Rebirth of England

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 its users are extremely loyal..."

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 "disappearing messages" app. Snapchat is the first social application to launch the "disappearing messages" 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, Itter and LinkedIn almost completely dominated the social media field, and other social applications, including Google's own Google+ and Whatsapp, which it invested in, did not perform well.

At the time, Evan Spiegel, one of the founders of Snapchat, was studying product design at Stanford University. He believed that most social media services lacked a way for friends to communicate privately. Social media such as Itter provided an unprecedented platform for sharing and connecting, but the interactions on these platforms lacked the intimacy of interactions in the real world.

Under such circumstances, in July 2011, Evan Spiegel and his classmates launched the app, which was then named Picaboo, on the Appstore.

In fact, as for the Snapchat app, Barron had never used it in his previous life, so it was not him who first reminded Ivanta to invest in it. Instead, it was Ivanta who heard her secretary Hedda Kahn mention that her high school sister was recently addicted to a social app. After she immediately investigated, she decided to invest...

That was already 2013, so IC Capital missed out on Snapchat’s seed round.

But in February of that year, after Ivanta personally met with several founders of Snapchat, Snapchat's Series A financing was finalized.

In this round of financing, IC Capital valued Snapchat at $6000 million, invested $1500 million in it, and acquired a 25% stake in Snapchat.

Since then, Snapchat has grown at an astonishing rate.

Snapchat users send more than 6000 million photos every day, and more than 50 billion photos in total.

Incredibly, Snapchat still only had five full-time employees at the time.

Shortly after completing its Series A funding round, Snapchat hired five additional employees, bringing the company's total headcount to 10.

It was also with the support of IC Capital’s resources that Snapchat’s popularity began to soar, and Snapchat was vigorously promoted through the media and mobile operating system resources controlled by Ivanta.

IC Capital then continued to participate as the main investor in Snapchat's Series B and Series C financing in 2013, which brought its stake in Snapchat to nearly 40%, making it Snapchat's largest investor. The reason why it was able to obtain such a large shareholding was also related to the huge resources that IC Capital could provide to Snapchat.

You should know that as of now, in the social field alone, 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 are all associated with this investment company.

Their investment in Snapchat itself brought in traffic and received extensive media coverage. Snapchat was therefore seen as a "rising star", which saved Snapchat a lot of trouble. It should be noted that Snapchat's development speed was completely different before and after IC Capital's investment.

Although Snapchat currently has no clear plans for commercialization, it already has more than 3000 million daily active users, who upload more than 4 million photos per day on Snapchat, even more than the number of photos users upload to Woaw every day.

"Snapchat's users aged between 18 and 24 account for 45% of the total users, which is far ahead of all other social applications. This is completely different from Woaw's main user group. Although Google and Woaw are interested in acquiring Snapchat, with the highest bid exceeding US$30 billion, Snapchat's founding team also understands their advantages and prefers to develop independently."

Although IC Capital is also a major shareholder of Woaw, YouTube was originally acquired by Woaw after IC Capital made the initial investment.

However, Ivanta respects the founder's opinion more and will not put pressure on the other party in terms of acquisition.

Barron agrees with this. The reason why Snapchat can develop so quickly is that their "game play" attracts young people. Just as Ivanta said, in the age range of 18-24, Snapchat users account for as high as 45% of the total users, while the corresponding proportions of Itter and Google+ are 16%, 19% and 15% respectively...

Relatively speaking, young people prefer a "cool" way of playing.

However, although Barron ignored Snapchat at first, after Ivanta mentioned it, he remembered that the company's market value once reached 300 billion US dollars after it went public, but its subsequent development was not ideal, and its market value later fell to more than 80 billion US dollars.

Of course, if Woaw still acquires Snapchat for around US$30 billion now, it would still be a good deal.

But Baron does not think that after acquiring Instagram, which owns Chat and Instagram, three "celebrity social apps" that have a considerable market share, if Woaw acquires Snapchat, it will be tolerated by American regulators.

Not to mention that they have already begun to deploy in the short video field.

Therefore, it is a good choice for IC Capital to invest in Snapchat and appropriately reduce its holdings after its listing to obtain sufficient profits.

……

Not surprisingly, after Barron arrived in New York, Ivanta mentioned to him that her father had invited Barron to meet him at home.

This work is organized and uploaded by Liujiu Book Bar~~

Barron naturally understood the other party's thoughts. He was simply very interested in the general election two years later.

However, although Barron would give him strong support, he did not want to make such things too obvious in the open. After all, he was a British duke. If he was too deeply involved in such matters, even if Britain was a close ally of the United States, it would easily arouse doubts and even have a counterproductive effect.

Of course, it is not a big deal to just talk about these things privately at a family gathering.

But Barron will not personally support the event, nor will he be as high-profile as Musk later - at least Musk is a real American.

Anyway, even if Ivanta, as his daughter, came forward, she would be able to provide great support at that time, as she manages most of Barron's resources in the United States.

We were able to succeed under that situation then, and now that we have resources that are many times stronger, there shouldn't be much chance of failure.