Monday, November 18, 2013

Barnum's Dictum: snapchat

This fish is a sucker.
If you want to get a close up look at how stupid America is, look no further than this, from snapchat's Wiki:

As of October 2012, Snapchat had not made any revenue.[7] Spiegel said in October 2012 that the Snapchat team was unwilling to be acquired.
As of February 2013, Snapchat confirmed a US$13.5 million Series A funding round led by Benchmark Capital, which valued the company between US$60 million and US$70 million. On June 24, 2013, the company's blog welcomed IVP as the lead investor from the Series B financing round, in which General Catalyst, Benchmark Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and SV Angel also participated.[22][23]
A mid-July media report valued the company at US$860 million.[24]
On November 14, 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported that Snapchat declined a cash offer from Facebook of US$3 billion to acquire the company.[25]
According to Om Malik, on November 15, 2013, Google offered $4B for the company but Evan Spiegel declined.[26]
          --source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat

The key line, of course, is the first: As of October 2012, Snapchat had not made any revenue. NOT profits, but ANY cash flow.

Then you take a look at their team; go ahead, search them, unless this is the far future and they're long gone by now and buried somewhere on Alexa along with the first round Net bubble burst circa 2000. But to this point I only have this to say: There's a REAL reason why we don't allow anyone to be president that's under 35.

"Irrational exuberance" is one thing. Not learning is quite another. Together, we're talking suckerland part two.

A while ago I was texting on this subject to a friend. I wound up like this:

here's the litmus test for all these whippersnapper start ups and "wantrepreneurs" that think they're so clever and evidently everyone else thinks so smart, innovative, cutting edge...; make their services paid and watch what happens. ha! most people confuse equity market valuation [or in this case, investor exuberance] with real value. the truth is the former is speculation. the latter is vaguely proven, if that. 

Ta da.