Embarrassing Ex-Employee Complaint Against Snapchat Unsealed (variety.com) 85
"Saying it had 'nothing to hide,' the company behind Snapchat released an unredacted version of a lawsuit filed against it by a former employee that claims investors and advertisers were misled about usage data." And one allegation -- about a meeting with the company's 25-year-old CEO about flawed user metrics and low adoption in India in Spain -- is particularly embarrassing.
Pompliano, who had just been hired away from Facebook, contends that he presented methods to address the issue, but that Evan Spiegel, the company's CEO, abruptly cut him off. "This app is only for rich people," Spiegel said, according to Pompliano. "I don't want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain"... Pompliano claims that Spiegel then met with two other executives and determined that "Mr. Pompliano presented a risk to Snapchat's IPO."
It may have been a flip remark, but the lawsuit also alleges two data analysts confided to Pompliano that Snapchat had "an institutional aversion to looking at user data," where its efforts showed "utter incompetence". The former employee -- who was fired after three weeks -- alleges that Snapchat inflated the rate of completed registrations and the number of users who stayed longer than seven days.
Snap originally said the lawsuit should remain redacted because it contained damaging trade secrets that would help its competitors, but now Snap attorneys are accusing Pompliano and his attorneys of "just making things up... The simple fact is that he knows exactly nothing about Snap's current metrics." Variety reports that Pompliano's attorney "said that Snap withdrew its effort to seal the complaint because the company knew it would lose."
It may have been a flip remark, but the lawsuit also alleges two data analysts confided to Pompliano that Snapchat had "an institutional aversion to looking at user data," where its efforts showed "utter incompetence". The former employee -- who was fired after three weeks -- alleges that Snapchat inflated the rate of completed registrations and the number of users who stayed longer than seven days.
Snap originally said the lawsuit should remain redacted because it contained damaging trade secrets that would help its competitors, but now Snap attorneys are accusing Pompliano and his attorneys of "just making things up... The simple fact is that he knows exactly nothing about Snap's current metrics." Variety reports that Pompliano's attorney "said that Snap withdrew its effort to seal the complaint because the company knew it would lose."
Re:Spain, a poor country? (Score:4, Insightful)
The CEO is a 25 year old, ignorant, narcissistic millennial. What did you expect?
Re:Spain, a poor country? (Score:4, Insightful)
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India has a very high income disparity - and enormous population. Taken as average it appears very poor, but if you just look at the sheer number of people with considerable disposable income, you'll spot a market comparable in size to Western Europe.
Spain is a pretty rich country, about on par with France.
But if you're an arrogant millenial idiot, you think "Spain = latin america" and "India = only poor, dirty people."
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Unless its about Trump, then we immediately know we can take any person's claims as 100% truth.
At least, that's what I've learned from Slashdot. People we know are the bad guys, always did the thing people claim they did.
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Hard to deny Trump's comments considering he puts them on Twitter or they're recorded.
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Ever heard of the Streisand Effect? I imagine that Snap hasn't until now.
If they just had admitted that they had a flaw and then fixed it most people would just have shrugged and gone on with their lives. Now Snap are in the headlines as screwups instead.
Re:Spain, a poor country? (Score:4, Funny)
The CEO is a 25 year old, ignorant, narcissistic millennial. What did you expect?
It's Snapchat. That's why the prospectus site was designed to briefly show the usage data, then have it disappear forever.
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I generally expect CEOs to bring something of value to offset their ignorance and narcissism. Most people that head companies that do not bring such end up as little more than small-businessmen, through admittedly the occasional puppet-CEO that's really little more than the Board's strawman-writ-live have been known to exist.
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The CEO is a 25 year old, ignorant, narcissistic millennial.
Does anyone have his number? I'm asking for a friend, who definitely isn't looking to appoint a new White House Chief of Staff, believe me.
John Miller
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wtf? An AC post and a lame gin-up of the gen gap? And getting mods, too? Come on, "O wise elders", this is a juvenile statement and not worth reading twice, let alone modding.
Re: Spain, a poor country? (Score:1)
Also higher than more than the bottom half of US states.
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It is sad that you have to spell that out for everybody here. but i guess it will stop a bunch of ignorant people trying to call you stupid for it lol. well done.
25 year old CEO (Score:1, Informative)
Stopped reading there. Odds are any company with young people running it will be gone in a decade. Not worth anyone's time.
Also, once people finally bore themselves of social media fad, these companies will be ruined. Next generation won't care because social media will be their parent's and they won't want to be part of it.
Re:25 year old CEO (Score:4, Informative)
Odds are any company with young people running it will be gone in a decade. Not worth anyone's time.
Like Facebook (Mark was 19), Google (Larry was 25), and Microsoft (Bill was 20)?
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The argument was statistical. Individual examples of companies with young people which survived more than a decade are not valid counterexamples.
Re: 25 year old CEO (Score:2)
And disavowing one because of age when not unprecedented is to boldly proclaim your purposefully ignorant attitude.
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Odds are any company with young people running it will be gone in a decade. Not worth anyone's time.
Like Facebook (Mark was 19), Google (Larry was 25), and Microsoft (Bill was 20)?
I'd wager that all 3 of those will be gone or not exist as we know them in one more decade.
MS is already circling the drain, Google^W Alphabet is chasing after them as fast as they can, and all Facebook can do is copy/buy everyone else in desperation. Their purchase of Instagram and wholesale copying of Snapchat likely bought them a 2 or 3 year extension.
