How would you feel if you found out that a company which started just a few years ago as a college project is now competing head-to-head with one of the world’s biggest companies?
It may sound fictional, but this actually happened.
This is the story of Snapchat and its creator, Evan Spiegel, who worked on many different ideas in his early days but didn't achieve much success. However, he never gave up and eventually created Snapchat.
Under his leadership, Snapchat reached a point where it became Instagram's biggest competitor. And at just 25 years old, Evan became the youngest billionaire in the world.
His journey is truly inspiring and full of excitement. Read on to learn more...
Early Life and Education
Evan Thomas Spiegel was born on June 4, 1990, in Los Angeles, California. His father, John Spiegel, was a Stanford-trained lawyer, and his mother, Melissa Thomas, was the youngest woman to become a lawyer from Stanford. Both his parents were highly successful and lived with their family in a $4.6 million home.
Evan was the youngest of three siblings. After his birth, his mother left her job to devote full time to raising her children. The family often vacationed in beautiful places like Europe, Mali, and the Bahamas, and Evan enjoyed a joyful and privileged childhood.
He completed his schooling at Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica. While he was in high school, his parents got divorced, but this didn’t have much of an impact on his studies.
From a young age, he had a deep interest in technology and product design. Alongside high school, he also studied design at Otis College of Art and Design.
During holidays, he interned at Red Bull in the product design and sales department, and continued interning at various places in the same field.
Stanford Days
After completing school, Evan enrolled in Stanford University to study product design. During this time, he met Bobby Murphy, a student of Mathematics and Computational Sciences. Together, they started a website called futurefreshman.com, aimed at guiding students through the college admission process. However, the idea failed to gain traction and turned out to be a flop.
One day at Stanford, Evan was having a conversation with his friend Reggie Brown, who shared an idea—an app that would allow photos to disappear after being viewed once. Evan found this idea fascinating and saw a lot of potential in it.
The Beginning of Snapchat
In April 2011, Evan presented this idea as part of his project design class. He invited his friends Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown to work on it.
The three of them started the company under the name Picaboo. At that time, Evan was only 20 years old. He became the CEO, Bobby the CTO, and Reggie was made Chief of Marketing.
Evan began designing the app from his college dorm room, while Bobby wrote the code. The app, allowing users to send self-destructing photos and chat easily, was launched in June 2011. Evan’s goal was not to create just another social media app but rather a tool for personal conversation.
However, as the original idea belonged to Reggie Brown, he applied for legal rights and patents with the US government, which led to a major conflict among the trio. Eventually, Brown left the company.
Despite this setback, Evan and Bobby continued building the company. They renamed the app "Snapchat" and used Evan’s family home in Pacific Palisades as their first office.
Initially, Snapchat was only available to iPhone users. Evan promoted the app himself and through blogs. By the end of 2011, they had just around 1,000 daily active users.
Snapchat's Rise
Around this time, Apple launched its first smartphone with a front camera, which quickly became popular among youth. The front camera trend led to a rapid rise in the number of photos being clicked and shared—something that greatly benefited Snapchat.
As a result, Snapchat’s daily active users shot up from 1,000 to 20,000 in just one month and doubled again to 40,000 the next month.
Initially, all the expenses were borne by Evan and Bobby. But as the user base grew, so did server costs, and their personal funds started running out. Since Snapchat had not started making money yet, they needed external funding.
They received their first investment of $485,000 from Lightspeed Venture Partners, which helped them hire staff and improve the app. They added the ability to send videos and also released an Android version of the app.
Thanks to these steps, Snapchat’s popularity skyrocketed. Evan even dropped out of Stanford just a few days before graduation to fully focus on the company. By the end of 2012, Snapchat had over 1 million daily active users.
In 2013, they received more funding and added new features like Stories.
At the same time, Reggie Brown filed a lawsuit claiming Snapchat and its ghost logo were originally his idea. After a year-long legal battle, Evan settled the dispute by paying Brown $154 million in September 2014.
The World’s Youngest Billionaire
Around this time, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noticed Snapchat's growing popularity and offered $3 billion to buy it. Evan declined, stating that Snapchat had immense future potential.
In 2014, Evan added location filters and advertisements to Snapchat, generating revenue for the first time.
That same year, Snapchat raised $485.6 million, increasing its valuation to $10 billion. Since Evan owned a large stake in the company, his wealth grew rapidly, making him the youngest billionaire in the world at just 25.
In 2015, Forbes named him the youngest billionaire, with a net worth of $2.1 billion.
During this time, he met Miranda Kerr, a beautiful Australian model. They fell in love, started dating, and eventually got married in May 2017.
Between 2016 and 2018, Evan renamed the company to Snap Inc. and introduced photo filters, increasing daily active users to 160 million by February 2017. He also implemented end-to-end encryption to ensure user privacy and kept adding innovative features to the app.
Snapchat became one of the most popular apps in the world, and Evan was named the youngest CEO of a public company.
In 2018, Evan returned to Stanford, completed his remaining credits, and earned his graduation degree.
In 2021, Forbes ranked him 55th in their Forbes 400 list, with a net worth of $13.8 billion.
Present Day
Today, Snapchat, which began as a college project, is used daily by over 400 million people and is one of the most popular apps in the world—standing strong as a major competitor to Instagram and Facebook.
Snapchat’s success can be attributed to Evan’s continuous innovation. He never copied features from other apps and always improved his ideas, even when they failed.
This is what helped him make Snapchat unique and become one of the most successful people of our time.
This is the inspiring story of Snapchat’s creator Evan Spiegel.
Conclusion:
Though Evan was born into a wealthy family, he was always hardworking. That attitude kept him motivated during Snapchat’s creation. Returning to Stanford to complete his degree even after achieving massive success reflects his belief in the value of education.
His life is truly an inspiration for anyone who dreams of doing something big and making history.
Thank you for reading!
How did you like this story? Let us know in the comments below!
.jpg)
0 Comments