Facebook offered to buy 100% of Snapchat for $3 billion.
Today, Spiegel's ownership share in the public company is worth more than $5.5 billion. Snap's market cap is ~$24 billion.
Facebook was "Worth" $92 billion when they IPOed and most people on HN lost their minds about how overvalued they were when the stock dipped on that first day:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4002730
Now Facebook's equity is worth $400 billion.
Amazon IPOed in 1997.. they didn't "make money" for over a decade, and even then, it was a tiny return. In the mean time, they built a massive business that's worth more than $430 billion today. Whether or not a company is making money in the most recent quarter has very little to do with their prospects.
>"Oh, well, but maybe Facebook just needs to mature, you say. If we give them just a few more years, the profit fairy might drop by and sprinkle her billions all over Facebook and its shareholders. I call fat chance."
https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2585-facebook-is-not-worth-33...
FB's trajectory after that point had a few step functions which had nothing to do with talent or execution (i.e. more predictable factors), but the remarkable mutual back scratching arrangement going on between governments and Facebook (and similar companies).
For example, I don't know how anyone in their right mind would have allowed the FB - WhatsApp acquisition to happen after seeing the price tag. I really doubt if anyone who understands technology still thinks this wasn't a sweetheart deal between the govt and FB.
The other step function is the US government's (and probably other governments) decision to simply look away on privacy issues as soon as they saw the huge benefits of having a tame populace unable to untether themselves from the top social networks (i.e. less stuff to monitor).
This is all the more bizarre when you notice how the privacy intrusion has basically moved to a stage where just about anything goes, and not one person is actually able to function in the economy without accepting a drastic reduction in privacy. By which I mean, it is only a matter of time when this is going to turn against the politicos who helped usher in this era. In fact, we are already seeing this in some cases. It seems like the people who are reaching the top positions in politics seem to be disgustingly shameless. The more regular, normal politician is unable to withstand/ignore the scrutiny of all the skeletons in their closet. While that may be a good thing (the scrutiny), the outcome where the most shameless person becomes the leader by default is not.
You are taking huge risks when trying to understand what manipulations governments around the world would resort to when trying to predict currency movements. You take a similar risk in predicting the trajectory of private companies which manage to acquire enormous quantities of data because you don't know what kind of mutual back scratching arrangements that is going to set up in the future.
Almost all of the stock market is decoupled from actual value, the bubble is obvious and once again the cycle will repeat itself and it will burst.
Facebook has $30 billion in cash and essentially no debt. The equity value of $30 billion in cash is.. $30 billion. So it's clear that they're worth at least $30 billion. On top of that they're generating ~$4 billion / quarter in net income. The equity value of net income is roughly Net income x (1 - Tax Rate), so call it $3 billion/quarter. Discount as you'd like for them to be worthless someday, but in the mean time they have a ton of cash and are printing a ton of cash.
I bet if you run the numbers and assuming a decent growth rate, you'll come to a total market cap of ~$420 billion. Efficient markets and all that..
Measuring Snapchat's decision to refuse a buy-out is simple: The investors, founders, and employees all have more money now than they would have had if they had sold. This will be completely confirmed in roughly 100 days (once the lock-up expires), as long as their stock price is above ~$2.50 on August 1st, they're vindicated.
You could make the analysis more complicated with opportunity cost calculations or assumptions about whether they would have received Facebook stock (which has appreciated a fair amount since the buyout offer) but those are all marginal concerns.
The Snapchat guys didn't want to be Palmer Luckey'd. They got the cash and kept their reputation. That's quite the win.
Because that's where the users are. PC VR is going to be a very small niche in the larger AR/VR space.
Further more, this experience of population at large is not reflecting the actual experience of most of the population of the world that has little to no exposure to computers or internet.
But when designing for your kind in a vacuum you will encounter some success among your peers.
Understand that the human brain cannot deal with this for extended period of time without serious side effects and there's no VR outside of limited niche market such as learning to overcome phobias.
Tech democratization can be foreseen through the rate of adoption in porn (VCR, DVD, etc.), what's the trend for VR porn ?
Mobile gaming didn't stop console and PC gaming, why should VR be any different?
But this is how it works, either you build something in a pure me,me,me fashion aka you sell to the highest bidder, usually one of the giant tech that buys to preserve their own interest or push their agenda. Or youyou actually care about people, users, customers and are not ruled by money and you don't sell and deserve what you earn while maybe giving back value to people and the global world.
To me snapchat are the obvious winner here.
Kids don't use Facebook. They use Snap, for now. Who knows in a few years.
Twitter and Facebook are what their parents use.
Your comment reads as "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded".
Whether or not the people who bought those shares go under water isn't their problem.
AKA, the early investors are going to make way way more money than if they had sold to facebook.
https://www.theinformation.com/snap-changed-employee-lockup-...
with $200 millions you could give away half of it and live happily on the remaining for a century. With $2 billions, the only difference is that you could give away 95% of it and live happily for a century.
[1]: http://www.jmooneyham.com/your-true-chances-of-getting-rich-...
Also, you have to also account for the synergetic benefits which FB provided to Instagram in terms of getting users quickly started by following and being followed by their fb friends.
An in the not so distant future it will be a few orders of magnitude less. That's how stock market bubbles work, they inflate in a silly manner then burst leaving the rich richer and the others with grains of dust and suicidal tendencies.