Episode 32: The Snap Inc. IPO

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Venturecapital, Ma, Investing, Acquisitions, Startups, Vc, Investment, Business, Technology

4.8 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2017

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Snap! Acquired is live on the scene reporting from the "Super Bowl" of 2017 tech events: Snap Inc's hugely anticipated (and just plain huge) IPO. What does the future hold for this plucky “camera company”? Will Snap's IPO endure as tech's most important picture-frame since the 2012 debut of Facebook, or is it destined to fade as just another snapshot? We debate!

Sponsors:
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta

Statsig: bit.ly/statsigacquired
Modern Treasury: https://bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury

Topics covered include:

Reference to our previous Acquired episode on Snap covering Facebook’s failed attempt to acquire the company in 2013, which goes deep on Snap’s origins and early history
Snap’s busy years since: launching Discover, Lenses, Geofilters, new Chat, Memories, an ads API, acquiring Bitmoji, and, of course, debuting Spectacles
The incredible document that is Snap's S-1 filing (read starting from the “BUSINESS” section on p.93)
Snap Inc’s “unique” voting structure
Evan Spiegel’s “CEO Award” bonus for successfully completing an IPO: an extra 3.0% of the company worth more than $600M
Snap’s IPO pricing, first day of trading “pop”, and momentum carried into day two
Introducing a new show section (for IPOs): Narratives!
- Snap is a “camera company"
- Snap's opportunity is winning television ad dollars
- Snap is a cult of the “product genius”
- Snap has a growth problem… and its name is Instagram (Stories)
- Snap has a cost problem: the (first?) gross margin negative IPO
- Wall Street to Evan: “we trust you… for now"
Chris Sacca’s biggest email fail of 2012
…And of course all the classics from the Acquired canon: waves, moats, flywheels, network effects, starting small and more!

The Carve Out:

Ben: The Bill Simmons Podcast with Ben Thompson
David: The Art of War, also Evan Spiegel’s Carve Out for 2013 :)

Transcript

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0:00.0	People misused the crap out of literally, and they're like, oh, he literally had him eating out of his hand.
0:05.6	It's like, no, he didn't, he figuratively had him eating out of his hand.
0:07.9	But last year, the whatever Marion Webster added an additional definition to literally to mean figuratively.
0:15.6	So now it literally means that sum total of everything that it means and everything that
0:18.6	it doesn't mean. Welcome to episode 32 of Acquired, the podcast where we talk about technology acquisitions and
0:36.5	IPOs.
0:37.5	I'm Ben Gilbert.
0:38.5	I'm David Rosenthal.
0:40.3	And we are your hosts.
0:42.4	Today's episode is the Super Bowl for our world, the Snapchat IPO.
0:47.0	It's been long awaited, highly speculated,
0:50.0	and everybody's got an opinion,
0:52.0	and they are not all the same.
0:54.0	So we are recording right now on Friday, March 3rd, exactly 21 hours after trading originally started.
1:02.0	Trading is underway for day. hours after trading originally started.
1:03.4	Trading is underway for day two and hopefully we should be able to get this out to you guys by
1:09.8	probably tomorrow over the weekend and get some pseudo real-time discussion going here on
1:16.4	Snapchat.
1:17.4	All right, listeners, our sponsor is one of our favorite companies, Vanta, and we have something very new from them to share.
1:24.8	Of course you know vanta enables companies to generate more revenue by getting their compliance
1:29.4	certifications that's sock 2, ISO 2701.
1:33.0	But the thing that we want to share now is,
	...

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