SnapChat Turns Down $3 Billion Offer From Facebook

Dr Herbert West writes about a reported $3 billion offer from Facebook that Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel turned down. "Snapchat, a rapidly growing messaging service, recently spurned an all-cash acquisition offer from Facebook for close to $3 billion or more, according to people briefed on the matter. The offer, and rebuff, came as Snapchat is being wooed by other investors and potential acquirers. Chinese e-commerce giant Tencent Holdings had offered to lead an investment that would value two-year-old Snapchat at $4 billion. Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s 23-year-old co-founder and CEO, will not likely consider an acquisition or an investment at least until early next year, the people briefed on the matter said. They said Spiegel is hoping Snapchat’s numbers – of users and messages – will grow enough by then to justify an even larger valuation, the people said."

Comments

And the bubble grows larger

[OverlordQ]

~nt~

Re:And the bubble grows larger

[somooeshidez90]

They should taken the offer before everything goes *pop*.

Re:And the bubble grows larger

[SpzToid]

It's ok. Evan Spiegel is 23 years old. He's got his whole life ahead of him. He'll bound to learn from this one way or the other. (And failure, should it happen, is good, right?)

Kudos for not selling out to Facebook! That took a lot of balls to walk away, leaving all that money on the table. The world is probably a better place for it. I still wish Skype hadn't been sold to Microsoft.

Re:And the bubble grows larger

[Dr_Barnowl]

Who says they don't? The client deletes the photos. What the server does with them is a trade secret.

Facebook may well have thought $3B an excellent deal to expand their social graph database with all the photos you DON'T post to Facebook because they are too private...

Re:And the bubble grows larger

[JaredOfEuropa]

I doubt that SnapChat will gain significantly more value in the future, FB (or other already-popular networks) can simply roll out a similar service and crush them. And the success of social apps like these is not due to any brilliant little invention, the founder's marketing savvy, or flawless execution. These are factors, but the biggest factors a luck and timing (which also involves a great deal of luck). I don't think Zuckerberg would have stumbled on a new grand success if he had sold out FB early on, and I doubt Spiegel will have another success despite the experience he's gained from this. At best he'll attach himself to some up-and-comer; his media exposure may add some value there.

Re:And the bubble grows larger

[gl4ss]

all we have about this is really just snapchat arranged rumours(non sec, non financial laws liable) about it - from a company that sooner or later needs a buyout because the company getting bought out IS THE BUSINESS PLAN. so either him or people who own shares in it arranged this leak - or even more likely they fabricated it. I can't see why facebook would really offer 3 billion for it(they have most of the snapchat users already too, so there's that as well).

now they can go around looking for investors - implying that they have a 3 billion valuation - without actually saying that they're worth 3 billion(which might get them into hot water, lying when trying to secure securities usually tends to be a crime..). they already laid it out that they're probably looking for some investment early next year, so they're already negotiating, for more likely something like another 70-100 million - which with a reasonable look at the company would be all the company is worth(0 revenue), so they're going to be using this to sell let's say 10% of the company for 100 million(which is a bargain if the company really was valued at 3 billion).

with their current business model it's just a question who is the sucker that gets to keep the money burning zero profiting service.

Re:And the bubble grows larger

[mcgrew]

Indeed, three BILLION dollars and he turned it down?? How fucking greedy can a human (and I use that term loosely) get? Jesus, I'd have taken the three billion, sent 2/3rds to help those poor fuckers in the Philippines and still had enough cash for me and everyone I know to live in luxury the rest of our lives.

I hope the stupid kid goes broke.

How's that tech bubble working out for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Zynga, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Skype, and the list keeps on growing.

Investors know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Re:How's that tech bubble working out for you?

[Mitreya]

Zynga, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Skype, and the list keeps on growing.

I think you forgot Facebook :)

Investors know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Big investors that got preferential price (and early access to all relevant information) made out just fine. The mere mortal investors might lose money, but that's a feature, not a bug.

Re:How's that tech bubble working out for you?

[afxgrin]

From what I can see, Snapchat has no revenue. They don't get anything, zero, ziltch - unless image EXIF data is worth something. No ads, no software sales (it's free!). Unless they've been saving on their servers every single pic/video sent from people's phones to later use for extortion I'd say they are pretty worthless besides a user base that's already installed on Facebook.

The user base would likely go into free fall if Facebook took them over anyway, because we absolutely know those guys would archive every single piece of information.

ads

[Anonymous Coward]

the minute they monetize Snapchat with ads kids will stop using it

fuck, give it to me!

[magic maverick]

I know that if I was offered 3 billion dollars for some fade chat program, I'd take it! Even if it was from arch-evil FaceBook. Of course, maybe they think they can get more. And more to the point, that 3 bil is not going just to one person, it's being spread out over the shareholders and vulture capitalists, as well as the founders (if they are still around). But still!

