Snap Inc.: An Overview

Today, we are living in a new era of advanced technology, where almost everything we do in a day is closely related to science. There can be no doubt that over the last years technology has been one responsible for creating useful resources that have been able to put quality information together in our fingertips. The development and discovery of technology have led to a lot of innovations, better luxuries, and better facilities, but in short, the technology has dramatically changed people’s lives. Many highly developed gadgets that are connected have led the way people communicate, study, use humor, play and behave. In life, it is not hard to discover most of the technology we use every day including computers, laptops, cell phones, radios, and TVs. Most of the technological discoveries have been made in the United States of America. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the significant stakeholders of Snap Inc. including some of their major strengths and weakness.

Snap Inc. is an American based camera and technology company that was founded September 16, 2011. The main founders of the company are Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel. The company is based in Venice in California (Colao 2013). The company has four main products which are Bitmoji, Snapchat, Zenly and Spectacles. Eventually, the company was named as Snapchat Inc. when it was founded but later it was rebranded five years later as Snap Inc. This was done all the spectacles products all to be under one company. The company maintains and develops multimedia mobile app Snapchat and image messaging, together with manufacturing a special camera called Spectacle and as a strong pair of smart glasses. This pair of glasses is used to connect the person utilizing the snapshot account while still recording videos in a circular format. Two years ago the unique spectacles became available for online purchase. The company believes that through inventing big cameras is an explicit representation of one of the most significant opportunity where people and communities lives can be improved.  

The company’s primary goal is to positively contribute to people’s progress by empowering how individuals express themselves, learn more about the world, living in the moment and having fun together. One of the central concepts of Snapchat is that messages and pictures are only there for a short time before they disappear (Poltash 2012). The application slowly changed from focusing from person to person picture sharing to featuring stories of twenty-four-hour contents. Snapchat has become popular when it comes to representing social media as a mobile-first direction. However, Snapchat has not gone down well with users with musician Rihanna accusing the app of promoting domestic violence and asking people to delete it in their phones.

The Company’s Goals and Primary Products

The primary stakeholders of Snap Inc. own more than one million U.S dollars, and they stand to make many bucks when it comes to the public.  The company has many stakeholders although some are companies while the rest are individuals.

Evan is the CEO and also one of the co-founders. He has a total of forty-four percentage of voting power. Together with Bobby Murphy, Evan launched Snapchat in September 2011. He is described as a visionary product that can rival Steve Jobs. However, he holds the title of the CEO which has helped him to come up with share structures so that he and Bobby can be in a position to retain the management and control of the company in future (Colao 2013). Although they founded the company together, Evan has been mandated with the task of ensuring the company achieves its goals and objectives.

He is the companies CTO and one of the co-founders together with Evan.  Despite Evan being the CEO, they both have the same voting powers standing at forty-four percent. Spiegel and Murphy were frat brother’s studying at Stanford whey they decided to come up with the app and together they have grown Snap Inc much more significant than just what we see of messages disappearing (Colao 2013). Most people describe Spiegel as a genius while Murphy is tasked with leading the company’s cutting-edge work in Labs division.

Benchmark is so far the largest venture stakeholder in Snap Inc mostly to the lead it took in 2013. During the deal, Mitch Lasky from Benchmark said that with time Snap Inc can work hard and become one of the leading mobile companies all over the world. The company has class A shares of 65,799,720 and voting power of 2.7%.

Lightspeed owner Barry Eggers came to learn of Snapchat from his daughter one day. Then one of the partners Jeremy Liew organized for a meeting with Snap Inc at the right time when the company was running out of cash. Together they discussed the way forward, and a working relationship was signed. The company has class A shares of 43,314,760 and voting power of 1.8%.

Imran Khan

Before joining the tech world, Khan was in the banking world. In January 2015, Khan was appointed by Snap as its chief strategy officer. He helped Snap acquire two hundred million U.S dollars from Alibaba. His principal job is to assist in strategy and assisting the company links up with IPO. His class “A” shares are 1,418,868 with a voting power of 1 percent. Nevertheless, he has contributed a lot to the company.

Snapchat’s Concept and Popularity

Fidelity Investment Company which is referred to as Fidelity is a global financial services company that is based in Boston in Massachusetts. Worldwide, it is the fourth biggest asset manager. The company operates a brokerage firm as well as being involved in managing a large part of mutual funds (Pagliery and October 2014) It also provides investment advice and fund distribution, wealth management, retirement services and life insurance services. In March this year, Fidelity was the largest owner of Snapchat with 33.4 million shares.

BlackRock Inc

BlackRock is a leading American global investment company that is based in New York City. It was founded as a fixed income, risk management, and asset management organization and today the company is the most prominent asset manager. The company operates globally with more than seventy offices in thirty countries. The company bought almost ten million shares in Snap during the first quarter.