For Facebook and Google, you can pick any 2 points in time a decade apart and compare. You'll see a vastly different service and business. With MS, you
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MS is already circling the drain, Google^W Alphabet is chasing after them as fast as they can, and all Facebook can do is copy/buy everyone else in desperation. Their purchase of Instagram and wholesale copying of Snapchat likely bought them a 2 or 3 year extension.
Nonsense.
According to slashdot, MS has been circling the drain almost as long as BSD has been dying.
Nope, still making billions a year in profit and that is now spanning multiple business lines instead of only Windows/Office.
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And if we show you a list of 1 million companies started by people in their 20's and which lasted less than 3 years?
Hint: The word "Odds" refer to statistics, not absolutes #Lern2English
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"Only old people use Snapchat!", S. Korean 14 year old a few years from now.
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Should he bother expanding into, say, the United States? Because the average American is "poorer" than the average Spaniard, or any EU citizen for that matter. (don't invoke your GDP per capita, the wealth of the 1% has no bearing on the life of the 99%)
You realize that there are millions of Americans who are literally dirt poor, right? Or are you just as ignorant as this "fuck you I got mine" American we're laughing about right now?
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Economy has been recovering for a few years now and unemployment rate steadily decreasing. We don't have a huge GDP per capita but we have a good standard of living, a high life expectancy and we've been within the top 30 in HDI for many years.
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Of course, I can't say if it'd be worthwhile for Spanchat to invest in Spain.
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On the other hand, GDP per capita is not the most important metric in this context. None of these messaging apps make their money by charging $100 per user: they work by making small amounts of money from millions of people. Spain is in the top third of the OECD by population, and the l10n has quite a lot of overlap with some other large markets.
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Ever heard of Inditex? Ortega is the richest person in Europe.
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Average student loan debt in the US is about $37,000 [wikipedia.org], not too far off what the average US car loan of $30,000 [cnbc.com]. And I see a lot of new cars being purchased by relatively new graduates, especially when it's their "first car" at their first post-collegiate job.
It is also well below the median income of people with a college degree [wikipedia.org], and the difference between the median high school graduate and the median college graduate is large enough that less than two years of income differential covers for the median co
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[...] his product is for folks who can cough up hundreds of dollars for smart phones. Marketing his service to folks who struggle to get food is a complete waste of resources.
But, you see, those people don't have smartphones. So you're marketing to people who do.
Also, keep in mind the sheer number of people. Even if 90% of India is struggling to get food (which is a percentage I pulled out of my ass--I have no idea about income in India), that's still 120 million people who aren't--about 1/3 the total population of the US. Last I saw, smartphone sales in India numbered in the area of 30 million units. So somebody over there is rich enough to buy them.
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"contained damaging trade secrets" (Score:4, Funny)
Just plain wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing embarrassing about not wanting to go into certain places. Chances are very good any company you can think of actively excludes themselves where things don't fit their business model.
Decisions based on where to offer services are based on demographics, target market, legal landscape, logistics, potential profits and so on. Chances are senior leadership is already going to be aware of their target market and probably doesn't need to do in-depth market analysis to realize certain countries don't make sense. In other words they can dismiss a country with half a second in thought - and be right.
Now if you want something that actually is embarrassing - we can talk about their data analytics.
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Decisions based on where to offer services are based on demographics, target market, legal landscape, logistics, potential profits and so on. Chances are senior leadership is already going to be aware of their target market and probably doesn't need to do in-depth market analysis to realize certain countries don't make sense. In other words they can dismiss a country with half a second in thought - and be right.
How "senior" can a 25 year old CEO be?
And why poach a growth lead from Facebook if you're going to flat out ignore him when he tells you the company is missing an opportunity?
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The embarrassing part was a guy that should know better alienating millions of potential customers
How many "potential customers" are actually going to be willing to pay two years of salary every month for snapchat services?
I'd guess that number is in the very small double digits, far from millions.
If it will cost you hundreds or thousands of times more money to get your infrastructure setup compared to expected profits, it's not worth even doing in the first place.
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It's embarrassing that he doesn't understand that Spain is still a highly developed economy, nor does he understand Gini coefficients. I guess he wasn't part of the international homeless for long enough to learn from experience what he should have known from general knowledge.
The embarrassing inexperience of the nouveau^2 rich.
Just looked at a map. (Score:1)
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Sure it is, its right there in the summary! jeez read much?>
What is so "embarrassing"? (Score:2)
Which part is supposed to be "embarrassing"? That they wish to focus on wealthy customers? Should Porsche be embarrassed too?
This part is outright praise-worthy...
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This part is outright praise-worthy...
Depends on if they mean their users' data or data about their users. As they're talking about metrics and "utter incompetence" in it's efforts, it seems they're talking about the latter and their inability to properly analyze the data about their users. If that's so, it's not so praise-worthy. (Noting, in the opposite case, that incompetence in *not* looking at the users' data would mean they're actually good at looking at it.)
What this really means... (Score:2)
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Is that data-driven programming isn't a thing at Snapchat.
Maybe the data disappears after 5 minutes, like the attention span of the CEO ...
Surely more embarrassing (Score:2)
is how ugly and badly designed their user interface is.
Will you all put your money where your mouth is (Score:1)