Re:fuck, give it to me!

[jrumney]

Vulture capitalists would never turn down 3 billion dollars. They may be vultures, but they know very well when to cash out.

Re:fuck, give it to me!

[girlintraining]

Vulture capitalists would never turn down 3 billion dollars. They may be vultures, but they know very well when to cash out.

You never accept the first offer. There's negotiation. It doesn't matter what the offer is for, or the conditions, etc. When you're selling, you don't take the first offer. Ever. Because once an offer's made, that's a signal that it's feeding time. Sharks do not hunt alone.

Re:fuck, give it to me!

[EdIII]

I dunno. There are limits to that kind of approach.

We are talking about $3 billion. With a fucking capital B. How much is Snapchat at now in total investment with the shareholders? If all parties are in for maybe $20 million, that $3 billion starts to look like one hell of a successful exit plan.

I would take the first offer in a split second if it was at a couple hundred times the initial investment. Take it, move on, innovate someplace else.

Unless you had some sort of ideological reason not to. Only thing I can think about is if I created a successful zero-knowledge service with very little competition I would keep it alive for those reasons. Snapchat does not qualify for that. It's a fad and they should know it.

Re:fuck, give it to me!

[aendeuryu]

This sounds a lot like the advice Groupon got.

They're ALL on crack.

[jcr]

When someone offers you $3B for a company with no revenues and a product that could be duplicated in a week, take the money and RUN.

FB must be brain-dead to offer that much, and Snapchat is insane to turn it down.

-jcr

Re:They're ALL on crack.

[aaronb1138]

Or Facebook knew they would decline the first offer out of hand, and is just baiting would-be competitors to blow giant piles of money on a boondoggle. Zuckerburg strikes me as that kind of brilliant and calculating. Even if they had taken the $3B offer, Facebook could easily have made the acquisition terms so onerous as to make it stillborn.

Re:They're ALL on crack.

[photonic]

With $3B at stake, that would be pretty risky poker play for Facebook. If Facebook knows it is a boondoggle, it is likely that SnapChat's owners know it too, so their best action would be to take the money and run.

FTFY

[jrumney]

Snapchat, a rapidly growing messaging service, recently spurned an all-cash acquisition offer from Facebook for close to $3 billion or more, according to people with a vested interest in the company's valuation.

Re:FTFY

[Shimbo]

Unfortunately, they made the written offer via Snapchat, so it disappeared after 10 seconds.

at long last..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. an honest company that says "sorry, we're aren't worth so much"

Valuation is completely skewed..

[spiffmastercow]

I really don't understand how the "new" tech companies command such a high price point for such worthless products. Somehow Twitter is worth more than Redhat, FB is worth more than MS, and Zynga is worth more than EA? I get that there is value in novelty, and that some of the older companies may not be innovating the way they used to, but how is it possible that something trivial like Snapchat is worth more than a couple mil?

Re:Valuation is completely skewed..

[EdIII]

Simple.

With rapidly declining advertising revenues in the traditional distribution channels due to a fundamental shift in the way people are consuming entertainment, there is a massive glut of advertising budgets and an absolute panic in the marketing douchebag asshole fucktard executives world.

Twitter provides massive amounts of data for marketers to masturbate over and determine just what is in our little pea brains at the moment and what we might buy. Value to marketing? HIGH.

Redhat makes operating systems. Value to marketing? LOW.

FB is the poster child for not just marketing data, but the destination for the attention deficit order generation to get their communication fix, consume entertainment, and progressively more and more, obtain news about what goes on in the world. Do I understand it? Not one fucking bit. Shoot me first. Is it valuable to marketing? Apparently extremely valuable. Every business out there is fumbling around with consultants and 3rd party vendors to get a FB presence up and running.

MS makes operating systems, office collaboration software, database systems, a beginning attempt at a phone system, and a complete failure in the entertainment market. Value to marketers? Moderate, and only in the form of crapware.

Zynga is valuable for the same reason as FB.

EA? I dunno about those assholes. Ever since most of those companies went full retard with DLC, DRM, and general stupidity I don't play video games from them anymore. I'm into the indie stuff out there. Surprising quality from most stuff Humble Bundle sells.

Re:Valuation is completely skewed..

[PCM2]

Somehow Twitter is worth more than Redhat, FB is worth more than MS, and Zynga is worth more than EA?

Errr... apparently Twitter IS worth more than Red Hat, but Zynga's market cap is less than half that of EA and Facebook's is less than half that of Microsoft.

The year 2000 called

[future assassin]

they want their bubble back as your offer sucked.

