Evan Spiegel: How Snap's Founders Choose What To Build Next

1. 0:00 – 2:12

   Intro

   1. SBSteven Bartlett0:00

      You became the world's youngest billionaire at the age of 25. You got Mark Zuckerberg offering you $3 billion.

   2. ESEvan Spiegel0:06

      That was, uh, a fateful day for sure, but we decided that we'd rather go it alone.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett0:11

      Was there ever a day where you doubted that decision? Evan Spiegel is the co-founder behind one of the world's biggest social media platforms, Snapchat. He turned disappearing messages into a multi-billion dollar empire, redefining how we connect online. Evan, you don't do many podcasts, do you?

   4. ESEvan Spiegel0:27

      I don't do much public speaking at all, but I wanna share a bit more.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett0:31

      So let's go back to those early days.

   6. ESEvan Spiegel0:32

      So I was an introvert growing up, and I loved to build stuff. At school, I built my own computer. And once you start realizing that things that look really complicated on the surface aren't that difficult, you start wondering, you know, what else you can build, so that led to building Snapchat at 21. So I was an undergrad at Stanford, and we'd raised $485,000, had a $4.25 million valuation.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett0:51

      What a fucking deal.

   8. ESEvan Spiegel0:52

      But back then, there were a lot of apps that would get popular really, really quickly and then sort of fade away, and a lot of people told us that we shouldn't sell it. They said, "You're just sending photos back and forth. How is this gonna grow for the long term?"

   9. SBSteven Bartlett1:02

      But the growth of Snapchat was atypical, to say the least. It was like this virus, and it was reaching 75 million users on a monthly basis. So I wondered if you had any advice on the fundamental principles of success.

   10. ESEvan Spiegel1:13

       How much people care about what they do and the ability to move quickly is the predictor of success. And at Snapchat, we have a really small design team. It's nine people who are constantly generating an incredible number of ideas and products and features because 99% of ideas are not good, but 1% is.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett1:30

       I wanna know what they teach at Stanford because the success rate of creating some of the world's preeminent entrepreneurs is really, really high.

   12. ESEvan Spiegel1:36

       There were a lot of very good lessons. The first one is...

   13. SBSteven Bartlett1:41

       This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you wanna support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.

2. 2:12 – 3:16

   The Dots That Got You Here

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:12

      Evan, when you look back over your earliest years and you, you try and make sense of the dots that connected in hindsight, I guess, as Steve Jobs once said, what are those dots?

   2. ESEvan Spiegel2:24

      There were a couple fateful choices that my parents made that I think had a huge impact. One was that they never let me watch TV. So they never let me watch TV, didn't, uh, want me to spend my time doing that, but at the same time would allow me to get whatever book I wanted. And that was a really, uh, I think, formative experience for me. And, and reading a book, you get to use your imagination a lot, you know, to try to paint the characters in your own mind, and that was really helpful. And because I wasn't watching TV, I had a lot of time on my hands, and so I liked to build stuff. I mean, when I was young, I would make a little fake hotel in our living room and, you know, have a guest experience where my parents could come and, you know, try to stay at our hotel. And I, I got to use my imagination a lot at home, and my parents made- never made me feel bad about turning the house upside down, moving chairs around to, to express myself and, and make stuff.

3. 3:16 – 3:29

   Did You Feel Like You Fitted In?

   1. ESEvan Spiegel3:16

   2. SBSteven Bartlett3:16

      Did you feel like you fitted in when you were a kid?

   3. ESEvan Spiegel3:18

      No, not, not at all. No, um, I was more of an introvert, um, growing up, so, uh, you know, I think sometimes that made it harder for me to, you know, feel like I f- fit in.

4. 3:29 – 4:45

   When Did Computers First Come Into the Picture?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett3:29

      And wh- when did computers come into the picture for you?

   2. ESEvan Spiegel3:32

      Uh, I guess I, I was exposed to my first computer, gosh, probably kindergarten, first grade, maybe a- around that, uh, period of time. I- my godfather brought over one of the early Macintoshes, uh, to show our, our family, and I got to try out things like Kid Pix and, and stuff like that. And then I guess later on in school, I, I went to the computer lab a lot. My- I really wanted my own computer, so the big breakthrough was when my mom said, "You know, if you build your own computer, you can have it. Uh, we won't let you connect it to the internet, but if you build your own computer, you can have it to, to play with." And so that was probably by sixth grade. I had a teacher who helped me, uh, you know, take all the different pieces you need and, and put them all together to, to build a computer. And I think th- this act of, you know, putting together these pieces, turning it on, you know, getting, uh, you know, Windows up and running, um, just made me realize why it s- it seems so complicated on the outside. When you're just looking at that tower, that box, right? Or, you know, and you haven't yet opened, opened it up and seen what's inside, I, I think it can seem really confusing or complicated. But as soon as you realize it's not that hard, uh, you know, to, to put it all together and, and to get started, I think there's something really empowering about that, about that feeling.

5. 4:45 – 5:11

   Things Aren’t as Complicated as They Seem

   1. ESEvan Spiegel4:45

   2. SBSteven Bartlett4:45

      What, what does that feeling teach you?

   3. ESEvan Spiegel4:47

      Uh, I, I think, you know... And, and I think this is much more the case now because, you know, if you go on YouTube, you can learn how to do pretty much anything, right? But I think, uh, once you start realizing that things that look really complicated or confusing on the surface aren't, aren't that difficult, you, you start wondering, you know, what else you can build or what else you can create or, you know, how else you can, can experiment with something that seems impossible from the outside, but really is just not that hard.

6. 5:11 – 5:52

   You Got Bullied

   1. ESEvan Spiegel5:11

   2. SBSteven Bartlett5:11

      And you got bullied in school, right? Was it sixth grade that you s- got bullied or was it sometime thereafter?

   3. ESEvan Spiegel5:19

      Yeah, middle school was not the... I think not the easiest, easiest time for me.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett5:22

      Why?

   5. ESEvan Spiegel5:23

      Um, I, you know, as I mentioned, I sort of, you know, had trouble fitting in. I, I, I didn't do a lot of activities that some other schoolmates did, like, you know, sports and stuff. I played ten- you know, a little bit on the, on the tennis team. Um, so I, I think, you know, the combination of not really playing sports with friends, spending a lot of time in the computer lab, uh, you know, at lunch or, or after school, I think, you know, just led to me feeling a bit, like, socially isolated at, you know, at what is, I think, a tricky time for, for lots of kids.

7. 5:52 – 7:16

   What Were You Like as a Kid

   1. ESEvan Spiegel5:52

   2. SBSteven Bartlett5:52

      What were you like as a kid? Were you confident?

   3. ESEvan Spiegel5:55

      I don't, I don't know if I was confident in myself per se, but I definitely was confident in my ideas. Like, I was willing to take a stand for ideas that I...... thought were different, or I was willing to explore ideas that didn't seem popular at the time, 'cause I thought it was, you know, important. I, I was, uh, I was talking to my, m- my dad's been staying with us for a while and I was talking with him, I was like, "What, you know, what stories do you think I could tell about growing up? What do you think?" And he was like, "Oh, well, you should tell them you were definitely, like, a contrarian." You know, I was like, "What do you mean by contrarian?" He's like, "Don't you remember? You wrote that article that was like an expose of the math program-"

   4. SBSteven Bartlett6:28

      (laughs)

   5. ESEvan Spiegel6:29

      "... because you were s- you know, you, you had been (laughs) basically interviewed all these teachers and kids and parents and, you know, uh, wrote this whole expose about how the math program could be better." And he was like, you know, it was sort of like, maybe better left unsaid in that environment, but the school, to their credit, supported me and, like, let me publish it and, uh, you know, I think created an environment where, you know, kids f- could challenge authority, which, which was really, uh, you know, something that, that I learned was okay.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett6:55

      I guess that's a, a principle as well of many of the people that I meet like you is that they're okay with pushing against convention. And at, you know, certain moments in your life, you make these decisions which one would say are contrarian bets. I can, I can see them all over your story, but clearly that was something innate in you from a fairly young age as you look back.

8. 7:16 – 8:38

   Why CEOs Don’t Do Many Podcasts

   1. SBSteven Bartlett7:16

      You don't do many podcasts, do you?

   2. ESEvan Spiegel7:18

      I don't do much public speaking at all. It's- it's a 2025 New Year's resolution for me though.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett7:22

      (laughs) Okay.

   4. ESEvan Spiegel7:23

      So we'll see, you know, I'm, I'm trying to, trying to, you know, share a, a bit more.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett7:27

      Why?

   6. ESEvan Spiegel7:29

      Um, I think it's really important that people understand our, our company and what we stand for, why we make the decisions that we do, and, and I think part of that is, you know, getting to know me and Bobby and I, you know, started this business, uh, 13 years ago and we have made a bunch of different choices along the way, but I think unless we talk about them, nobody knows. Um, and, and so it's, it's really important for us to share, you know, how, how we make decisions and our de- design philosophy and that kind of thing.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett7:55

      It's a really interesting time, I think, to be a CEO generally because I think even 10, 15 years ago, CEOs of major companies that so many people use and love weren't doing podcasts. They weren't w- they would maybe release press releases and their marketing team would kind of run the comms, but there's been this almost big shift towards leadership transparency now. Our leaders are, like, expected to be glass boxes.

