Chapter 994 Snapchat
“Yes, Snapchat is about to launch a chat function. According to surveys, Snapchat is currently the most popular among young people, especially high school students, and user loyalty is extremely high...”
After arriving in New York, Barron talked to Ivanta about another project invested by IC Capital, a social application called Snapchat.
Many people may not know much about Snapchat, but everyone should have used the "burn after reading" application, and Snapchat was the first social application to launch the "burn after reading" function - —It is a social application based on photo sharing. It allows users to send pictures, videos and other content and set a certain viewing time. Once the set time is exceeded, the content will be automatically deleted.
Snapchat was founded in 2011. At that time, Woaw, Twitter and LinkedIn had almost completely dominated the social media field. Other social applications, including Google’s own Google+ and its investment in Whatsapp, did not perform well. .
Evan Spiegel, one of the founders of Snapchat, was studying product design at Stanford University at the time. He believed that most social media services lacked a way for friends to communicate privately - social media such as Woaw and Twitter provided An unprecedented platform for sharing and connecting, but interactions on these platforms lack the intimacy of real-world interactions.
Under such circumstances, in July 2011, Evan Spiegel and his classmates launched the application, which was still named Picaboo on the Appstore.
In fact, as for the Snapchat app, because Barron had never used it in his previous life, it was not him who initially reminded Ivanta to invest, but Ivanta who listened to it once. When her secretary Hedda Kahn mentioned that her high school sister was recently addicted to a social networking app, she immediately conducted an investigation and decided to invest...
It was already 2013, Therefore, IC Capital missed out on Snapchat’s seed round of financing.
But in February of that year, after Ivanta personally interviewed several founders of Snapchat, Snapchat’s Series A financing was finalized.
In this financing, IC Capital valued Snapchat at US$60 million, invested US$15 million in it, and obtained 25% of Snapchat’s shares.
Since then, Snapchat has grown at an astonishing rate.
Snapchat users send more than 60 million photos every day, and more than 5 billion photos in total.
Incredibly, Snapchat’s operations team at the time still only had 5 full-time employees.
Shortly after closing its Series A round of funding, Snapchat hired five more employees, bringing the company’s total number of employees to 10.
Also with the support of IC Capital's resources, Snapchat's popularity began to soar. Through Ivanta's control of media, mobile operating systems and other resources, Snapchat was vigorously promoted.
Next, IC Capital also served as the main investor and continued to participate in Snapchat’s Series B and Series C financings in 2013, bringing its stake in Snapchat to close to 40%. %, becoming the largest investor in Snapchat - the reason why it can obtain such a large shareholding is also related to the huge resources that IC Capital can provide to Snapchat.
You must know that as of now, only in the social field, IC Capital is already one of the major shareholders of Woaw. It has also invested in Twitter and Linkin, the most well-known applications in the social media field, and has contacted this investment company. together.
Their investment in Snapchat itself brought traffic and received strong coverage from the media. As a result, Snapchat was regarded as a "rising star", which has caused Snapchat to lose a lot of money. Road, you must know that before IC Capital invested, and after the investment, the development speed of Snapchat was completely different.
Although Snapchat currently has no clear plans for commercialization, it already has more than 30 million daily active users, and these users upload more than 400 million photos on Snapchat every day, even more than The number of photos users upload to Woaw every day.
“Snapchat’s users in the 18-24 age range account for 45% of the total users. This proportion is much ahead of all other social applications. This is completely different from Woaw’s main user group, although both Google and Woaw Interested in acquiring Snapchat, highest bid It has exceeded US$3 billion, but the founding team of Snapchat also understands their advantages and prefers to develop independently. "Although IC Capital is also the major shareholder of Woaw, YouTube was originally invested by IC Capital. Acquired by Woaw.
However, Ivanta still respects the founder's opinions more and will not put pressure on the other party in terms of acquisitions.
Barron also agreed with this. The reason why Snapchat can develop rapidly is because their "game play" attracts young people. As Ivanta said, people aged 18-24 are In one age range, Snapchat users account for 45% of the total users, while the corresponding proportions of Woaw, Twitter and Google+ are 16%, 19% and 15% respectively...
Relatively speaking, young people are more I like the "cool" gameplay.
However, although Barron initially ignored Snapchat, after Ivanta mentioned it, he also remembered that after the company went public, its market value was as high as 30 billion U.S. dollars, but its subsequent development was not very ideal. The market value has dropped to more than 8 billion US dollars.
Of course, if Woaw still acquires Snapchat for about US$3 billion, it will be a good deal.
But Barron does not think that after acquiring Instagram, and owning Woaw, WoawChat and Instagram, three "celebrity social apps" that occupy a considerable market share, if Woaw then acquires Snapchat, it will have a negative impact on the United States. From the perspective of regulators, this is something that can be tolerated.
Not to mention that they have already begun to expand into the field of short videos.
Therefore, it is also a good choice for IC Capital to invest in Snapchat and appropriately reduce its holdings after its listing to obtain sufficient profits.
...
As expected, after Barron came to New York, Ivanta mentioned to him that her father invited Barron to meet at his home.
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In this regard, Barron naturally understood the other party's thoughts, and it was nothing more than a great interest in the general election two years later.
However, although Barron will also give him strong support, he does not want to make this kind of thing too obvious. After all, his identity is a British Duke, and it is too in-depth. When it comes to this kind of thing, even though Britain is a close ally of the United States, it is very easy to raise doubts and even be counterproductive.
Of course, just attending family gatherings to discuss these matters privately is irrelevant.
But when the time comes, Barron will not stand up personally, let alone be as high-profile as Musk later - at least Musk is a serious American.
Anyway, even if Ivanta, as his daughter, comes forward, and she manages most of Barron's resources in the United States, it will be enough to provide super help at that time.
At that time, we were able to succeed in that situation. Now that we have resources that are many times more powerful, there should not be much possibility of failure.
(End of this chapter)