In terms of net worth, he is not yet close to Elon Musk ($13,4 billion) or Mark Zuckerberg ($56,7 billion), but Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel is making great strides with a current net worth of $3.3 billion. Snapchat is, just like Facebook and Twitter, a social media app.
The major difference between these apps is that Snapchat has no timeline and that the sent videos or photos disappear after a few seconds. The app is hugely popular among young people; no fewer than 3 billion 'snaps' (messages) are sent daily.
Mark Zuckerberg also noticed that users were being poached from his platform and decided to make Spiegel a proposal: a takeover bid of 3 billion euros or compete with his Facebook.
Spiegel turned down this offer, and the business world was perplexed: a move of genius or a foolish one? Snapchat continued to grow, and Spiegel reaped the rewards of his hard work this year. Snapchat went public under the name Snap Inc., making Evan Spiegel and co-founder Bobby Murphy billionaires overnight.
Not bad for a 27-year-old. How did he manage it? What can we learn from this young billionaire?
Learning and getting back up after falling
Falling and getting back up is simply part of being an entrepreneur. Spiegel experienced this during the launch of Picaboo, the predecessor of Snapchat.
The idea for Picaboo, a chat app with temporary content, originated when a fellow sorority member told him about a photo he had sent someone and regretted. Spiegel became enthusiastic, and that is how Picaboo was born.
The app appeared in the App Store in July 2011, but Instagram momentum failed to materialize (Instagram already had 10.000 app downloads on the first day). Investors also showed little interest, because why would anyone send a photo that disappears immediately?
The app didn't catch on, and a month later Picaboo had only 127 users—a disappointment. However, Spiegel didn't give up and decided to rebrand Picaboo as Snapchat, including the iconic ghost.
The rebranding caught on, as the app became hugely popular among students. In December 2011, Snapchat had 2.
241 users, and in January 2012 this number rose to 20.000. Snapchat fell, rose, and conquered, as the chat app currently has a staggering 178 million users.
Stay unique
Every company has its unique characteristics that set it apart from the competition, but it is very tempting to look at the competition and blindly “copy” features that may not suit your company at all.
Spiegel wasn't distracted by Mark Zuckerberg, who was launching innovation after innovation with Facebook.
In fact, it was Zuckerberg who launched an exact copy of Snapchat in late 2012 under the name Facebook Poke.
The new Facebook app received a lot of publicity at launch, but was mainly described as a copy of Snapchat. Facebook ultimately lost the battle, and the Facebook Poke project flopped.
Stay unique as a company, it will be praised by your customers and it is also the reason why customers have chosen you.
Age does not always play a role
Experience comes with time, or does it? Spiegel is only 27 years old and was the world's youngest billionaire at 25.
At this age, he was already ranked 327th on the Forbes 400, the list of the 400 richest Americans, and to think that he never finished his studies at Stanford.
However, Spiegel is not lacking in experience. For instance, he took various courses in product design at the Arts Center College of Design in Pasadena and worked as a marketing intern at RedBull.
Age doesn't always matter; it's best to look at the experience and capabilities someone has.