   8. ESEvan Spiegel8:19

      I think even beyond that, media has really reshaped to focus on individuals, right? Individuals are the, are what people are interested in, they're the ones who have distribution, so I think that, like, the, the center of gravity has shifted away from the entity, like the business, to focus more on the individual characters, right-

   9. SBSteven Bartlett8:37

      Mm-hmm.

   10. ESEvan Spiegel8:37

       ... and storytellers.

9. 8:38 – 10:13

   Why Did You Choose Product Design?

   1. ESEvan Spiegel8:38

   2. SBSteven Bartlett8:38

      So you went off to university, um, you went to Stanford University, which is an incredible university, and you went to ultimately try and pursue product design at Stanford. Why did you choose product design at that stage in your life? What was it that was calling you about that course?

   3. ESEvan Spiegel8:53

      Well, what's really cool about product design is it... (sighs) The basic concept is, like, you don't need to wait around and, you know, wait for an idea to fall out of heaven or get struck by lightning. You can systematically create new ideas by listening to people, empathizing with them, and then basically prototyping solutions to the problems that they share with you and then iterating on those solutions by bringing those solutions back to them and saying, "What do you think? Does this solve your problem?" So for me to be able to combine, um, my love of making things with this process for making things that could be useful to people, making new products, that was really, uh, exciting to me. And, and the product design school was created by a really visionary guy named David Kelley. I had the opportunity to take a class from him and it was r- it was really just, uh, an incredible experience.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett9:40

      What is product design? For someone, like, someone like me that has no idea what they teach in such a course, is it... 'Cause my head says, like, designing for, like, physical products or...

   5. ESEvan Spiegel9:49

      A lot of the product design school at Stanford is oriented around physical products. Of course now, you know, it's so much more, uh, than that, but when I, when I was there at the time and it was under the mechanical engineering department, it was very oriented around physical products, understanding materials, but all part of this framework of how do we understand the problems that people are facing? How do we empathize with them? And then how do we design solutions that solve those problems?

   6. SBSteven Bartlett10:12

      Did

10. 10:13 – 10:43

    Your Class in Entrepreneurship

    1. SBSteven Bartlett10:13

       you learn entrepreneurship through this time as well? Because I think in your sophomore year you took a, a class on entrepreneurship and venture capital, right?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel10:20

       Yeah, that was, that was really a game changer. So, uh, that, that, uh, class called Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital, and the class is a series of case studies, uh, b- basically led by entrepreneurs who come in and present a story of creating their business and lessons learned and then it's an open Q&A. I got to listen to their amazing stories and, and ask them questions and, and that was super inspiring to me.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett10:42

       Do

11. 10:43 – 11:45

    Most Important Lesson From Entrepreneurship Class

    1. SBSteven Bartlett10:43

       you remember anything you took away from those classes that ended up being really important for you in terms of an idea or a philosophy or anything?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel10:51

       I think the biggest thing that I took away from my time at, at Stanford and from that class was the focus on going after really, really big opportunities. And I think one of the things that's so different, growing up here in LA, I think a lot of the, the business community that I was exposed to is more focused on cash flow, right? Like, how quickly can this business turn a profit? You know, how can we do that really predictably? How much cash are we gonna generate? At Stanford, the business culture is entirely oriented around, well, how big is that opportunity? Like, is that a huge opportunity? Is that opportunity big enough? 'Cause if it, if you're not going after something that could reach billions of people, that's not that interesting. Uh, and that was a totally different way of thinking for me combined with the venture capital approach which is really to invest a lot of money early and scale quickly and then build out the business later, uh, after you've achieved scale, after you've achieved mass adoption.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett11:44

       I've always wondered

12. 11:45 – 13:09

    Big Ambitions

    1. SBSteven Bartlett11:45

       what they teach at Stanford, especially as it relates to business because the success rate of creating some of the world's f- f- sort of preeminent entrepreneurs is really, really high. So you're telling me one of the key ideas is big ambitions?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel11:57

       Yeah, and, and I think it makes sense because it's so hard to create a business. Your odds of success are so low, so it's really important that you go after something really big so that if you're successful, that at the end of the day, there, there's a huge opportunity at the, at the end of the rainbow.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett12:11

       So my, in my head I go, well, if it's really, really big, then the chance of failure is probably gonna go up.So if, you know, I could open a coffee shop, right? And my chance of success is pretty decent. But if I go after building a new social network, which is something only a psychopath would do... (laughs)

    4. ESEvan Spiegel12:27

       (laughs)

    5. SBSteven Bartlett12:27

       Then my odds of success are what? One in a, a gazillion?

    6. ESEvan Spiegel12:30

       Yeah, I, I, I think what is exciting though about the technology business is the way that it scales. And so I think what's different than your coffee shop example is once you build a great service once, once we build Snapchat one time, it can scale to 850 million people around the world, right? Whereas you'd have to go build a new coffee shop, uh, you know, on every, on every street corner to scale the business. And so once, once I think you start seeing the world in terms of the potential to scale and the potential to build, uh, you know, a product or service that can reach billions of people, it really changes, you know, the opportunities you identify or the things that, you know, the, the services that you wanna build.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett13:08

       Interesting.

13. 13:09 – 15:42

    Entrepreneurship Challenges in Europe

    1. SBSteven Bartlett13:09

       So the question that most of us, especially in the UK, we, we often don't think about s- building businesses that have the potential to reach huge scale, um, in part because we don't have as much of a robust, I think, technical track record in terms of building great unicorn tech companies in Europe as you guys do over here.

    2. ESEvan Spiegel13:28

       One of the int- I mean, uh, I don't know if we wanna go down (laughs) this path and talk about entrepreneurship in Europe, but I think one of the real challenges in Europe is how small the different markets are in each country. And so I think what's really interesting when I, when I talk to entrepreneurs in Europe, oftentimes they're very focused on growing first in their country and using that market as a stepping stone. But the, all the countries in Europe are quite different. There are different cultures and different languages. And so sometimes entrepreneurs can spend too much time trying to grow in Europe rather than what I've seen out of some companies in Australia, for example, they're on an island. The first thing they're, these entrepreneurs are thinking about is like, "How do I go grow in the US? How do I go grow in China? How do I go grow in a really, really big market and get to scale really quickly? And then I can go reinvest and grow in Europe or grow in other countries where it might be more difficult to, to grow."

    3. SBSteven Bartlett14:16

       That is so true. Thinking about my investment portfolio, there's about 40 different companies there. And ev- almost every single one of them, without, without really an exception, has adopted the approach of, "We'll crack the UK first, and then we'll go and figure out the US." But in that transition to the US, they encounter tons of challenges with how expensive it is to succeed here, like marketing costs here. If they're in retail, how difficult it is to get into Target or Walmart here. Also, the founders end up building their lives, their families in the UK, which means that the fa- the founders can't really sh- you know, uproot and, and move to the US later in the journey. So most of them try the US, waste a ton of money, get burnt, run back. And then I've seen that story play out over and over again. When you think about penetrating these international markets, do you send core team members there?

    4. ESEvan Spiegel15:05

       Oftentimes, what we've done with Snapchat is actually follow the growth. So looking for countries where people have already started using the product, already love it, are giving us a bunch of feedback. And then, you know, we'll send folks there or we're, we'll figure out how to sort of build on the momentum or make sure it's localized properly and make sure we're working with local creators so that the content's relevant. But I think, you know, because our service is based on communication, it, you know, Snapchat doesn't really work unless you, you're using it with a friend. You gotta use it together. Uh, what we look for is just that momentum where friends are, are using it to communicate with one another and then figure out how to build on top of that with the content ecosystem or augmented reality and those sorts of things.

14. 15:42 – 17:42

    Your First Failure

    1. ESEvan Spiegel15:42

    2. SBSteven Bartlett15:42

       What was your first idea that failed?

    3. ESEvan Spiegel15:45

       Oh, my. Well, there, there were pu- I mean, I made a, an orange juicer at one point. Um, but this- (laughs)

    4. SBSteven Bartlett15:49

       (laughs)

    5. ESEvan Spiegel15:50

       Um, but I think the biggest, the biggest failure was Future Freshman. Bobby and I, I, I was really fortunate to meet Bobby. He lived across the hall from me, uh, at our, our fraternity at, at Stanford. And we, uh, you know, we shared this love of making stuff. So we, you know, we had kind of worked on a couple social ideas that were interesting, but the one thing we decided to spend a lot of time on was Future Freshman, which was designed to help kids apply to college. It was something that we'd had direct experience with, so we could empathize with how difficult the process is. We had siblings who were also applying to college. So we spent about 18 months building like a full-featured website. You could select the schools you wanted to go to. It would aggregate all the essay questions and requirements and make it really easy to apply. Um, but it was very clear by the end of that 18 months or so that it was gonna be really difficult for us to, to win. We were up against a company called Naviance, which had their own software suite, and they had d- a really good idea, which is they went to all the college counselors around the US, you know, in high schools and things like that, and said, "Hey, tell everyone to use Naviance. Uh, make sure your students' parents are using our platform." And so they got a, uh, a lot of distribution through all the different schools. And so obviously you're gonna use the platform that's being recommended by your college counselor, not, you know, an app made by two kids, uh, outta Stanford.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett17:03

       Mm-hmm.

