[edoardo]

I published an article about Snapchat a couple of days ago. Yes, it is. Snapchat is not a "sustainable business", it's a trend or a bubble. People are using it now, because it's cool; but in a couple of years, there will be another trend and so on. Even if they are still alive after 5 years, the valuation is ridiculous. Entrepreneurship is not about money, but at some point you need to face this problem and have a solution in your pocket. They are worth $4B and they don't have a clue. I guess this is just another groupon. (http://greatpreneurs.com/startups-dilemma-trends-businesses/)

[dakrisht]

Totally.

It's how the wind blows these days in "tech". It's reminiscent of a bubble with all of these mobile apps calling themselves "companies" when most aren't even profitable. It reminds of the early 2000s when "how many eyeballs do you get monthly" was the question of the day.

Does Pinterest really need $400M+ in venture to operate? What are they doing over there? Advanced robotics with neural implants? Burn rate of $30M a month?

Utter bullshit.

Like I said before, VC's aren't dumb but they're also not very smart, most at least - they don't need to be. They flock to whatever's hot and popular (trendy) and invest. Their exit strategy is simple: a highly overvalued IPO where the public market will buy based on hype or an acquisition.

These unsustainable trends in extremely overvalued companies/apps will continue for a while, unfortunately.

Until the shit hits the fan and one of these giants of venture capital infusion tank.

Unfortunately, it's so much more than an issue of Snapchat being worthless, it's a large chunk of the tech community today being generally worthless by looking for the EASY WAY OUT - building some stupid app, getting 5M+ users for a few years of engagement and raising large rounds and cashing out. There's no intrinsic value of any kind in this.

It wasn't like this before the App Store.

There is still great technology being developed out there, but most people (and human nature in general) flocks to the easy way out, the replication factor, globalization, the art of copying something, or as Peter Thiel would say" "the 1 to n of globalization."

[nemothekid]

I'm unsure why you chose to pick on Pinterest. It seems to have a very real business model that is powered by very real and powerful engagement metrics. Pinterest could very well be as solid as facebook.

Why does Pinterest need $400M in venture to operate? Lets ask ourselves why a glorified status feed, Twitter, needs over 100 engineers. Why does Twitter need to rewrite almost every aspect of real-time stream processing? Because there is huge value there, and at that scale I'm sure the financials look a lot different from your weekend web app.

Back to snapchat, this tech doomsday bubble, everyone is parrotting is a single lone horse in what are many successful and sustainable companies such as DropBox, Uber, RocketFuel and Square. And its not like snapchat is an imaginary app. Snapchat shares over 350M photos a day, people aren't lining up and seeing snapchat success overnight.

I'm having trouble seeing that the current tech industry is in a "bubble" when the only evidence for it is that SnapChat, with an incredibly huge userbase, is raising ~3B. For whatever reason the other 39 "unicorn" companies don't count.

[dakrisht]

Maybe because they're unprofitable? Maybe because what's the point of pinning random items on a virtual pin board? Maybe because what's the need for $500M in capital for a website? Maybe because what good does Pinterest do for anyone or anything aside from waste time?

In Twitter's defense, while they might not "need" 100 engineers to rewrite their code, they are certainly infinitely more than just a glorified status feed.

Twitter has allowed millions of people across the globe to share insight into what is happening in their back yard. While for us Americans, this might include the dog taking a shit on a Macbook, in the Middle East it's far different. Twitter and FB have been responsible for a lot of insight and uprisings, especially during the Arab Spring.

Additionally, Twitter is an innovation in communications. Just like Skype is, but perhaps less so or just differently. Marc Andreessen said it perfectly: "Twitter is instant global public messaging - for free." That has some value vs. pinning my dress on a pin board.

Point is - SnapChat is worthless, Pinterest is less worthless but still has little value. Sure, advertisers and brands flock to the net since their old-school TV/print models are being replaced by technology - but very few "apps" are companies/businesses. And young users, particularly teens are very prone to jump ship like fleas off a dog when the "latest and greatest" comes about. Do you see SnapChat existing in 10 years? I don't think so. Pinterest? There will be something newer. FB? Twitter? Dropbox? Yeap, they'll still be around. And probably doing better than ever.

[gojomo]

People said the same about Facebook & Twitter. People thought Google overpaid for YouTube – now it's clear it would have been a steal at twice the price.

You mention Groupon. I've knocked Groupon a lot, but it's still got a public-market-cap of $7B, more than the Google buyout offer people said they were insane to reject.