The pain of waiting 60 seconds to send a photo via text message was really an obstacle to communication. Today, go to any concert and you can see that little ghost blinking at the top of the screen. And that never gets old to me.
Nearly a billion people open Snapchat every month, almost half a billion use it every single day.
What initially started as like kind of a gimmick very quickly became a messaging service.
Stories at this point has got to be one of the most emulated product ideas across social media. When you see one of your ideas copied exactly as a designer, it's very gratifying because it means that you designed it so perfectly that all these super smart people who saw it couldn't figure out how to iterate on it and make it better.
You have been working on these AR glasses for around a decade. What convinced you that this bet was one worth taking?
We're spending seven or eight hours a day on screens on average. Bringing computing off of a screen and into the world I think is essential at this moment in time because
Can we talk about the meme of it all?
Of course. Yeah. Which one?
I read that your family made a sizable donation to an organization called Undo Medical Debt.
We found this amazing organization and opportunity to relieve medical debt, which puts so much pressure on families.
I'm Sammy Cohen and this is Social Currency, a podcast that unpacks the stories that are shaping business, culture, and the intersection of the two. I am so excited to introduce today's guest, Evan Spiegel. Evan is the co-founder and CEO of Snap. And if you still think of Snapchat as the app your kid uses or maybe you used in your 20s, this one's going to reset that for you because nearly a billion people open the app every month. And the company that Evan started at 21 is now betting its next decade on putting a new technology that you wear on your face in the forefront. So, in this conversation, Evan and I talk about the evolution of Snap, how he grapples with being the most copied product in social media, and Specs, the $2,195 AR glasses more than a decade in the making. He tells me who he's actually picturing buying them, why he thinks Snap wins a category that the other big tech players are already playing in, and what happens to the smartphone when it does. And towards the end, Evan gets candid about age gating social media, and where he lands as a dad, the multi-million dollar donation his family made to ease medical debt, and the throughline connecting the causes he gives to. Snapchat is a company that a lot of people have strong feelings about, especially parents. And I don't think this conversation will settle that either way, but I do think it'll spark some very interesting conversations. Let me know what you make of it. This is Evan Spiegel's Social Currency.
This episode is brought to you by Mercury, banking built so founders can move faster now with Spend, the expense management system with cards, intelligent budgets, and employee reimbursements all in one place. Most founders start out the same way, one card shared among whoever needs it. When I was setting up the podcast studio last year, my team bought the cameras on my card and then we ended up returning one camera and then had to comb through emails looking for that final camera that replaced the one that we returned. That was time that was not spent building the show. Instead, we were digging through emails for proof of a purchase. Mercury Spend fixes that. Your team texts a photo or lets Gmail scan it and the work is done. Cards with overdue receipts lock automatically so nobody is chasing anybody. Budgets you set once hold on their own per person per team per card. Expense management living in the same place as your business banking which is where it should have been the whole time. Mercury is a fintech company not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column NA members FDIC. The IO card is issued by Patriot Bank NA member FDIC pursuant to a license from Mastercard International Incorporated. Evan Spiegel, welcome to Social Currency.
Thank you so much. Great to be here in Los Angeles too. We're so happy.
Like a 10-minute drive from your office.
I think maybe seven. So you made it easy. Thank you.
So you've been on my list of CEOs that I've wanted to talk to for a very long time. So I actually was connected finally. I found my way to you through I was in Cannes and I was at a Snap luncheon. And it was this gorgeous event and I was sitting next to Emma who does a lot of your events and I basically gave her the hard pitch and my final line was and it's less than 10 minutes away from where Evan sits in his office so he's got to make it.
So she was like okay maybe I'll actually ask him.
She's like that's the clincher I'm in.
Well this is the famous women's lunch that I've never attended actually in Cannes. So you'll have to tell me all about it.
Yeah, it was iconic, but you're not a woman, so you won't get the details. But before we get into it, I want to put some numbers on the table because everyone who is watching this or listening to it has heard of Evan Spiegel. They've heard of Snapchat. But just to put some numbers out there, nearly a billion people open Snapchat every month. Almost half a billion use it every single day. And it's grown revenue double digits year-over-year. This September, the app turns 15. So we're not talking about a startup anymore. We are talking about something that is used by a very high percentage of people who are alive on this planet. So just to really stake the ground in what we're going to be covering today. But as we were talking about right before we started filming, I'm super excited about lots of stuff that is on the road map right now for Snap. Something that's going to be launching very soon, which we'll get into. But before we get into that, the story of Snapchat has been told now thousands of times at this point. But when you started Snap, it was called Peekaboo when it first launched. You were famously 21, the Stanford dropout. We know that story. But can you share anything with us about what people may be surprised to hear about the early days because we're going back now 15 years.
