aclements18

Agreed. Also there are typically legal repercussions for misrepresenting your business that are outlined in deal terms.

In this analogy you seem to believe the trajectory for this toddler is set in stone. The reality is at it's infancy (which is where Space X is in the grand scheme) it can look very promising but turn out very bad, or a competitor can drastically outpace. Any valuation should discount for the level of risk.

A lot can happen over time. 10 years ago MySpace was by far the dominant social network and Blackberry was the mobile powerhouse. Seemed like neither would fall with so much momentum behind them but we see how that played out.

For better or worse, the "someone" who will offer the bundle will likely be Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Their entire business model is based on bundling content to provide it at lower cost than an a la carte.

It's unlikely things will change for them just because they move away from a cable box to apps. In essence that is what they are already doing. Even today you need a cable subscription to access at least a third of the content on Apple TV.

First off Ryan, I think its a great platform. As a very frequent visitor to the site I would have to reiterate that it is frustrating that I can't really participate in the conversation where there is an aspect of the product that I would like to ask the founder more about. Hopefully you guys can create a way that doesn't result in spam, but feels a little more inclusive.

IMHO, a good way to do the comments would be to focus on Q&A with the founders (or someone affiliated with the product) address the question. As a visitor I would like to easily be able to see which questions have been answered instead of scrolling around to piece together the conversation.

Certainly looking forward to seeing what you have planned for PH.

Not to take anything away from this young man (and Maker Studios) success here, but I thought it might be a good time to point out how YouTube math works. If his channel generates $4 million in ad revenue, Google/YouTube keeps about 45% and issues a check to Maker for the remaining $2.2m. Maker then takes another 10-30%.

Still a substantial sum in the end, but I felt the title may potentially be misleading.

Very much agree. Much more natural way to get additional information. I really like how Livefyre is doing something similar with Sidenotes: http://web.livefyre.com/streamhub/#liveSidenotes

They didn't lose $645 million in spending, it was a one time recognition of the stock they already allocated.

They also got rid of the person leading that deal and the Twitter Music app that they shut down. They appear to be taking a new approach that goes beyond what is trending.

Well Twitter made about $665 million last year, with much larger projections for this year. I would say that qualifies as "decent".

It still costs money to acquire new users. It's easy to think when something becomes a household name there is no need to keep spending to bring new users on. As with most social sites the bigger the network is the harder it is for competitors to come in and steal their position. Pinterest user base is still "only" around 50 million. Thats 5% the size of Facebook.

Additionally the markets are not treating tech stocks so well right now, this might last another three months, and it might last a year and a half. What you know for sure is that you don't want to go out and try to raise money when the market is really down. You'll be terribly diluted if you're even able to raise money at all. They get what you can now, because they don't know how long it will be until the IPO.

These are only a couple of the considerations, if they are planning an IPO very soon then there's a completely different motivation. Hope this helps.

You also basically described the movie The Game (with Michael Douglas). If you haven't seen it I suggest you check it out.

I always thought this was a cool idea. I'd imagine this couldn't effectively be done for less than a couple hundred thousand considering the number of people who would have to be working on this full time.

Amazon 2012: $61B revenues and $39M loss.

To say, net income may not be the best indicator of success for high growth tech companies. They reinvest every dollar to continue to spur growth.

This is a solid venture backed company that has been generating quite a bit of revenue for some time now. This exit will provide its investors with a solid return. Odd how little attention a company like this gets from the tech community.

Bernie Brenner, the guy who heads up their business development, wrote The Sumo Advantage which one of the best books I've read on BD. He very clearly identifies the role of BD and how it is distinctly different than sales. I'd recommend it for any startup looking to partner with large established businesses to spur growth.

I would actually argue that there are more top tier Stanford CS grads than there are startups with Snapchat's engagement numbers. The value of the student should be discounted more than the value of snapchat from a competition standpoint.

In either case the point was to illustrate that, all risks considered, snapchat is still worth a lot of money. I have yet to see anyone (HN commenters, tech press) argue about what their valuation should be, which seems like the reasonable follow up to "It should not be $3 billion".

We can agree that its not zero, then what basis can we use to agree that $3 billion is inaccurate?

Silicon Valley did fund some "hyperloops", look no further than Musk's other two big ideas (Space X & Tesla). Look for the few VCs that are non conventional thinkers themselves. The ones that discuss the distant future as though it is right around the corner or even happening now.

As an example watch any 10 minutes of this interview with Steve Jurvetson of DFJ. You'll see why he and Musk were a good fit: http://youtu.be/O2tK0Wl2F8w

To be clear, you wouldn't pay $100 to get half of his signing bonus at Facebook?

All of those factors (risks) have to be taken into consideration, and you price it as such. It's still a > zero figure.

Question: If you were to have a CS grad from Stanford offer you 50% of all of his income for the rest of his life. How much would you pay in one lump sum? $100? $1 million? Probably more… Point is, you would agree the number is not zero.

He doesn't have a job yet (and never had a job before), but by any measure everyone that knows him says he's extremely talented. And now he's even getting huge job offers from Google and Facebook.

Would you say that you wouldn't make that investment? Is he worthless cause he has an upcoming rent payment due and also has to feed himself?

Therin lies the problem. That is the fundamental conflict between the diversified vc and the concentrated entrepreneur. It is not a secret, in fact a lot of good VCs want entrepreneurs to have a very clear understanding of what the end goal is.