    7. ESEvan Spiegel17:03

       Um, a- and so we had a real distribution disadvantage. And then we also realized, like even if we were wildly successful and we got, you know, the million students, you know, a year who apply to four-year colleges or, you know, something like that, we would have to then reacquire another million students the next year. Uh, and so we sort of had this, uh, realization that it was gonna be really hard to build a big, uh, a big business and that we really oughta try something different. And most importantly, try to, to build something that wouldn't take 18 months to build before we got great feedback. So to try to build something really simple, um, you know, that, that people could, could try and, and that we could collect feedback on faster.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett17:41

       So two

15. 17:42 – 18:32

    How to Know When to Quit

    1. SBSteven Bartlett17:42

       points there. How'd you know when to quit? You've kind of assembled a couple of principles there, but even it's diff- I think it's difficult in business because you can be getting lots of negative feedback, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the idea is something that you should quit. Maybe it means you should pivot or iterate or just keep going. But how did you know? What were the stars that aligned that told you to quit that business?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel18:03

       Uh, I think for us, it was that we didn't love the product enough. I think if you really love the product, you, you know, and you love what you're building, what you're doing, you can fight through just about anything. I mean, that was really the case with the early days of Snapchat. We loved, uh, building, you know, using, using the product. We were using it all day with our friends, so we could really, we just had an attachment to it that we never...... you know, really developed with Future Freshman because we weren't applying to college. So we didn't have that same, I think, connection with the product that we ended up developing with Snapchat.

16. 18:32 – 19:01

    Why Love and Passion Matter

    1. ESEvan Spiegel18:32

    2. SBSteven Bartlett18:32

       And why does that end up mattering so much, that, like, love and passion for the thing that you're building?

    3. ESEvan Spiegel18:36

       Because I think that's what, you know... The, the love and passion for what you're building and the love and passion for the people you're working with, like, that's what allows you to get through, you know, all the challenges that come when you try to, to, to build a business. I think if you don't love what you're doing... I mean, I just absolutely love what I do and, and the team that we get to work with and, and, of course, the, the products that we make, the community we serve. And I think without that just love for what you do, it, it can be, you know, it can, it can be hard.

17. 19:01 – 20:22

    Launching Early & Getting Feedback Fast

    1. ESEvan Spiegel19:01

    2. SBSteven Bartlett19:01

       And, and you, you... The other thing you said was you felt that you should go after a business that didn't take, like, 18 months, like, two years of your time to build before you got it to market. Why is that... For entrepreneurs that are listening that maybe have spent years perfecting something in their bedroom that hasn't gone to market yet, why was that insight so important to you for your next venture?

    3. ESEvan Spiegel19:23

       I think getting that feedback from your customers as quickly and early as possible is critical, even if it's on, like, the back of a napkin. Like, "Hey, here's what I'm thinking. This is what it's gonna look like. What do you think about that i- idea?" Because it's very hard to know whether or not you have a good idea unless you can put something in front of people and have them use it. I mean, that's almost one of the cardinal rules of the product design program that, you know, I guess, we wilf- willfully, uh, ignored, which is that you should really rapidly prototype and get feedback as quickly as possible so that you know you're on the right track. I mean, even in the early days... You know, Snapchat, before it was called Snapchat, was called Picaboo. It was more focused on disappearing messages. Very quickly, we learned that wasn't interesting to people. They wanted to communicate with pictures. They wanted to talk with pictures. So when we called the app Snapchat, we explained that it was 10 times faster than sending a photo via text message, people were like, "Oh, I want that." Like, "That's something that I'll use every day." And so it was just really interesting to get the feedback really, really early on, you know, with the, with an initial version of the app that took, you know, a couple of months to create.

18. 20:22 – 21:20

    How Your Initial Ideas Can Be Wrong

    1. ESEvan Spiegel20:22

    2. SBSteven Bartlett20:22

       I think this is a really interesting point that a lot of founders don't realize, that e- even companies like yours, they start with an initial hypothesis which is nearly always wrong. But kind of when you hear these stories, you hear, like, "Had an idea in my basement and then pursued it and then it became a billion-dollar business." But there's something in the, like, humility and the realization that your initial idea might be wildly off and that your job isn't to, like, be right, it is to be successful, and they're, like, two different things, right?

    3. ESEvan Spiegel20:49

       Uh, I, I totally agree and I think the, the challenge... Someone... I, I... I think this was, like, one of those Vanity Fair parties a million years ago, the, the, the souvenir was a lighter. And, like, on one side, it's like, "The director is always right," and on the other side, it's like, "The customer's never wrong."

    4. SBSteven Bartlett21:03

       (laughs)

    5. ESEvan Spiegel21:04

       You know? And I think, like, that's, like, always the interesting challenge with a business, that you have to stay true to your vision, the reason why you're building a product, your philosophy, but at the same time, your customers are the people you serve, and, and ultimately how they feel about your product is, is right, whether or not you agree with it.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett21:19

       So how did

19. 21:20 – 26:46

    How You Got Started With Snapchat

    1. SBSteven Bartlett21:20

       you get past, um, Future Freshman to your next business? What was the journey from there? So you'd met your co-founder at that point, Bobby, and how did you then move over to the idea of Snapchat?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel21:33

       I think one of the things that was really helpful is that I did a semester, a quarter abroad, uh, in Cape Town. And I think taking a step back and being there sort of gave me perspective about what we were working... I was working on it while I was still working on Future Freshman while I was there, but it really gave me, like, more perspective and, and I think, you know, I just realized, "This is gonna be really hard and I don't really love what we're doing. We gotta find something else."

    3. SBSteven Bartlett21:57

       And was that, more than anything, a feeling you had? Like, a feeling of just, "I'm not enjoying doing this every day, opening my emails, thinking about this problem"?

    4. ESEvan Spiegel22:05

       Yeah, I think it's so important to listen to those feelings. Yeah.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett22:09

       Hmm. Yes, we're very good at not listening to them.

    6. ESEvan Spiegel22:12

       (laughs)

    7. SBSteven Bartlett22:13

       Think of... Because parents and other pressures, right? To continue doing something. So then how did you get from there, from being in Cape Town, to the idea for Snapchat?

    8. ESEvan Spiegel22:23

       Well, I came back, uh, from Cape Town. I moved into, um, a dorm at Stanford. One of my buddies who had been... Reggie, one of my friends, who had been living in our fraternity before, was also in that same dorm, so we were hanging out. And, you know, one day, he was like, "Man, I wish I, I could send a disappearing photo." I was like, "That's a super interesting idea." And we looked it up. There were a couple other apps that were doing some similar stuff at the time, um, but they were very... They were much more like s- like, security-focused. They weren't really focused as much on, on fun, you know? So I was like, "That's a super interesting idea." And you could see really quickly that it, it was simple enough that we could build it and get feedback really quickly, you know? And I, I think there were a couple, uh, important design choices, uh, that we made at the time. One was opening to the camera. Um, we really wanted to be the f- You know, the, the tagline is, "The fastest way to share a moment." We wanted to be the fastest way to share a moment. And at the time, I don't know if you remember, the iPhone had, like, a shutter animation. So you would, like, tap the camera to open it, and it would take forever to, like, open up the camera. Super slow. And there was a big toggle. You had to choose between the camera and a, and video, right?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett23:29

       Mm-hmm.

    10. ESEvan Spiegel23:30

        So there was all this friction in, in using the camera. So we decided, "We're gonna open the camera. We're gonna get rid of that animation, and you're gonna be able to go straight into capturing what's happening in front of you, uh, before the moment disappears." So that... I think that was a, a, a really important, um, choice that we made. And then, uh, of course, the choice to let people choose how long they wanted to let someone, um, you know, see their snap, but with the caveat that you could always take a screenshot. Um, and that was probably one of the most important pieces of feedback we got in the initial, in, in the initial days. So we built a prototype of the app. I took it to my design class. "Here's this new app. It's called Picaboo. You can send a photo that disappears." You know, "This is really different than social media. Social media is all about permanence, and you're trying to look popular and collect all these likes and comments and pretty pictures. You know, that's the 1% of moments in your life. And here's Snapchat. This is..." Or Picaboo at the time. "Here's Picaboo. This is for the other 99%."

    11. SBSteven Bartlett24:22

        Mm-hmm.

    12. ESEvan Spiegel24:22

        Right? All the other moments that you might be embarrassed to post to all your friends, but that you wanna share with your best friend or, you know, your family. Um, everyone's like, "This is never going to work, because you can always take a screenshot. This makes no sense." So it, it doesn't go away. You can take a screenshot.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett24:37

        Mm-hmm.

    14. ESEvan Spiegel24:37

        And I think one of the, the big inventions, and that's why I th- I think it's so important to get this feedback, one of the big inventions that we made, uh, at, that s- later that summer when Bobby and I were working out of my dad's house, we invented a way to detect if someone had taken a screenshot. And so we would send a little notification back that said, "Hey, you know, your friend took a screenshot." And I think that was part of what made the service fun that, you know, you could set how long it would, uh, appear for your friend. But if they wanted to save it, they could take a screenshot, but you would know-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett25:06

        Mm-hmm.

    16. ESEvan Spiegel25:06

        ... that they saved it. And I think that was one of sort of the early, uh, feedback loops of the product that helped, you know, make people feel comfortable using it for picture messaging.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett25:15

        How long was that journey between you having that conversation with Reggie about wanting photos to disappear and the moment when you knew Snapchat was gonna be a big deal? Like how, how long is that gap?