I think maybe the biggest surprise about the early days of Snapchat and Peekaboo was that while the initial idea was around disappearing photos, the key insight was that, you know, we were using it with our friends to talk. And so what initially started as like kind of a gimmick called Peekaboo to be able to send a photo that disappears. And of course, you know, you can always take a screenshot and save the photo very quickly became a messaging service. And that's really the key insight behind Snapchat. It's why we renamed it Snapchat. You know, picture messaging, essentially added captions and drawing, and that's really when the service started to grow. And so, I think, you know, the insight around Snapchat is really that visual communication is way faster. It's way more fun. It's way more emotionally expressive. You can actually see how your friend feels, right, and what they're doing in the moment without them having to write four paragraphs on an iPhone touchscreen. So, I think that's really the key insight and, you know, why the service endures. You know, now 15 years later, so many people are staying close with their friends and family because they're able to see how they feel and what they're up to through a snap.
And so that key insight of this is communication, this is messaging, can you take us back to when you kind of had that realization or maybe even you were out living your life and you saw someone in the wild who wasn't directly connecting to you using Snap. What was your reaction and what did you do?
Well, you know, one of the earliest memories I have and one of the key insights we had was just how slow it was to send pictures at the time. So, I remember we actually went I think every year there's like a beach volleyball tournament in Manhattan Beach. A lot of people go to Manhattan Beach and that really impacts the cellular connectivity. So, trying to send a photo was basically impossible. And we had that experience and we were so frustrated. But using Snapchat, we had invented a new way to send photos way faster than text message. And so Snapchat was like the only way you could communicate from the Manhattan Beach volleyball match because it was so quick and, you know, so lightweight to send an image in the moment. That was a big unlock for us because we realized that, you know, just the pain of waiting, you know, 60 seconds to send a photo via text message was really an obstacle to communication. And with Snapchat you could do that so much faster. But I think, you know, today what I always love, you know, is going to a concert. Go to any concert and you can see that little ghost blinking at the top of the screen and it never gets old to me.
Yeah. Yeah. One thing that we'll talk about too is I think everything that Snap has done thus far basically living in the phone, we're now moving to some new devices and new ways where you're going to physically see Snap in the world, whereas before, you know, it's in this other device stuck on the phone screen.
And I know you've talked about this quite a bit, but I did want to bring this up just because I think that this has certainly been something that we've seen kind of evolve over time, but you've been very vocal about how certain companies have maybe copied Snapchat or ripped off features that Snapchat very clearly rolled out first. Stories at this point has got to be one of the most emulated, if we want to call it that, product ideas across social media over the last 15 years. When you see something, and it doesn't even have to be stories. I mean, now Snapchat also was basically the company to come up with these lenses or filters. How do you think about that of just Snap being this innovator and then other companies kind of coming into the space and saying, 'Oh, that's so good. We want to take it over to our platforms.'
I'm of several minds, I guess, on the topic. I think the first one, you know, my background is really in design, and that's what I love to do. And when you see one of your ideas copied exactly as a designer, it's very gratifying because it means that you designed it so perfectly that all these super smart people who saw it couldn't figure out how to iterate on it and make it better. They, you know, it's like some of these Eames chairs, right? They're still making knockoffs the exact same because you just can't beat it. It's perfect. And so for me, I think it's just a huge compliment when we see someone, you know, copy the feature exactly. And I think that that's actually what was so wise about what Kevin did with Instagram. He just came out and said, 'Yep, it's stories. We're doing the exact same thing because it's great and we think our community will love it.' And so I think as a designer, like that's very fulfilling. I think where it can get frustrating sometimes is trying to explain to investors how we can continue to be successful and compete with these huge companies if they can just take, you know, all of our ideas or all of what we create. And, you know, I think the most important thing is that we're able to actually continually innovate and continually come up with new ideas and that's really what's driven the growth of our company over the long term. And now, you know, as we talk about things like Specs, basically a computer built into a pair of glasses, we've decided to really focus a lot of our innovation and investment in areas that are incredibly difficult to copy. And that's one of the things I really like about hardware and the integration, you know, of hardware and software is that it's very, very difficult to copy. And so as we're making these long-term investments, as we're making bets on things that don't seem obvious yet, we're investing in a space that's going to be hard for folks to follow. And that's something that we're now able to do 15 years into the life of the company where we have the resources to invest that way.
