
Snapchat acquires social map app Zenly - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/21/snapchat-buys-zenly
======
nextstep
Snap also debuted "Snap Map" location sharing feature today:
[https://www.snap.com/en-US/news/post/introducing-the-snap-
ma...](https://www.snap.com/en-US/news/post/introducing-the-snap-map/)

~~~
josteink
> It's easy to get started — just pinch to zoom out and view the Map

Snapchat is one of my absolute "I'm getting old" triggers.

I absolutely cannot use it.

The app may have a notification-bubble on it, but when I start I have to swipe
left and right randomly for a given period of time, until I finally, -for
whatever reason-, land on a page where I can click the thing which caused the
notification.

Why swiping left or right should "logically" lead to whatever it leads, I
cannot tell. Often I find myself wanting to go -back- from some deeply nested
screen, and to do that I have to swipe from right to left (as in "drag" the
app -forwards-). WTF?

And now this. You can zoom out from a screen you never zoomed in to. Because
that's clearly obvious.

This whole app is a UX disaster of proportions. I absolutely cannot see the
appeal, nor how this app gained such a wide user-base.

Every time I accidentally side-swipe when trying to scroll (about one on five
times or so) and land on some obscure functionality I have no reason why I'm
being lead into, I'm getting one inch closer to just deleting the app and
using whatever dumbed down web-version exists instead.

Can't we please have the big clicky buttons back? Anything except these
"magical" swipes and gestures, seemingly only introduced by some weird cargo-
cult "gestures are intuitive" following.

At least none of those web-versions has stupid "intuitive" gesture-based
navigation and random side-swiping bullshit. And that makes them 100x more
usable IMO.

~~~
jdhn
>The whole app is a UX disaster of proportions.

As a UX designer, I think that Snapchat did this on purpose. They know that
"the olds" will grow frustrated with the UI and won't use it, but they know
that the younger crowd who have grown up with mobile interfaces and their
accompanying interaction patterns (tap, swipe to reveal hidden items, long
press to reveal hidden items, etc) will know how to navigate around the app
and are willing to put up with the UI flaws.

This has two valuable results (at least from Snapchat's point of view):

1) Older people won't use it, which makes the younger generation perceive it
as a safe space from their elders.

2) Advertisers are guaranteed a pool of younger users who have disposable
income.

As for the appeal of Snapchat, it really lowers the cognitive barrier for
updating people about your life. Personally, I spend more time curating items
that I post on Facebook as it feels more permanent, but on Snapchat there
isn't that pressure as the picture will disappear in 10 seconds or less.

------
vassilyk
Location based ads are a really tough nut to crack. If Snap wants to exist in
the ad tech business going this route they will have to become bigger than
Facebook or they will just fail. There is no interest in driving 3 persons to
a store and no one will want to do it, especially agencies, because it's an
enormous pain to setup and micro manage. Also, far less spend than video views
or other les restrictive objectives. So if this is Snap strategy, good luck to
them especially outside of the US and big Snapchat cities like London or
Paris.

Zenly has definitely an amazing team, but I don't think their tech is that
valuable, at least it's not a valid shield against what Facebook could come up
with if they feel they should.

------
arikr
Based on the generally good approximation of 10% ownership for series B
investors, this wasn't a great return (if any) for Benchmark.

Pretty nice for the founders though, and likely nice for the users too -
Zenly's product requires all/most of your friends to use it for it to be good,
which is really hard to do, but Snapchat already has a lot of users, so it'll
take Zenly's tech and turn it into something valuable.

Seems like a nice outcome overall!

~~~
flylib
at the upper bounds (350 million) (10% is 35 million) with 22.5 million
invested in 9/2016 and the sale shortly after that is a nice flip and a gain
of 10+ million

~~~
kornish
They definitely got their money back, but venture economics dictate that the
fund is paid for by the outlier returns (10 to 100 to 1000x or more) rather
than a nice 1.5x.

~~~
tinbad
With those amounts, everything adds up. $10 million probably pays for a couple
years rent for a fancy VC office on sand hill road.

------
rsp1984
I just can't get my head around this.

1\. Why don't they just build it themselves? That would cost probably low
single-digit millions and maybe 1 year of time. I don't mean to downplay the
work that went into Zenly but it's not like we're talking about self-driving
car tech where there's a real technological entry barrier.

2\. If, for some strange reason, they can't build it themselves and need to
acquire, why do they go for the expensive VC-pumped startup instead of picking
one or several of the hundreds of other less expensive options?

Can someone please enlighten me?

~~~
Disruptive_Dave
Answer to #2: They both have backing from Benchmark?

~~~
majani
This is the right answer. VCs helped Snapchat out, so it's time for Snapchat
to help their VCs out and balance their books.

------
vit05
They have acquired recently another location based app called Placed. It is
become pretty clear that they want focus in construct the best platform for
Ads and content based on location. Maybe more than age, gender and education.
That could be a shift in their started sttrategy when they only talked to Big
world companies like Coke, Nike and Unilever.

------
nostrademons
Heh, I guess Loopt was just a decade too early.

