Co-Founder, CEO & Director, Snap
SNAP CEO EVAN SPIEGEL: How I Took a College Idea & Became the World's Youngest Billionaire
Evan Spiegel, the co-founder and CEO of Snap, launched Snapchat in 2011 while he was still a student at Stanford University.
Since then, he’s built one of the biggest social platforms in the world, used by more than 400 million people every day.
Evan's idea has genuinely changed the way we communicate. So, I couldn’t wait to sit down with him for our first episode of Great Company Presents: Founders Friday mini-series.
In our conversation, Evan shares:
How the idea of Snapchat came about
The moment he decided to drop out of Stanford
The reality of becoming a billionaire at 25
How he...
About Evan Spiegel
Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO of Snap, unveiled Specs, the company's augmented reality glasses, at the Augmented World Expo in June 2026. Spiegel described Specs as "a new kind of computer designed for real life and built into see-through glasses," priced at $2,195 and expected to ship in fall 2026. He stated that the device represents Snap's effort to "make computing more human" by bringing computing into the world around users rather than confining it to screens. Spiegel said Specs are "the most capable and most wearable AR glasses ever built" and remarked that "those copycats up north aren't going to be stealing this one," an apparent reference to competitors. He also said the company had been working toward the product for more than 12 years. In interviews, Spiegel discussed Snap's approach to distribution and competition. He said that distribution is "one of the hardest things to figure out in consumer technology today" and that TikTok and Threads succeeded in part by solving distribution challenges. He also reflected on Snapchat's early growth, noting that the platform grew more slowly than broadcast-oriented social media because it focused on connecting users with close friends rather than large audiences. On the topic of artificial intelligence, Spiegel said AI is making a "profound impact" on software development and predicted that "humans are writing any code at all by next year" would be unlikely, as much of the work is being automated. He also said Snap is working to convert its audience into higher advertising revenue growth, an area where he said the company is "falling short today."
Transcript (183 segments)
H
Host0:00
You became one of the youngest billionaires in the world age 25. You said that Meta has stolen some stuff.
E
Evan Spiegel0:06
Mark Zuckerberg recorded himself saying the word poke. That was the notification sound for the app. Such a big company was so focused on what we were doing. My mom was like, 'You can have your own computer if you build it.' And I was like, 'Okay, you're building a computer. What age is this?'
H
Host0:20
11, 12. You've gone into one of the best colleges and then you're saying you want to drop out for this idea.
E
Evan Spiegel0:26
It seemed obvious to work on something I was passionate about. So,
H
Host0:29
What are your hopes for the future of Snap?
E
Evan Spiegel0:32
Oh my gosh, I have so so many.
H
Host0:36
Hey guys, and welcome to our brand new miniseries, Founders Friday. Now, I've been an entrepreneur for the last 14 years with Candy Killins, with Jampol, with Tuck Shop, my other businesses. And honestly, it's been one of the hardest journeys I've ever been on. And that's coming from a new parent, okay? And I'm learning every single day, making mistakes every single day. So, for the month of July, I want to do something special for you, our community, our amazing community, okay? But also for myself. I'm going to be sitting down with founders I admire, people who have built brilliant businesses and who have been generous enough to share the lessons they've learned along the way. Trust me, you do not want to miss this. The things that I've learned have been incredible. My first guest is someone who genuinely changed the way we communicate. He's one of the youngest billionaires ever. It's Evan Spiegel, the founder and CEO of Snapchat. Evan launched Snapchat in 2011 when he was still a student at Stanford University. Since then, he's built one of the biggest social platforms in the entire world, used by more than 400 million people every single day. We sat down together in April at a Snapford event I was hosting in the Cotswwells. It was incredible. And our conversation just went everywhere. Evan opens up about the early days of building Snap, the biggest business lessons he's learned, and how he thinks about social media when it comes to his own children. A huge conversation. So, here it is. Our first ever great company presents Founders Friday with Evan Spiegel. Enjoy it.
It feels like we're about to do a cooking show. That'll be the next episode. Evan cooking. This is how we're doing about how to make sourdough. Great company MB. Do you know I want to start with some quickfire questions for you. What's one belief you had as a younger founder that you've completely reversed?
E
Evan Spiegel2:29
You know, when we were starting the company, we were so focused on secrecy. We were incredibly secretive about the products that we were working on. Even inside the company, people really wouldn't talk with each other about what they were working on. And obviously there was an enormous amount of fear partially informed by our competitive experience with Meta always knocking off our products. We really should not talk about what we're building even internally. And I think that was a huge mistake because one of the most important things that leaders do is communicating with our team and facilitating that inside the company. It's so important to the culture, to furthering the vision, to making sure we get the best ideas from all over the company. So, one of the biggest things we've changed has gone from being a very secretive siloed company internally to one that is way more transparent and open about what we're working on.
