Scott Galloway, marketing professor at the NYU Stern School of Business argues that there is an infallible sign of when a company is dying. “It’s the moment when the boss of the company appears on the cover of a fashion magazine.”
Galloway cites the ex-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer – and Evan Spiegel, who was photographed in the “Vogue”, and who adorned the Italian edition of the fashion label in the noble brand Burberry. Such images communicated hubris, narcissism, and distraction from the essential, namely, the work, the expert says.
In fact, it is now bad for Evan Spiegel’s company Snap, which brings out the photo and video platform Snapchat. The start-up started with a lot of excitement during the stock exchanges in March and shone for a long time with increasing user numbers. It was particularly popular with young people who were so interesting for advertisers.
There is not much left of the euphoria. Narcissism suffers from money wastage and is now giving out perseverance. “Bobby and I will not sell any of our shares this year,” he said in the analyst call following the presentation of the current quarterly figures. “We deeply believe in the long-term success of Snap.”
The only question is how long the founder duo still has a good price for the shares. The service disappoints investors for the second time in a row. Even the first figures after the Wall Street debut were below the expectations, now the Malaise is repeated – as notorious as the video endless loop of the Snapchat so popular video snippets called GIFs.
The per-user advertising revenue on Snap’s core business is less than expected. They were only $1.05 in the past quarter, while analysts estimated $1.07. The total revenue of $ 181 million represents gigantic losses, rising from $115.9 million in the previous quarter to $443 million.
Also the user growth could not convince investors. The number of daily active users climbed to 173 million, an increase of 21 percent year-on-year and 4 percent compared to the previous quarter. Snapchat’s parent company, Snap, went to the stock market early in March with a big hit in New York, but since then the price has fallen sharply. The Californian company is strongly attacked by the rival Instagram from Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
