Snapchat to list after rejecting Facebook offer
EVAN Spiegel, the co-founder and chief of the billion-dollar app Snapchat, has said the company is planning an initial public offering (IPO).
“We need to IPO,” the 24-year-old told a tech conference, ruling out an acquisition by a larger company.
Spiegel did not divulge the time frame Snapchat is following to take the hugely popular app public, but said “we have a plan to do that”.
He was speaking on stage at Recode’s Code Conference in San Francisco.
Snapchat boasts millions of users – mainly aged under 30 – and a $15bn (£9.7bn) valuation. Spiegel previously turned down an offer of $3bn for the company from Facebook.
He said it was “more fun that way”, talking about remaining an independent company.
Despite Snapchat’s own sky-high valuation, Spiegel warned the tech bubble could be about to burst.
“I think that people are making riskier investments and … there will be a correction,” he said. “It’s definitely something we factor into our plans. If I knew exactly when, I could make a lot of money,” he added.
“At some point there won’t be any momentum investors left buying at higher prices, and the market begins to tumble,” he wrote in emails in 2013 that were obtained by the Wall Street Journal last year. “Maybe 10–20 per cent correction or something more significant, especially in tech stocks.”
In March this year Snapchat raised $200m of funding from Alibaba – a huge vote of confidence for the four-year-old app, which at the time had just introduced content-driven advertising features to generate revenue.