H
Host3:30
That's it. So, you were always secretive at the beginning. You just didn't want to say anything.
E
Evan Spiegel3:34
We didn't want to say anything publicly. We didn't really want to say anything internally. Where we were really focused was on our customers. And as long as our customers were happy, we were like, that'll kind of take care of the rest. And then as the company got bigger and the company's profile grew, it became much more important to communicate externally but also internally to really align the team. So that comes with building a lot more trust inside the team and relying on folks not to share all the fun stuff we're working on. But it creates a much stronger and more cohesive team internally.
H
Host4:03
What was the thing you said that Meta has stolen some stuff before. What was the thing that really hurt the most when someone took it?
E
Evan Spiegel4:10
It's not so much what hurt the most, just from the earliest days. I think there were four of us living in my dad's house working on Snapchat when they created a ripoff called Poke and put it at the top of Facebook. So every time you open the app, it told you to download Poke. Mark Zuckerberg recorded himself saying the word Poke. That was the notification sound for the app. And we were like, 'Wow, this guy's really into Snapchat.' So I think just learning so early on that even as such a tiny team, four of us working out of my dad's house, maybe five of us, that such a big company was so focused on what we were doing made us really feel like we needed to protect our ideas at least until we shipped them to our community.
H
Host4:46
Who's your business idol?
E
Evan Spiegel4:48
Wow. I think my business idol was Steve Jobs. I mean, that's who, growing up, I had the think different posters on my wall. I even had the posters of the G3 Mac tower on my bedroom wall. So I think for me, Steve was just such an incredible inspiration. And yeah, that story is always really deeply inspiring.
H
Host5:11
What was it about him that you just admired so much?
E
Evan Spiegel5:15
That he cared so deeply about design, that he cared enough about the way things actually worked. He showed people that if they wanted to build amazing things or design amazing things, it wasn't just about making something that looked beautiful, it was about making something that worked beautifully. And that to me is so hard to do, and his commitment to doing that was just incredibly inspiring to me.
H
Host5:48
You know, Steve Jobs said many times that his main goal was to create technology that enhanced humanity. Do you feel like that's a similar goal for you there?
E
Evan Spiegel5:59
Yeah. Our goal is to make computing more human. So certainly sounds aligned with some of those early ideals. But also I think throughout history, even think about Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog, people who were working on computers in the very early days, they really viewed them as accelerants for humanity, tools for humanity, and talked about them in that way. So I think at its best, computing makes all of us better.
H
Host6:25
What's a success that didn't feel as good as you expected?
E
Evan Spiegel6:29
You know, I think for us, people always talk about taking the company public. We'd see all these photos and videos, everyone with the confetti coming down and ringing the bell. And I remember I was meeting with a friend of mine because I went and talked to a bunch of public company CEOs before we went public, to learn and ask a bunch of questions. And I remember one of my friends was like, 'Whatever you do, do not get the confetti. Tell them no confetti because every single day from there on out it's hard building a public company. Every single time there's a hiccup or a problem with the company, they're going to put that confetti photo up.' And what was very interesting for me was how sobering that was. Because I think so many people view an IPO as an end, but in so many ways, it's actually the beginning of a totally different phase for the company, a totally different way of managing and communicating about it. So for me, I think that's something that is typically viewed as a success getting to that milestone, but comes with so many new responsibilities and so many changes.
H
Host7:34
Last quickfire. If you had to go into business with Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos, who would it be?
E
Evan Spiegel7:38
Jeff.
H
Host7:40
Why?
E
Evan Spiegel7:42
Jeff was really kind to me when I was starting the business. I remember I was in a big executive meeting with Jeff about our Amazon relationship or something like that, and towards the end of the meeting he excused everybody, but he stayed behind with me. The company was going through a bunch of difficult challenges at the time, and I was really young and just trying to learn how to build the company. And he was like, 'Evan, just don't worry about it, just stay focused on what you're doing, you're going to do great.' And I was like, 'Wow, for him to go out of his way to take that time to connect with me and encourage me like that was really inspiring.' It's something I've held with me to this day, and I think about that a lot when I meet other founders. It's not easy building a company, and for him to go out of his way and just encourage me like that was really powerful.
H
Host8:58
I think it is probably the best thing about the technology industry. I mean, I certainly experienced it building our business, and I had the great fortune of knowing absolutely nothing about running a company. So I really relied on all the incredible mentors I met along the way who were willing to help out or were super responsive if I had a question. And so I do think that is probably at least for me the best part of the industry as a whole.
So where did you grow up?
