Snapchat Supposedly Turned Down a $3 Billion Acquisition Offer from Facebook
When Facebook spent the staggering amount of $1 billion on the Instagram acquisition, people the world over thought they were crazy for throwing that kind of money on an app that, at the time, hadn’t generated any revenue.
Well, that acquisition turned out pretty well for CEO Zuckerberg, who has since allegedly turned his sights on Snapchat, only to have an even more ludicrous offer spurned. How much more ludicrous, you ask? Apparently, Snapchat recently turned down a $3 billion offer from the social media giant.
The report comes from The Wall Street Journal, whose sources claim that this is, in fact, the second time that Facebook has made a billion-dollar plus offer to Snapchat and been turned down.
Snapchat CEO and founder Evan Spiegel (pictured above) has allegedly been approached by Mark Zuckerberg once before, only that time he only had to resist $1 billion worth of temptation. Spiegel believes the company still has plenty of room to grow on its own, and according to the Journal’s sources won’t consider selling until early 2014 at the earliest.
Still, it can’t have been easy for 23-year-old Spiegel to say no to $3 billion, especially since Snapchat is in the same boat as Instagram was when Facebook came knocking: they have no revenue to their name.
Snapchat has been valued by some at $4 billion, so maybe Spiegel is waiting for that figure to cross his desk. The question now is whether Facebook — who already tried to steal some of Snapchat’s thunder with the Poke app — will come knocking again next year when Spiegel is more likely to consider acquisition. And if Zuckerberg does try again, how much will he offer the third time?
(via Wall Street Journal via Engadget)
Image credit: Photo illustration based on Money Dollar by 401(K) 2013 and Evan Spiegel, Snapchat by jdlasica
