The $1B valuation was for their last round which was a $50m investment by Tencen... | Hacker News

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		thesausageking on Sept 26, 2019 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed The $1B valuation was for their last round which was a $50m investment by Tencent, the company behind WeChat. The investment was more about a partnership between the companies than the economics. At the time, Kik's CEO said: "Today, there are only five other companies in the world that see the future like we do: Tencent, Line, Facebook, Snapchat, and Telegram. One of them owns the largest internet market in the world. We couldn’t be more excited to partner with them as we run this race."

criddell on Sept 26, 2019 [–]

I even wonder how Tencent thought Kik was worth $50m. That seems absurd.

thesausageking on Sept 27, 2019 | [–]

When Tencent invested, it had 300m users including 40% of teenagers in the US, and were growing fast.

For Tencent (which makes WeChat), it's worth it to spend 0.03% of their market cap to partner with a fast growing app in the US market.

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