Laura Briere - Comments

Chris, everything is relative. For most of the social media and social network sites, people are looking at potential revenue. The potential of harnessing the "network effect" is huge for the number of users these sites have. Granted, I think the valuations are totally best case anyway. - Rob Diana

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Twitter is microblogging #1,so it's a billionaire. - Igor Poltavskiy

Do any of those companies mentioned turn a profit? - AJ Kohn

AJ, that is a good question. I know that some of them have revenue mainly based on ad sales, but I am not sure about profit. - Rob Diana

@Rob: To *my* knowledge (not unlimited) none of them turn a profit though a few do have revenue. It just feels like web 1.0 all over again. Grab share and monetize later was the adage. It only worked for a slim few. I know many VCs are advising to extend runways because valuations are down in this climate, more so with companies without a real revenue model. Boom, potential looks good. Bust, potential looks like risk. - AJ Kohn

Profit? - we don't need no stinking profit. Not even a source of a revenue is required apparently. 100's of millions, billions -- insane. Large, real companies barely have those evalutions. - Brian Sullivan

I retweeted this to my friends - great post! - Laura Briere

Brian and Chris, the key here is to remember that stock price and company valuations are not related :) Valuations are typically considering current revenue, recurring and project revenue as well as potential. The stock market is something completely different and price fluctuations are not entirely explainable. - Rob Diana

Thanks for the kind words Laura. - Rob Diana

Stock price and company valuations are not related? - Brian Sullivan

Brian, I was talking about the non-public companies. Typically, they are given a different set of standards than public companies. - Rob Diana

Chris, that is a good point on the Microsoft investment. We have no idea what was investment or what was "bought". I kept the valuation the same as I did from a previous post in order to provide a stable comparison. - Rob Diana

BTW - this is a great benchmark to have as we figure out what exactly will happen with these companies. It's nice to see someone put this out there like this. - AJ Kohn

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