~~~
sjroot
Not to mention that Apple has natively included Find iPhone and Find My
Friends. I imagine Android has a lot of similar applications too.

~~~
zulln
Think something like this is built into Google Maps today.

------
justincormack
Useful as Macron pushes France as a startup centre to have a large exit like
this. Zenly are based in Paris.

------
znewman
What exactly does Zenly do and why is it worth millions? It just looks like
bitmoji on google maps.

~~~
flanbiscuit
Snapchat just update for me today and they rolled a new feature that I'm
assuming incorporates what Zenly did. You can now share your location with
friends and see public/shared locations and stories. I can now zoom around the
map looking at snap stories of specific locations without waiting for Snapchat
to show it to me. It also shows a heatmap over your map so you can see areas
with heavy activity. You can't click on the "hot" areas, it's just info.

Edit: Official Snapchat post: [https://www.snap.com/en-
US/news/post/introducing-the-snap-ma...](https://www.snap.com/en-
US/news/post/introducing-the-snap-map/)

~~~
lelandbatey
Interesting, I totally can tap any "hotzone" I want and Snapchat will serve me
random videos from that approximate location. It's very interesting to watch
sporting events.

~~~
flanbiscuit
I'll have to try that again. I thought I had tapped on a couple and it didn't
work but maybe I just didn't hit the right spot.

------
koolba
Every time I see a company I've never ever heard of get acquired for hundreds
of millions of dollars, I have to step back and wonder what an interesting
world we live in.

~~~
Apocryphon
To be fair, there are probably dozens of such deals every day in traditional
non-tech industries.

~~~
jpatokal
Yup. For example, did you know that CK Infrastructure is buying Ista? Ista
builds energy meters, and is worth... $4.5B.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/deals-day-
idUSL3N1JI3AN](http://www.reuters.com/article/deals-day-idUSL3N1JI3AN)

~~~
geekone
Is this a fair analogy when considering Ista's history ("Clorius is taken over
by ista. -1974")? [https://www.ista.com/uk/company/facts-
figures/history/](https://www.ista.com/uk/company/facts-figures/history/)

~~~
samfisher83
They also have a billion dollars in revenue, and generate cash.

------
Aissen
Zenly has one of the best teams here in Paris (and there are _lots_ of great
teams).

They also have awesome tech, AFAIK they're the first to leverage gomobile to
create a cross platform (iOS/Android + backend) "transport" code based on
grpc.

It's still weird to see the founders exit now since they should still have a
lot of runway after last year's round. But it's probably safer given the
company doesn't make any money yet.

~~~
bsaul
Last time i saw a codebase with gomobile, it wasn't a pretty sight...
especially on android. Not sure this is the reason they got bought.

~~~
Aissen
No, and I didn't say it was, I was just commenting on a very interesting piece
of tech that I haven't seen use at this scale elsewhere.

It most probably is a combination of factors. The crown is supposedly their
tech to get constant location with minimal battery impact.

------
mmanfrin
2 million _downloads_.

$125 - $175 paid per download.

Jesus.

~~~
slackoverflower
I mean FB paid $1b for Instagram's 30m users. $33/user

~~~
PKop
Ok so... a much better deal then?

~~~
nemild
Instagram was financially a steal for FB, in retrospect. And no, you can't
just say "they paid this much for download, that is dumb". There is a lot of
nuance, for example:

\- Does the company need it to survive or succeed?

\- Can the acquiring company better monetize or grow the asset?

\- Are the growth trends exponential, such that a huge amount of other people
may soon be using the product?

\- Is there some strategic advantage to the team - or product category
expertise?

\- Is the product easily defensible? (e.g., strong network effects)

I can't speak to this particular acquisition, but there are a number of
examples where heavily "overpaying" may actually be a steal in the long term
(and of course, the opposite).

------
shirazi
Great win for European startup scene. Congrats to Zenly team.

------
arikr
How do people think Snap will monetize the map?

Brand bitmojis? Location ads - e.g. like Waze where you see McDonalds logos on
the map?

Local events seems like too much logistics/not enough money.

~~~
foota
Snapchat already has custom event filters that you can pay for.

~~~
hirsin
Yeah, weddings and graduations are a big hit for them. Definitely a new must
have for event planners that just gets folded into the cost of the event.

------
good_vibes
How long before Facebook adds this to all of it's apps?

------
Warvick
I wonder if Snapchat will manage to get this money back in one way or another.
Instagram is a massively popular app, while Zenly - it is HN where I first
heard it. Also, 2 million downloads mainly from teens seem to be not so
massive. There are bigger and more unique apps.

I wonder how often deals like that comes from pressure from VC's rather than
actual strategy.

~~~
emsal
They're probably going to integrate elements from Zenly into the main Snapchat
app is my guess.

~~~
lilbobbytables
Yeah, but what I don't get about this, is that building that tech (if it's
just a map and pin tracking your friends) is not hard. And certainly wouldn't
be hard for Snap.

I can't see how 2 million users are worth it either. It really isn't even that
many anyways because I'm sure many were already snap users)

Unless it's because they really wanted to do Snap map and are basically paying
to have a fast implementation and have that many people with it enabled from
day one. This way when Instagram copies them it will take a few months.

------
wonder_bread
More than their entire R&D budget for 2016....I sure hope they have something
up their sleeves...

~~~
ghughes
M&A is the new R&D.

------
beamatronic
Never heard of it

------
speeq
So who wants to create a location based messaging app with me?

Email me [serious].

