{"id":3645,"date":"2017-02-21T22:31:42","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T22:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/hanging-out-at-snaps-unremarkable-ipo-roadshow.html"},"modified":"2017-02-21T22:31:42","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T22:31:42","slug":"hanging-out-at-snaps-unremarkable-ipo-roadshow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/hanging-out-at-snaps-unremarkable-ipo-roadshow.html","title":{"rendered":"Hanging out at Snap\u2019s unremarkable IPO roadshow"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

One of the remarkable things about the roadshow presentations for hotly-anticipated IPOs \u2014 where they\u2019ll make a pitch to investors and answer questions \u2014 is that they are often unremarkable.<\/p>\n

That seemed about the same case for Snap, which was presenting to potential investors at the Mandarin Hotel in New York this afternoon. Over lunch, a packed ballroom 30\u00a0stories up at the\u00a0hotel listened as COO Imran Khan and co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy answer questions about the future and viability of Snap as a public company. The last we\u2019d heard from Snap was when it lowballed its potential IPO valuation as it inches closer to its public debut next month (which is what usually happens).<\/p>\n

One attendee summed it up the roadshow pretty nicely: a lot of the people at the roadshow presentation are there to check a box and make sure that no one misses anything. For a looming IPO as massive as Snap that\u2019s doubly important (as it was for Twitter), but sometimes it\u2019s really not all that exciting.<\/p>\n

The Snap executives were asked all the questions you would expect from investors \u2014 and ones that have been circulating in the community for some time now \u2014 according to attendees on their way out. How will Snap respond to slowing DAU growth? What about slowing engagement? What about Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy\u2019s control over the company?<\/p>\n

Snap was a camera company, pointing to Spectacles as one example. It had some work to do on Android, where problems may have affected its user growth and it\u2019s an area it needs to fix going forward. Snap\u2019s answers seemed standard\u00a0enough, as they\u2019d probably answered the same multiple times already, from what attendees\u00a0were saying as they exited the building carrying little yellow Snap prospectus notebooks \u2014 which include all the financials and data publicly filed for its IPO.<\/p>\n

These are all questions Snap is going to face as it goes on the road and especially begins its march up to its IPO. Snap\u2019s very young advertising business is growing quickly, but its costs are ballooning. It has to face the challenge of being compared to Twitter with its slowing user growth and monetization that doesn\u2019t come close to Facebook\u2019s. Investors, in the IPO, are buying shares that have no voting rights in the company. And Facebook is nipping at Snap\u2019s heels with clones and copycats of a variety of its products.Tech observers, in general, have more questions than excitement about Snap going into March that could make the IPO a complete toss-up.<\/p>\n

Investors and attendees, piling in like sardines in the elevators (around 12 to 14 at a time), made their way to the roadshow where they were asked to have a business card and a photo ID. It was all suits, jackets and pea coats for the most part with the bankers sporting the look that you would expect if you envisioned someone ready to drill Snap executives on questions about the future of the company. One trip up included nearly 40 people riding\u00a0three elevators, opening up to a room already full of another 30 people signing in. By 12:30, the room was loaded\u00a0with people seated at long square tables and many standing off to the side.<\/p>\n

Checking a stopwatch, it took about 3 minutes and 18 seconds from entering the Mandarin Hotel and riding the elevator to the 36th floor where the roadshow presentation was happening to being aggressively surveilled and then politely (and sternly) told to leave the room. This is really par for the course for a roadshow presentation, and harkens back to Twitter\u2019s roadshow back in 2013 (which I recall it took about 2 minutes). Instead, the process wasn\u2019t really about Snap\u2019s devotion to secrecy, but rather just the dance that pre-IPO companies play at these presentations.<\/p>\n

The presentation would last about an hour where food would be served. One attendee said he \u201cthought it was turkey?\u201d\u00a0with a sort of questioning tone at the end. It\u2019s not\u00a0all that surprising \u2014 Twitter served chicken and it\u2019s a thing that\u2019s quite easy to scale up to a larger audience for lunch, a good strategy if you\u2019re looking to cook a large meal for a lot of people.<\/p>\n

One floor down, after jumping over a rope blocking off the stairs to the 36th floor, was the lounge where you could see some mixture of people\u00a0waiting to prod exiting attendees for details about the presentation and typical hotel guests that were just there to hang out and have some lunch, and probably didn\u2019t know what they were getting into. With an hour to kill, coffee\u2019s not a bad idea \u2014 though a Cafe Latte was about $14 including tip at the hotel. (Come on, man.)<\/p>\n

\"snap<\/p>\n

Then, dead silence, and no one walking out. You could see some people picking a staging ground, normally outside the bottom elevators that exit onto Columbus Circle.<\/p>\n

At around 1:15 p.m., attendees began trickling out, interspersed periodically with the obviously-dressed non-bankers and investors. There would be a mixed crowd that would just comment lightly that it was \u201cinteresting\u201d and that they really didn\u2019t say anything of note. Others would talk a bit about how there really wasn\u2019t anything new that they were talking about. The rest would politely\u00a0walk straight by without saying anything, head out the door and make a turn toward the street passing by a scrum of reporters on the way out \u2014 not even hailing a cab or calling an Uber.<\/p>\n

But really this is all color to just paint a picture of how utterly normal this presentation was for a company that is going to be one of the largest tech IPOs in recent memory, and one that\u2019s supposed to set the stage for tech IPOs in the future. Attendees clamming up as they exited the building was not a product of Snap\u2019s secrecy, but rather just how these things go at roadshow presentations \u2014 and how the song and dance plays out as Snap inches towards its IPO.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Bryce Durbin\/TechCrunch<\/small><\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/RNKERXapkd4\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the remarkable things about the roadshow presentations for hotly-anticipated IPOs \u2014 where they\u2019ll make a pitch to investors and answer questions \u2014 is that they are often unremarkable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-3645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t