E
Evan Spiegel9:26
I grew up in Los Angeles. I was raised by two lawyers. My mom was a tax lawyer. My dad did a lot of business litigation. I had two younger sisters, both way smarter than me. And I think having two lawyers meant for very spirited dinner table conversations and certainly debates. Never averse to conflict. Lawyers actually feed off of conflict in some ways. So I think it was really interesting to grow up in an environment where there was a real commitment to intellectual honesty and integrity. We used to call my dad the encyclopedia before Google came along and unseated him from his position of knowing so much about the world. He was really passionate about history and economics. So there would just be really great and intense debates around the table in our home growing up.
H
Host10:20
What does that teach you, though?
E
Evan Spiegel10:22
I think one of the things that taught me at a very young age was the ability to stand my ground in really tough conversations. I remember getting to know my wife and us all having dinner with my dad, and I'm just debating with my dad, and my wife's like, 'What are you doing?' And I'm like, 'No, this is our love language. We're having a conversation.' But I think it was really fun to be in an environment that encouraged that because that sort of intellectual curiosity and spirited debate is so much at the heart of creating good ideas. And that's really valuable.
H
Host10:56
Yeah. I've never thought of it that way because life is sometimes about having those hard conversations and also being able to stand your ground. I think that's in some ways what separates good leaders from great leaders, and that has to be from childhood. But also to develop a willingness to be open-minded when you're wrong. And I think that's where the focus on intellectual integrity is so important because the dinner table was about getting to the right answer, not being right.
So you stubborn?
E
Evan Spiegel11:33
I can be. Yeah, I can be.
H
Host11:36
But if you know you're wrong, you admit you're wrong, or will you hold?
E
Evan Spiegel11:40
The entire game is how quickly can you change your mind once you find out you're wrong. So...
H
Host11:44
So give me an example. What do you mean?
E
Evan Spiegel11:46
I think for example, when we're working on a new product in our company or I'm really holding my ground on a feature, as soon as somebody proves I'm wrong or shows me our customers are looking for something different or has a better idea, what we always try to reward is the speed at which you admit you're wrong and change. So for us in our company, we're not looking for folks who are always right because it's impossible to always be right. In fact, quite a lot of the time even the smartest people in the world are wrong. So the question is how quickly can you adapt and change? How quickly can you say you're totally right, my mistake, let's change direction? And by rewarding that behavior, you have an organization that grows and learns very quickly compared to an organization that rewards people who are right the first time. We're trying to get to the right answer the fastest.
H
Host12:33
That is I yeah, I had some therapy once, right?
E
Evan Spiegel12:39
Just once, just. [laughter]
H
Host12:43
I actually think that all founders should have therapy. I totally think they should. Most people should have therapy. But I had it quite a lot. And the therapist said to me that when you argue, you're trying to win. And I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'Well, with your family, with your friends, maybe with your partner, it feels like you're trying to always win.' I said, 'Yeah, isn't that the point?' They said, 'No, you're trying to find the solution. You're trying to find the answer. No one should be a winner when you're arguing.' And that's exactly what you're saying. And I think the most attractive thing is admitting when you're wrong.
E
Evan Spiegel13:15
I think there's probably nothing more powerful, especially if you can do it quickly.
H
Host13:19
Especially if you can do it quickly.
E
Evan Spiegel13:21
But it's funny you mentioned therapy. My parents, when I was like 15 or so, ended up divorcing. As part of that, I started therapy. And that was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me because I was able to do so much work on myself and my worldview before we started Snapchat when I was 20. So in that intervening period between my parents divorcing and creating Snapchat, I actually was able to do a huge amount of work on myself, which was well timed going into all the challenges of growing a business.
H
Host13:59
Growing up in LA. So you had your sisters, you, your parents, happy childhood?
E
Evan Spiegel14:05
And a dog.
H
Host14:06
And a dog. What was the dog called?
E
Evan Spiegel14:08
Walter.
H
Host14:09
Love Walter. [laughter]
E
Evan Spiegel14:10
Me too.
H
Host14:13
Happy childhood.
E
Evan Spiegel14:14
Yeah. Generally speaking, I loved reading. I loved design. Got very into computers. My parents did not let me watch television when I was growing up until I was like a teenager or something like that.
H
Host14:30
Hang on a second. And so?
E
Evan Spiegel14:31
Nothing.
H
Host14:32
No television. For what reason?
E
Evan Spiegel14:36
They wanted me to spend my time doing other things. Which was an enormous gift that they gave me because I ended up reading and building stuff. I got super into Lego. I would use my imagination to create stuff. I would build a ship in the living room out of our furniture and hit the seas, that kind of thing. And the flip side was the challenge socially because people connect through television and media. It's a huge point of connection in our society, and having shared stories is a really important way that people get to know each other and make friends. So missing that point of connection was hard with my peers who were watching all sorts of stuff and talking about it at school. But in hindsight, the benefit of spending a lot of time reading and learning and imagining was massive. And it wasn't until I guess I must have been in middle school, I'd fallen in love with computers. I'd go at lunch, I'd be in the computer lab. I was really into design. And I really wanted my own computer. And my mom was like, 'You can have your own computer if you build it.' And I was like, 'Okay, challenge accepted.' So...
