# How Evan Spiegel Turned A "Stupid" Idea Into The Snapchat Empire

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/evan-carmichael-believe-unlocking-your-true-potential-7782439/how-evan-spiegel-turned-a-stupid-idea-into-the-snapchat-empire
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/evan-carmichael-believe-unlocking-your-true-potential-7782439/how-evan-spiegel-turned-a-stupid-idea-into-the-snapchat-empire.md
Podcast: [Evan Carmichael - Believe: Unlocking Your True Potential](https://stenobird.com/podcast/evan-carmichael-believe-unlocking-your-true-potential-7782439)
Published: 2026-07-17T14:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/VG4049081942.mp3
Audio file: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/VG4049081942.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/evan-carmichael-believe-unlocking-your-true-potential-7782439/episodes/how-evan-spiegel-turned-a-stupid-idea-into-the-snapchat-empire
Duration seconds: 1275

## Resource

✎ Get free access to our vault of PDF summaries for every YouTube video here: https://believe.evancarmichael.com/the-vault ✎ Check out my NEWEST video: https://goo.gl/E0eE6m ✎ To get more details on all the research and studies mentioned in this video check out the articles below: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-02-22/snap-hits-100-billion-market-value https://www.alphr.com/business/1010208/who-is-evan-spiegel-snapchat/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/10/the-birth-of-snapchat/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Spiegel https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/13/snapchat-facebook-buyout-offer-rejected https://www.businessinsider.com/best-quotes-by-evan-spiegel-snapchat-ceo-2015-7 https://thunderbit.com/blog/snapchat-statistics-need-to-know ✎ Evan Spiegel, the co-founder and CEO of Snapchat, was laughed at in a Stanford class for an idea where photos disappear after being viewed. He teamed up with Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown to build the first version called Peekaboo, but it failed and led to a co-founder dispute. Instead of quitting, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy rebuilt the app, rebranded it as Snapchat in 2011, and slowly grew it through high school and college users. By 2012, Snapchat hit over 1 million daily users, and Evan even dropped out of Stanford to focus fully on the company. ✎ In 2013, Snapchat exploded in growth, reaching hundreds of millions of snaps sent per day as celebrities and teens embraced the app. That same year, Facebook offered Evan Spiegel $3 billion to buy Snapchat, but he turned it down at just 23 years old, choosing long-term vision over quick money. Snapchat kept growing, launched Stories, added AR lenses, and went public in 2017 as Snap Inc. with a $33 billion valuation. Evan Spiegel became the youngest CEO of a public…

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