He gave a plausible and coherent explanation of Snapchat's strategy (spoiler: Tencent of the West). I think that Tencent's valuation is stretched and I think Snapchat is unlikely to succeed even if that is actually their goal... but it was interesting, anyway.
edit: hey, w1ntermute, thank you for that interesting response. Cognitively I think my brain wants a tidy explanation for them turning down the $3B, otherwise I can't make any sense of it whatsoever.
> He gave a plausible and coherent explanation of Snapchat's strategy
No, he doesn't. All he did was demonstrate his utter lack of understanding of East Asia.
East Asian cultures are high-context, meaning that when Tencent released non-messenger services (that could actually turn a profit), users were much more likely to use them because they were already familiar with the company and its existing messaging service. But this strategy does not work well in the low-context cultures of the West, where people are more comfortable with giving new companies and products a chance. Snapchat cannot expand into other verticals with the ease that Tencent did.
That's what people said about Asia-style free-to-play games, too: that they would never work in the West due to cultural differences. Turns out that was totally wrong.
No, you're actually making the mistake of conflating China with the rest of Asia. Japan, which also has a high-context culture, has paid upfront for games for decades. And it wasn't just that free-to-play games were popular in China first, it's that paid games could never turn a profit because people would pirate them. There's a huge difference between people not using a product and people using it without paying for it.
The primary reason why free-to-play games became popular in the West is because the $0.99 floor that Apple set for the App Store drove consumer psychology regarding app purchases, which made it difficult to turn a profit in any other way. Just take a look at Steam to see how much money is being made from non-freemium games.
The important aspect is that the "project" has millions of dollars in investment and employees. Thus, they are accountable to investors and employees who may care about what the public thinks.
