Snapchat

[Suradit69]

Interesting decision made by some 23 year old who was offered up to $4 billion for a business with no revenue, no profit and that depends on remaining in favor with teenagers.

Meet the 23-Year-Old Kid Who Turned Down $3 Billion for Snapchat

Two years ago, Evan Spiegel was just another beer-soaked frat boy obsessing over sex and dot.com riches. This week, the 23-year-old co-founder of Snapchat was offered big -- big -- money for the tiny smartphone app company he created.

Instead of dancing into the sunset, Spiegel did the unthinkable, turning down a $3 billion offer from Facebook (FB) and then a $4 billion bid from Google (GOOG). A college dropout running a company with almost no assets, no revenue and a mountain of legal problems, Spiegel is betting Snapchat can transcend the stigma of the "next big thing" and become an industry unto its own.

There's no going back now. History will paint Evan Spiegel as either one of the most brilliant entrepreneurs ever, or a delusional fool.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/meet-the-23-year-old-kid-who-turned-down--3-billion-for-snapchat-010309114.html

Had it been me, I think I would have taken either the $3 billion or $4 billion and been out the door.

[BKKdreaming]

I think he is smart , they will bid more and he can pick who he works for......

because that is part of the deal , he needs to keep running the company

and look at all the free press they got .......... and the more press they will get when he decides who to "marry"

[Suradit69]

I think he is smart , they will bid more and he can pick who he works for......

because that is part of the deal , he needs to keep running the company

and look at all the free press they got .......... and the more press they will get when he decides who to "marry"

Well you may be right, but remember what happened to Jerry Wang when he turned down the $45 billion offer from Microsoft for Yahoo.

Also, as someone on CNBC suggested, Zuckerberg and Facebook could just develop a similar service in a few months and totally undermine SnapChat. And, since Snapchat has no way to gather info on its users and their demographic is not that flush with cash, there's some serious questions on how it's going to generate revenue.

If you have $4 billion in your pocket that automatically gives you a lot of freedom to do pretty much whatever you feel like doing ... for the rest of your life.

I hope he made a good decision. I can't imagine what it would be like to see this go up in a cloud of smoke and spend the rest of his life thinking about what he blew.

[lomatopo]

Trust me, "someone" is collecting, analyzing, reviewing and archiving "Snaps".

Suspect his investors had at least a little input to the decision?

Evan Spiegel was highlighted in this New Yorker article from April 30, 2012 by Ken Auletta, "Get Rich U", about Stanford...some might enjoy it

On a sunny day in February, Evan Spiegel had an appointment with Wendell and Nasr to seek their advice. A lean mechanical-engineering senior from Los Angeles, in a cardigan, T-shirt, and jeans, Spiegel wanted to describe the mobile-phone application, called Snapchat, that he and a fraternity brother had designed. The idea came to him when a friend said, “I wish these photos I am sending this girl would disappear.” As Spiegel and his partner conceived it, the app would allow users to avoid making youthful indiscretions a matter of digital permanence. You could take pictures on a mobile device and share them, and after ten seconds the images would disappear.

ANNALS OF HIGHER EDUCATION

GET RICH U.

There are no walls between Stanford and Silicon Valley. Should there be?

BY KEN AULETTA

APRIL 30, 2012

Stanford University is so startlingly paradisial, so fragrant and sunny, it’s as if you could eat from the trees and live happily forever. Students ride their bikes through manicured quads, past blooming flowers and statues by Rodin, to buildings named for benefactors like Gates, Hewlett, and Packard. Everyone seems happy, though there is a well-known phenomenon called the “Stanford duck syndrome”: students seem cheerful, but all the while they are furiously paddling their legs to stay afloat. What they are generally paddling toward are careers of the sort that could get their names on those buildings. The campus has its jocks, stoners, and poets, but what it is famous for are budding entrepreneurs, engineers, and computer aces hoping to make their fortune in one crevasse or another of Silicon Valley.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/30/120430fa_fact_auletta?currentPage=all

Edited November 18, 2013 by lomatopo

[Chicog]

I think Justin Bieber's new "selfie" app will probably put him out of business, all those prepubescent screaming kids will use it just because their fellow mong has his name on it.

[Suradit69]

I think he is smart , they will bid more and he can pick who he works for......

because that is part of the deal , he needs to keep running the company

and look at all the free press they got .......... and the more press they will get when he decides who to "marry"

Oops. Can almost feel that $4 billion dollar offer evaporating into a moderately interesting historical footnote.

Oh well, maybe they can come up with another $4 billion idea and refuse to sell it.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook Inc is developing its own video-chat app, known internally as Slingshot, after its failed attempt to acquire mobile messaging startup Snapchat, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-developing-video-chat-app-190554687.html

Edited May 19, 2014 by Suradit69

[Suradit69]

Snapchat's Possibly Ghastly Mistake In Rebuffing Facebook; Here Comes Slingshot

The Financial Times is reporting that Facebook is developing a Snapchat lookalike under the name of Slingshot. Something which leads to the thought that perhaps Snapchat made a ghastly mistake in rebuffing Facebook’s bid of $3 billion for the company. Our economic point here being that if you’ve got something that is easily replicable then if someone offers you $3 billion for it then perhaps you had better take the offer?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/05/19/snapchats-possibly-ghastly-mistake-in-rebuffing-facebook-here-comes-slingshot/?partner=yahootix

[Carmine6]

Big mistake. Who else will offer anything that high? Only a handful of companies would be willing to spend something like that on snapchat, and he turned down the two who have the ability to make expensive acquisitions without worrying that it makes sense.

[negreanu]

Looks like a error to me.....