The instant photo messaging service, Snapchat has been the main topic of discussions around the Internet for a few days ever since its’ 23-year-old co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel turned down a deal from Facebook, which offered “close to $3 billion or more” in cash to acquire Snapchat. Users of the photo messaging service were more than happy about this news, as the founders claim it values more than $3 billion.
According to Wall Street Journal, Facebook had approached Snapchat with a $1 billion offer first before refreshing the offer to more than $3 billion in “all-cash” just to end up rejected for the second time. This could have been Facebook’s biggest buy, since last year’s acquisition of the popular photo sharing app, Instagram for a reported $1 billion dollars.
Snapchat now boasts over 350 million photo shares per day. It’s ability to set a time limit to self-destruct a message is the most attractive feature of the messaging service. Co-founder Evan Spiegel is confident that these numbers will grow beyond limits in a few months, when he hopes to see a better deal next year. But, was it the wisest decision?
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Let’s take a trip down the memory lane and look back at some companies which made amazing career-changing decisions. First startup that comes to my mind is Digg, which turned down several deals including one from Google which offered $200 million, only to end up selling it to Betaworks for just $500k. Then there’s Facebook. Yahoo once offered $1 billion to acquire Facebook from CEO Mark Zuckerberg when he was only 22 years-old. Now, Facebook is valued at over $100 billion.
Evan Spiegel is certainly happy with his decision. And, he is smart enough to wait for a better deal since Snapchat already has its’ own unique user base that generates a pile of money for the young owner to pay his bills.
[Photo Credit: jdlasica- Flickr]
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