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Comment by spitfire | Hacker News Reader

Bottom line:

(a) We're not in a bubble. We're in a revenue tsunami like nothing any of us have ever seen in our lifetimes.

Instagram didn't have a single dime of revenue. and the CEO basically waved away any thoughts of revenue when pointedly asked about it in an interview.

Facebook, who has 800M active, engaged users has only $4B in revenue. Is that what passes for a revenue tsunami these days? Guys, a revenue tsunami looks like double digit income growth quarter after quarter.

NB: Kudos to the CEO of instagram for making out like he did. But it's not an example to follow. Unless you like failure.

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I couldn't agree more. Apple, Google and Microsoft are revenue tsunamis. Instagram, Uber, Airbnb etc. may as well be operating in a different universe in comparison.

Microsoft revenues grew 15% over the past 4 years. Large company, yes, but hardly a quick moving power like a tsunami. Google grew 85% in the period. Stellar for a company of that size but tsunami? Depends who you ask. Apple grew 190%+ during that period. Tsunami? Hell yes

Uber, Airbnb, and other hot companies like Square, Dropbox, Box, and Fab are generating lots of revenue and (probably) all growing much, much faster than any of the companies listed above. Sure they have smaller bases and thus can grow at faster rates, but they are becoming quite big, quite quickly. Having that many companies growing so explosively doesn't happen so often. And that's not to mention the growth that Zynga and Facebook also are having. Kleiner Perkins said Zynga was their fastest growing company in history - and they backed Amazon and Google!

To be clear, I'm not talking about the bubble. Just pointing out that there are many companies in this current wave that have obscenely strong revenue growth (Instagram obviously not being one of them)

You mess up your argument by including Uber & AirBnB in that list, both of which make good and growing revenues.

I wouldn't class either as tsunamis and doubt they will ever be in the league of an Apple, Google or Microsoft.

You realize you just named 3 of the very largest companies the world has ever seen and all just a few decades old. That's a pretty high bar.

Yes I do, that's why they are called revenue tsunamis. I guess my issue is that I don't see why if a new online startup is managing to make some revenue, this suddenly means it is a "revenue tsunami". Comapred to Instagram ok, compared to Apple et al - no.

The revenue tsunami was a strange one for me as well. What exactly is he referring to? There are many things I could point out about the good financial aspects of seed fund startups but a current revenue tsunami is not something that personally comes to mind.

Could have made that point more clearly I guess. Zynga, Airbnb, Dropbox and OMGPop all have massive revenue growth. Instagram could have easily had massive revenue, they just--wisely it seems--decided to make filters free. Hipstamatic charged for filters, had a fraction of the user base and never hit real scale. If Hipstamatic makes $5,000 a day / $2M a year (which it might), then they made $2M a year on tens of thousands of users vs. Instagram's $0.00 a year on tens of millions of users.

Of course the best thing to have is tens of millions of users and revenue (Zynga, OMGPOP).

It's like business economics is flipped upside down in Silicon Valley. Social networks that make little or no revenue are valued higher than companies who do have revenue. Is earning money a stigma? It's as if you're better off not even trying to earn money, and just pretend that when you do try to monetize that money will magically flow into your bank account.

"It's as if you're better off not even trying to earn money,"

If you don't have anything good to say don't say anything at all.

Better to ignore revenue and be thought worthless, than to attempt to make money and remove all doubt.

(paraphrasing)

For those who aren't aware, this is an adaptation of a quote from Abraham Lincoln, which went "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."

I've also seen it attributed to Mark Twain as well.

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