It’s the second day of summer, and Snapchat has raised an $80 million* Series B round at an $800 million pre-money valuation. The phat Series B round was led by Institutional Venture Partners, according to multiple sources, after being sought after by many other top-tier Valley VCs.
After putting in its dough, IVP hooks up with Benchmark and Lightspeed, Snapchat’s existing backers.
Contrary to prior reports, including ours, the $800 million valuation is considerably less than $1 billion and considerably more than the half that originally demarcated. The company will also not be using the money to build an oversized salesforce. I have no idea where that one came from.
My guess is that Snapchat founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy will use the new money to continue to scale their foothold on the Ephemeral-net, as more people beyond Snapchat’s gateway, 20-something demographic realize that capturing random moments and sending them to their friends briefly (and disposably) is the cool thing to do.
Eight people Snapchatted me tonight; I am over 30, and so are all but two of them.
*Update: Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel has announced this morning that the raise is $60 million, versus the $80 million we originally reported on Saturday. Both we and Valleywag’s Nitasha Tiku are hearing that the total raise was $80 million despite the SEC filing, with around $20 million sold in a secondary offering. General Catalyst Partners (see my disclosure) and SV Angel also went in on the round.