H
Host15:51
You're building a computer. What age is this?
E
Evan Spiegel15:52
This must have been in middle sixth or seventh grade or something like that.
H
Host15:56
So what age is that for a UK audience?
E
Evan Spiegel15:58
What is that? That's like 11 or 12, something like that.
H
Host16:02
So just so your parents said, 'You can have a computer, but you have to build it.'
E
Evan Spiegel16:05
Yep. And they took me to Fry Electronics, which is the electronic store, and we picked out the motherboard and this kind of thing. And that was a real breakthrough for me and a really exciting moment to have my own computer but also to realize that building a computer wasn't that hard. So many times in our lives we are afraid of things that appear complicated, but when you actually have a chance to build it yourself, that illusion disappears and you realize you're capable of so many things.
H
Host16:38
So hang on. So you opened up the computer, but how would you even know where to begin?
E
Evan Spiegel16:43
I had a teacher at school who was the computer teacher, and I'd taken a course over the summer in building your own computer, so he very generously helped me out.
H
Host16:53
Do you feel like an outsider growing up?
E
Evan Spiegel16:56
In some ways, yeah. I mean, in some ways I was the ultimate insider. I grew up in a privileged family, attended an elite private school in Los Angeles. So in many ways I was absolutely an insider. In other ways, for example, not being allowed to watch TV, I was sometimes an outsider.
H
Host17:26
But you mentioned that school maybe had been a bit tricky at times in social situations.
E
Evan Spiegel17:32
Yeah, definitely. I was a pretty nerdy kid. I was spending a lot of time reading books and making stuff and not a lot of time watching TV. I remember in kindergarten, my parents helped me write a letter to the PE teacher because I was too afraid to do PE because there were too many people running around and balls flying. I was terrified. So I sat down with my parents, wrote a letter to the PE teacher and said, 'I'm just not ready for PE. I'll play when I'm ready.' And my parents supported me in doing that. And it's hilarious. My three kids now go to the school that I went to growing up. And the PE teacher is still there. Almost every day when I drop our kids off, I see her and I'm like, 'Hey, morning. I don't want to play dodgeball.' Thankfully, I was able to overcome that fear. But I just spent a lot of time reading and not a ton of time running around.
H
Host18:34
You went to Stanford though.
E
Evan Spiegel18:36
Yeah.
H
Host18:37
You're at Stanford. You're hanging out with your friends and you come up with this idea to create an app. Tell me the origin story of Snapchat.
E
Evan Spiegel18:47
So Bobby had lived across the hall from me in our fraternity. We had started working on a bunch of projects together. One of which was called Future Freshman. It was designed to help people get into college. It was a total disaster. Only my mom used it. So that was not a great success. And we started working on other ideas. My friend Reggie was like, 'What if you could send a photo that disappeared?' We were like, 'Oh wow, that's an interesting idea.' So I sketched out the frames of the app. It was called Peekaboo at the time. We built a prototype. It's the ghost. Peekaboo, boo, like a ghost.
H
Host19:23
So you came with this idea, you started creating it, you started building it with your buddies, you always thought this is what I want to do. I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to create a business.
E
Evan Spiegel19:34
I think most, Bobby and I really did not like working for other people. We both had been really fortunate. He had a job working for a payments company. I had a job interning at Intuit, which was an amazing opportunity. We had been working on essentially websites that would be used on touchtone phones for India. That had been really cool because I realized on a team of just three or four people that you could build and ship software to the world. It was really inspiring. So that combination of not wanting to work for other people, wanting to build stuff, and realizing that if you built software, you could scale it and deploy it to people all over the world easily was really exciting. So Bobby and I just loved working together. I think all of those things combined led us to work on Snapchat. And when I first presented Snapchat, or what was called Peekaboo at the time, to my class because it was one of my senior projects, everyone was like, 'This makes no sense. This isn't going to work. You can always take a screenshot. The photos don't disappear. What?' But what was very interesting was after that summer as we continued to work on it, we really loved using Snapchat to just send photos back and forth to our friends. We invented a new mechanism to detect when somebody took a screenshot. So we couldn't prevent it, but we would at least let you know if somebody saved your photo. And Snapchat became a way that people started talking to each other. Which meant that then we pivoted, we called it Snapchat, we pivoted to talking about it as visual messaging. We added captions and drawing and all the sorts of things that you now use today.
H
Host21:18
When you launch it, what was that moment like?
E
Evan Spiegel21:21
Probably very anticlimactic. Launching an app is like clicking a button.