And this is clearly something you're so passionate about. And I could see the way that you lit up as you were talking about that. And the design element clearly is something that resonates with you. But at this point, Snap employs thousands of people, right? You are leading this company, you have investors or you have, you know, your shareholders to report out to. When you're building a company of your size, are there certain lanes that Evan Spiegel signs off on on basically a weekly basis, stuff that you are really deep in the weeds on? Obviously, you can't touch everything, but what are those areas for you that to this day you're like, I need to be involved in that?
I really care a lot about the design of our products. So, you know, every week I'm spending hours in design meetings, which is really not at the sign-off phase of an idea, but actually at the generative phase of the idea where we're still playing with something that's totally new before it's fully formed yet. That's really where I like to have input and push the team. And we've got a really, really talented design team. It's not very big. It's like nine or 10 people, right? But all around a table, you know, for hours every week, we're debating ideas and trying new things. And so that's really the input that I, you know, like to have in our company. And the other thing I really care deeply about is the culture. So, you know, we've had these same values basically since I can remember, kind, smart, and creative. But those values have to be expressed in the way that the company actually works, in the way that we reward people, in the way that we train our leaders at Snap. And so developing our people, you know, in line with our values is something that I really care a lot about.
I think it's time we move on to Specs of them all. So you have been working on these AR glasses for around a decade. I want to talk about this bet, right? Because Snap has this pattern of making these bets on spaces, on behaviors, right? It ultimately comes down to communication, human behaviors before kind of the rest of the world has caught up and other platforms have caught up as we've just talked about. So, what convinced you that this bet was one worth taking?
I think for me, you know, a lot of my experience of computers when I was younger was very isolating. So, you know, when I grew up, I fell in love with computers. I got obsessed, right? But back in the day, in order to use a computer, you had to use it in the computer lab, right? And so that meant instead of going and playing on the field, you know, at recess, I'd be inside the computer lab at lunch, right? And I think if you just play that forward to today, computers still require us to sort of check out of the real world and either look down at a small phone screen, right, or get behind a laptop screen. And so I think for me, you know, computers are so powerful. They've transformed the way that we work and especially with desk jobs, right? For sure. Maybe less so with, you know, more hands-on jobs because computers today require us to use our hands all the time. And so for me, the promise and the vision of bringing computing off of a screen and into the world in a way that can be shared amongst people will truly unlock the computer's potential, but also make it more human in a way that I think is essential at this moment in time. Because we're spending seven or eight hours a day on screens on average, more than that. And I think we've gotten to the point where if we don't take action to make computing better fit into our lives and help us better connect with one another and stay present in the moment that ultimately I just don't think we're going to get the full benefits of computing in the future. So the big vision is to make computing more human by bringing it into the world. And that's why we've been investing in augmented reality and glasses for 12 years and billions of dollars. But I think we see that future and we're closer now than we ever have been.
Yeah, my screen time is pretty disgusting, but it really is just essential. I mean, we're working on these devices. That's how we're connecting personally with our friends and our families. And so hearing this evolution, right, because computers started on our desk, then they went to our pockets, right, with our phones now going to our faces. I guess my question for you is, and by the way, I'm fully bought in to your vision. I believe like this is the future. It's just a question of how quickly things adapt. So my question for you is what's that timeline? What do you think it will take in order for that kind of mass adoption of people who kind of start moving away from the phones? And I guess what happens to the phone?
