Meet the 23-Year-Old Kid Who
Turned Down $3 Billion for
Snapchat
Two years ago, Evan Spiegel was
just another beer-soaked frat
boy obsessing over sex and
dot.com riches. This week, the
23-year-old co-founder of
Snapchat was offered big -- big --
money for the tiny smartphone
app company he created.
Instead of dancing into the
sunset, Spiegel did the
unthinkable, turning down a $3
billion offer from Facebook (FB)
and then a $4 billion bid from
Google (GOOG). A college dropout
running a company with almost
no assets, no revenue and a
mountain of legal problems,
Spiegel is betting Snapchat can
transcend the stigma of the
"next big thing" and become an
industry unto its own.
There's no going back now.
History will paint Evan Spiegel as
either one of the most brilliant
entrepreneurs ever, or a
delusional fool.
With him there is no in between.
The irony of the weird tale
unfolding around this boyishly
handsome child of privilege is
that Snapchat is based on the
idea of not leaving any history at
all. Dreamed up as a way to send
so-called "sext" messages that
self destruct before falling into
the wrong hands, Snapchat
doesn't actually posses the
things that made Facebook and
Google huge. Snapchat knows
nothing about its users. Each of
the millions of Snaps that will be
sent this month will be erased
from a third-party server within
seconds of being received.
What Snapchat has is explosive
growth with the teenagers that
are already sick of Facebook.
Snapchat is sexy and subversive.
It's cool. It's everything Facebook
isn't. That may be precisely why
Spiegel thinks Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg, Google, or maybe
even Twitter, will be coming back
with even bigger offers soon.
How it started
After leaving school, Spiegel
moved in with his father and used
some of the $70 million the
company has garnered in venture
funding to continue to build out
the app. In a recent interview with
the Associated Press, Spiegel
recounted how his controversial
company came to be:
"A buddy of mine was bummed
about a photo he (regretted
sending). And so we started
looking at some of the other
applications in the space that
were doing disappearing texts,
photo, video. And they really had a
hard time because there was a
lot of stigma around deleting
things. But when Bobby (Bobby
Murphy, Snapchat chief
technology officer and co-
founder) and I built the prototype
and started using it, we realized
how much fun we were having
sending the photos back and
forth. And based on our
experience with the application
we were able to do a good job
describing how ephemeral
content can make an experience
that is really fun, exciting and
way more engaging."
According to his bio on Snapchat's
website, Spiegel dipped his toes
into software development while
in high school "developing
simulators and video game
emulators" before moving on to
more complex websites he would
build for friends and family. The
young tech hot shot now serves
on President Obama's Council on
Technology and Media and
apparently has finished up his
degree at Stanford.
Tech gossip site Valleywag and
others describe Spiegel as a
spoiled frat boy who stumbled
into a fortune while
brainstorming ways to send less-
incriminating sext messages with
his fraternity buddies. According
to this less-charitable version of
events Spiegel and credited co-
founder Bobby Murphy adapted
much of what is now Snapchat
from an earlier company called
"Picaboo" that was created by
Reggie Brown.
Brown, a former Kappa Sigma
fraternity brother of Murphy and
Spiegel, has filed suit against the
company in Los Angeles Superior
Court. It became an even higher
stakes lawsuit Wednesday
evening when it was reported
that Snapchat had turned down a
$3 billion cash offer from
Facebook. By Thursday
afternoon, the founder of
GigaOm, Om Malik, reported via
Twitter (TWTR) that Spiegel had
subsequently rejected nearly $4
billion from Google.
New visionary
According to Snapchat's website,
the company's infrastructure
and unopened Snaps are stored
on Google's cloud computing
service, App Engine, until they are
viewed and then deleted.
Snapchat claims more than 350
million Snaps were sent in
September, but the company has
no reliable information on users.
Right now, Snapchat's most
tangible assets are a cute icon, a
great app and lawsuits.
Hyper-growth or not, who is Evan
Spiegel to turn down a $4 billion
offer for his little app company?
As Yahoo Interactive Editor Phil
Pearlman sees it, Spiegel is the
latest, no-holds barred visionary
tech titan in the making. "He's a
smart guy, a super young guy,
and my impression is that he's in
it to win it," offers Pearlman in
the attached video.
As for the aforementioned
lawsuit, Pearlman notes that "the
parallel to the Facebook story is
really interesting from a
Machiavellian perspective. You
need that kind of a cutthroat or
warrior mentality to make it."
If Spiegel getting sued by Brown
calls to mind Zuckerberg fighting
off the Winklevoss twins' claims
to have invented Facebook,
Snapchat's other legal woes give
off a whiff of a much creepier
entrepreneur named Joe Francis,
former king of the Girls Gone Wild
empire. Much like Girls Gone Wild,
Snapchat has been dogged from
the start by claims of trafficking
in illicit visuals. Francis built a
huge business selling videos and
DVDs of women flashing the
camera and engaging in other
lewd behaviors. In return for their
consent, Francis would pay the
women as little as a hat or T-
shirt.
Ultimately, a series of
increasingly weird lawsuits
destroyed the business, which
filed for bankruptcy earlier this
year. Whether he proves to be
another Zuckerberg, Francis, or
something entirely different,
Evan Spiegel couldn't seem less
concerned. The rabid appeal of
Snapchat to the highly coveted
teen audience makes it likely that
Facebook, Google or perhaps
Twitter will come around with
even larger bids for the company.
Better still, high-profile venture
backer Benchmark Capital gives
Snapchat a veneer of
respectability and legal cover of
which Francis could only have
dreamed.
Spiegel is straight out of central
casting. A 23-year-old soon-to-be
billionaire from Southern
California who already has enough
money and self-assurance to
wait as long as it takes for
someone to make him an 11-digit
offer for his sexting app. It's a
Millennial version of the American
dream.
Or at least that's one version of
it. Pearlman sees substance
under the sizzle. "The media is
going to frame things so that
they're as sellable as possible," he
concludes.
However brilliant he is, or is not,
Spiegel has the world convinced
Snapchat is a better social
network mousetrap. The only
question seems to be exactly
how much gold gets laid at his
door.

wow!! that guy has guts oh.....lets wait and see what happens

joywendy: wow!! that guy has guts oh.....lets wait and see what happens

Good morning . He knows what his coy is worth. Not everything is about money seriously.

onegig: Good morning . He knows what his coy is worth. Not everything is about money seriously.

yeah, you are right....he should be very careful, facebook and google wont stop.

this is what the american cultists/fraternities do while here in naija our cultists just

Calling a 23years old a kid?

ehvez: Calling a 23years old a kid?

yep. Theyre called "college kids".
U dont read online a lot else you'll see this term used for under 25's.
"kids fresh out of college/school"
etc.
Steve jobs founded wat bcame apple @ 22 and he was referred to as a kid. Kid cuz He had no worldly experience for business/worldly success (not kid in d sense of not being smart).
I dnt think d term is insultive or derogatory ( the law counts 17+ as adults).
Decades l8r wat wud u call ur 22 y.o self(after ur more wiser,experienced,worldly)? A kid!