From a college dropout to a billionaire, Evan Spiegel’s life has been compared to the lives of so many before him who have followed similar paths, choosing their startup over a degree and the list includes names like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. There was a time when Mark was considered the world’s youngest billionaire for connecting people (No, not Nokia) through his social media Facebook and then came the time of the temporary social media (which kinda became permanent now) that led Evan providing a unique platform for millenials to not just consume content but create content as well. Here are a few excerpts from this selfie-made billionaire !
- Evan had a privileged life and was a similar nerd with a technology refuge and got his 1st computer in his 6th grade. Moreover, he also conducted experiments with Photoshop during his school time and used to spend his free weekends at the art lab of a local high school.
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- In his high school he had interned with the marketing team of Red Bull where he was promoting the brand in bars and clubs and also worked with and worked with molecular dynamics simulations at the California NanoSystems Institute later. In one of the guest lectures at Stanford, Scott Cook took notice of his skills and Evan also had a job offer for txtWeb, a project meant to broadcast information from web over text messages.
- Snapchat wasn’t his first product idea, he was previously hired by his co-founder Murphy to work on designing an online social network, taking an inspiration from the Google Circles, but it failed. He developed his then first project with Murphy, Future Freshman, which was online software aimed to help in the management of college admissions by counselors, parents and high schoolers; although it started well, it couldn’t continue for long.
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- Prior to releasing Snapchat, the billionaire had launches an app called Picaboo, which was also similar to Snapchat. Picaboo was a photo-sharing app, which deleted images within 10 seconds of them being viewed by their recipient.But this app could not stay around in the market for long and therefore it was relaunched with various other upgrades and was called as Snapchat.
- Snapchat was legally in trouble when one of the frat brothers with whom Evan had worked with filed a case. It is said that Frank Brown filed a lawsuit only after he was forced out of Snapchat’s founding team. Brown said he was seeking at least a 20 percent stake in the company. But in the year 2014 both the parties agreed for an out of court settlement which is still not known to anyone.
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- Evan and Mark have been good friends and they have stood with each other through their thick and thins. Well these two men have a lot in common right from dropping out from college to being dragged to court by co-founders they both have been there and done that. When Mark tried to buy Snapchat for a hefty price of $3 Billion after Facebook’s failed attempt at temporary social media, Evan refused quoting “Game On”, he even ordered his then 6 employees Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”.
Currently standing at over $19 Billion valuation (facebook’s largest acquisition) Evan Spiegel even though hadn’t cracked his degree in Product Design (with only 3 papers left) had cracked the answer to the single largest question in startup space
Source: successstory, businessinsider, techcrunch, mashable, entrepreneur, recode
