[nfbush]

Better a company that generates revenue than one that uses all it's money on growth and has billions $ negative. I hate this idea of a growth rate being "too slow", all it does is encourage monopolisation which is bad for people. Edit: spelling

[aianus]

Snapchat doesn't have earnings (they lost $514 million dollars in 2016) so they really need to demonstrate ongoing growth in either number of users or revenue per user.

[existencebox]

I'd honestly be curious to why this comment is being downvoted so much, as I've often found myself agreeing with this refrain.

To pre-answer the common rebuttal I get, that VCs are taking moonshots at the chance of a VERY HIGH return; I'd ask why not look at VC investments in the sense of a more traditional portfolio, where you'd have your growth stocks, your value stocks, etc. If I could find a vehicle that reliably gave 20% YOY I'd throw fistfulls of money at it.

So can someone enlighten me as to why this isn't a viable way of looking at VC investment?

[mikedouglas]

It's not a viable way to look at investing in ad companies. Advertising has historically been zero-sum (about 2% of the economy), and there's huge returns to scale (more data, bigger advertisers, etc). Unless your inventory is unique (which it isn't), you need reach (which is why TV is/was such a great platform). Look at Twitter, which is having a extremely difficult time w/ ads because of that lack of scale.

In ads, you want to be GOOG/FB, not TWTR.

[forgetsusername]

>id honestly be curious to why this comment is being downvoted so much

Because it confuses revenues and earnings? It defends Snap chat for not having "negative billions" when, in fact, it is has negative billions.