Evan Spiegel

Early life and education

Evan was born in Los Angeles, California, to John W. Spiegel and Melissa Ann Thomas, both lawyers. Spiegel grew up in Pacific Palisades, California, where he was raised Episcopalian. He was educated at the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, and attended Stanford University.

Spiegel took design classes at the Otis College of Art and Design while still in high school and at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena the summer before entering Stanford. He also had an unpaid internship in sales at Red Bull. While a student, he worked as a paid intern for a biomedical company, as a careers instructor in Cape Town, South Africa, and at Intuit on the TxtWeb project. Spiegel was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity.

Career

In 2012, Evan left Stanford to focus on Snapchat shortly before completing his degree. While studying product design at Stanford he proposed Snapchat as a class project, an idea which his classmates ridiculed. Spiegel co-founded the mobile application Snapchat along with Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown. He is the Founder and CEO of Snap, Inc.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that after the predicted March 2017 IPO for Snap Inc., Murphy and Spiegel would hold over "70% of the voting power" in the company, and own around 45% of the total stock.

In February 2017, Spiegel and Murphy pledged to donate upwards of 13,000,000 shares of Class A common stock over the next 15–20 years to an arts, education and youth non-profit.

Controversy

In May 2014, Valleywag, a Gawker blog, released a set of emails written by Spiegel during his undergraduate career to fraternity members. Spiegel later apologized for his actions and attitude towards women at the time the emails were sent, stating, "I'm obviously mortified and embarrassed that my idiotic emails during my fraternity days were made public. I have no excuse. I'm sorry I wrote them at the time and I was a jerk to have written them. They in no way reflect who I am today or my views towards women."

According to former Snapchat employee Anthony Pompliano in a lawsuit filed against Snap Inc., Spiegel made a statement in 2015 that Snapchat is "only for rich people" and that he does not "want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain." Spiegel decried Pompliano's comments and elaborated, "Obviously Snapchat is for everyone. It’s available worldwide to download for free".

Spiegel faced further controversy in 2017 with the release of a feature called "Snap Maps" on Snapchat. It is considered to be an invasion of privacy and could also promote stalking within society due to the ability for people to see your location, and you to see the location of others. Snapchat's blog, upon releasing this feature, stated "We’ve built a whole new way to explore the world! See what’s happening, find your friends, and get inspired to go on an adventure!"

Personal life

Spiegel began dating model Miranda Kerr in 2015. The two first met each other at a Louis Vuitton dinner in New York in 2014. They became engaged on July 20, 2016. They married in a private ceremony in Los Angeles on May 27, 2017. Just a month before Evan got engaged to Miranda he purchased a 7,164 square feet, $12 million house that was previously owned by the famous American actor and film producer Harrison Ford.

Kerr described Spiegel as 'very traditional' and believes in sex after marriage.

As of 2016, Spiegel was ranked #854 on the Forbes 400 with $4 billion in wealth. Spiegel is also a member of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council.