H
Host21:25
But isn't there that moment when you... I remember when we first launched our website for my sweets company. I remember sitting with my buddy and just being like we launched it. Here we go. And then just nothing happened. And I was like okay surely something's meant to happen. It was anticlimactic for me as well. But I still remember that moment like it was yesterday.
E
Evan Spiegel21:48
The launches that I remember are a bit later into the life of the app where everyone would cluster around a computer and watch the dashboard because to me the fun of a launch is the community feedback. That's the best part.
H
Host22:03
So what was the moment you decided to drop out of Stanford?
E
Evan Spiegel22:05
I was in the back of my CNC machining class.
H
Host22:08
So you remember this moment? Here we go.
E
Evan Spiegel22:10
Oh yeah. I remember this moment. I was in the back of my CNC machining class. I was refreshing the Wells Fargo app over and over again, waiting for the $485,000 from our investors to hit the account. And when it landed, I went up to the teacher and I said, 'I'm so sorry. I have to drop out of school.'
H
Host22:28
You didn't do that. You didn't walk up straight away.
E
Evan Spiegel22:31
Oh yeah. I said, 'I'm sorry. Excuse me, Craig. Actually, I have to drop out of school.' And Craig, God bless Craig, because I went back and took that same CNC machining class again later to get my degree in 2018.
H
Host22:45
That's a wild appetite for risk. Your parents are these incredible lawyers. You've grown up with them, right? So they're your parents. You admire them. They have these strict rules like you have to work hard, no TV, no screens, nothing at all. I imagine they were like, you got to go to university, you got to push and becoming a lawyer, you have to go through all that education. But then what you've done, you're smart, you're educated, you have ideas, you've gone into one of the best colleges, and then you're saying you want to drop out for this idea. And as we know, most businesses fail. So what was your conversation you had with your parents?
E
Evan Spiegel23:17
Well, I think it's funny because what you described paints a picture of very little risk. I was just out of school. I had the opportunity to live in my dad's house and work out of his house. I had gone to a really great university, so I wasn't worried about being able to get a job later if it didn't work out. I think it was almost the perfect circumstance to take a huge risk because the downside was minimal. I think one of the challenges we face as entrepreneurs, and certainly as folks get later into their lives and have responsibility with family, children, etc., then it gets much harder to take a risk. But for me, it seemed obvious to work on something I was passionate about. And I think for me it was much more about the responsibility, frankly, that we had to our investors. They had invested $485,000, which to us was like infinity. We were like, we will never need to raise money again. We were able to hire two of our friends. It was extraordinary for us. And we really had a responsibility at that point to focus 100% of our time on building the company.
H
Host24:23
I mean Snapchat grew so quickly. I remember downloading it for the first time and just being like this is insane and it just spreading like wildfire. This was around 2013, hundreds of millions of snaps were being sent every day. The growth was so quick. Were you expecting that?
E
Evan Spiegel24:41
It didn't feel quick for us. In a lot of ways, the growth of Snapchat was slower than traditional social media because social media is broadcast oriented. And Snapchat is messaging oriented. So actually, it grows slower because you're onboarding a smaller network, like just your close friends and family, not necessarily 2,000 people you don't know very well. And so I actually remember feeling a lot of pressure that I hoped this could grow faster because the nature of Snapchat as a messaging platform means it doesn't grow as fast as broadcast social media.
H
Host25:12
But how did Snapchat catch on to other...
People outside of your college? How did you market it outside of that?
E
Evan Spiegel25:18
You know what? We tried to market it really unsuccessfully. So I would literally go to the outdoor mall in Santa Monica called the Third Street Promenade and hand out flyers like, 'Don't you want to send visual messages to your friend?' At that time, we advertised it as 10 times faster than MMS because sending a picture via text message took like minutes. It's crazy. And we invented a way to send pictures really quickly. So we would try to advertise it that way and people were like, 'What? What are you talking about?' But a bunch of our friends started using it. My cousin started using it in Orange County with some of his friends over the summer. As all of our friends who had been using it at school went back home to their hometowns, they shared it with their friends. Ultimately, I think the only way Snapchat has really grown consistently over time is just friends sharing it with other friends or family members and teaching them how to use it because Snapchat was so different. It was a new way of communicating visually, and people weren't familiar with an app that opened to the camera and prompted you to communicate with a picture instead of words.
H
Host26:19
When was the point where you suddenly went, 'Oh, this could be a thing. This is working.'
E
Evan Spiegel26:24
I think it was partway through my senior year of school because I would sit in the back of my classes and refresh the little snap counter we had that showed how many snaps were being sent. Early on in the year, it would go up by one every now and then, but midway through the year, it was incrementing very quickly. Every time I checked, maybe a hundred new snaps had been sent. That was about the time we realized we were running out of money to pay for the server bills. My grandparents had given me $10,000 that I had spent. Bobby and I had maxed out the credit cards. My dad was like, 'I am not paying for people to send pictures. What are you talking about?' So that was the point where we were like, 'Okay, we've got some momentum, but now we have to figure out how to pay the server bill.'
