Here's what you need to know about Snapchat's IPO (SNAP)

Its Wall Street debut on Thursday is already being hotly anticipated as the tech IPO of the year. Here's what you need to know about the IPO as the company, now known as Snap Inc., starts trading:

The basics: Snap Inc. is scheduled to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the ticker SNAP after pricing its IPO at $17 a share. That gives it a $24 billion valuation.

Snap sold 200 million shares at $17 apiece, valuing the company at $23.8 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Some of Snap's new investors won't be able to sell the stock for a year.

It's also selling only nonvoting shares because its CEO Evan Spiegel and cofounder Bobby Murphy want to retain control.

This is a rare move for a company, and a Securities and Exchange Commission committee is already looking into what it means for investor transparency.

A report in The New York Times said the founders tightened their grip on the company over a dispute with its first investor.

Despite its roots as a sexting app, it's much more than that now. Spiegel has been pitching Snap as a camera company: "Before, cameras were the perfect way to save or record something you saw. And they sort of helped augment memory. But now cameras augment the way that we talk."

"Snap is a camera company," Spiegel says at the beginning of the road-show video. "We feel like we're really at the beginning of what cameras can do."

Spiegel compares Snapchat's camera to a mouse cursor on a desktop computer. "With Snapchat, the camera has become the primary input for the phone."

"I think Snapchat really tapped into that human desire to communicate in a way that feels like it's face-to-face, even if you're far away," Spiegel says.

Here's how Snapchat executives explained why investors should buy into their IPO.

Labeling it a "camera company" and not a social network makes Snap hard to compare. Investors say there are four key issues they're now dealing with when it comes to Snap's IPO. The first is its valuation.

Snapchat's user growth is slowing. So far, Snap has blamed the problem on bad product updates that made it hard to use on Android.

To boost its numbers, Snapchat acknowledges it will need to cater to Android users too.

"To continue growth in user engagement, we will need to prioritize development of our products to operate on smartphones with Android operating systems," the company said in its S-1 filing. "If we are unable to improve operability of our products on smartphones with Android operating systems, and those smartphones become more popular and fewer people use smartphones with iOS operating systems, our business could be seriously harmed."

Here's the bull case versus the bear case on its user growth.

Then there's the money question: Can Snapchat sustain its revenue growth?

Here's the bull case versus the bear case.

And the elephant in the room that might stomp on Snapchat's IPO: Facebook.

Here's the bull case versus the bear case.

But that's not turning away investors. Some investors are already predicting it to pop on day one.

At the $17 share price, a lot of people will get rich from the IPO. Spiegel's stake alone in Snap is worth $4.5 billion. Now it's Wall Street's turn to value the company.

Here's who else will get rich from Snapchat's IPO.

Here's what you need to know about Snapchat's IPO (SNAP)

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