David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Cool. So listeners, we should again clarify that we are grading on the criteria of what will this move allow them to do. Like was the IPO a good move and did the idea of doing this IPO, number one, was it well executed. Number two, does it put them in a good position. And so I have to set aside a lot of my feelings of the company in general. Like if I feel like they’re set up for success and they’re not way ahead of their skiz in terms of the… well, actually I guess they’re related because the fact that they’ve got a market cap that is so ahead of revenue is totally tied into this. But I guess the point I'm making is, if they were going to IPO and they needed to IPO, they did it extremely well. I am an A on execution on this thing, so far a day in, and their ability to raise the capital that they fight or flight, do or die, needed to raise and do it at least so far really well. I think that’s an A with like a ridiculous amount of variance. I thought about, David and I were talking about before the show like should we even grade it. I think that it’s too early to tell but an A on execution, an A on what it sets them up to do in the future, staying nimble, potentially making interesting acquisitions. I don’t know actually how this will help them grow into new markets. I think that’s still the biggest scariest thing for me. But in terms of how to go raise money and the way that that best sets them up for success, this is an A. I think the parallels to our Facebook IPO episode are just so great right now are so perfect and so apt. We graded the Facebook IPO and I think we gave it two grades – a grade for the actual IPO itself and then a grade for how that event influenced the trajectory of the company over time. And the IPO was terrible but what we learned from that story was that experience really made Facebook what it is today kind of drove them to much further greatness. I think I completely agree with you, like this IPO was brilliantly executed by Snap. They told their story so well and positioned themselves perfectly. One need only look at how the performance has gone over the last two days, granted it’s still very early but versus Facebook’s first two days. But the question and the real grade that matters, we’re going to have to come back for at least round 3, it not 4 and 5 down the road on this one. I totally agree. I almost feel silly for giving it an A. Like there’s just so much variance and so much we don’t know.…

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