Do not be easily discouraged by the crowd- The first time Evan Spiegel proposed Snap chat was at Stanford as a product design class project, and his idea was ridiculed by all his classmates. He didn’t focus on the side talks but on bringing his dreams to fruition and in 2015, he was named the youngest billionaire in the world. As of 2016, Spiegel was ranked #854 on the Forbes 400 with $4 billion in wealth. Pretty cool right?
It’s not always about the money- As a student, he worked a lot. He was an unpaid sales intern at Red Bull. Then he moved on to work for a biomedical company, a careers instructor in Cape Town, South Africa, and at Intuit on the TxtWeb project. All these numerous experiences gave him a diverse outlook on life as well as skills which came in handy later in his life.
Believe in your dream 101%- In late 2013, Evan Spiegel turned down a huge sum of money from social giant Facebook. With an offer to pay upfront $3 billion to acquire Snapchat, he reportedly gave them the run around before turning down the sizeable bid. Instead of coveting instant riches, he admirably opted to pursue the dream of building a successful business.
“There are very few people in the world who get to build a business like this,” he told Forbes at the time. “I think trading that for some short-term gain isn’t very interesting.”
Never give up- Snap chat is his second attempt at creating a mobile app. His first app was a photos sharing one called picaboo. Picaboo launched in July of 2011 but by the end of the summer, it only had 127 users. He didn’t allow this deter his dreams.
Give back- Nothing beats giving back to the society. In February 2017, he decided to donate upwards of 13,000,000 shares of Class A common stock in his company over the next 15–20 years to an arts, education and youth non-profit.
