Evan Spiegel is the co-founder of Snapchat, and he is a great example for any upcoming entrepreneur. Spiegel was only 24 years old when he co-founded Snapchat, now a multi-billion dollar business!
After high school he went to Stanford University and studied product design. Snapchat actually started as an idea he had for a class project during college. Even then it quickly became an instant hit. Right before he was about to graduate Spiegel dropped out of school and pursued his Snapchat idea.
Snapchat presented the world to a new, innovative idea that many people took a liking to. The idea of having a conversation with someone over a mobile device using pictures that disappear was very creative. Millions upon millions of Snapchats are sent every day!
At the age of 23, Spiegel was able to turn down the opportunity to have Snapchat be bought for $3 billion by Facebook because he believed the company could get even bigger.
It is quite clear that Evan Spiegel showcases many great entrepreneurial traits like boldness, innovation, and creativity among many others. Any new entrepreneur can certainly look to him as an example for themselves.
While Evan Spiegel says he can make Snapchat bigger, what opportunity did he forego by turning down Facebook? Could he have used the resources and connections of Facebook to expand more quickly?
In addition, now that Facebook has released its own stories and direct messaging with pictures (through Instagram), how does that compete? Snapchat still dominates its market, but has it experienced a dent in its market with Instagram’s features?
I still think that Snapchat has remained competitive, but I would be wary of Facebook, as it has positioned itself to be a significant competitor to Snapchat, through its upgrades to Instagram. Since Facebook could not buy Snapchat, it created its own competition.
This is a very cool story, the thing that stands out to me most is the fact that he turned down the $3 billion offer that was presented by Facebook. To me it seems like $3 billion, is already very big, but it shows his capacity for the big picture because he sees something even bigger than that.
It’s interesting to see how many popular social media outlets have come from top level schools like, in this case, Stanford. This is undoubtedly due to the advantage of having a vast network of people with whom you can workshop ideas, get opinions, and test products or hypotheses.
It has been really interesting to see the evolution of snapchat over the years! It will be interesting to see if snapchat can continue to stay competitive with other forms of social media.
Wow it is really cool to hear the story behind Snapchat. This is a very innovative app, and continues to change constantly. He definitely took a big risk turning down 3 billion dollars.
Snapchat is one of the biggest social media brands out there, I personally use it more than Instagram and I’d be willing to bet that there are millions of people like me who do the same. Due to this fact I believe he made the right choice in not selling to Facebook. His company can go much further and I look forward to seeing what the next steps for snapchat are.