Slide raises $50M at $500M Valuation

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/slide-slides-into-some-cash/

by breck • 19 years ago

23 31 19 years ago

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

jawngee• 19 years ago

Ugg, really?

90% of facebook spam comes from their crappy little apps.

immad• 19 years ago

90% of the spam 3.3% of the valuation...

... Spammers should get a better deal really :-)

dcurtis5• 19 years ago

Good for them. They're proving that you can get obscene valuations by using second-level advertising on the back of a low-profit, highly overvalued social network.

sethjohn4• 19 years ago

Don't make too much fun unless you know the numbers. For all I know they might be generating huge profits. What makes you think their valuation is too high?

dcurtis5• 19 years ago

I was more joking than being serious.

Max Levchin's name is worth a lot of money, though, so that might have been a major factor in the high valuation. Do you think they deserve half-a-billion valuation while running on the back of Facebook? I don't know their numbers, but 500 million dollars is a lot of money.

mig2• 19 years ago

I really wish someone made wise estimates of their current revenue/profit numbers or at least provide the thought process that went behind coming up with $500M+ valuation.

kingnothing• 19 years ago

Maybe I'm completely out of the loop on this one... but how do they make money?

eVizitei• 19 years ago

I'm not sure. You don't buy facebook apps, you just use them if someone else invite you to. Is it possible that the advertising revenue is deep enough to support a 50+ employee company?

sethjohn4• 19 years ago

Yes, in fact web advertising has proved to be deep enough to support all of Google!

Of course there is a limit to the total amount of advertising dollars available and many half-good companies may not be good enough to support themselves with advertising, but there is no question that a good company can do very well on advertising alone.

far33d• 19 years ago

It certainly seems a lot easier to get a huge valuation from Wall Street than from Sand Hill Road. A lot of these "mega-valuations" (zillow, ning, slide, etc) have gotten funding from PE, hedge, and investment houses instead of classic VC.

mig2• 19 years ago

That's a very keen observation. I am not sure about the 'lot easier' part though.

One thing that's common among all these "mega-valuations" startups are star-founders who have had billion dollar exits in the past.

blader3• 19 years ago

This is their fourth round of funding - it's quite common to go to a larger institution for later rounds of funding for a mezzanine round before an IPO.

aston3• 19 years ago

Funny is, Microsoft's market cap is 30x Intuit's. Facebook's worth $15 billion? Slide's worth $500million. See? Ratios are easy!

aswanson• 19 years ago

Ok, I relent. Bubble 2.0 it is.

mattmaroon2• 19 years ago

I'm curious what PG thinks. This seems like a bad idea for Slide to me, as they've now limited themselves to an IPO, or an acquisition by a massive corporation.

Harj• 19 years ago

those are the only two outcomes max would view as acceptable anyway. and probably not even so much for the latter.

mattmaroon2• 19 years ago

True enough. I'm all for swinging for the fences I guess, but it's good to keep options open where possible.

zach• 19 years ago

Max always seems like a "burn the ships" entrepreneur, so it isn't that surprising that he's taking the go-big-or-go-bankrupt road. I'm sure the VCs involved love that attitude too, so I guess everyone's happy...

wallflower2• 19 years ago

I wonder what the profit-margin for a top-100 Facebook application might be after paying for bandwidth/server costs, assuming they monetize through displaying advertising.

wallflower2• 19 years ago

How do independent Facebook application developers compete against the 800-lb gorillas of Facebook, Slide and RockYou? Slide and RockYou seem to prove economies of scale. From Craig Ulliot - developer of 50K+ daily user FB application 'Where I've been'

"Well my application has become incredibly popular, and I'm very excited about it, don't get me wrong!

But I'm a freelance developer, not a company, and its put a powerful 4GB $450 a month dedicated server on 3 backbones at maximum load and is pushing 2000GB a month in traffic. It doesn't make me any money and I'm getting hundreds of comments and emails daily about it.

How can i support it and maintain it? What do i do with it now? its growing at a few users a second, so should i get another server each month?"

http://tinyurl.com/yu6k98

Slide raises $50M at $500M Valuation

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