words Who can afford to decline an offer of $ 3 billion from a titan of the web as Facebook? Evan Spiegel, CEO and co-founder of the photo sharing application, Snapchat, has made this daring. Portrait.
“It’s probably scary when a giant invades your space … but now we see it as the best Christmas gift you can give us.”
and Evan Spiegel commented launch in September “poke” the Facebook social network, very similar to that of his “Snapchat” feature. In ironic about this “gift”, it was still far off … since Facebook just offered him some $ 3 billion to buy its exchange application photos! An offer he politely refused because he hopes to promote the more, as indicated Wednesday the Wall Street Journal.
“no” to 4000000000
Enough to arouse the wildest rumors about the claims of the young entrepreneur California. According to Valleywag blog dedicated to scenes of Silicon Valley Evan Spiegel had even rejected the advances of Google was willing to pay up to $ 4 billion to provide the “kill app” favorite teens.
For over 15 years that would have missed the phenomenon, “Snapchat” is the famous application that allows you to send photos to be automatically deleted after being viewed.
student project skeptical
Evan Spiegel, 23, was designed in 2011, Bobby Murphy, a friend of Stanford as part of a final project of the year for his course design. From the outset, the concept is raising eyebrows. As the young CEO told himself in 2012, during the presentation of their project, the classmates of the two friends argue that Snapchat only interest, at best, only those who wish to send naughty pictures.
It is true that with this application, the “sexting” has found a medium of choice because it limits the risks of these control flow without compromising pictures (although computer however, found flaws in the system automatic deletion).
“This is fun”
It is also one of the main criticisms leveled at the still of Snapchat: the application would only encourage teenagers to share pictures of them naked. In this, his co-creator invariably brings the same answers. The first issue:
“That’s funny. Point.”
users would suffice, he said in an interview with the AP office in February. In fact, in September 2013 Snapchat had convinced 350 million users (against 200 million three months earlier!)
champion of impermanence
His second argument is deeper. Evan Spiegel has made her find a way to promote the right to be forgotten at a time when, although virtual, on any digital action leaves an indelible mark on the canvas. In an interview with Forbes magazine in 2012, the young man and regretted:
“People live with this huge burden of having to manage the digital equivalent of their personality.”
profiles on social networks, blogs, tweet and even private conversations … all that is exchanged on the web or via mobile devices is maintained. This causes also a productive against overabundance of data. The Contractor shall comply as follows:
“Today, most companies are built on the idea of ??keeping everything and then create a ton of software to organize all this in the hope of later things that are important.”
Protect brainstorm
why Snapchat offers exceed, and that’s what makes its strength in the eyes of its inventor. The application symbolize the idea that we should rather remove all default and keep only the essentials. This simple theory would be gold. While she was still in its infancy, Evan Spiegel already claimed.
the time, so in 2011, one of his professors and mentors at Stanford, Peter Wendell, introduced him to his friends venture-capital, tells the magazine The Newyorker . The student then worried about the risk of “losing control Company .” Already. He even refuses to meet with employees Twitter for fear of being robbed his invention.
good advice from a schoolgirl
But he did not, however, rejected all investors. After a first phase of tests with his comrades, application spreads and rises quickly in the top of the download platform.
This is not without stirring up desires. One day in early 2012, he received a message – on Facebook, of course – Jeremy Liew, who works for the venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners. Evan Spiegel also tells about the meeting a revealing anecdote: Jeremy Liew Snapchat have heard through a colleague whose teenage daughter was crowned as one of his favorite applications after Instagram and Angry Bird.
Dad did not want to pay
However, to continue to develop Snapchat, little work of his partner Bobby Murphy, is not enough. “ My father did not want to pay for the photos that go “, also tells the young entrepreneur who dropped Stanford to return to live in his father’s apartment in Los Angeles. A Lightspeed, he said yes.
His first fundraiser allows nearly $ 500,000 to settle his bills to pay for hosting servers. Other investors will follow. In February 2013, Benchmark Capital, another venture capital, gathered around the table to give him $ 13.5 million, valuing the start-up between 60 and 70 million.
Saying “no”
Rest for Evan Spiegel to find a way to monetize his nugget, why not integrating paid to its application functionality. But he does will probably not at any price. Definitely able to say “no” when he deems it necessary, he has refused to develop an application for Google Glass “ because they put the [users Snapchat] uncomfortable ” .
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