H
Host27:04
So, you're a huge risk taker or is it calculated risk?
E
Evan Spiegel27:09
I would say definitely highly calculated risk. Yeah. I'm thinking about other risk
H
Host27:15
Because what I see is so interesting, right, is that you wouldn't do PE. You didn't like that because you felt it was too much, but at the same time, you're happy to take a risk which is even worse than doing something like PE. Do you know what I mean? But is it? I don't know.
E
Evan Spiegel27:28
PE sounds pretty bad right now. Does it?
H
Host27:31
That's what I find so mad, right? And so interesting is that you're happy to risk life, career, going to college, other people's money. You're happy to take that risk, but you won't go to a PE class because you're worried about the bulls and the intensity.
E
Evan Spiegel27:47
I think you're maybe missing the other side of the equation, which is reward. What is the upside of PE class versus building a company? I think it's so important to very thoughtfully consider if you're going to take a risk, especially a risk like working on our Specs glasses that are coming out later this year. This has been a 12-year undertaking, enormous amount of risk, but also one where the upside is enormous and where we have huge strategic advantages. So that's an example of a very thoughtful, calculated risk.
H
Host28:24
You became one of the youngest billionaires in the world, age 25. That's young. How important is that side of growing a business to you? The financial side.
E
Evan Spiegel28:41
Well, it's interesting. The more money you have, the less important that becomes. The biggest step change for me was when our investors wisely allowed Bobby and I each to sell $10 million worth of stock when the company was valued around $800 million. That immediately took the financial stress and pressure of growing a business off the table. I was like, 'Okay, I can buy a home and provide for my family.' All those things that constantly gnaw at you were taken away early on. That created an environment where we felt comfortable taking more risk and building the business for the long term. That was the moment I felt that relief. Once you can buy a home and provide for your family, the rest is awesome and fun and an opportunity to give back, but it's not as fundamental as that first step change from living in my dad's house to being able to buy a house.
H
Host29:57
You're right. Money is fundamentally important when you can provide for your family, buy a house, buy a plane ticket. Above that, it doesn't really mean anything as much as we think it does.
E
Evan Spiegel30:11
I think beyond that, it comes with a huge amount of responsibility. It's pressure in a different way. Having had this extraordinary opportunity comes with a massive responsibility to give back and make a positive impact. Once you've provided for yourself and your family, the next step is how can I use this to give back to my community? And how do you stay ambitious? I love what I do so much. I love serving our community. Our community constantly pushes me to do more, to do better, to make something more interesting or engaging that helps them connect better with their family and friends. So for me, it's our community that provides that constant drive and ambition to build a better service.
H
Host31:03
How do you balance being a successful founder but also being a good dad and a good husband?
E
Evan Spiegel31:09
I'm so fortunate to have a fabulous wife and really wonderful kids. It would be almost impossible without Miranda, my wife. She's an extraordinary mom, so committed to our family and supportive of me. There has not been one time in our entire marriage or history together that she has criticized me for working too hard or being exhausted. She's never created that pressure. As a result, I feel I can do great work without that anxiety. We met when we both already had demanding careers. She had Flynn, who was two or three at the time. We built our lives together admiring and respecting the intensity with which we approach family and work. That created a foundation where we've worked hard to create the right balance, but it's very difficult and there are many times where there isn't balance.
H
Host32:28
What's harder, being a dad or building Snapchat?
E
Evan Spiegel32:33
I would say they're hard in different ways.
H
Host32:35
It's so diplomatic.
E
Evan Spiegel32:37
They're hard in different ways.
H
Host32:39
Because I'm a new dad.
E
Evan Spiegel32:41
You're like being a dad's way harder.
H
Host32:43
It is.
E
Evan Spiegel32:45
It's hard being a dad. What I'm finding tricky is finding the balance between being a present dad and building the businesses I have. It's interesting, going back to our risk-reward conversation, the heart-expanding miracle of being a dad is so unbelievably rewarding and far more rewarding than building a business. So maybe that balances it all out.
H
Host33:21
Your parents didn't allow you to watch TV, right? Do you do the same with your kids?
E
Evan Spiegel33:25
With some minor exceptions. We allow YouTube during haircuts. Our two-year-old doesn't like getting his haircut, so we let him watch YouTube videos of Bobcat tractors. That's his thing. For his birthday, I got him six different Bobcat tractor toys. So he sits and gets his haircut while watching Bobcat tractors. That's good by me.
H
Host33:52
That's the only rule.
E
Evan Spiegel33:54
That's it. He can watch some YouTube when he's getting his haircut.