Mendelson touches on this in a post: http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2013/06/the-vc-bar...

I see a lot of the comments the thinking in the founders logic. But remember there is also likely a good deal of pressure from investors who, depending on circumstances, have quite a bit of say on if they approve a deal or not. It is not uncommon for founders to want to sell and the vc want to hold out to produce a better return.

Why is that? Economics of a venture fund. Say a VC recognizes this is likely to be the biggest winner in their fund. If I run a $400 million dollar fund and I am trying to return 3 times that to my investors that means that I have to make my investors $1.2 billion. Considering my fund only owns 10% of the company, a sale for $3 billy ain’t gonna cut it.

Yes, this would be one of the 30 investments I made from this fund, but I am only expecting 3 of those to really knock it out the ballpark. I have to extract all my returns from those three.

I certainly don’t know that this is the case for Snapchat, but it has been the case for some. While this may sound like it’s holding founders money hostage, this is the game they (hopefully) knew they were getting into when they took that first dollar. Best of luck to them, they are still very much killing it.

While I am a huge fan of Tesla, and Musk, I think your reasoning is a bit unsubstantiated. While most analysts who don't have their head in the sand would agree that Tesla is an awesome company and has years of explosive growth ahead, there has to be some numerical concept that helps you distinguish a good company from a good investment.

The key concern is all your points still apply if the stock price was $500, instead of $180. At that point would you still invest?

Another way to think of it: If I were to give you one lump sum for half of all of your future earnings (salaries, bonuses, gifts) what would a be a reasonable price that you would sell that to me for? You could be a very capable professional with a lot of earning potential but there is still an upper limit on what I should pay if I plan to come out profitable, correct?

Your perspective is correct, but the vast majority (99%) of new businesses in the economy will never raise money from a VC (and shouldn't).

Most VC portfolios are structured such that the expectation (at least at the time of investment) is that this company will be able to make up for ALL the inevitable losses I am going to take in the other companies I invest in. Well, not really that cynical, but in reality usually one or two companies in a fund are where all the profits come from, so you can understand why investors push each company to swing for the fences.

Key takeaway for entrepreneurs is just to know when a VC is right for your business and when it's not. The key factor here is how quickly you need to scale. For example most entrepreneurs don't have the goal of a nine figure exit for their business in the next several years, but some do.

Not all VCs invest this way. Here's a good read by Greycroft Partner Ian Sigalow that walks through the economics of how they invest and why: http://www.sigalow.com/2012/01/a-new-take-on-series-a

Pretty sure it was the Pebble Watch. Their largest, most publicized project was called in to question after repeated delays.

I think the subsequent changes (i.e. no renderings) made make the platform substantially better. But they still need to get away from that "presale" perception that the general public has.

The first few projects I backed were friends or just because I thought they were cool ideas that would be awesome in real life. Getting something in return was really, in its purest form, a 'perk'.

For clarification, the 6 page memo is not read aloud. Each person is provided a copy at the beginning of the meeting and the first 10-15 minutes of the meeting are completely silent.

This actually works pretty well because in the real world people usually only skim the info provided in advance of most meetings because they only need to "get the gist" of what's being said. This forces everyone to have a thorough understanding and promotes more thoughtful discussion.

I'd also say it's worth taking a look at the book Talent is Overrated. It explores HOW you practice, a step beyond the 10,000 hour rule. http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-World-Class-Performer...

I always met at Think and never really thought of it as a startup place, just one that is convenient. But now that you mention it I do run into all the startup folks there now. Good stuff, though they stopped serving lemonade :(

I think Boxee and Roku both have solid platforms and are very forward thinking about their respective ecosystems. The challenge is that video content producers are not there yet. Content producers are not their because adoption of these ecosystems have not yet reached critical mass.

At this point I think the entire industry vertical is more concerned with growing the pie rather than maximizing the slice taking their taking of it.

This tv ecosystem trend is happening, but right now it looks like the iOS App store in its infancy. Lots of potential. The difference was the App store rolled out to millions of existing phones at once. None of these platforms have that scale yet.

Actually, these are some really great articles. Thanks for sharing. I think the administration has been late on some or most issues but it appears that these issues aren't even on Romney's radar. I've been following the software patent issue and still believe Obama is better positioned to make the right long term decision.

Do you feel as though IP does not have any place in technology? Curious to here your take.

Dont know if I would agree with you about the of cycle dud candidate. I see your point, just seems like the polls show that this wont be a landslide. I think (thought?) Romney had a realistic chance at winning.

Thanks Seth for pointing out both of these articles. Read the SOPA one, about to read the others. Would you mind adding that to the comments on the original post as well? Would like to show some other valuable points to consider.

For the level of risk that seems about right. Remember an investor allocating funds to VC dos not have a financial objective to blow the stock market out the water, it's to create a risk adjusted return that is not highly correlated to the market. Unfortunately most VCs are unable to accomplish this (though I have little doubt USV has had that problem).

Also, to really calculate the return you should consider the method which VC funds call and return capital. It's not as though they just take the full amount on day one and return the gains (or losses) at the end of year 10. They have several transactions throughout the life of each fund.

Seems very feasible if they are positioning themselves to be acquired. With 40% of your workforce gone you no longer have a business, you just have a bunch of assets. I would be surprised if they are still and independent, publicly traded company by the end of 2012.

Unfortunate, they had a lot of smart people working for them, but the dual-ceo structure ensured they would never be decisive enough to take big risks on innovation.