Evan Spiegel Quotes

Evan Spiegel, the 24-year-old founder of Snapchat, a photo-messaging app that was valued at $15 billion after a round of fundraising in March, confirmed that his firm is preparing for an IPO, though he didn’t say when.

All told, there must have been more than a hundred people there, milling about between the makeshift tricycle track in the parking lot and the fraternity house. The freshmen had come sporting a variety of attire, from the East Coasters in polos to Southern Californians in tank tops, most trying too hard to look cool and casual at the same time. All the brothers were wearing yellow t-shirts for rush; the front depicted Curious George passed out next to a tipped-over bottle of ether. The lower right side of the back showed a small anchor with the fraternity’s letters, KΣ, on each side—it was Evan’s signature. The anchor was his way of saying, “This is an Evan Spiegel production.” Evan was born on June 4, 1990, to a pair of highly successful lawyers. His mother, Melissa Thomas, graduated from Harvard Law School and practiced tax law as a partner at a prominent Los Angeles firm before resigning to become a stay-at-home mother when Evan was young. His father, John Spiegel, graduated from Stanford and Yale Law School and became a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson, an elite firm started by Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger. His clients included Warner Bros. and Sergey Brin.

Evan was born on June 4, 1990, to a pair of highly successful lawyers. His mother, Melissa Thomas, graduated from Harvard Law School and practiced tax law as a partner at a prominent Los Angeles firm before resigning to become a stay-at-home mother when Evan was young. His father, John Spiegel, graduated from Stanford and Yale Law School and became a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson, an elite firm started by Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger. His clients included Warner Bros. and Sergey Brin. Evan and his two younger sisters, Lauren and Caroline, grew up in Pacific Palisades, an upper-class neighborhood bordering Santa Monica in western Los Angeles. John had the kids volunteer and help build homes in poor areas of Mexico. When Evan was in high school, Melissa and John divorced after nearly twenty years of marriage. Evan chose to live with his father in a four-million-dollar house in Pacific Palisades, just blocks from his childhood home where his mother still lives. John let young Evan decorate the new home with the help of Greg Grande, the set designer from Friends. Evan decked out his room with a custom white leather king-size bed, Venetian plaster, floating bookshelves, two designer desk chairs, custom closets, and, of course, a brand new computer.

When Jeremy Liew and Lightspeed had invested just a few weeks prior, Liew had included terms giving Lightspeed the right of first refusal to invest in Snapchat’s next round of funding, as well as rights to take 50 percent of the next round. Essentially, Lightspeed controlled Snapchat’s next round of funding and made Snapchat unattractive to other investors, who would want to take a larger stake in the Series A round. Evan was furious. He felt betrayed and taken advantage of. Liew had told him these terms were standard. Evan would warn other students about this betrayal for years to come, as he did in a keynote address at a Stanford Women in Business conference in 2013: One of my biggest mistakes as an entrepreneur involved a term sheet. This particular term sheet was our first. And when we talked to the venture capitalists, and we talked to our lawyers, they took refuge in the notion of Standard. When I asked a question because I didn’t understand something, I was reassured that the term was standard, and therefore agreeable. I forgot that the idea of STANDARD is a construct. It simply does not exist. So rather than attempt to further understand the document, I accepted it. It wasn’t until a bit later, when the company had grown and we needed more capital—that I realized I had made a very expensive mistake. He also warned in a 2015 talk at the University of Southern California, “If you hear the words ‘standard terms,’ then figure out actually what the terms are, because they are probably not standard and the person explaining [them] to you probably doesn’t know how they work.” Teo and General Catalyst put Evan in touch with lawyers who would help him escape the blocking structure with a new round of funding. Evan struck a deal with Jeremy Liew to sell Lightspeed a limited number of Snapchat shares at a discount in exchange for removing the onerous terms. Feeling stung by Silicon Valley venture capitalists, Evan then put the deal with General Catalyst on hold and put together a group of angel investors from Los Angeles, including his father, John Spiegel, and the CEO of Sony Entertainment, Michael Lynton.

As everyone streamed into the house, the music blared and the liquor flowed. All of the furniture in the house had been taken out and replaced with bars or dance floors. The outside deck was covered in people, bars, and heat lamps. People who hadn’t been lucky enough to be invited snuck into the party through a hole in the fence. Inside, partygoers talked with old classmates, danced, and scoured the crowd for a midnight kiss. Upstairs, Evan had created a sectioned-off VIP area, with more bars and friends. It was a house party on steroids, with one hundred, maybe two hundred people crammed into Snapchat’s new headquarters to sip champagne and ring in the New Year. John Spiegel stopped by the party, saying hi and congratulating Evan, Bobby, David, Daniel, and Evan’s girlfriend at the time. He chatted with some of Evan’s friends he had met over the years, sharing a sense of bewilderment over how quickly his son’s crazy scheme had taken off. John had worked his way up a very traditional ladder, climbing from the law review to a Supreme Court clerkship to becoming an extremely successful litigator. Evan had eschewed a bachelor’s degree from Stanford to focus on his seemingly quixotic business. Everything seemed to be going perfectly.

One of the masters of trendspotting is Rohit Bhargava, author of Non-Obvious. He curates the biggest trends each year and packages them up into a book. Then he explains how people and businesses can take advantage of these trends to improve their position in the marketplace. Thinking deliberately about trends is a secret sauce for most successful hustlers, because it creates an unfair advantage. When Evan Spiegel built Snapchat, he was capitalizing on a trend. He saw people using Facebook and their phones to share photos, but noticed they felt inhibited by the fact that the images were either permanent, or public. By reversing those two elements―making image-sharing ephemeral and private, he solved a big problem. Snapchat exploded across the younger demographics and quickly became a multibillion-dollar business. Another example is Kik, a popular messaging app. When Kik launched, plenty of messaging services already existed. In fact, the ultimate messaging services seemed to be the ones already  built into everyone's phones. Apple had a messaging app, and so did Android. So, why reinvent the wheel? Ted Livingston, the founder of Kik, had other ideas. Why? Because he had identified a trend. Consumers were clearly upset with the built-in messaging services. First, the telecom companies were charging per message sent and received, which was a horrible experience. It felt like classic, capitalistic highway robbery. Second―and this was a big problem for teens: You could only exchange messages by giving out your phone number. Livingston noticed that teens wanted to chat with other people they met online, but had no safe way of doing that without giving out their number. So he created Kik, which allows people to create a username instead. Kiksters can then share their username to start chatting, while keeping their digits private. But even better, messaging is unlimited, and completely free. By examining the trends happening in the messaging market, Livingston was able to build a product that rivaled the multi-billion dollar incumbents. Now his company is valued at over a billion.   

Imran Khan, director de estrategia de la empresa, aseguró: «Snapchat es una empresa de cámaras, no es una empresa social». No sé si es por resentimiento, después de que Evan Spiegel rechazara las ofertas de adquisición de Zuckerberg, o si se trata de una respuesta justificada ante una amenaza, pero creo que lo primero que piensa Mark Zuckerberg en cuanto abre los ojos por la mañana, y lo último antes de cerrarlos por la noche, es: «Vamos a barrer a Snap Inc. de la faz de la Tierra». Y lo va a hacer. Zuckerberg sabe que las imágenes son la funcionalidad más potente de Facebook, y gran parte de ella reside en esa ala de su imperio social llamada Instagram. Tardamos sesenta mil veces menos en procesar imágenes que textos. Las imágenes tienen línea directa con el corazón. Y si Snapchat amenaza con llevarse un considerable pedazo del negocio, o incluso con encaramarse al liderato, esa amenaza hay que machacarla.