H
Host33:59
There's this whole conversation around social media and what Snapchat is doing so well, it's about connection. I interviewed Robert Waldinger, who ran a happiness study that lasted nearly 100 years. They followed 917 people, checking their brain, financial status, connections, everything. At the end, they found the happiest people weren't the richest or most successful, but those with the best connections with family and friends. The more we're connected, the happier we are. It's amazing to realize what you guys are trying to do is bring back social media to what it was about connection. You said something like social media started as a place where we're all connected, but it's come to a place where we've become disconnected. What are your views on that?
E
Evan Spiegel35:12
Technology has incredible power to help people connect and build deeper relationships, especially when we're separated. We want to build a service that supports those deep connections. When we built Snapchat, social media was focused on performance metrics like likes and comments, where everything was saved forever. That changed what people shared—only the good parts of their lives, not the other 99% which is how we build relationships. Because Snapchat was about sharing the moment in the moment and letting it go, people weren't paying attention to how they looked; they were communicating how they felt. That instantaneous moment of connection was incredibly valuable. Over the years, we found in our research that people felt happy using Snapchat and it improved their relationships. Now independent studies from Australia, the Netherlands, and the US show Snapchat has a positive impact on well-being. I was excited to see that, especially since services like TikTok and Instagram were found not good for well-being. It's important to look deeper rather than bundling everything as social media.
H
Host37:21
You said, 'My hope is that the social network of the future is right here in person. One of the biggest challenges we face is that we have gotten so good at connecting with people far away, but less good at connecting with people right in front of us, across the dinner table.' That's great. I didn't get that tattooed across my chest.
E
Evan Spiegel37:39
You're so nice to pick good quotes. Our team quotes me back to myself a lot, but usually to point out when I'm wrong. So thank you.
H
Host37:47
Life is really about being around the dinner table. Someone I admire says you can tell when someone's successful because their dinner table gets longer. That's how we should value success—when your dinner table gets longer, that's friends, family, loved ones. I think social media has made us forget that.
E
Evan Spiegel38:14
Unfortunately, it's not just social media. The challenge with computers and smartphones today is that they're all designed around a single player experience. They're used alone. I think social media should be about building something together, a technology that gets out of the way and brings people together. It's so easy to build connections around shared activities and experiences. Creating shared experiences is one of the best points of connection. We generate stories that further that connection. Technology that enables people to get the benefits of computing while sharing experiences together sets us up for a different way of relating to technology—being present together in the moment rather than on a device.
H
Host39:22
If you had a magic wand and were in control, what would you change with everything? Let's channel it to tech and social media. What would you do to make it right, good, a happy place?
E
Evan Spiegel39:51
I would try to make sure services optimize around human connection and relationships rather than human competition. Human beings like to compete, but far more, they like to connect. If we make tools that make it easier to build relationships and connect than to compete, we will have a more productive and fruitful relationship with technology.
H
Host40:24
We were talking about specs. It's taken 12 years to build. Are you excited about the future?
E
Evan Spiegel40:33
I'm so excited. I've dedicated so much of my life to this technology. I'm passionate about how it will change the way people think about computers—not as something that takes us away from the world, but keeps us in it. This is a really wacky idea, but so many physical things can be made out of light in glasses.
H
Host41:00
Explain to me, what do you mean?
E
Evan Spiegel41:01
With specs and augmented reality, imagine you and I playing a board game. Today, that board game is made somewhere, packaged, shipped, unboxed. With specs, we can use light to create that exact same physical experience. You and I can see the same board game and move pieces around. That experience of play together with something that was physical is now represented with light. The spillover impact is huge—it improves accessibility, environmental impact, and economics because you can scale ideas at lower cost. Over the next 10, 20, 30 years, that's a big idea I'm really excited about.
H
Host42:29
So what are your hopes for the future of Snap?
E
Evan Spiegel42:33
I have so many. The headline would be that we make computing more human. 20, 30 years from now, we'll look back at people hunched over screens and say, 'That's crazy.' Thank goodness we changed computers to fit into our lives as humans. The last 40 years of computing have required humans to turn their lives upside down to get the benefits. Instead, we should ask how to change computing to better fit how we've naturally lived, worked, and played together for thousands of years.
H
Host43:15
What do you think makes a successful founder and entrepreneur?
E
Evan Spiegel43:19
Not giving up.
H
Host43:22
Yeah, that's it, isn't it?
E
Evan Spiegel43:25
It's that.
H
Host43:27
I wish it were easier. There's a narrative in the UK that to live a fulfilled life you have to be an entrepreneur. I say hell no, you have to be a complete psychopath. It's the hardest thing, virtually impossible at times. The resilience to keep going every day is what success is.
E
Evan Spiegel44:11
I think so. On really tough days, when I've asked friends or other entrepreneurs for advice, the answer is always just knuckle down and figure it out. I wish there was a silver bullet, but that seems to be the common denominator across founders.
