A little more than two weeks ago, we reported on the rumors that Snapchat, the private photo sharing service that lets you send pictures to people that disappear after a few seconds, rejected a $3 billion purchase offer from Facebook.
Many people believe the SnapChat founders are crazy for turning down such a lucrative offer. But apparently, the founders had their reasons, including the fact that Snapchat was reportedly entertaining other lucrative offers at the time of the Facebook offer, such as an investment from Chinese e-commerce company Tencent Holdings that would value the company at $4 billion. The founders apparently believed they can do better than Facebook’s offer.
A recent profile in CNET of Snapchat 23-year-old co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel sheds more light on the background on the company’s leaders, and their possible motivations. One key finding: Unlike the vast majority of entrepreneurs, Spiegel was born into upper-class. His mother was the youngest woman ever to graduate from Harvard Law School, and worked as a partner from law firm Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, before leaving to be a stay-at-home mother. His father is a partner at the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, a job that CNET reports “afforded the family a very comfortable lifestyle in a $4.6 million home in Huntington Palisades, an upper class neighborhood.” The articles refers to things like Spiegel’s driving of a 2006 Cadillac Escalade, which his father bought new for $56,000, and Spiegel’s later request to his parents for a BMW 535i, a $75,000 car — something his mother apparently later leased for him.
Source : VentureBeat
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