Snapchat has routinely been the subject of jokes about the meteoric rise of its valuation. Tuesday's report that a new funding round would value the messaging company at $10 billion only served to add to the snickers.
Snapchat’s worth $20b; Uber is reenacting The Wire with limos; & Microsoft is right about something. I stepped off in wrong dimension today.— Paul Kedrosky (@pkedrosky) August 26, 2014
Snapchat valued at $10 billion .. the creator still lives with his dad— Zora Suleman (@ZoraSuleman) August 27, 2014
Snapchat now valued at $10 billion; world contemplates whether numbers are just symbols. http://t.co/sTdttXqbtY— Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey) August 27, 2014
But Twitter CEO Dick Costolo knows something about defending valuations. Twitter is another company that quickly rose from obscurity to become the darling of the Silicon Valley investment world.
And he's got something to say to those Snapchat critics:
Snapchat at $10b not absurd. Crazy growth, clear monetization path, & one of the best social product thinkers out there. Long (figuratively)— dick costolo (@dickc) August 27, 2014
Costolo was presumably referring to Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat. In some ways, Twitter blazed the path that Snapchat is following. The microblogging platform attracted many users, but critics questioned whether it could generate the cash to justify its valuations. Twitter generated $312 million in the second quarter of 2014, and is currently worth about $30 billion.
BONUS: The Illustrated History of Twitter