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Snapchat's Evan Spiegel: Saying no to $3B, and feeling lucky
- kken 13y agoNot sure what the point of that piece it. But it made me dislike Mr. Spiegel.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- papa_bear 13y agoYeah, I used to think they might have an ace up their sleeve after turning down the facebook offer. This article is making me think it's just because their CEO is spoiled and arrogant.
- pazimzadeh 13y agoWhy did it make you dislike him? Shouldn't you make the best of what you have?
- COMS 13y agoIt's the same justification that a corrupt government official uses, an African warlord or someone abusing the welfare system. It's one of the worst aspect of human culture and anyone who celebrates it should be derided.
- dev1n 13y agoI disliked him immediately after reading the line The note, accompanied by a plea for a new BMW 535i Has anyone been able to find out what he studied while at Stanford?
- confluence 13y agoSame thing most other Stanford grads study: how to beg rich adults for money. They are very good at that.
- nilkn 13y agoI think this article has no point other than to make the reader dislike Evan Spiegel. That said, understanding that he came from an extremely privileged background does make it slightly easier to understand how he could be sufficiently detached from the money to turn down the multi-billion-dollar offers he's received.
- _RPM 13y agoI don't understand why the press glamorizes this party lifestyle that apparently Mr. Spiegel engaged in. I want to hear about about the work that went into building SnapChat.
- pm90 13y agoThe answer to your question is in your question. While you are interested in the technical details, most of the general public is interested in his personality, his girlfriend, his house etcetc
- mynameishere 13y agoThey aren't glamorizing anything. The piece was written to make people dislike the guy. The work? Well, they made it over a weekend, and then somehow got money to hire engineers to scale it up. That's the work, aside from the marketing (which is witchcraft as far as I can tell).
- acchow 13y agoThis was hardly a glamor piece. A detailed history of Spiegel's personal life was presented to paint his $3bn decision as hubris.
- smtddr 13y ago"So if life isn't fair -- it's not about working harder, it's about working the system." --Evan Spiegel, The son of successful lawyers, Spiegel grew up in a world of wealth, power, and privilege. This is pretty much explains the behavior of "The One Percent" and mega-corps. I hope all of snapchat's employees are equally as rich. Otherwise they just lost out on a huge, life-altering windfall due to some kind insane arrogance. Or I'm very wrong, FB comes back with a bigger offer and Spiegel takes it. I mean, it's just a screenshot/video sharing app with a little twist. A twist that can be undone by a software-update making it impossible to prevent the device from saving it. Did you know Android-KitKat comes with ScreenRecording? I wonder how snapchat deals with that. EDIT: Ives's answer about SecureContent flag sounds good. Now I wonder about the future Custom ROMs...
- drimal 13y agoYep. Word just got around today that FB's feeling alienated and there aren't any other balls in the court. Evan's too arrogant to accept a lower offer. Worst part is that everyone's feeling awkwardly trapped. I even feel bad complaining - damn golden handcuffs.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- quack 13y agoApple creates an integrated snapchat. Removes snapchat from the apple store. It's not like they havent done that to other popular apps that they have the ability to replicate (google maps)
- neon_electro 13y agoExcept Google Maps is still on the App Store.
- Touche 13y agoFor example, Apple has banned comics from being sold through Comixology that they themselves sell in their store.
- carsongross 13y agoA poster child for our time.
- aforty 13y agoA poster child for our 1%.
- adamnemecek 13y agoReads like a hit piece. Also is anyone else somewhat disturbed by all personal details the articles goes into?
- RodericDay 13y agoI think it's intended to be a hit-piece, it's incredibly blatant about it. Think about it as the natural counterpart to Steve Jobs' biography and other such pieces making myths out of SV entrepreneurship.
- adamnemecek 13y agoSomeone probably wants to acquire Snapchat and does not feel like paying 3B for it. Or Facebook is butthurt. /takes-off 3D printed tin foil hat
- salient 13y agoThe main reason I'd prefer they didn't get bought by Facebook or even Google, is because I know those 2 would pretty much eliminate any privacy features Snapchat may have left. However, I fear they will intend to do that, too, in the future in an effort to monetize, especially if they IPO. If anything, I hope they find a very scalable monetization solution before they IPO.
- pearjuice 13y agoWhat is Snapchat its future anyway? I doubt any sane tech company will raise its bid and I also doubt snapchat has some secret formula to justify saying no to those bids. Are they hitting at an IPO? Bluffing? Do they have billion dollar revenue stream lining up? What is their deal?
- downandout 13y agoSnapchat has achieved the kind of user acceptance that only a handful of tech companies ever do. Kudos to them. However, it is a feature, not a product. The next great thing will come along and claim its notoriously fickle user base as fast or faster than Snapchat itself arrived on the scene. The barriers to entry are so low as to effectively be nonexistent. Evan grew up rich and has family money to fall back on if he fails, so perhaps he can afford to gamble for a bigger payday. The problem is that he is gambling with the financial futures of his investors and employees as well. In my opinion, a bet that Snapchat will ever be valued at more than $3 billion is a long shot, and there is a greater-than-zero chance that the company will be worth nothing two years from now.
- sillysaurus2 13y agoHowever, it is a feature, not a product. Steve Jobs said that to Drew Huston about Dropbox. I think Steve believed it, too. History will show whether Snapchat is a feature or a product, because they'll either fail or succeed. But if even Steve Jobs was bad at assessing early-stage tech companies, then we outsiders probably shouldn't make categorical judgments like "Snapchat isn't a product."
- bryanh 13y agoYou beat me by a minute!
- sillysaurus2 13y agoWell, if it's any consolation: You made Zapier, and I didn't! Zapier is awesome; thank you for creating it.
- bryanh 13y agoWell, myself and about 7 others so far! And thank you for using it! :-)
- hackinthebochs 13y ago
- chatmasta 13y agoWhat a horrible piece of "journalism." People need to get over the privilege bashing that seems to be so "in vogue" these days. This dude got into Stanford (despite what people here think, that requires more than just money), created an app sharing 400M+ photos per day after less than two years, and has big enough balls to turn down $3B from Mark Zuckerberg. Whether you agree with how he's handled the situation or not, you have to give him some respect. This article is a piece of trash. I hope Spiegel wipes his ass with it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- redmaverick 13y agoWhat if Snapchat adds a feature which is something like a transient social network with disappearing posts? I for one would jump ship from fb. I don't like the idea that the information I post on fb can be searched and possibly mined by my fb friends.
- rajacombinator 13y agoHow did they get letters written to his dad? Someone was mad ... Even though the article paints him as a thoroughly detestable character, I like the fact that Facebook - which started as an equally trivial app - is scared of his company. It's not like Zuckerberg wasn't privileged too.