If I ever get offered $3 billion for anything I've made I will grab that money so fast the conference room chairs will spin into orbit. 3 BILLION DOLLARS. Holy shit.
I personally think he has made a HUGE mistake turning this down. As the article points out, it is hard to see how Snapchat can even make money, and I don't think his potential demographic is anywhere near as big as Instagram's (Facebook purchase) or Tumblr's (Yahoo purchase).
It's gone to his head. He is my age and looking at something he made with his own hands blow up in his face. He is riding high on adrenaline and loving it and blind to everything but the upward growth on the prediction graph. That graph is telling him that he will be twice or four times as big this time next year. What he fails to see is how fast and hard the app can (and will) fall when the next cool thing comes along. Apps like these are fads. They are not sustainable in terms of growth once they hit mainstream because the fact that they are a cool little in-secret is half of the appeal to the teenage demographic. I seriously doubt he expects that he can make 3bn out of revenues from it, I think he's just hoping to sell for 10bn next year. Or it's his baby and he doesn't want to give it up to Facebook to watch it be destroyed. Regardless, 3bn is 3bn. Open your eyes man!
It's insane what you can do with 3 billions dollars. You could buy out more than half of the companies in a small city and monopolize them., You could build the largest building in the world with one room, make it your office just for the hell of it and still have 2 billions dollars left. Turn down that kind of money? The guy is clearly blinded by greed.
Ya definitely. With 3 billion he could really invest into something much larger and with potential for a bigger impact than what he has done with Snapchat. Snapchat seems to have cornered a niche market - but how much can it really grow from this? I mean it is for teenagers (and potentially smart politicians) to send naked pictures of each other without risking public embarrassment and humiliation. On a side note - I'd like to see what Hubski could do with just 100,000 dollars. I bet it would be more substantial than Snapchat.
I don't know if I quite see snapchat like that. Yeah there is the whole sexting angle but setting that aside for a moment, I think about all the social networks out there where nobody communicates with their connections authentically because they are so worried about all the different audiences reacting to every little missive. Maybe Snapchat's value as a brand is that it is not just temporal, but trusted by virtue of the mechanics. Sexting is probably just a small fraction of the traffic, -in most cases it's a communications tool that let's you connect with people, say what you need to say and move on without having to think about repercussions. It's just mentally easy, even if what you're saying is mundane. Heck, due to employers increasingly stalking people's social graphs, it's probably preferable for some people to use snapchat for something as innocuous as asking a friend to meet up for a beer. That being said, wtf were they thinking. 3 billion. Sort of feels like a gamble to bait a higher price from a Facebook competitor. So many messaging apps out there could just implement this feature.
As far as I know, the only competitors with wallets that big are Google, Microsoft, and Apple. The only one I can see making an offer is Google, and I doubt they would make a higher one.That being said, wtf were they thinking. 3 billion. Sort of feels like a gamble to bait a higher price from a Facebook competitor. So many messaging apps out there could just implement this feature.
True. Can you imagine if Twitter had accepted Google's offer? That was pre-Google+. That would have had a big impact on Google's strategy, and their response to the ascension of Facebook. I think Twitter would be very different now if Google bought it, probably for the worse.
I agree it would be worse. But I'm sort of wondering how Twitter is going to make itself worse by itself, -It just IPOed for over 15 billion valuation and has never turned a profit? Don't get me wrong, I think they'll make money, but they won't be able to monetize for their valuation and look the same.
I said this to my friends yesterday. Snapchat is going to be the pets.com of the second tech bubble except their not going to be able to cash out in time because of their own ignorance/stupidity. P.S. I love snapchat, but it's worth very little.