    18. ESEvan Spiegel25:28

        I would say it took until maybe, um, certainly the following school year for me. So over that summer, Bobby and I went to my dad's house, worked a lot, uh, on the service, renamed it Snapchat, got a lot of feedback. When we were using it with our friends, everyone wanted like, "Hey, can I add a caption? Can I add, you know, can I draw on it?" Because it, in the original version, it was just a photo.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett25:51

        Mm-hmm.

    20. ESEvan Spiegel25:51

        Um, but because people were, you know, using, just our friend group, using it to, to communicate, we needed to add things like captions and, and drawing. So I think the Snapchat launched in the App Store about September of 2011. And it probably wasn't until late that fall maybe or even into, into the following, beginning of 2012 that I was... I remember sitting in the back of my classroom, and we had a, a snap counter that would count the total number of snaps ever sent, you know?

    21. SBSteven Bartlett26:19

        Mm-hmm.

    22. ESEvan Spiegel26:20

        And in the early days, it was like hundreds or a thousand or whatever. Um, and you'd, you know, I'd refresh the page, and it wouldn't, the number wouldn't change, you know. But by that time, by, you know, the beginning of 20, 2012, every time I refreshed the snap counter page, you know, the number would go up. And it would jump by one or two or 10. So it was clear that people were using the service and, and communicating. And that's when I was like, "Oh, this is, this is fun, you know. Not only are we loving it with our friends, but there's more people using it too."

    23. SBSteven Bartlett26:45

        One of the things you

20. 26:46 – 28:19

    How to Know What Customer Feedback to Implement

    1. SBSteven Bartlett26:46

       said there is that you were using people around you, your friends, to give you feedback on what features you should add next. You said people wanted to write on it, and they wanted to add captions. As a founder, that must be quite hard because you're getting lots of feedback to change lots of things all the time. How do you know what to filter as good feedback that you'll implement versus a distraction or bad feedback? Is there a, a framework at all that you have, you've had to deploy?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel27:13

       So I think all feedback is good feedback. All feedback is valuable. I think what you do with it is what matters. So for example, let's take the use of the, the caption tool, for example. You know, we could have added a super clunky caption tool that took forever to use that was like, you know, like social media where you add the caption at the bottom of the photo and tap it and hashtag all this stuff. The way that we decided to implement captions to make it easier for people to communicate is all you have to do is tap on the photo right after you took it. So you'd snapst- take the photo, tap, the keyboard would pop up. There was a little caption bar, you know the caption bar-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett27:44

       Mm-hmm.

    4. ESEvan Spiegel27:44

       ... uh, well, you know, that still allowed you to see the photo behind it instead of it being sort of attached to the photo below it. It was right on top of the photo. And then as soon as you hit enter, you could, you know, jump to the page where you select, uh, which friends you wanted to send it to. So I think, you know, what was more important than hearing feedback of, "Hey, I, I want a way to, you know, add a caption or express more in the snap," the way that we implemented that feedback and designed something really fast and easy to use is why that black bar caption is, you know, now, uh, I think-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett28:11

       Mm-hmm.

    6. ESEvan Spiegel28:11

       ... synonymous with Snapchat and, and is like, you know, well, well, well-known around, around the world.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett28:17

       So it was a year from the idea

21. 28:19 – 29:29

    How You Raised Capital

    1. SBSteven Bartlett28:19

       to the, the day when you raised capital for the first time roughly?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel28:23

       Yeah, more or less.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett28:24

       And talk me through that. So how much did you raise? How did you go about raising the capital? And what was the business like at that time in terms of users and downloads?

    4. ESEvan Spiegel28:33

       Yeah. I, I don't remember the exact, uh, sort of user s- statistics. But what was really, really helpful is that we had about a y- a year of data. So if you remember back then, there were a lot of apps that were sort of like a, a flash in the pan. Like they would get popular really, really quickly and then sort of fade away. And so venture investors would kinda jump into these apps, and then the apps would get really popular and then kind of fade. And so when we were raising money, one of the things that really helped us is we had a year's worth of data to basically show, hey, when people start using this product to talk to their friends, they keep doing it-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett29:03

       Mm-hmm.

    6. ESEvan Spiegel29:03

       ... because it's really fun, and it's better than text message based communication. Visual communication is way more fun, more powerful, more expressive than text-based communication. And, you know, people use it consistently once they learn how. Um, a- and that was really important to the investors who were worried, is this, you know, just another flash in the pan type, type service. Um, so, so we really just led, I think we had like three, maybe five slides of just the data.

22. 29:29 – 30:00

    Investor Feedback

    1. ESEvan Spiegel29:29

       Um-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett29:29

       Do you remember feedback you got from investors at that early stage? I think this is important 'cause all founders are gonna get the email that tells them that they're not onto something.

    3. ESEvan Spiegel29:38

       Yeah. I think the biggest piece of feedback was just like, "Hey, this seems like something that these really big, powerful tech companies are just gonna copy. And, um, you know, it's, they're really tough to compete with. So, you know, we, we're not really sure we wanna invest in something that's going up against these really, really big, powerful tech companies."

    4. SBSteven Bartlett29:56

       I mean, there's some wisdom in that.

    5. ESEvan Spiegel29:57

       Certainly a lot of, uh, foresight in that one, yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett29:59

       Yeah. Because

23. 30:00 – 31:34

    Building a Social Network Sounds Delusional

    1. SBSteven Bartlett30:00

       you, but, but the odds anyway of building a, a social networking app are extremely low. It's, we were saying before we started recording, that you've gotta be almost like delusional to think that you can.

    2. ESEvan Spiegel30:13

       I think at that time too, you know, Snapchat came last after Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, like you name it, all of those services had come first. And so I think the idea that like s- you know, and, and that was still at the time when people believed that network effect- effects meant that you couldn't compete, right?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett30:30

       Mm-hmm.

    4. ESEvan Spiegel30:30

       Whoever has the bus- biggest network is gonna win. No one else is gonna be able to compete. And so I think there was that concern that, you know, oh, if these other competitors are much bigger and they have network effects, how are you ever gonna grow, uh, grow and, and compete? So that was a big piece of feedback. And then I think there was just a whole other group of people who didn't really understand what the service was, um, and so weren't that interested. But Jeremy at Lightspeed f-... reached out. He had his profile picture was a, a photo of him with Obama. Uh, and I was like, "Oh, okay, must be like a real..." Now with AI, I, you never know.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett31:01

       (laughs)

    6. ESEvan Spiegel31:01

       But, but back then I was like, "Okay, must be legit." So we met up with them and, and hi- one of his partners that hi- uh, I guess his daughter used Snapchat and loved Snapchat, and so they understood the service and what it was about and how she was using it with her friends. Uh, and so they ended up investing $485,000 at a $4.25 million valuation.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett31:20

       What a fucking deal, in hindsight.

    8. ESEvan Spiegel31:22

       (laughs)

    9. SBSteven Bartlett31:22

       How many users did you have at the time when you raised that capital?

    10. ESEvan Spiegel31:25

        Uh, I would have guessed about 100,000 or something like that.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett31:29

        And you... The valuation was $4 million, roughly?

    12. ESEvan Spiegel31:31

        4.25, yeah.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett31:33

        In, in that first year

24. 31:34 – 36:02

    Did You Ever Doubt Snapchat Would Work?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett31:34

       up until the point that you raised that money, did you ever doubt that Snapchat was gonna work? And I guess to understand th- the question a bit more, you almost have to add a goal or ambition to it. So I'm presuming you wanted it to be and thought it could be a company. Did you ever doubt that it would be? Was there anything that ever happened in that first year?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel31:55

       There was one moment where we accidentally took down the Snapchat infrastructure for three days. So the service stopped working entirely for three day- actually, it... Something broke and it took us three days to fix it. And we were like, "Ah, we're, we're done." I mean, "Uh, what are we gonna do?" You know? Uh, the service has been, um, down for three days. It's a messaging service, you know? Uh, so people haven't been able to talk to their friends. Like, is anyone gonna use it? Um, and, eh, when we turned it back on, people just started using it again, and that gave us a lot more conviction in that, you know, we had a product that people really just loved using.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett32:34

       How and why was it growing? Was it a marketing campaign or was it organic?

    4. ESEvan Spiegel32:38

       The only thing that we ever saw work was, you know, friends using it with friends, telling their friends about it, and wanting to, you know, learn how to use it. Because communicating with photos was a new thing. I mean, people were... Hadn't been talking with pictures before. And, and even the way people thought about photos, it was like a photo is for pr- uh, saving a precious moment, right? Like that's-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett32:57

       Mm-hmm.

    6. ESEvan Spiegel32:57

       Or like a family photo. Like that's really how people were thinking about photos at the time. You weren't able... Like, that was just coming out of the digital camera, like plug it into your computer and upload the photos era.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett33:08

       Mm-hmm.

    8. ESEvan Spiegel33:08

       So there was this massive, I think, behavioral change of people realizing like, "Wow, like, no, a picture is worth 1,000 words. And now that I can take it instantly on my f- phone and, and send it with my friend in, you know, uh, a couple hundred milliseconds, like we can talk with pictures ins- instead of just use pictures to save memories."

    9. SBSteven Bartlett33:26

       I don't think we really remember that.

