How Did Snapchat Reach a Rumored $3.5B Valuation? | Hacker News Reader

How Did Snapchat Reach a Rumored $3.5B Valuation?

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14 pointsghosh8 comments

"Photos shared/day Facebook - 350m Snapchat - 350m"

Apples and oranges there. A share on Facebook reaches all the friends (or list) the user chooses while on Snapchat it's just one person. A photo on Facebook can be reshared further with the possibility of virality, on Snapchat it lasts 10s and then it's gone. A photo on Facebook can be captioned, tagged, located, etc, while on Snapchat it's limited to a caption. And so on.

I don't doubt that Snapchat has a great deal of value because I don't see an occasional short-lived advert image/video deterring many of the core users, but to suggest that it has the same impact as Facebook's photo sharing offering is completely ludicrous. They're different beasts beyond the entirely superficial 'sending photos to other people' similarity.

"...but to suggest that it has the same impact as Facebook's photo sharing offering is completely ludicrous."

The point of Benedict's tweet, which is not associated with the analysis in any way, is merely a way to look at the traction or activity on the platforms. Totally agree that they're not one in the same—one is a "messaging" app, while the other is a network; but I do think that it shows that Snapchat is very much a real and budding user base that is not just a flash in the pan.

It's at such a fragile point, though. Monetising a previously entirely free service is risky at any time, but there's lots more risk than usual here (fickleness of audience, existence of competitors, fundamental simplicity of offering).

We've seen plenty of startups fail at this point before; is there anything to suggest Snapchat will beat the odds?

Assuming an average valuation/yearly revenue ~= 20 it means that for $3.5bn the should make $175m a year. If they have 350m photo shares a day (!!!) this number seems very well within their reach. They can even afford to monetize less aggressively and thus more user-friendly. I think it's one of these cases where numbers are so huge that they work in their favor whatever they do.

20X revenue would be a really high valuation even for a SaaS business. 6-10X would be more likely in the long run.

When Twitter had ~$140M in revenue their price was ~50x revenue.

Source: http://www.quora.com/What-are-revenue-multiples-for-technolo...

The company is very hot right, basically selling expectations thus I think well above 10x. In any case $350m with these kind of numbers still seems very feasible. Won't you agree?

It's a fair point, but to be honest, I think if anyone is OK with an ad-supported product, it's teens. They're used to free services being supported by ads. They get the tradeoff.

So I don't think the ads will drive them away, but they are an inherently fickle group, so something that is shinier, newer, and doesn't have every parent on the world using it will always be appealing.

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