There seems to be a lot of folks paying attention to Snapchat rejecting Facebook’s $3B offer.
Loosely speaking I’ve seen negative sentiments like
“This means Facebook is in trouble”
“I knew it, we are in a bubble”
“The Snapchat founders are nuts”
I don’t think it’s any of those things.
Consider Facebook’s stock is pretty high right now. They are flush with cash, profitable and can easily afford $3B for a leader in this new emerging market. And kudos to Zuck and co for taking bold moves. Their purchase of Instagram was extremely smart. This was a sensible offer, not one from desperation.
It is reasonable to assume that the Snapchat founders have already taken out millions of dollars in secondary sales of their stock. They are not risking losing it all, instead they are going for it.
I like this tweet by Aaron Levie. In less than 140 characters he summed it all up nicely.
No one rational would have turned down $3 billion for SnapChat. But, no one rational would have built SnapChat in the first place.
— Aaron Levie (@levie)
Snapchat’s future is up to them. They have to do a lot of things right. But they have an opportunity to build a big, important company.