Business person: founder and CEO of Snapchat; Evan Spiegel - the youngest billionaire in the world

The “Business Person” heading tells “Megamind” readers about what stories and facts surround the most prominent IT entrepreneurs from all over the world, the value of companies running which exceeds any reasonable limits. We will not be limited only to the “new wave” of businessmen and we will also tell about those who are called the “old school”.

Today, life and history of Evan Spiegel, founder of Snapchat , are a close-up. The Snapchat service is a photo messenger with self-destructing messages in the form of text messages, photos and videos that are stored on the server for up to ten seconds.
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The entrepreneur began working on this project as a student. Before that, Evan Spiegel had no significant work experience. And the idea for a startup was suggested by his friend. Spiegel became the youngest billionaire, and now his fortune is estimated at $ 2.1 billion.

Family hobbies

Evan Spiegel grew up in Pacific Palisades, an elite area of ​​Los Angeles. He was the eldest son of two lawyers - Spiegel's parents divorced when he was in school.

Spiegel can rightfully be called a "boy major": from childhood he was accustomed to rest with his father, a successful lawyer, now in the Bahamas, now at Canadian ski resorts, now in Europe.

The Spiegel family was a member of several private clubs, including the Jonathan Club in Santa Monica and La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club. They often traveled to Europe and even visited Canada, where they rode snowboards with delivery to the top by helicopters.

Other attributes of luxury, to which the young man was accustomed from childhood, are luxury cars (according to Business Insider, Spiegel had five of them). As reported by LA Weekly, the first car, which Evan got behind the wheel, only having received a driver's license, was the Cadillac Escalade (the cost of the new model is from $ 72,000).



Spiegel wanted to have a more economical car, and in 2008 he wrote a letter to his father asking about the BMW 550i, which cost about $ 75,000. “Cars bring me real pleasure,” he wrote. “I would be very grateful if you would rate me and all my work by buying a BMW.” Requests teenager led to disagreements with his father, after which he moved to his mother, who gave him a long-awaited car.

Student years

Thanks to his father's connections, Spiegel enrolled at the prestigious Stanford to study industrial design. At Stanford University, Spiegel met the future co-founders of Snapchat — Reggie Brown and Bobby Murphy. According to TechCrunch, the idea of ​​creating a mobile application that allows you to send self-destructing images belonged to Brown.

Later, Murphy told Forbes: "We were not cool, so we tried to create something to become cool." All three were members of the Kappa-Sigma fraternity - Spiegel was the second most important person in the organization.



Shortly before graduation, Spiegel dropped out of school to pursue Snapchat.

Business idea and business partners

In the spring of 2011 (Spiegel studied at the penultimate year) Brown said: "I want the photos I sent to this girl to disappear." The younger comrade was delighted with this thought and called it "an idea for a million." As it turned out recently, he underestimated her: the idea brought an order of magnitude more.

The development of the application was assigned to Bobby Murphy, a programmer student, with whom Spiegel first tried himself as an entrepreneur. They founded the company Future Freshman, which helped applicants and their parents prepare documents for the university.

All summer, three young men worked on the project, first called Pictaboo. Evan drew the logo, which even now remains the hallmark of the Snapchat, a cheerful ghost. He became CEO of the company, Brown became the marketing director, and Murphy became the technical director.

Pictaboo was released in July, a month later he had only 127 users. In August, the trinity of the creators of the project suddenly unexpectedly fell out: as TechCrunch writes, because of the order in which their names will be indicated in the patent. In addition, they could not share the shares: Brown wanted to get 30%, the rest was not satisfied. In the end, Spiegel and Murphy actually kicked Brown out of the company, turning off all email addresses and passwords.

Snapchat

In the fall of 2011, the two remaining company founders changed their name to Snapchat. The number of users has grown to a thousand people, and Spiegel and Murphy discovered an interesting pattern: the service was most popular from 9 to 15 hours, that is, at a time when schoolchildren are in class. For teenagers, the application has become a real find: you can exchange pictures without fear that the teacher will see them.

In April 2012, the number of fans of Snapchat has grown to 10 thousand people. Here, however, young entrepreneurs faced financial difficulties: the payment for server capacity grew, and they had to look for investors. Jeremy Lew from Lightspeed Venture Partners came to the rescue: his partner's daughter told him about the popularity of the application among teenagers. He invested in Snapchat $ 485 thousand and valued the company at $ 4.25 million.

After receiving the money, Spiegel immediately dismissed from Stanford, despite the fact that he had to finish his studies before the end of just a few weeks.

In 2012, the team created most of the application, at which time they were located in the house of Father Spiegel. Despite the fact that later the company moved into its own office, Spiegel lived with his father for a long time - in particular, because of the “cheap rent”.

In February 2013, fans of Snapchat have already sent 60 million shots per day, in May - 150 million.

The popularity of the service also attracted investors: in the spring of 2013, the company received $ 13.5 million from Benchmark, in the summer of the same year - $ 80 million from IPV and several other investors (SV Angel, General Catalyst Partners); while Snapchat was valued at $ 800 million. In December, Coatue Management hedge fund ($ 50 million) invested in Snapchat.

In total, the investment received by the application at the end of the year exceeded $ 120 million.

At the end of 2013, Mark Zuckerberg became interested in a startup. Unable to create successful clones of the service with a ghost, he offered the founders $ 3 billion for the company. Spiegel refused, stating that in the near future he did not intend to consider the offers of either purchase or investment (interest from other investors at that time was very high).

In 2014, Yuri Milner’s DST Global fund was invested in the “cheerful ghost” (the amount of funding was not disclosed), and the company's valuation reached $ 7 billion. In early October, it became known that Snapchat expects a new influx of investment, including from Yahoo! and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. According to The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! can invest in an application of $ 20 million.

In March 2015, Snapchat attracted another $ 200 million investment, valued at $ 19 billion. In early 2016, the Fidelity Foundation invested $ 175 million in Snapchat.

Personal life

The relationship between Miranda Kerr and the youngest billionaire in the world, the founder of Snapchat service Evan Spiegel, became known in July last year after the paparazzi noticed lovers holding hands on a street in Los Angeles. The following month, Miranda and Evan went on their first trip together, and recently the model first spoke about the relationship with her chosen one.



“He’s 25, but he’s acting like he’s 50,” Miranda laughed. - He doesn't go to parties. He goes to Venice Beach to work. He always returns home on time. In the evenings we rarely go out somewhere - we prefer to have dinner at home and go to bed early. ”

Under the guise of a superhero

Jordan Crook, in his TechCrunch article, draws Spiegel's portrait from a completely different side:

In an interview with Forbes, Spiegel apparently lied when telling the story that Zuckerberg offered to meet with him and discuss the deal. His version of the story describes Mark’s very friendly and slightly desperate invitation to come, which Spiegel hints at Zuckerberg with cold refusal: you have to come yourself.

Other founders in Los Angeles, whose businesses do not compete with Snapchat at all, cannot say anything good about it. A friend of mine who does not consider Spiegel as a friend, but rather often interacts with him, calls him "very insecure" and "unbearably impudent."

I'll be honest, I wanted to like Evan. I really tried. I wrote off his insolence, even a little deserved, on immaturity. In the end, he built a two billion business in 21 years. But in fact, when you learn more about someone you respect, there comes a time when the part that you respect is separated from the person.