    10. ESEvan Spiegel33:29

        (laughs)

    11. SBSteven Bartlett33:29

        Isn't that crazy that we don't remember?

    12. ESEvan Spiegel33:31

        (laughs) It wasn't that long ago.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett33:32

        I know, but we just don't remember.

    14. ESEvan Spiegel33:33

        (laughs)

    15. SBSteven Bartlett33:33

        Like, as you were saying, I was like, "Fuck, yeah, you couldn't, like, send a photo to your friend and talk."

    16. ESEvan Spiegel33:37

        Crazy. Yeah, yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett33:38

        I was like, I was th- I'm trying to think of the app that I could have used back then to do that and there just, like, isn't one.

    18. ESEvan Spiegel33:43

        Yeah, but now I'm dating myself, you know? It's terrible.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett33:45

        (laughs) Yeah. No, that's crazy. We, we forget that because it's so commonplace now on every app, you, you can... And I guess they, they ultimately got that from you, copied that from you. I've got this photo, um, from the early days. Do you remember this photo?

    20. ESEvan Spiegel34:01

        Oh, this is awesome. Yeah, this is great.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett34:03

        This picture. What is this picture? Where are you? What are you doing? Who is that?

    22. ESEvan Spiegel34:06

        Well, th- this was actually our first office, which was great. It was, uh, called the Blue House in Venice, 523 Ocean Front Walk. And actually, uh, you know, it... Things sort of, uh, had, had reached a breaking point at my dad's house. I think there were seven or eight of us living there, you know. One, one night, I... His girlfriend at the time, now wife, came in and one of, you know, one of our teammates was, like, sleeping on the couch with a blanket she had bought him for Christmas and she's just like, "Uh, I think that," like, "We've had enough here." So (laughs) we, we had to get an office, uh, and, and move out. And we were going to dinner in Venice and we walked past this old blue house and it had, uh, for lease sign on it and we were like, "Wow, this would be wild. We can have an office on the beach, on the Venice boardwalk. Um, let's, let's call 'em." And we called them, they wanted a crazy amount per square foot in rent we couldn't afford at the time. But we ultimately waited, uh, a bit longer and, and were able to, to negotiate that down quite a bit, and moved into the Blue House. And I think the best thing about the Blue House was that the, the Venice boardwalk is one of the most popular destination, tourist destinations in the W- in California, maybe even in the world. I mean, it's more than 10 million people a year come to the Venice boardwalk. And we had a big ghost logo, our big app icon outside, and all day long people would come up and talk to us about the app or give us feedback or need help with their account. And so we were just immersed in people from all over the world-

    23. SBSteven Bartlett35:25

        Wow.

    24. ESEvan Spiegel35:25

        ... who were using Snapchat and wanted to come talk to us about it. Ult- ultimately, it became like a little too much, but in the beginning-

    25. SBSteven Bartlett35:31

        (laughs)

    26. ESEvan Spiegel35:31

        ... (laughs) in the beginning, uh, it was just so amazing to be right there on the boardwalk, uh, with so many people.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett35:36

        And h- so how many people f- could fit into the Blue House?

    28. ESEvan Spiegel35:40

        I think, you know, at max capacity it was 20 something. I think we were 20 something people by the time we moved out, maybe 30. It was pretty crammed. I mean, I was playing footsie with, you know, people under the, under the table.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett35:49

        Yeah.

    30. ESEvan Spiegel35:49

        We were pretty smooshed.
25. 36:02 – 37:16

    Quitting University to Build Snapchat

    1. SBSteven Bartlett36:02

       out of university, uh, by that point, obviously.

    2. ESEvan Spiegel36:04

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett36:05

       Tell me about that decision, 'cause that's not... I know the app's growing and everything, but to drop out of a prestigious university can't be a super easy decision.

    4. ESEvan Spiegel36:15

       I, I really felt I had no choice. I didn't have enough credits to graduate. I mean, I, you know, I was doing the, the... I was doing the product design program, the engineering program, I had a lot more classes that I had to, to finish. And ultimately we'd raised $485,000, uh, from investors and, you know, I was spending all day trying to pass these engi- You know, I was taking I think 20 credits at the time or something (laughs) and trying to, trying to work on our business, I just couldn't do both at the same time. So I was like, you know, "Hopefully one day I'll be able to go back." I actually did end up going back and got my degree in 2018-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett36:48

       Oh, did you?

    6. ESEvan Spiegel36:48

       ... which was awesome. Um, and, uh, but, um-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett36:52

       Why?

    8. ESEvan Spiegel36:52

       I just couldn't do both at the same time.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett36:54

       Why didn't you go back and get your degree?

    10. ESEvan Spiegel36:55

        I really did not wanna have that debate with our kids where they're like... You know what I mean?

    11. SBSteven Bartlett37:00

        (laughs)

    12. ESEvan Spiegel37:00

        Where they're like, "But Dad, like you..." You know what I mean? Like, "You, you didn't... You dropped out, you don't have a degree, like why do I need one?" Uh, you know, I, I think...... colleges can, can be really valuable. It's not for everybody, but it made a huge impact in, in my life. So I wanted to be able to, you know, show how important that is to our, to

26. 37:16 – 39:10

    Most Important Entrepreneurial Advice for Young People

    1. ESEvan Spiegel37:16

       our kids.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett37:16

       I was thinking earlier when we were talking about college/university, the world was different when you went to university and college. And you've got these four boys now. The oldest, I think, is 14 years old. If he wants to be like dad, say he wanted to follow in your footsteps, is there anything else based on how the world is currently that you'd be advising him to learn before the age of, like, 21? Is- are there any topics or degrees that you would be pushing him towards now if he wanted to be like dad, if that was his decision?

    3. ESEvan Spiegel37:47

       I think one of the most important things today is really nurturing creativity. I mean, I think creativity is really the, the x factor, certainly in the age of AI, right? And, and so, uh, I think nurturing creativity, finding ways to develop those skills. For example, Flynn, who's 14, he loves drawing, love- he's unbelievably talented at drawing. And I think sometimes he's like, "Well, I don't know if there's a career in drawing." But I think sometimes he doesn't see that drawing is just the way that he's expressing creativity. Drawing is the beginning of that journey of exercising those muscles in your brain that allow you to visualize something that other people don't see, right?

    4. SBSteven Bartlett38:22

       Mm-hmm.

    5. ESEvan Spiegel38:23

       And, and that's one way, that's one tool, one skill he can use to express what's in his, in his brain. But I think exercising that, that muscle, that creativity is so important. I think creativity is just becoming more and more rare, ultimately because so much of our society is oriented around things we can measure. Creativity is so hard to measure. And so I think it can be really tough, um, you know, to, to find the, the dedication to invest in developing creativity when it's un- uncertain what the outcome is. Um, but that, that's really what I would encourage him or so many, so many people to do. We're all born creative. We're all, you know, we're all born with this ability to express ourselves. And it's only over time, I think, that we stop, you know, practicing that ability or, you know, uh, or we become fearful of expressing ourselves. And, and I think that, that can be overcome.

27. 39:10 – 40:17

    Could Job Titles Be Limiting Creativity?

    1. ESEvan Spiegel39:10

    2. SBSteven Bartlett39:10

       'Cause we think through job titles at, at that age, don't we? We think, "What's the job title that I should be aiming at?" So doctor, lawyer, et cetera, versus we don't necessarily think as much about collecting useful long-term skills, I'd say. I've got a- my, my girlfriend's little brother now who's like racking his brain trying to pick a job title for the next like 60 years of his life. I'm like, "It doesn't work like that." You know? And the world is changing so quickly now as well. It probably makes more sense to try and get some fundamental skills that will translate.

    3. ESEvan Spiegel39:40

       Plus job titles are totally ridiculous anyways. In the early days, we would just make up... Anyone who joined the team, we would just make up their, uh, their title. It would have nothing to do with anything.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett39:50

       (laughs) Really? (laughs)

    5. ESEvan Spiegel39:50

       Yeah. (laughs)

    6. SBSteven Bartlett39:52

       Um, so job titles are ridiculous when the team is small, right?

    7. ESEvan Spiegel39:55

       Just in general, right? Because I think people anchor to job titles to confer, confer status, right? And I think ultimately, like amazing impact, creativity, great ideas come from anywhere, right? And the more that you focus your organization around hierarchy, I think the less you're focusing on the right things, which are how are we making sure great ideas are coming from anywhere, getting surfaced, you know, and, and, um, being

28. 40:17 – 42:06

    The Hierarchy Problem in Companies

    1. ESEvan Spiegel40:17

       built.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett40:17

       But hierarchy comes into place when things start to get big and we need to put processes and reporting lines in place. How do you defend against that?

    3. ESEvan Spiegel40:24

       Well, uh, I think you're getting at like the fundamental problem that all companies end up having. And I, I think there's, there's a great book called Loonshots, which I really love, that actually gets at this issue directly. And, and basically what the author, Safi Bahcall, found was essentially that very big companies, you know, once they get a lot larger, they have a lot of customers to serve, they need to build all this organizational infrastructure. And ultimately that comes with hierarchy. But the ones that continue to innovate, that are very successful at innovating consistently over long periods of time also have very small, very flat teams that don't have any hierarchy at all, that are really, really focused on innovating and on trying new things. And ultimately, the companies that are really successful find a way to build a relationship between the huge organization that is supporting all these customers and needs to be operationally rigorous and metrics focused, builds a relationship between them and this very small group of people who are trying crazy things. And he gives a lot of examples. You know, one of the ways that the United States was able to win World War II, they had these crazy group of scientists that were trying new things like radar and stuff like that at the time.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett41:32

       Mm-hmm.

