The Khanversation with Imran Khan Evan Spiegel on Snap's Past, Present, and Future
7 snips
Jul 10, 2025 
Evan Spiegel, the co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc., dives deep into Snapchat's transformative journey, starting with the early days at Stanford. He shares insights on pioneering features like Stories and AR Lenses that reshaped social media. The conversation shifts to his vision for Spectacles and making computing more human-centric. Spiegel discusses the challenges of rapid growth, the significance of company culture, and strategic decisions leading to their early IPO, all while emphasizing long-term innovation over short-term gains.
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Early Origin Story
- Evan describes Snapchat starting as a Stanford project called Pickaboo that opened into the camera and sent disappearing photos to friends.
- They renamed it Snapchat after realizing visual, fast one-to-one photo communication was the real use case.
Virality From Friend-Only Use
- Snapchat's core virality came from being useful only with friends, forcing word-of-mouth growth.
- Speed of sending photos beat MMS and made camera-first communication compelling.
Why Stories Worked
- Stories solved social pressure from permanent feeds by letting people chronicle beginning-to-end moments that expire after 24 hours.
- Stories let users share without blasting friends and start fresh daily, matching human storytelling rhythms.