I really hope Snap's struggles as a public company don't effect other "Unicorns" going public. Judging from Spotify's weird IPO filing I think other companies are getting spooked.
Me too, but for a different reason. I feel like many privately held unicorns aren't really worth as much as their last VC investment would imply. If we get more of these companies publicly traded then we can see how much they are really worth, bringing a much needed correction to the tech startup investment scene. It's starting to look like the year 2000, but instead of a dot com bubble we have an "Uber for x" bubble and a couple other templates that get way too much investment money.
I hope it does. Snap was clearly overvalued to an absurd level. If things like this don’t make investors more discerning, then you’ve got the workings of a bubble on your hands.
People said that about Facebook as well and yet now its super profitable.
Not disagreeing with what you say; I would be very interested in a side by side analysis of FB and SNAP to see why one succeeded and one is struggling.
Perhaps one main reason is simply that FB is aggressively trying to kill SNAP whereas FB itself didn't have that kind of a determined opponent.
They're not really comparable when you look at the numbers. Facebook had 500 million active users, a steadily growing user base (1 billion was projected within a year at the time of the IPO), and a clear monetisation strategy.
Snap had 150 million active users, most importantly it's growth was seriously stunted, and it's monetisation strategy was rather 2 dimensional.
Facebook IPO'd at around $100 billion, Snap IPO'd at $20 billion, and it got very close to $30 billion in the trading immediately after. However nothing about it's numbers should justify that. Investors get seduced by the promise of a SaaS revenue hockey stick, and I hope people learn the lessons of Snap before they buy into future hype IPOs so easily.