    5. ESEvan Spiegel41:32

       But then they were taking those ideas, bringing them to the military, which is a huge, very structured hierarchical organization, and saying, "What do you guys think about this? How can you play with this? What are your ideas? What are your feedback? Take this into battle, put it on an airplane, see what happens." And then give that feedback back to this very, you know, unstructured, flat, small group of, of, uh, inventors and scientists. And by really focusing on the relationship between those parts of the organization, ultimately companies can figure out how to build a strong relationship between the two and then innovate over time.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett42:04

       So how have you done that at Snapchat?

29. 42:06 – 47:44

    How Do You Innovate at Snapchat?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett42:06

    2. ESEvan Spiegel42:06

       At Snapchat, we have a really small design team. I think it would surprise people. It's nine people.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett42:11

       Really?

    4. ESEvan Spiegel42:11

       It is totally flat. So there's no fancy titles. Everyone is a product designer. Um, the, the way that the team works is very focused around making things. That's the entire job. In fact, your very first day when you start, you... We have design critiques once a week for a couple hours. Your very first day, you have to present, uh, something. So you have to make something-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett42:33

       (laughs)

    6. ESEvan Spiegel42:33

       ... and, and present it. And what that does that I think is really interesting and, and powerful is that ultimately, of course, on your first day, when you have no context for what the company is working on, no idea what's going on, how, how on earth are you supposed to come up with a great idea? I mean, it's almost impossible. But you have to show an idea your first day. And so ultimately, on your very first day, your worst fear has come true. That like we're sitting there all together and we're looking at an idea that's like ultimately not that great. I mean, sometimes they're pretty good, but ultimately not that great. And that, I think, opens the door to creativity because you've already...It already happened. It- you already failed. There's al-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett43:11

       (laughs)

    8. ESEvan Spiegel43:11

       The idea wasn't good. Uh, and, you know, what ultimately happens on our design team is that 99% of ideas are not good, but 1% is. And, you know, we really abide by that idea of like, you know, or the concept that, like, the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. (laughs)

    9. SBSteven Bartlett43:26

       Hmm.

    10. ESEvan Spiegel43:26

        So the team is just constantly generating an i- incredible number of ideas and products and features and that sort of thing, and ultimately, our job is to try to figure out what the great ones are and then, most importantly, build a strong relationship between this little team that's coming up with all this stuff all the time and our, you know, much bigger engineering organization, our bigger product organization, who also have all sorts of amazing ideas and are also innovating in their own way, and build a flywheel between the two where we can ultimately, you know, make a lot of new products and then consistently make them better.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett43:58

        So many questions there that I'm very, very curious about. The first one is, do you measure the amount of ideas that that small design team are producing?

    12. ESEvan Spiegel44:06

        Uh, no, but I- I do know when we need more. (laughs)

    13. SBSteven Bartlett44:08

        Okay. Okay. Fine. Okay. So you've got a-

    14. ESEvan Spiegel44:10

        (laughs)

    15. SBSteven Bartlett44:10

        ... you've got a sort of intuitive feeling. It's small team, you can stay close. And then how do you get the bigger organization to cooperate with the s- smaller design team when the bigger organization have their own incentives, they have their own planning cycles, they have their own egos, uh, as all humans do? How do you get them to work together?

    16. ESEvan Spiegel44:27

        For us, the- the bridge organization is probably our product organization, and they really help connect the dots between the engineering folks and the design folks. And a lot of this stuff, you know, actually mirrors the relationship that Bobby and I had in the very early days, where I was more design-focused. I had a bit of an engineering background and had taken some CS, but I was more design-focused, and Bobby, you know, is an unbelievable, uh, computer scientist, right? He, you know, took math and- and, uh, computer science at school, but he also loved design. And so we had this really, you know, powerful relationship where, you know, I- I could talk with him about new ideas and- and design, and he could talk about the engineering constraints of when... You know, for example, when we were inventing this- this notion that, you know, you would tap to take a photo and hold to record a video, at the time, that was a really big deal, right?

    17. SBSteven Bartlett45:14

        Mm-hmm.

    18. ESEvan Spiegel45:14

        To- to- you know, to help people more easily use their cameras. Now every camera on a smartphone is tap for a photo, hold- hold for video. But the engineering complexity that was required to enable that design was something that we really talked about and worked through, because the way that the design and the animations had to work and the way that you, you know, held your finger really mattered with the way that ultimately we were flipping between, you know, the- the video feed and- or capturing, uh, a still-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett45:40

        Mm-hmm.

    20. ESEvan Spiegel45:41

        ... a still image. And it was that dialogue that ultimately ended up, you know, resulting in a- in a new product and a new, you know, uh, thing that people could use. So we mirrored a lot of that and tried to build that relationship across the organization constantly over time, where, you know, there's- there's a real dialogue and an understanding and a- an appreciation both for design and engineering, um, you know, that o- oftentimes is facilitated by our product organization.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett46:04

        In terms of that small design team, you said you have a critique session-

    22. ESEvan Spiegel46:07

        Yeah.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett46:07

        ... once a week. What is a critique session?

    24. ESEvan Spiegel46:10

        So, uh, it's just where we look at work. That's all we do. Uh, we- people just share, uh, new work. So for a couple hours, we'll just look at all the new ideas.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett46:19

        That have come out of that small-

    26. ESEvan Spiegel46:20

        (clears throat)

    27. SBSteven Bartlett46:20

        ... team.

    28. ESEvan Spiegel46:20

        ... and new designs that have come out of the last week from that team.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett46:24

        And these can be anything?

    30. ESEvan Spiegel46:25

        Uh, really anything, yeah. Oftentimes, they're oriented around solving a problem, so kind of coming back to that product design philosophy, like, what problem are we trying to solve? How can we empathize with our, you know, community? Okay, our creators are having friction, you know, posting to- to Snapchat. It's, you know, confusing the way that they're reading their story replies, or that's not working the right way. How can we make that easier? And then we'll just look at a ton of ideas.
30. 47:44 – 48:45

    How Important Is Hiring?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett47:44

       think about the people in that photo that were part of the first order 20, how important, in hindsight, is hiring?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel47:52

       I think it's everything. I think it's everything. And these were really, really just wonderful people. I mean, still, you know, uh, in many cases, close friends. And I think interesting, there was a moment I realized, um, David, Daniel, Bobby, and a couple other of our original engineers, all of them, uh, you know, o- original engineers were musicians as well. And it was really interesting, this moment, you know, because the- the early folks who were working on the engineering side of- of Snap were unbelievably creative and unbelievably talented. And it- it was an interesting, like, aha moment, because I think oftentimes people think of the disciplines as separate, like, "Oh, there's designers, and then over there, there's engineers." And I think so much of the magic actually is when those disciplines, like, combine or cross over or people who really love and appreciate both.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett48:44

       Especially for a company that's aspiring

31. 48:45 – 50:51

    Hiring Mistakes to Avoid

    1. SBSteven Bartlett48:45

       to be creative-

    2. ESEvan Spiegel48:47

       Absolutely.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett48:48

       ... in everything they're doing.

    4. ESEvan Spiegel48:49

       Yeah.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett48:50

       Um, on this point of hiring, did you make any hiring mistakes in those early days?

    6. ESEvan Spiegel48:54

       Oh, absolutely. Yeah, plenty.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett48:55

       And what were those mistakes? Not necessarily people, but the- the frameworks were- were off or the way that you hired these people or what- what- what caused the mistakes?

    8. ESEvan Spiegel49:03

       I think occasionally in the early days, um, we almost, like, overindexed on the wrong types of experience, if that makes sense. So one of the things we really wanted to do was bring in people who were very, very experienced leaders who had run much bigger teams. That was like, if we wanna build a big company, we gotta find people who have run-... big companies and big teams. And so one of the early engineering leaders who joined our team, I think he, you know, he was coming from, from working on a team of 300 or something like that at, at Amazon, was coming to, like, a team of eight at, at Snapchat. But we were really thinking ahead about like, "How can we hire people who can actually help us scale here and, and build something, uh, really big?" And I think that, that sort of focus on leadership experience and experience leading at scale was really valuable. I think what was oftentimes a bit less valuable in those early days were, was almost more people who had very specific domain expertise. So there were people who would, you know, come into our, come for an interview or something like that and be like, "Well, I think what you guys should do is add likes because every other platform has likes. So if you just add likes, then people will, you know, use your service more." And not really coming with the same open-mindedness and curiosity about, "Well, why is Snapchat doing it differently? Like, why don't you have likes and comments? Like, what, how are you thinking about this service, um, differently? And, and how could I, how can I change and grow and adapt to the way that you're thinking about it to help you grow faster?"

    9. SBSteven Bartlett50:28

       Mm-hmm.

    10. ESEvan Spiegel50:29

        And, and so I think, uh, now one of the things we're always looking for in the interview process is adaptability, right? It's amazing to have prior experience, but the question is how do you apply that prior experience to a new context and change and adapt the way that you see things, change your perspective, um, you know, to be able to meet the needs of our business, which is different than, you know, other businesses.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett50:50

        What, what are the other factors?