H
Host44:31
Did you ever get to a point where you thought you were going to give up?
E
Evan Spiegel44:35
There have been really hard days, but I don't think that's ever seriously been on the table because I love what I do so much. That love overcomes all the exhaustion and frustration.
H
Host44:59
Evan, a big thank you. It's a privilege to get time with you and get into your mind. What I love is that you still have the passion and excitement. When people ask me about my sweets business, my eyes light up. Same with you.
E
Evan Spiegel45:27
Well, I was told I was going to get some candy out of this.
H
Host45:29
Don't worry, you got loads. We'd like to end with eight quickfire questions. Ready?
E
Evan Spiegel45:37
Wow. Start and end with quickfire. You know how it is.
H
Host45:39
I've never seen any like
E
Evan Spiegel45:40
Here we go.
H
Host45:41
What's a saying or phrase that makes you smile or cheers you up?
E
Evan Spiegel45:44
Love you, Dad.
H
Host45:46
Best compliment anyone's ever given you?
E
Evan Spiegel45:49
The best compliments have been around my ability to listen, learn, and change quickly. My wife often gives feedback on areas where I can improve, and when she notices my effort and change, that's a well-received compliment.
H
Host46:12
Wise feedback is the best.
E
Evan Spiegel46:14
I get it a lot.
H
Host46:18
What scares you most about yourself?
E
Evan Spiegel46:19
I'm extremely impatient. I'm really conscious of time, earthly time. Sometimes that gets in the way of being in the moment or giving time to something inconvenient but important. I'm trying to work on that to make sure I'm living fully in the moment and not letting it fly by.
H
Host47:03
When was the last time you cried?
E
Evan Spiegel47:05
This weekend I watched the movie 'I Swear' and I was bawling. It was unbelievable, so inspiring. I was blown away. We don't watch movies often, and I was in tears the whole time.
H
Host47:24
I talk about this a lot. It's unbelievable. I hosted the BAFTA film red carpet and spoke to Robert, who played the lead. He was unknown, then he wins the BAFTA. I watched it and thought he's the greatest actor. The story of John David is unbelievable.
E
Evan Spiegel47:54
Unbelievable.
H
Host47:57
You have to watch another movie called 'Nowhere Special'. It's about a window cleaner who has to look after a boy. It's unknown, a little bit like 'Ice'. It's unbelievable. Watch that. What's something you can't let go of?
E
Evan Spiegel48:18
I cannot let go of
H
Host48:22
It's like my phone. I don't know.
E
Evan Spiegel48:25
Computers.
H
Host48:26
Yeah, there you go. Computers. That's it. What's your guilty pleasure?
E
Evan Spiegel48:30
Probably playing Call of Duty with my friends every now and then. That's my guilty pleasure, and not appropriate for young kids.
H
Host48:40
I'd fuck you up on that. I would snipe the fuck out of you.
E
Evan Spiegel48:45
That's probably true.
H
Host48:47
What turns you off?
E
Evan Spiegel48:50
When people talk over other people. It drives me crazy. Just let them finish.
H
Host49:00
Great answer. I think I do that sometimes.
E
Evan Spiegel49:05
Oh my gosh.
H
Host49:09
I know. I've learned from doing this podcast that silence is golden.
E
Evan Spiegel49:17
It's like you got into my team's mind.
H
Host49:21
Yeah. Do you have any other feedback?
E
Evan Spiegel49:24
Yeah.
H
Host49:26
Well, what turns you on?
E
Evan Spiegel49:26
People who are really open, who wear their heart on their sleeve, who aren't afraid to talk about what they love. I get really inspired by that.
H
Host49:39
Last one, the cheesy one. What do you like most about yourself?
E
Evan Spiegel49:43
I really make an effort to prioritize our team and community on a human level. Sometimes that's as basic as calling someone who had a loss or accident to ask how they are and if we can help. That's the foundation of real relationships. Also writing thank you notes for things team members have done. It's the greatest thing my parents taught me.
H
Host50:29
It honestly is. Write a thank you note. I got a job once because I wrote a thank you note after an interview. They gave me the hosting job. Thank you notes go a long way.
E
Evan Spiegel50:41
I remember as a kid after birthdays or Christmas, my mom would give me a stack of thank you notes to write. For my first girlfriend, my thank you note arrived at her house before I did. I thought it would arrive afterwards, but it was timely. I arrived and so did the note.
H
Host51:10
You had real conviction it was going to go super well.
E
Evan Spiegel51:16
Yeah, I loved the weekend. I loved the moment we had.
H
Host51:20
So they're like sorry you're a liar.
Evan, thank you. You're incredible. Thank you for being great company. You're the best.
E
Evan Spiegel51:30
Thank you so much.