So I don't think the phone's going to go away just like laptops haven't gone away, desktops haven't gone away, even televisions, you know, haven't gone away. But I think over time people will move more of their, you know, computing behaviors into glasses because of the convenience, right, of being able to actually use glasses, keep your hands free, to actually be able to see other people and interact with the world. I think the benefits of being able to use computing without giving up your connection to the real world and the people around you is really, really compelling. And then, you know, obviously we can talk a little bit about some of the use cases and utilities. But, you know, the minute you're able to bring that information and actually overlay it in the world around you rather than requiring you to look down at this little screen all the time, you get a lot, I think, of utility benefits in addition to being able to stay grounded in the world around you. But in terms of time frame, I mean, our general view is that, you know, Specs will be ready for more of a mass market product, you know, in the 2030 time frame. So today, you know, they're $2,195. You can check them out at specs.com. But they're more oriented towards early adopters, you know, people who are really passionate about technology. You can think about the people who were buying the first, you know, Macintosh in the 1980s, you know, or who were playing around with, you know, AI and GPUs, you know, back, you know, gosh what would it be, in 2005 CUDA was introduced, right? And there was a decade-long period where a lot of early adopters were playing around with GPUs and what was possible in artificial intelligence and only now today, right, about 20 years later have we seen, you know, massive, massive adoption at scale. So our focus today is to focus on early adopters, developers, really build out the platform and all the incredible experiences people can have and then, you know, as the price point comes down and the form factor gets lighter and battery life extends, we'll be closer to a product that can ship millions and millions of units and ultimately change the world in terms of the way people use computing.
And before we sat down I had the privilege of getting to try the Specs, guys, and really, really cool. So, I tried I think an older version that was from a few years ago and then I tried the one that's coming out soon and I have a few observations that I want to share with you. We'll use this as a live.
I want the feedback here.
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I think I look really great in them. I'm half kidding, but I think they actually do look really cool. I was first impressed with how they like I walking around in LA would feel really confident and excited to wear them. They actually would kind of they look like the sunglasses that I choose to wear, you know, that don't have the computer features. So, that's number one. I thought the look was really great. And I know what I had heard just in media coverage and whatnot was the weight. I actually thought that these felt totally fine. You know, I felt like obviously they're chunkier glasses. You can see that when you look at it, but the weight was not something that I really even thought about. And then the third thing that I really this is less of a product feedback and more of something where I know I would use it if I was, you know, in one of these early adopters is for things like cooking, right? When I am like unfortunately I don't have any recipe memorized like I need to go on YouTube or whatever and go through a recipe. But for me, if I were to have a YouTube video that was playing, this would change my life because what I do, I have my phone and I will stand it up and it's getting olive oil on it. It's getting like garlic and then it like somehow jalapeno and it somehow ends up in my eye later on because it's on my phone. I don't know how it works, but this is kind of like the perfect disintermediation of having that device that you need with you that you kind of want to have as part of the experience. But in that specific instance, right, like the phone is a bug and not a feature. Whereas the glasses, it's really just it would be so organic and useful in that situation. And so I can just think of I mean that was just the first one that came to mind, but there are so many instances that as I'm thinking about things that I'm doing on a regular basis where it's really nice to have those glasses and to be hands-free. It's unbelievable.
Yeah. I think we don't realize how much time we're preoccupied holding our phones, right, and not actually getting stuff done.
Yeah. And just like I don't even know how this happened, but I like developed this like thumb I don't know strain from typing all the time.
Bent pinky. Do you have the bent pinky from holding your phone?
No, but I have the thumb issue. So, any opportunity to use less of my phone and physically hold it, I'm all about. You had mentioned the price point. And so, what would you say to someone who's like, 'Hey, I am interested in this, but the $2,195 price point is, you know, a little bit much for me.'
Well, we're going to offer buy now pay later, so you can pay as you go. I think that helps. But the way to think about Specs is really as a computer and so it's priced around the price point of, you know, a high-end MacBook or something like that. So I think that's really the way to think about it is more of an investment in a computer than, you know, a pair of sunglasses.
Yeah. And that positioning I think is helpful because I think from if you look at the other products that are coming to market by other companies, right, it's a very different positioning. This is, if you think about it as, okay, this is truly something that has it also has extended battery life with the case. And it's something that if you think of as more of a, yeah, a computer versus just an accessory that you wear, it's very different.
I completely agree. I think the most important thing for us will just be having people try it. So that's what I'm most excited about, you know, over the next couple years. Like no one's tried anything like this before. I mean, probably before you tried Specs today, you hadn't had an experience like that. So
Yeah. No, I was freaking out. I would have loved to actually have a recording of me trying it.
You should have done that. It would have been great.
Missed opportunities. Evan, what can I say? But no, I literally was bugging out because it's pretty crazy the idea that I went to the browser section and then I was typing in Wall Street Journal and trying to pull up, you know, different sites and it took me a second to kind of like get immersed in it because I had never done anything like that. That was my first experience with any kind of AR.
