Insight
Spiegel: Founders Can Only Optimize for Two of Investors, Terms, or Valuation
“You have three things you can optimize for when you're raising money. You can optimize for the people you're working with, like the venture capitalists, You can optimize for the terms, you can optimize for the valuation, but pick two.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Spiegel: Zuckerberg Disclosed Facebook's Poke Clone In Late 2012 Meeting
“He was telling us about working on a new poke app, which ultimately ended up being a copycat of Snapchat at the time.”
Insight
Spiegel: Network Size Matters Less Than Having A User's Closest Contacts
“If you have a big network, but you're only talking to three or five or seven people in that network, that actually the size of the network doesn't matter that much. What matters is that those people, those, you know, that you talk to all the time are a part of…”
Opinion
Spiegel: Instagram sold to Facebook way too early
“Well, I think, as you mentioned, we did have the benefit of learning from Instagram, and it was very clear that Instagram had sold way too early.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Spiegel: Snap did not anticipate Instagram directly carbon-copying Stories
“The one thing that we didn't anticipate was that Instagram would actually perfectly copy stories, like carbon copy it, because in the past they had sort of tried different rifts on our products, like they would take the core idea, but then try to make it bette…”
Assertion Supported
Spiegel: Reggie Brown conceived the idea of disappearing photos
“I mean, he came up with the idea of sending disappearing photos and share that with me”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Spiegel: Lightspeed's Seed Note ROFR Discouraged Other Series A Leads
“The writer first refusal allowed Lightspeed to buy up to 50% of the next round and because of the way that a convertible note works, that meant that they would control that series of stock. So they would control the series A of stock, and that meant that other…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Spiegel: Future cameras will overlay computing onto our environment and daily lives
“And I think in the future, and even today with, you know, the fifth generation of spectacles, cameras are really used to overlay computing on our environment and to better integrate computing with our day-to-day lives.”
Opinion
Spiegel: AR glasses are critical to Snap's long-term future
“I think that's critical to our long-term future.”
Insight
Spiegel: Snapchat grew via close-friend networks rather than broad social graphs
“Yeah, and it was different than social media virality because social media virality is very network-based, right? You would want to have the largest graph possible, but the reason why Snapchat was able to grow is because you really wanted to use it with your, …”
Assertion Supported
Spiegel: Snapchat invented the tap-for-photo, hold-for-video camera interface
“We had invented this idea that you could just tap to take a photo or hold the button and start recording a video. And that at the time, based on the way the camera worked, was actually quite difficult to engineer.”
Disclosure
Spiegel and Bobby Murphy each cashed out $10M in an early round
“In one of those early financing rounds, Bobby and I were both able to cash out like ten million dollars each.”
Disclosure
Spiegel is a registered independent who generally avoids political giving
“Personally, I'm a registered independent, which is, I believe, actually the largest party in America. I don't do political giving, although I did give to Michael Tubbs, who lived across the hall from me in college.”
Insight
Spiegel: Entrepreneurial success relies heavily on family safety nets and luck
“Life isn't fair. And it's been extraordinary to have these gifts of, you know, growing up in the Palisades, being able to attend a great school, having the opportunity, the safety net to go pursue a business. I mean, but I think beyond luck, there are so many …”
Insight
Spiegel: College admissions software is brutal due to 100% annual churn
“Ultimately we were solving a problem where even if we were really successful, our customers would essentially leave us every year. So we'd have to go get more customers the next year, and so it was just a really, really tough business, I think, to get off the …”
Assertion Supported
Spiegel: Picaboo rebranded to Snapchat following a cease-and-desist letter
“We got a cease and desist from a pick-a-boo company, and maybe one of the best things that ever happened to us.”
Disclosure
Spiegel and Murphy funded early Snap with savings and inheritance
“You know, my grandparents had left me 10,000 dollars. Bobby had some money from one of his prior jobs, and so he chipped that in. My dad, I think, put in maybe five or 10,000 dollars, but he wasn't quite keen to put in any more to help people send photos back …”
Assertion Supported
Spiegel: Lightspeed's seed round valued Snapchat at $4.25M
“4.25 million.”
Assertion Supported
A nearby school invested $15K in Snap's seed round, funding a gym
“Actually, my favorite part of that story is a school nearby invested 15,000 dollars and ended up making, I think they ended up building a new gymnasium or something.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Spiegel: Eric Schmidt advised early Snap not to hire a CFO
“And so he would say, you know, hey, I'm coming to LA. I'll come by. You and Bobby just make a list of all the questions you have, and I'll help you answer them. And, you know, at that time, our questions were like, do we need a CFO? Like, you know, this kind o…”
Evan Spiegel