Billionaire born in 1990 Evan Spiegel - a 'genius madman'

Snapchat's CEO is the youngest and "crazy" billionaire in the world of technology. But his success makes all the world have to recognize him as a genius.

At 25, Evan Spiegel is currently the youngest billionaire in the world today. What you get is enough to make people dream: born in a full family ( maybe even rich ), go to Stanford ( then drop out of school ) and own a steaming messaging app. The best guide for today's youth - Snapchat. All these successes come not only from the backing of a solid family, they come from the "madness" of this particular guy.

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From an application "like no one"

Born in September 2011, amid Mark Zuckerberg's storm, Facebook's Snapchat's success is a phenomenon of technology village. The bizarre idea of ​​a messaging application . automatically deleting messages after the reader has considered something no one thinks about, even considered " crazy ". Spiegel's thinking is that people should not try to build their " information wall " on social networks, they should only share the moments and emotions at the time of talking to each other. .

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The madness in that idea helped Snapchat quickly conquer young people in America. This application is popular because people can safely send each other important information, sharing words without fear they are spread as widely as on Facebook. With Snapchat, everything simply communicates, shares and . forgets it ( you want to remember it because Snapchat will automatically delete the message ).

Snapchat pursues a simple, unique design instead of a variety of functions like many social networks or messaging applications today. Spiegel's brainchild is so simple that it has no features other than taking photos, recording videos, sending messages to friends on the list.

But Snapchat is a successful product, at least until now. After rejecting the offer of Facebook ( $ 3 billion ) and Google ( $ 4 billion ), Snapchat is now priced at $ 16 billion. Spiegel's " crazy " application has become one of the most remarkable technology products in the world today.

Say no to $ 3 billion from Mark and Facebook

Speaking of Spiegel's " madness ", it's impossible not to mention the story between him and Mark Zuckerberg - Facebook's CEO. At the time of 2012, when Snapchat was very young and Evan Spiegel was not a famous figure, Mark had noticed him. The reason is probably everyone guessed: the birth of Snapchat and the popularity of young people for it is enough to make Facebook worry.

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As " superior ", Mark was polite to send Spiegel an email with the content: " Spiegel, go to Menlo Park (Facebook headquarters) and we will get to know each other ". But the " anonymous guy " answered the CEO of a social network worth up to $ 20 billion at the time: " Hello, I'm in LA (Los Angeles), why don't you come here? ".

And then Mark had to accept that " invitation " from Spiegel. The meeting between the Facebook boss and two co-founders Snapchat: Spiegel and Bobby Murphy took place in a secret place and had a tense atmosphere. Mark didn't say much to the two young men apart from introducing them to Poke, a new Facebook application with almost the same features as Snapchat. Mark's implication is clear: You should know your identity because we will bury Snapchat. In response to the declaration of war, Spiegel quietly returned to the office and placed six books The Art of War for 6 employees of Snapchat, one each.

As soon as Poke was released at the end of 2012, Mark sent an invitation to use Poke to Spiegel and hoped he would like the new application. Almost immediately, Spiegel and Murphy . locked their Facebook accounts. It is worth mentioning that in just 3 days, from an extremely hot application at the time of launch, Poke quickly faded and was kicked off the top 1 by Snapchat himself on the App Store. And that's when Spiegel smiled.

Here, many people will understand why Mark once again contacted Spiegel in 2013 to offer to buy Snapchat for $ 3 billion. For many analysts, this is a crazy price for an OTT application that is only 2 years old and has never created any profit. But even more crazy than Mark's decision, Spiegel replied simply: "No".

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Up to now, although quite small compared to Facebook, Snapchat has helped Spiegel become the youngest billionaire in the world with assets of more than 1.5 billion USD . From a startup with only 6 employees, Snapchat now has more than 300 employees and is valued at about $ 16 billion in the market. If he agreed with Mark at the time, there might not have been an extremely successful Snapchat today.

A "non-standard" world

As a person with special thinking, the way Spiegel lives and works is not the same as what one considers normal.

After booming and having more than 100 million regular users, Snapchat also started building video content for ads. But instead of accepting horizontal screen advertising ( like many current commercials ), Spiegel forces advertisers to . advertise for vertical videos. The reason is because he thinks that having to turn the smartphone screen sideways to watch the video is " very inconvenient ". With Spiegel, nothing is required and he just wants to make the result most satisfactory.

Spiegel's decision received suspicion and even turned away many ad units. Having to "follow" Spiegel means that they will not be able to reuse the videos that are still widely used on Facebook, Youtube, . This is not to mention the price to hire ads on Snapchat up. up to 20 USD per 1000 views ( reduced from the original 100 USD ). This number is higher than many other services, and people wonder if a service has never had professional advertising tools like Snapchat worthy of that money?

In response to the suspicion, Spiegel said he would not change his opinion. Placing the ad vertically will help mobile users not to miserably spin across the screen every time they watch a video containing ads, and that increases the probability that they will see the entire ad spanning about 10 seconds. Rather than profit, the reason Spiegel decided it was because he only cared about the quality of the product, and making the user feel comfortable was what he was aiming for.

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Spiegel's way of thinking convinced many famous brands. Snapchat has signed more than 11 content channels, including CNN, MTV, Daily Mail, National Geographic, Yahoo . You can track the content of these channels in the Discover interface of the application. Instead of focusing on building lasting content, these content will only last for 24 hours since they appear. This encourages people to pay more attention to content every day, rather than skimming and assuming that they will find it again " at some point ".

Spiegel's " madness " does not stop there. With a consistent mindset when building Snapchat is the social network should not keep the personal content of the user, he has bluntly . delete all the lines of his tweet. Spiegel thinks we should only live and share the present moments together, and Snapchat is a great tool for you to do that. Up to the present time, his Twitter has more than 34 thousand followers and has . 0 tweets.

Only 25 years old, what Evan Spiegel can do can be considered a miracle. With a different personality and a "crazy" way of thinking, Spiegel's success will definitely not stop there.

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