32. 50:51 – 52:10

    Three Leadership Traits of a Perfect Hire

    1. SBSteven Bartlett50:51

       If, if you were to make a perfect Snapchat employee now, what would their personality be? Their, their psychology, their, their attributes?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel50:59

       We h- we have three values and three leadership behaviors. Three values are kind, smart, and creative. That's been the, the, those have been the values since the, the very beginning, really 'cause Bobby and I were just having a conversation like, "What kind of people do we wanna work with? Kind, smart, creative." Like, great. But since then, and, and we can spend some more time talking about this, I think what was really fascinating over time was to learn, you know, and by the way, 10 years ago, people were not talking about kindness at work. I mean, people would be like, "Sorry, what?"

    3. SBSteven Bartlett51:24

       (laughs)

    4. ESEvan Spiegel51:25

       You know, no ki- no, kind, smart, creative. Like, why kindness? What we found was that with, th- that the relationship between kindness and creativity is really, really important because unless people feel comfortable coming up with crazy ideas, unless they feel comfortable that if they say, you know, they have some new idea and it actually isn't that great, that they're not gonna be laughed at, that they'll be supported, right? Unless you have that sort of supportive culture, it's very hard to be creative. And so we learned over time that actually, wow, kindness is k- is kinda the essential ingredient if you wanna have a creative, uh, a creative culture. But anyways, kind, smart, creative. Smart, pretty self-explanatory. Um, and then, uh, when it comes to leadership behaviors, there's three leadership behaviors or attributes we look for.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett52:09

       I just wanna pause

33. 52:10 – 53:37

    Being Nice vs. Being Kind

    1. SBSteven Bartlett52:10

       on that point of kind. Do you make a distinction between someone being nice and being kind? Because in your environment, you also mentioned that you do these critique sessions and you're giving people criti- critical feedback, and if a culture gets a little bit too kind, then isn't that gonna inhibit innovation and feedback?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel52:26

       We always differentiate between kind and nice. There's a couple examples that I think help with that. So like for one, um, I think it's really kind to tell somebody that they have something stuck in their teeth.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett52:37

       Yeah.

    4. ESEvan Spiegel52:37

       You have something stuck in your teeth, y- you wanna know about it, right? It might make you feel awkward. Certainly as the person pointing it out, it's a little awkward, right? If you want, if you just wanna be nice, you pretend nothing's going, going on and you just say, "Oh, you know, nice to meet you." Whatever. But if you're really being kind and you wanna help that person, you say, y- you know, "You've got something stuck in your teeth, you, you gotta take care of that." And I think that helps distinguish between, you know, niceties and being kind and really wanting to help, help somebody. I thi- I think another great example is if somebody's really struggling, you know, uh, at work or they're struggling to grow or they're struggling with, you know, to, to perform, um, the, you know, their duties at, at Snap, you know, the nice thing to do is maybe just make them feel good about it. "Oh, don't worry, uh, you know, um, I'm sure it'll be okay." The kind thing to do is really help them succeed, right? Say, "Hey, this isn't working because you're doing X, Y, and Z. You know, here are some things to do to think about that differently." Provide that really direct feedback. That allows people to grow, and that's the kind thing to do rather than just making them feel good about not meeting expectations.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett53:34

       Leadership values, you said there's three.

    6. ESEvan Spiegel53:35

       Leadership values. Okay, there's three of them. The

34. 53:37 – 56:29

    T-Shaped Leadership

    1. ESEvan Spiegel53:37

       first one i- is T-shaped leadership. So we talk a lot about T-shaped leadership. What we mean by that, uh, is that you have a real depth of experience, a depth of expertise in a given area, and then a real breadth of understanding of the business overall, and an ability to connect with lots of different types of people who think different ways. 'Cause you need to be able to connect your expertise to all the different areas of our business to really drive impact as a leader. I mean, I think that's one of the, like almost the hallmarks of, of running a business today is it's basically impossible to do anything interesting without a team, right?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett54:10

       Mm-hmm.

    3. ESEvan Spiegel54:10

       The way that the world works today is very complicated, and it's really important that you have folks who have deep expertise, but then they have to apply it to all these other cross-functional areas, you know? So they have to have a familiarity with it and an ability to relate to people with different, you know, viewpoints or, or other, you know, uh, areas of expertise, so.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett54:26

       And as we proceed with this, these leadership principles, are you saying that in order to become a leader at Snapchat, you need these three things? Or are you saying everybody at Snapchat needs these three things?

    5. ESEvan Spiegel54:36

       We think everyone is a leader, so we do apply it, uh, broadly. But of course, you know, um, y- you know, I, I think it's really important as we're thinking about hiring or bringing in a new leader that, you know, that this is something that we, we talk to folks about.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett54:48

       So if someone's not quite T-shaped, if they're a little bit I-shaped, is there something they can do to become a bit more T, T-shaped?

    7. ESEvan Spiegel54:55

       Yeah, th- uh, that's almost maybe the, the easier one, right? If you can build on a, if you can build on a real depth of expertise by going engaging with folks maybe outside of your comfort zone or in different parts of the business and build that curiosity and understanding, that helps develop, I think, that breadth of understanding. I think what's harder is if you're a generalist and you don't have that deep skill set or that deep area of expertise, it's really, really hard to bring enough value to the team, right? And I think that's wh- that's where people get frustrated with like the idea of middle management, right? Where it's like, oh, this is just a person who, you know, knows a little about a lot, but can't really help me solve this problem 'cause they don't really know the details. They don't really understand, you know, how, how to help me, you know, grow as an individual or solve this tough technical problem. And so I think that's why that area of, of expertise is so important because it's so hard to inspire people that you're working with if you don't know a lot about, you know, the, the area that you're working in.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett55:48

       And do you need to be a T-shaped leader at Snapchat...... now and when there was 10 of you in, in the bedroom, or, uh, in your dad's house? Has it always been important or is that a function of being bigger?

    9. ESEvan Spiegel56:00

       That's a great question. I wish we had been more thoughtful about the leadership values and, and characteristics we were looking for back then. I think, you know, when you're working on a team of 10 or a team of 20, you're not thinking as much about, "What are, what leadership characteristics-"

    10. SBSteven Bartlett56:13

        (laughs)

    11. ESEvan Spiegel56:13

        "... are really important to us?" It's more about, like, "How do we survive tomorrow?"

    12. SBSteven Bartlett56:16

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    13. ESEvan Spiegel56:16

        Um, you know, but, but I think over time, as we learned what leaders were really successful at Snap, we were able to, you know, to kinda look at those attributes and say, "Okay, you know, these are the leaders who can, who, who really succeed here and drive a lot of value for our business."

35. 56:29 – 59:24

    Advice to Younger Evan on Leadership

    1. ESEvan Spiegel56:29

    2. SBSteven Bartlett56:29

       Before we move on to the, the second two, if this Evan could have gone back to the Evan that was running a team of 10 and he could have pulled him aside and said, "Listen, here's some advice that you're gonna need to know about leadership and building this team, the most critical advice I could give you at this time..." And this is for all the entrepreneurs out there that are building a, they're laying the foundations of a potentially very big company right now. What would you have whispered in his ear?

    3. ESEvan Spiegel56:51

       I, I would have said, "Everything's gonna be okay."

    4. SBSteven Bartlett56:53

       Really? (laughs)

    5. ESEvan Spiegel56:54

       "Everything's gonna be okay." Um, you know, I, I think sometimes people are too focused n- on making the right decision and not as focused on fixing it if they're wrong. And I think what I would've put more emphasis on is just how quickly are you changing your mind when you receive new information? How quickly are you fixing a problem or a mistake if you didn't make the right decision in the first place? And that's the feedback loop that is so mission-critical to building a, a business in the early days. It has very little to do... Obviously, there's existential decisions, you know, and, and those can, you know, create some big problems for your business. But most decisions are not existential-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett57:34

       Mm-hmm.

    7. ESEvan Spiegel57:35

       ... decisions. And the more important thing is to make a decision, and then if you're wrong, fix it. Um, and I think it's the when you're wrong fixing it part that deserves most of the attention and, and also how you can identify, you know, who your great leaders are, who, you know, uh, who really talented folks on the team are. Because they're very quick to point out, "You know, I don't think we did that right. I think we should take this path, you know, th- this other path that, you know, we, we maybe hadn't considered the first time." And, and I think it takes courage to, to say that in, in an organization rather than just say, "Oh, we're doing a great job," you know?

    8. SBSteven Bartlett58:05

       Mm-hmm. And when you're back there and you're, you've made a mistake, there's something you've done wrong, in hindsight, did you know in your hea- 'cause y- 'cause one of the things that I think of when I was a first time founder building a student notice board was I would get feedback, and the feedback would be saying, "You're wrong about this. You need to change." And I think, uh, sometimes there was a part of me that knew, but I was, like, too scared to act upon it, so I kind of, like, gaslit myself to just keep going. (laughs) And I think a lot of founders do that.

    9. ESEvan Spiegel58:33

       (laughs)

    10. SBSteven Bartlett58:33

        I know this 'cause they, they come to me in my portfolio and they say, "Oh, Steve, there's this guy we've hired and he's been there now for a year and he's just not cutting it." I'm like, "Why the fuck are you telling me?" And th- they're, they're procrastinating avoiding the conversation, but clearly they know. Clearly they know it's not right.

