
Twitter Raises $35 Million Series C From Benchmark and IVP, Others - zaveri
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/13/twitter-raises-third-round-of-funding-from-benchmark-and-ivp/
======
josefresco
I thought VC money was funding to build your idea before you had enough
revenue from your users. Twitter is built, has millions of users and still
need funding to continue? When is the honeymoon over?

Apparently never for the chosen few.

~~~
axod
You can't really rely on VC money forever, at some point someone will actually
want a business model.

IMHO I'd be really surprised if anyone buys twitter, but who knows. If someone
does, it'll probably be another VC backed site with no business model either.

~~~
drusenko
You understand that with a 250M valuation, the sale is going to have to be at
500M minimum. What "VC backed site with no business model either" is going to
be able to afford that?

~~~
vicaya
Don't know where do you get that understanding from. Google's current market
cap is 112B, its total revenue (2008) is 21B. It used to be that price/sale
ratio is 10 for startups, which means they need 25M revenue to be valued at
250M. Even if P/S is massively compressed these days, they still only need
about 50M to worth that valuation. 50M sale for twitter given the usage is
definitely feasible.

------
fallentimes
I wonder how much equity the founders have now.

~~~
blader
About 15% less than they had before this round.

~~~
bkbleikamp
But still enough to get rich...again.

------
vaksel
just goes to show, that its much easier raising cash when you don't need it

~~~
jacquesm
When you're spending money like there is no tomorrow and you still have to
really find your business model I don't think that qualifies as being in a
state where you don't need external cash. Twitter needs it worse than a junkie
needs a fix, without external money flowing in they would probably not last
another 6 months.

------
sachinag
BREAKING: Twitter files to become a bank holding company, in line to receive
TARP funds. MORE TO COME /siren

------
tdavis
Just when I thought it couldn't become any more ludicrous...

~~~
agotterer
What are they going to spend this money on?

~~~
misuba
My guess is that they aren't, by and large. This is a recession-insurance
round, to make sure they have all the runway they need even if things get so
fucked that their first shots at revenue generation don't take.

~~~
agotterer
Fair enough... But what have they spent any money on thus far? They have a
small team and a bunch of servers. I'm having trouble placing the need for
this amount of money plus the other rounds.

~~~
agotterer
To follow up... According to their crunchbase page they have raised $55M.
Their website says they have 33 employees (more then I thought).

------
johnrob
For all the comments about twitter being a money burning machine, you have to
admit they are in many ways "upstream of revenue"
(<http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html> \- second paragraph under examples).
They have a lot of users. That's only half the equation, but it's one more
half than most companies have.

~~~
jacquesm
second that. I personally don't even 'get' twitter but I'm happy they got
their investment and I'm sure that if they play their cards wisely they'll do
just fine.

Everybody that is second guessing them here should go and prove that they can
do a better job, for now the twitter folk are doing a better job than 99% of
anybody bitching about them. You _wished_ you were in the possession of even a
small share of that money burning machine. They've been very selective about
the rate at which they dillute which is showing quite a bit of restraint,
they've already rebuffed several buy out offers so it looks like they know
what they're doing and they are playing their cards very close to their chest.

Watch and learn.

------
nir
So it's somewhere between $7-35 per active user?

------
okeumeni
Is Twitter actually just money burning machine?

~~~
herval
No! It also allows you to tell the world what you're doing - in 140 characters
or less..

------
sammyo
Twitter is in the news a lot. At the Davos summit it seemed to be the only
positive story in the entire world (twitter being used by legit journalists).
It just works for a whole lot of folks. I suspect the new investors current
opinion is that they just got the best deal of 09.

------
tokenadult
Twitter's blog entry on this news:

<http://blog.twitter.com/2009/02/opportunity-knocks.html>

------
popschedule
This twitter business is a joke. Over-hyped much?

