillions of impressions are served, therefore billions of ad dollars flow to the platform, billions with a b - All these businesses have 100s of millions if not billions in cash on their balance sheets
For the record these ad products have kept 1000s of people in advertising jobs around the world and helped around 3 million advertisers spending billions collectively sell shit online.
1/ Im an advertiser I can tell you that big brands still love the platform (and spend heavily) 2/ Revenue is $2bn+ a year, how is this not successful? 3/ Balance sheet has $1bn+ 4/ NFL deal is huge, ditto bloomberg streaming 5/ Product needs to ship much quicker than Facebook does to stay relevant 6/ It is the only place that has nailed real time properly, if there is a bomb in a major city you will hear it first on twitter no where else has this edge, nowhere 7/ The worlds most important people are on this platform and readily accessible in most cases, not true on FB in terms of accessibility 8/ 80% Gross Margin business 9/ Needs to stay independent and ramp up advertising spend once logged out tweets ad product rolls out 10/ True reach of Twitter is almost 1bn users when we consider tweets appearing on TV, off the platform, in newspapers etc. This is comparable to FB
Some of the ignorant stuff people are saying about all the employees is disrespectful.
WhatsApp and IG when they were acquired were making very little money, if they had stayed independent and no one acquired them they would not be running today (they would exhaust the capital chain). WhatsApp maybe was making £10ml a year but was losing money; IG was making £0. I can tell you with certainty if they were independent and around today the growth would be stalling and there is a high chance they would not be able to continue raising venture money, it is very easy to grow products to 1bn users when you add FB growth's team which is best in class to an already solid product.
Twitter has been generating solid revenue from around 2009/10 (someone correct me if im off here) and big brands love it and there is lots of data I have seen to support the value to advertisers around the world.
Twitter does however need to tell its story a lot better afterall a Tweet means many different things to many people, its just not as easy to communicate as Facebook to an outside but this doesn't mean it is not valuable or should not exist independently.
Sure, everyone office in the world uses it as software of choice. I wish all software products were that terrible.
I have so many DR clients printing money via FB ads, CTRs are not the metric we even focus on, it is all about conversions or measurement studies to support even investing in the platform. All my clients (big and small) love the platform, ad formats and service level.
Great company, well deserved success.
I'm looking at my FB friends list, counts well over 600 people, the bulk are from well to-do families all privately educated, top unis, top careers. I don't think any, would have their parents allow them to drop out of Uni irrespective of whether it was the next FB they were building and write them a $100k cheque to get going.
This is an example of luck that many ignore in the narrative. However major kudos to Zuck his ad product has basically guaranteed me a career for the rest of my life. For that alone I'm grateful for FB being invented.
I do expect the revenue to ramp significantly for FB, TWTR, IG, Snapchat etc over the next 3-5 years based on client demand. In five years time, all the strongest aspects and best practices will really be established by brands and agencies and the ad dollars will subsequently follow. Much of the overall digital budget is moving quickly downstream to social platforms. This pace will quicken over time as all brands will need to spend on these platforms to fulfill reach capabilities. All big brands need to be able to reach millions of users at scale which comes with significant media investment or revenue for these social platforms. We're only four years in and it will be an area I am betting the next 5-7 years of my career on.
This is fundamentally wrong. I'm an advertiser and I have seen so many Snapchat campaigns work tremendously well for brand advertisers. All for large established brands who are spending solid amounts with the platform.
Much of the hard work is ahead for the platform in terms of measurement and clear steps to defining and achieving ROI metrics such as awareness, brand uplift all the way through to DR elements such as traffic, leads, mobile installs and conversions.
The company makes huge strides very often updating media packs, incorporating measurement (Nielsen) etc. I expect very smart acquisitions in terms of continuing to drive user growth on the consumer side and build out of measurement / ads API to cater to the agency world in the next 12-18 months.
An IPO for snapchat is some time away but it is building a very real commercial organisation amongst brands, advertisers, agencies, the TV community (look at the viacom deal recently).
Also to your point here:
"FB raised 16B in a horribly botched IPO."
You can't say a company raised $16bn and had a horrible IPO. This really doesn't make any sense irrespective of all the ratchets and clawback clauses (none of which will keep any FB exec up at night let alone the CEO). Look at FB today, you should be kicking yourself if you had the chance or even thought about buying the stock at $17 when it was being shorted like crazy by Wall Street.
I've spent several thousand pounds via work on Uber. This has resulted in 2-3 bad trips (which round out to 0.02%).
- Quick pick up times - Usually responsive and helpful drivers (no complaining) - Helpful carrying heavy items (almost 100% of the time) - Cheap fees - Bill splitting is easy no friction - UberPool does make me slightly nervous
The service works and is default for myself and 100s of business users, personally it works well too esp for date night.
In comparison, London Black Cab drivers are rude, racist, crass, willing to rip you off and take advantage of you. They do not have their cars auditing a lot of the time, refusal to take cash is unacceptable in this day and age and should be in place in ALL taxis. There is no excuse for this.
I genuinely expected to hear some new insights or information. Instead this is ALL re-purposed information. Nothing new here folks.
I certainly will not be listening anymore of these lectures. I'm very disappointed.
Politely disagree here. Most people who succeed in business are usually (but not in all cases) brought up in good homes, in stable social environments and receive good educations. Pull beneath the curtain and even the 'high school/college drop out' is usually from a middle class home or has received private education. There are many other things that play a role as well including race. Remember all the kerfuffle a year or two ago about the lack of entrepreneurs from ethnic minority groups namely black groups who weren't being funded. Its not part of the 'VC Pattern Recognition'. Believe me it also pained me to write about race because I've v low tolerance for it.
Furthermore, there is clear evidence across the most wildly successful companies you will see many entrepreneurs do look very similar. Many have similar upbringings, many have good educations/come from good homes, many are from specific sections in the class hierarchy and many are from specific races. Just look at most of the top venture investors most are white or jewish.
Persistence yes i agree is unbelievably important. By default telling many people you'll start a business will likely result in a mix bag of congrats but many people telling you why it is a bad idea or why it won't work.
However, please do not be so dismissive of IQ or social environment or education. All of these things play a key role.
Look at the S&P 500. The CEOs education is as follows 97% have a college degree and 67% have a further degree. Most common degrees are engineering. Stanford and Harvard have 4% of the CEO population in the 500. I will also include Zuckerburg/Gates in this stat even if he dropped out he still went!
Please do not be so dismissive of other factors it is just myopic and extremely ignorant.
How many other people can do the same thing?
In fact, it's actually irrelevant in this case that the writer made mistakes and could be better (all of us could be better). The most impressive point of the story is he showed enough courage to write to someone at the height of the VC industry and get a response and invite for a meeting.
Props to the lad.
Lots of other friends I know have worked for nice shiny tech companies you've all heard of and would die to work for and have had AWFUL, TERRIBLE times and quit within the first six months.
The quality of the experience and the skills you pick is up is MORE important than brand name firms early in your life. Always focus on skills, thats what leads to fulfilment and of course getting paid.
Uber are taking more measures to get more drivers on the system esp with the recent JV financing deal with Toyota to create 100,000 more uber/self-employed drivers.