Saucy selfie app Snapchat hits $800m valuation as VCs chuck cash around

Risqué photo-sharing app Snapchat has convinced VCs its saucy-selfie-sending service can provide serious returns for their $60m investment in its latest funding round, led by venture capital company IVP. The app firm said on its blog that it has also attracted Sony's US chief exec Michael Lynton to its board, after the deal …

[Code Monkey]

$800m for a load of pictures of winkles? The world's gone mad!

[lglethal]

Agreed...

I cannot understand this... The may have a huge following with "Da Yoof" but "Da Yoof" are also the first to jump ship if something starts trying to charge them money. So I'd love to hear how they are going to "monetize" this fickle audience...

[Ru]

Re: Agreed...

So I'd love to hear how they are going to "monetize" this fickle audience...

Blackmail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Agreed...

I consider myself on the upper edge of "da yoof", and even worse, I think this app has an extremely short lived novelty value - it's the sort of thing you get excited about, coolest thing ever, then a week later move onto something else and uninstall.

I've kept it on my phone, and my mates have come and gone on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Agreed...

"I've kept it on my phone, and my mates have come and gone on it."

You should make them stand further away when they look at the pictures.

[El Presidente]

Investors

Most of the money is probably raised off the back so called 'mom and pop' investors being sold junk stock via secondary pump and dump boiler room call centres.

[Steven Raith]

"It’s no secret that Snapchat has yet to turn on its monetisation engine."

As it's snapchat we're talking about, I misread that as 'molestation engine' and it didn't seem out of place.

Steven R

[SteveK]

Is this valuation before or after yesterday's discovery that IOS7 removes some functionality that their app relies on to prevent screenshots being taken of images...?

[g e]

What an utter load of bollocks.

Literally, most likely.

Fair play though, if they manage to stiff some rich idiot investors for a bundle of cash, it does seem to be like shooting plutocrats fish in a barrel

[Fenwick]

Re: What an utter load of bollocks.

Those idiot investors are probably our highly paid pension fund managers, (when it floats).

[TeeCee]

"Funding leader IVP has published a list of ten reasons why the app is worth it."

I have read them and will summarise, so you don't have to:

1) It's something to do with mobile stuff and mobile stuff is really, really big right now.

2) They had a really impressive powerpoint slide with a graph and long words on it.

3) It's also something to do with pictures and pictures are really, really big right now. Also, these are mobile pictures (see 1).

4) The yoof like it and those blokes in suits who invest in shit like it too. This is quite clever as they don't usually like the same things.

5) It's got "entrepreneurs" and "vision" behind it. We need those words for a house in wankword bingo.

6) Other people with pots of cash have already pissed a big stain on its wall. We can bleat with the best of them.

7) It's something to do with "social networking", which is really, really big right now. And pictures. And mobile. That's like having three aces in poker......right?

8) Someone else started something else fairly close by and that was hugely successful. One of the lads looked at a map, they're less than an inch apart on it and everyone knows that success is actually a contagious disease.

9) They have clever people. They must be clever, 'cos they work in a place where you can see girls in bikinis on the beach through the window. We work in a dingy office in a city and we're kicking ourselves for being so fucking stupid.

10) They said they were only taking money off carefully chosen people. This made us feel very special. Almost as special as that nice lawyer from Lagos who personally chose us to..........

[monkeyfish]

It’s no secret that Snapchat has yet to turn on its monetisation engine.

¡Bong!

...Oh wait

[jungle_jim]

Snapchat

So far I have used it to send pictures of me having a shit to my mates.

There has to be some money in that.

[Cliff]

Did we learn nothing?!

Remember the Dotcomboomandbust 1.0?? Overvaluations based on popularity and the number of users means some muppets lose their shirts. Marconi used to be a real company before they lost a mint, BT used to make £100/second profit then lost a packet. Murdoch took a severe ball-kick on MySpace, Facebook IPO proved clearly that overvaluation is still rife in the psyche.

$800M for a load of running costs and no revenue model to speak of, you guys must be f'ing nuts.

[monkeyfish]

Re: Did we learn nothing?!

To be fair, the people who sold those companies made a ton of money. It's just the people who bought them that didn't.

[Scarborough Dave]

I use Snapchat and it is very useful

Not for indecent images, but sending messages to colleagues and my kids that don't have to be permanent - so sort of another version of simple verbal communication, such as messy image of bedroom with message of "Tidy room please!"

The ability to mix image and text simply is great.

Image of server with lights on and text "Up and running! :)"

Much easier than using most other systems for this quick mix of visual (even movie) and text messaging.

[lglethal]

Re: I use Snapchat and it is very useful

Alright Dave, I'll bite...

Will you pay for it when the inevitable price tag gets attached?

[Scarborough Dave]

Re: I use Snapchat and it is very useful

Errh! No we use it because it is free and I personally always ignore the adverts on apps anyway.

I'll just find something else from another upstart offering free services in order to build market share before being sold to a VC fund - using other people money.

[frank ly]

Re: I use Snapchat and it is very useful

Evernote's Skitch does this with some text and fancy graphics added if you want them and you send by ordinary e-mail.

[Scarborough Dave]

Re: I use Snapchat and it is very useful

Evernote looks interesting, Thanks!