WTF has happened to the world. how the fuck can a chat service be worth 3 billion. You could equip every being in Africa with a generator, gas and the tools to create a new life with that much money,

Re:Ephemeral is a good word for this

[Zontar The Mindless]

I can't help recalling that a measly *1* billion would buy you the world's most popular open source database just 7 or so years ago...

SnapChat Roulette

[goombah99]

Images you can't forget but can't see after 30 seconds.

Re:SnapChat Roulette

[Anonymous Coward]

But contain pictures of people connected with the phone owner, GPS info, possible objects of interest to the person taking or receiving the pictures, possibilities of marketing campaigns with the best SnapChat evolving product X, etc... There's a lot you can do with it if you look beneath the surface. A small SnapChat app update lets them data mine everything in your phone.

My children are using it

[Anonymous Coward]

Never heard of SnapChat before

I've heard of it because my children are using it

It's basking in it's 15-minute worth of glory

If that guy isn't selling now, I don't think he will have a lot of time left before someone deflate that 3Billion price tag

Re:My children are using it

[Dogtanian]

I've heard of it because my children are using it It's basking in it's 15-minute worth of glory

I've heard of it, but never used it. I know that it's an app that lets you send images ("snaps") to others that appear on their phone for a number of seconds before allegedly disappearing irretrievably. (*) That's it. It sounds like a "tens of millions of dollars if it *really* takes off" business, not a $3bn one.

Yes, I appreciate that with these things, it's as much the established user base that's more important, but I don't see how this can have the all-encompassing network effect that will lock users in to the same extent as with Facebook itself. It's not like your social life is going to end if you stop using it (or have I missed something?) and it's a one trick pony that's vulnerable to becoming boring- and abandoned- by the notoriously fickle teenage demographic who are its primary users. What's stopping anyone else from doing something similar or better?

So, yeah. It's definitely not worth $3bn, and this is definitely "bubble" territory. The guy no doubt thinks he'll get more from other people- personally, if I was in his position, I'd take the money and run even if there was a possibility of $4bn... the possibility of the bubble bursting before you see that and the company losing 90% of its value is a real possibility.

Especially if the obvious hole in the deletion mechanism becomes more widely known and more widely exploited and/or a story breaks that the images *aren't* being deleted from Snapchat's servers after downloading as they claim and/or someone else has access to them, e.g. the NSA. While 14-year-olds sending underage nude pics of themselves to their girl/boyfriend won't be bothered about the legality, they might be more put off by the fact that they're out there permanently or being viewed by some middle-aged guy in a government agency. (The "old enough to be their Dad" bit being applicable here, not the government).

(*) Because we all know that once you've uploaded something to another user's device that's out of your control, there's no prospect of them getting round the auto-deletion, except where there is, and I heard of workarounds some time back.

Re:My children are using it

[Jason Levine]

One obvious workaround that I can think of: Screen capture. On my phone (Droid Bionic), pressing the Volume Down + Power button for a few seconds takes a photo of the screen no matter what app I'm in. Most other phones have a similar capability (though the actual method for this may vary). So if someone sent me a SnapChat photo, I could save a screenshot of it on my phone. While the original would "expire" and be unavailable, my screenshot version would remain for me to keep looking at or send to other people.

Re:My children are using it

[beerdragoon]

From what I understand, SnapChat will detect that you have done this and let the other person know you grabbed a screenshot of the image. While this won't stop you from having a copy of that particular image, it will warn the other person not to send you any new ones in the future.

Re:My children are using it

[ottothecow]

Also, they make it slightly difficult (but definitely not impossible). To view the snap, you must be touching the screen--so you have to hold that in place while you do the screenshot dance with your other fingers.

They also let you set the timer on the photo, so you could give someone a nice generous 10 seconds, or you could say they get to see it for 2. Some phones require a second or so of holding the buttons to get a screenshot, so if the image is only there for 2 seconds, you had better be really fast.

You also have to know you are going to want to save the photo. If most of the photos you receive are innocuous, are you going to be ready to do the screenshot dance? You only get one chance and it is only around for a max of 10 seconds.

The only reliable option is an app that grabs the unviewed images and stores them. These work since snapchat downloads the image before showing it to you...giving you plenty of time to find the barely obfuscated file before viewing it in snapchat and having it get deleted.

I've never bothered though. For the most part, I like snapchat because it doesn't clog up everything else with dumb pictures. A group MMS will send as a message (not data), can have a large filesize attachment, can take some time to load, and will be stored in your phone forever unless you delete it. For stupid little throwaway "snaps", it is kind of nice that they just go away when you are done.