List of specific stakeholders within stakeholders groups

1.    Capital Research and Management Company
2.    The Vanguard Group
3.    Norges Bank Investment Company
4.    PNC Bank

Fidelity Investment

1.    FMR LLC

Benchmark Inc.

1.    Dimension Fund advisor
2.    Northern Trust Investment
3.    Blackrock Fund Advisors
4.    Engaged Capital LLC

1.    Lightspeed India Partners
2.    Lightspeed China Partners

Behavior and Motives of Stakeholders

BlackRock is one company that is much committed to giving back to the society. The CEO of the company said that all the stakeholders of his company need to contribute to the building of the community otherwise they might lose support. A lot is happening in the society and if the companies chip in they can play a paramount role. The move created towards a more significant responsibility in the corporation has continued to grow three years ago. The primary motive of BlackRock Company is to make sure that despite being in business it gives back to the society.

Fidelity

Around four years ago the people managing Fidelity Company had every reason to smile and feel right about the company. The assets and clients base which was under management was growing each day. The company was venturing into new products and markets. The company today is helping to manage corporate retirement plans for more than five thousand people with close to four million people participating. Each year the company is experiencing rapid growth in a very competitive market.

The CEO of the company said that they started the company because they were not satisfied enough with the status quo in the society. The company believes that commerce is not for a specific group of people but everyone. In this world today, communities are usually shaped by people who are in business. This is the reason why the company is much interested in achieving its goal and objectives to make sure that we have a just society. According to the company, people who are in business can sell more products given the right technology, and this will make their customers happier.

Snap Inc.’s Stakeholders

Benchmark

The company helps to provide financial advice to mutual funds, banks, hedge funds and multinational investors. The motive of the company is to make sure that institutions receive the best financial information without any discrimination.  The hiring of the company is based on one’s qualification and skills.

Generic Strategic Programs Available

Swing

This is a short-term strategy used by business people to sell and buy stocks whose indicators suggest a downward and upward trend in the coming days. For swing strategy, the options available are:

1.    Government involvement in the stock exchange.
2.    Close monitoring of the business by appointed bodies. This will help to reduce the rate at which business people are losing their money to fraudsters.
3.    Involving all the members in decision making.

Offensive

It is a strategy that involves trying to pursue changes within the business industry actively. Most countries on the offensive side dwell much in research to survive in the market. The options here include:

1.    Investing a lot in research to be ahead of others
2.    Coming up with strategies that will make sure the changes do not negatively affect the business people.

Defensive

These are management tools that are used in business to keep off any form of attack from any potential competitor. As a company, you need to keep safe your shares to ensure the customers and profits are intact. We can suggest below options:

1.    1investing more in the customers
2.    Investing in research that will help identify the weakness of the competitors
3.    Benchmarking with other companies

Hold

Also called positioning trading is a strategy used in an investment where a business person buys some stock and holds them for quite some time, with the aim that the value of the stock will increase for the period. Below are some of the options available for hold strategy.

1.    Investing in buying a significant amount of shares. This will help to maximize on a substantial profit once the market is right.
2.    This strategy involves a lot of risks. Therefore, it is good for the company to engage risks and benefits experts before embarking on holding the stocks.

For snapChat company the best available options are both defensive and hold strategies.  Today the business world is very competitive, and it is only those companies that who are strategically positioning themselves that will survive (Van Halen et al. 2005). In the last three years, the company has made a considerable profit. Proper management is essential to every organization to achieve its goals. The company can invest in buying stock, holding them for quite some time and later selling them at a reasonable profit.

A program strategy is a broach approach or means which will help a program achieve its goals. One strategy program is proper management. The main reason why people venture into business is to make a profit at the end of the day. However, this cannot be achieved with a team that lacks good management skills.  Therefore, the stakeholders mentioned above need to have active management to compete well with other companies. Another program strategy is practicing good communication in the company. One of the reasons why most organizations and companies fail to see their third birthday is a result of poor communication. Excellent communication is essential in a company as it ensures that there is a smooth flow of information from one department to the other.  It is through dialogue that managers will be in a position to encourage their juniors something that makes them feel that they are part of the organization. If the stakeholders mentioned above practice the two strategies I have said, I have a firm belief that they will survive in the business world.

Reference List

Colao, J.J., 2013. In Less Than Two Years, Snapchat Is an $860 Million Company.

Pagliery, J. and October, J., 2014. Snapchat isn’t private. Period. CNN Money.

Poltash, N.A., 2012. Snapchat and sexting: A snapshot of baring your bare essentials. Rich. JL & Tech., 19, p.1.

Van Halen, C., Vezzoli, C. and Wimmer, R., 2005. Methodology for product service system innovation: how to develop clean, clever and competitive strategies in companies. Uitgeverij Van Gorcum.