Editor’s Morning Note: We have two quick bites for you this morning, one positive and one negative. Balance!
“When we were young.” – Adele
It’s a cold Friday here in San Francisco. To keep you warm, we have two short nibbles ready to go.
First, Snapchat’s parent company, Snap, is being sued by a former employee during the run-up to its IPO. Second, new ecommerce sales numbers are worth noting.
In order, let’s go:
Snap
Snap’s IPO, which will bring the performance of both Snapchat and Spectacles into the public sphere, is under the microscope this week. A former employee alleged Snap fired him for looking askance at growth data the worker found suspect.
Variety has the story, from which we will excise only the following:
Anthony Pompliano, who was the company’s growth lead, alleges that he was fired after just three weeks with the company because he refused to go along with Snapchat’s plans.
That’s not good. What happened specifically?
He said he was fired after blowing the whistle on the company’s misrepresentations with several higher-ups.
Yeesh, subpar all around. Final claim?
“Snapchat’s leadership saw Mr. Pompliano as an impediment to their planned IPO because he refused to turn a blind eye to Snapchat’s misrepresentations,” the lawsuit alleges.
Zonks. Pompliano’s lawyers know how to make sure their suit hits the news cycle. A suit against a company isn’t much, often. A suit against a company alleging that a key employee was fired on the path to IPO over material concerns is something else.
Snapchat claims the suit has no merit. That may very well be true, but it still lands far too close to the IPO for comfort.
Ecommerce is Big
If you missed the Twitter discussion of whether Amazon is somehow too good for capitalism due to its anti-profit stance—that’s a rude, only partially true statement, but you get me—you are lucky.
The broader discussion regarding ecommerce continues, however, with consumer behavior continuing its shift towards digital transactions over IRL interactions. Fortune has the latest late-2016 numbers via Adobe:
Perhaps that sort of expansion will provide enough lift for even Jet’s wings. I’m kidding.
Happy Friday!