    11. ESEvan Spiegel58:50

        It's funny you say that because anytime someone comes to ask me about, like, that type of people advice, like, "What do you think we should do, you know? Do you think that..." I'm like, "It sounds like you've already made up your mind." (laughs)

    12. SBSteven Bartlett59:00

        (laughs)

    13. ESEvan Spiegel59:02

        So yeah, I, I think it is, I think it is really important to, you know, act on that feedback, not be afraid to change direction quickly if, you know, you, you realize that you made a mistake. But as you point out, it's, it's hard to do. And sometimes it is worth seeing if, you know, your, your bet, you know, plays out. You don't wanna thrash the team and change your mind all the time. So sometimes, you know, it is, it is sometimes worth seeing things through a little bit before you change.

36. 59:24 – 1:01:36

    Embedding Company Culture Early

    1. SBSteven Bartlett59:24

       Is there anything else you would have said to that younger Evan in that, in your dad's house, advice?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel59:30

       Um, at, at that point before we had scaled to a lot of, you know, thousands of people, I think we could have been much more clear on the culture, the kind, smart, creative piece, and really embedded that in the team prior to scaling. Because one of the biggest challenges that we confronted was, you know, as we went from 20 people to 2,000 people, we basically imported all of these different cultures from all sorts of different companies. Like, we imported an, an Amazon contingent, right? We im- you know, who they really love their six-page documents. We, you know, imported a, a Google, uh, contingent, right? And they're very focused on consensus-based decision-making. We imported, you know, a, a contingent from, from Meta as well, and I think we were too slow to be really clear about what our values were and what that looked like in practice, what those behaviors looked like. And I think if we had earlier and, and faster... Well, so when, when we're evaluating performance and we look at our values, kind, smart, creative, we have specific behaviors attached to that that are actually research-backed and whatever. We did a whole study to understand which of those behaviors are really tied to performance in those values. But that gives people a really clear framework for the expectations for how to behave at Snap and our unique culture. And there, there was a moment of time, uh, moment in time where I felt like we were losing control of our culture, and I wasn't happy with our, our company and the team. I remember I was complaining to a friend of mine, this is probably, like, your story of, of folks coming to you and saying, "Oh, it's not working." I was, I was complaining to a friend of mine and I was just like, "Man, I just don't, like, I don't like it. Like, I don't like my job. I don't like what our company has become." And she just looks at me and she's like, "Then fix it." (laughs)

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:09

       (laughs)

    4. ESEvan Spiegel1:01:09

       And I was like, "Great point." Um, and, and I, you know, I think at that... It just, it had changed and grown so quickly that it was really hard to stay true to our values. But I think, you know, uh, I really took that ad- advice to heart and just started trying to fix it with our team, getting really clear about the values, getting really clear about the behaviors, holding a higher bar and saying, "Hey, you know, if you're not into the kind, smart, creative thing, that's okay. There are other companies with different cultures." But, you know, that really matters to us here.

37. 1:01:36 – 1:03:19

    What Founders Should Do When Culture Dilutes

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:36

       So do you, do you wish you had... This would have been a pretty remarkable thing to do, but do you wish you had made, like, a culture bible in the early days. And then, like, I'm, I'm thinking practically what should a founder do then if they're at that stage when they've got a small team now?... to prevent what happened to you in terms of the culture becoming a little bit too pick and mix?

    2. ESEvan Spiegel1:01:56

       So I think it's less about the culture bible and more about how you apply whatever your values are to your hiring processes, to your promotion processes, to whether or not people still work at the company. And so we were too slow to embed those values in our performance evaluation.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:13

       Ah.

    4. ESEvan Spiegel1:02:13

       And so I think if we had been way faster at just saying, "Hey, these are our values and what we stand for. This is what it looks like in practice, uh, and if you're not living up to that, this isn't the right home for you," like that, that would've helped shape the culture a lot faster. Also because immediately people see, "Oh, wow, if they're serious about their values and they're asking people to leave if they won't live up to their values, well, then I, you know, I better get on board with the values or find, you know, another culture that fits, you know, fits my personality better."

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:41

       It just doesn't seem like a priority to founders, culture. You know?

    6. ESEvan Spiegel1:02:44

       I think it's such a priority, but it's hard to understand what it means. You know, I had so many people telling me, like, "Really, you gotta really focus on the culture, focus on the culture," like, like what do you mean by culture? It's like, it's actually just how people behave, right? I mean, that's really what we're saying, like what is the collection of group behaviors, you know, that are, uh, acceptable or norms in your, in your company? So I think instead of using this big culture word, which I was hearing a lot but not understanding how it was, like, tactically connecting to our business, I think when we're talking with founders, we should just be more specific about, you know, how people are living their, the values of their company every day through their behaviors.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:17

       And that's dictated

38. 1:03:19 – 1:04:10

    Company Incentives

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:19

       essentially by the incentives of the organization, 'cause what you said is you basically introduced incentive structures, said, "You're gonna be exited or you're gonna be promoted."

    2. ESEvan Spiegel1:03:27

       And, and getting really real about that and serious. But it, you know, the, the tough conversations come where it's like, "Well, that person's a superstar, you know, but they're not really living our kindness value." And Bobby, I think, is so, is, uh, was so great on this. Bobby is like, "Evan, there's no such thing as a brilliant jerk. If you're really brilliant, how could you possibly be a jerk?" I mean, it just m- you know, and you're like, "Damn, I love that." So, so I think this concept that, like, yeah, if you're really that smart, uh, how could you possibly be a jerk to people? I mean, what? Uh, that, that, I think, you know, really informed our approach to, to building out our team and, and I think gives you that clarity in those moments where you're like, "Wow, but they're so smart or they're so talented." It's like, "Yeah, but if they're that smart and talented, why can't they just be kind, kind people?"

39. 1:04:10 – 1:05:32

    Worst Advice You Got Early On

    1. ESEvan Spiegel1:04:10

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:10

       What was the worst advice you got in those early years? We talked about some of the good advice and the good advice you'd give now, but was there any, like, really bad advice that you got that seemed to make sense but was terrible advice?

    3. ESEvan Spiegel1:04:22

       Well, I think a lot of people in the early days, you know, told us that, um, that, uh, we should sell it. I mean, there, there were a lot of... There was one embarrassing moment I remember. I, I joined a conference call, uh, early with some of our lawyers, and I don't think they had known I, I had joined and they were talking about, uh, you know, this thing is basically going to zero. You know what I mean? This was in the early days. Like, "It's just a fad," you know, da-da-da-da-da, and I'm like, "Oh, hey, guys." (laughs)

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:48

       You're joking. What? And y- they didn't know you were on the call?

    5. ESEvan Spiegel1:04:50

       (laughs) They, they hadn't known I had joined because I'd joined a minute or two early or something like that. Um, so I think there was a lot of skepticism in the early days and a lot of people who said, you know, "Hey, sell now while you can. Um, you know, uh, you're competing in a really, really tough industry with a lot of big players and you don't know if people are gonna, you know, continue to love this product." But I think what they missed was our vision for the future, right? They only saw what was in the public. We were working on all sorts of, and still are working on all sorts of amazing new products that give us conviction in the future and, and our ability to make products that, that people really love. But I think from the outside when you were looking at Snapchat, you're like, "People are just sending photos back and forth. I mean, how is this ever gonna be a business? How is this ever gonna grow for the long term?"

40. 1:05:32 – 1:09:50

    How Mark Zuckerberg Approached You

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:32

       But you do end up getting an offer, a ve- a very famous offer when you're 23 years old from Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook.

    2. ESEvan Spiegel1:05:39

       Yeah. That was a, a fateful, fateful day for sure.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:44

       Ho- ho- how did, how does that begin? How does that story begin? Is it an email, a phone call, an introduction?

    4. ESEvan Spiegel1:05:49

       I think it was an initial email. Um, and I think we met at, at some point and they, they were interested in what we were doing and, you know, at that time they were working on a competitor called Poke, um, you know, and so they were kind of talking with us, "Hey, you know, we're exploring this space," kind of thing. "What do you think? And maybe you wanna join, uh, Facebook." I think they had just acquired Instagram too, um, probably like a year earlier or something like that. And our view was that Instagram had been wildly undervalued in that, um, acquisition ultimately had given up like a massive, massive opportunity. Um-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:25

       Instagram was sold for a billion, was it?

    6. ESEvan Spiegel1:06:27

       Yeah.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:27

       A billion, yeah. And WhatsApp was 19 billion roughly.

    8. ESEvan Spiegel1:06:31

       Yeah, I think so.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:32

       I think. You're 23 years old at that point. You've got Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg offering you a lot of money. I heard that it was $3 billion they offered.

    10. ESEvan Spiegel1:06:48

        Yeah. We never talked about it publicly, but yeah.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:51

        Is, is that the number?

    12. ESEvan Spiegel1:06:53

        Uh, that's not technically the number, but it's what's been reported publicly, so we can go with that.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:57

        Okay.

    14. ESEvan Spiegel1:06:58

        (laughs)

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:58

        And, but did you get an offer?

    16. ESEvan Spiegel1:07:00

        There were, there was a real conversation about what it would look like and, you know, um, h- you know, to, to join forces. But ul- ultimately, you know, when we talked with our board and our investors, uh, you know, we decided that we'd rather go it alone, so.

Episode duration: 2:29:52