Re: My children are using it

[iamhassi]

Just take a picture with another phone or camera: "dude Tiffany just sent me a snap chat let me borrow your phone before i look at it I'm going to take a picture so she doesn't know I have it!" But the teens dumb enough to send nude photos of themselves are the same ones not smart enough to know people are doing that. All it takes is one kid in a school figuring out to just take photos with another device and the entire school will stop using snapchat, making snapchat not even worth 3 million. It's a fad, it will be gone any day now

Pointcast Redux

[hirschma]

Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PointCast_(dotcom)

Reminds of the time when Yahoo turned down $47.5B

[linuxguy]

Reminds of the time when Yahoo turned down $47.5B from Microsoft in 2008. They have regretted it since.

They're trying to be the next Groupon!

[billstewart]

Google reportedly offered Groupon $6B and was turned down; the company's probably worth about $6 by now.

Facebook offered SnapChat $3B? As long as it's in cash, not Facebook stock, there's only one right thing to do, which is to take the money and run. (Or take the money and stick around, if that's the deal, but take the money. Do not play Go, Do not pass up $3B.

Re:They're trying to be the next Groupon!

[rodrigoandrade]

Groupon is worth US$6.86 billion right now. In hindsight, turning Google's offer down was a wise move.

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGRPN&ei=0KyEUrHVCMGUsgfcSA

But please don't let facts get in the way of your anti-capitalist parade.

When you're offered an obscene amount of money for your property, you don't just blurt out a Yes or No. You consult with lawyers, accountants, CFAs/CFPs, etc. before making a decision.

Re:They're trying to be the next Groupon!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because market cap is be-all and end-all metric of company's worth, especially when considering acquisition.

Look to Facebook and how come they were willing ..

[tyrione]

. to flood SnapChat with $3 Billion to get them out of the market and under their growing conglomeration. Believe it or not, these guys might be onto something that will knee cap Facebook, and they know it.

Re:So this must be the commercial advertisement

[Joining Yet Again]

You know how when someone commits murder for money and gets away with it you don't just say, "You just envy the murderer because you wouldn't have been able to pull it off"?

Well, same moral scenario here.

Some people - and I know it's hard for some others to believe - genuinely won't do something they believe to be morally reprehensible, no matter how much they might materially profit from it.

For example, I was introduced to bitcoins about three years ago, and it was suggested to me that I start generating some. I replied by saying that I saw no reason why I should be entitled to money just from getting in at the start of a Ponzi scheme. I did generate one or two out of curiosity anyway, but deleted them. I guess I have lost out on hundreds of thousands of dollars there, but do I envy bitcoin multimillionaires? Of course not. They're operating by their rules, and I'm operating by mine. My value system is (obviously) more important to me than theirs.

Am I saying I could have achieved what every billionaire has achieved, were it not for my self-righteousness? Of course not. I don't have the engineering talent of Hewlett and Packard, or Linus Torvalds. Do I envy these guys? Again, no. H&P were naturally brilliant, and Torvalds was excellent but also in exactly the right place at the right time. There's nothing I could have done to be them. The world's not fair and I accept that. These people just... are. They were/are in leadership positions, and it makes sense why.

Re:No Kidding

[Charliemopps]

They're buying the users, not the application. My guess is those users fit a demographic that Facebook is lacking in.

The 1990's have returned

[clovis]

A nearly worthless no-revenue software company gets a $3 billion offer? Sounds like the 1990's again.
I need to have a look at dumping all my tech stocks, hopefully _before_ the crash this time.

Perspective

[stealth_finger]

So $3 billion offer for a website/app, some paintings sell for $142 million, and people moaned about India spending $75 million on sending a rocket to fucking Mars. What the fuck is wrong with some people.

Obligatory movie quote

[pr0t0]

This reminds of a line in the movie, "Entrapment".

In this case, the line would be: What can you buy with $6.68 Billion that you can't buy with $6 Billion. It was dumb for Groupon not to sell out. Just as it was dumb for the Snapchat guys not to sell out.

When you're in billion dollar territory, you've made it. You can spend the rest of your life trying to grow a $3 Billion company into a $10 Billion company, but the odds and history are greatly stacked against you. You can invest and grow that money into the same target amount, all while spending your time on other pursuits. How much innovation is left in Snapchat? How much more work is there to do with it? It's a simple, single-purpose app that does one thing very well and that's what makes it successful. Once you start tacking on features, you start losing customers and momentum. It probably reached 80-85% of its utility right out of the gate.

Take the money and go invent something else. Or buy a basketball team. Or help bring an end to disease in a developing corner of the world. But don't waste your time and talents trying to milk one good idea for a few more bucks.

Re:So this must be the commercial advertisement

[rich_hudds]

I don't really see why selling to Facebook woulb be morally reprehensible.

Also, you have to consider what good things you could do with the money.

The hundreds of thousands of dollars you airily dismiss could have done a lot of good.