Comment by 7Figures2Commas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 7Figures2Commas | Hacker News Reader

7Figures2Commas

Snapchat reportedly has minimal revenue, and is already discovering that advertisers aren't going to pony up $100 CPMs[1].

When Facebook went public, it was already generating more than a billion dollars in revenue a quarter. When Twitter went public, it was generating well over $100 million a quarter.

There is no doubt that Snapchat is an important platform and can generate revenue - perhaps significant amounts of it - but it has a long way to go before it can justify a public market valuation anywhere near its current private market valuation.

For comparison, Twitter is currently worth about $23 billion and generated more than $400 million in revenue last quarter.

Snapchat, in its current state, might be an interesting public market investment at a few billion. Above that, there are much better risk-reward opportunities.

[1] http://recode.net/2015/05/08/snapchat-lowered-its-ad-rates-f...

But snapchat has huge unlocked revenue potential. they can 'flip' a switch and instantly monetize those millions of users by launching an advertising platform similar to the one Google and Facebook has. Facebook deliberately waited years before generating meaningful revenue, so did Google.

You're confusing the subject of potential with the subject of valuation. If Snapchat goes public at a valuation anywhere near its current private market valuation, the revenue potential will be more than built in to the valuation, with minimal discount for risk I might add.

As a public equities investor, this is entirely unappealing unless you believe that Snapchat could deliver a multiple far in excess of comps like Facebook and Twitter and at a time when valuations are already so rich.

At this point in the cycle, I do not believe it would be wise to be chasing an issue that has retail investor appeal but minimal revenue. If you're bullish on social, you could do a lot worse than to invest in the company that has the best working model.

that's why it has the valuation it has. the valuation is pricing in the potential . People thought Google and Facebook would not deliver, but they did. Maybe snapchat will, but maybe not. I think they will.

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