

Twitter is raising new cash at 250 million valuation - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/24/twitter-raising-new-cash-at-250-million-valuation/

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zain
Wow, a $250 valuation with 6 million users? That's $41.66 per user. It is
ridiculously high, especially with no business model in sight.

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old-gregg
Make it something like $400/user. Having been an insider of 3 "Internet
startups" in the past, I am assuming a 1:10 ratio of real active users vs
total number of accounts in the database. BTW investors _always_ asked us
about the number of _active_ users, followed by a question of "how do you
define active"? Something like "logged into his account at least once within
last week" is considered a _very_ good measure of an active user.

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axod
It's simply ridiculous. Maybe we'll soon see a return to the dotcom tactics of
alladvantage,themutual etc,etc - Pay people to become your "Users" so you can
get more funding.

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endtwist
Perhaps I'm missing something important here, but how are these companies
(Facebook, Twitter, et al) being valued? I know there is "potential" value
here, but who comes up with the actual numbers?

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eru
Everybody guesses and whoever guesses too high by the largest error, gets his
bid accepted.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner's_curse>

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nazgulnarsil
what was the facebook offer assuming that their stock is toilet paper?

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brianr
It was $500 million total including $100m in cash --
[http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/twitter-
rejects-500-mill...](http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/twitter-
rejects-500-million-takeover-offer-from-facebook)

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ojbyrne
$100 million in cash? Passing that up looks pretty dumb right now.

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mattmaroon
How does that look dumb if they're raising at a $250m valuation? Seems smart
to me.

That article made it seem like it was about $150m (at the more sane $5b
Facebook valuation) stock only. I wouldn't take that if I owned Twitter.

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axod
Surely a valuation is meaningless until you are able to actually have a
liquidity event.

If it was me, I'd recognize that the Twitter hype is probably peaking about
now, and it's a good time to quit and take some cash.

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nazgulnarsil
it always looks like it's peaking if your growth is hyperbolic. whether or not
they're idiots or geniuses is determined by the market.

but if I was running twitter I would certainly take $150 million in cash. If
you still want to run a company well now you have cash and a success under
your belt. Funding should be an order of magnitude easier.

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axod
"it always looks like it's peaking if your growth is hyperbolic."

Sure, but the fact we're even discussing $250m valuation for a company whos
only real worth seems to be its users and possible future profit, should be a
good pointer that this is a peak. Much like Facebook peaked.

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jonursenbach
Once they start cranking out new features and hire some competent people who
know how to _properly_ run a website with an accompanying API then I'll
believe a 250m valuation.

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axod
Have you run a website with that many users? Harder than it looks...

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josefresco
His website is clearly up: <http://jon.ursenba.ch/>

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jonursenbach
Oh dear, my personal website isn't up yet because I'm waiting for a graphic
designer to get back to me. What will I do!?

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axod
Remove it from your profile so people don't think it's broken? Point it at a
server with a holding page?

