Book Read Free

How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars

Page 33

by Billy Gallagher

LinkedIn

  Looksery

  Luck, Andrew

  Lynton, Jamie

  Lynton, Michael

  Madonna

  Madrigal, Alexis

  Magnusson, Peter

  Mailbox (app)

  Malik, Om

  Major League Baseball

  Mandela, Nelson

  Markowitz, Harris

  Masters, Blake

  Matas, Mike

  Mayer, Marissa

  McBride, Shaun. See Shonduras (Shaun McBride)

  McCarthy, Barry

  McGregor, Jena

  Meerkat

  Micallef, Amanda

  Miller, Erick

  Mills, Wyatt

  Minelli, Liza

  Mossberg, Walt

  MPlatco (Michael Platco)

  MTV

  Murphy, Bobby

  Brown lawsuit and

  childhood and parents

  on Colbert Report

  Future Freshman

  and Kappa Sigma

  New Year’s Eve party (2012–2013)

  personality and temperament

  at $SNAP IPO

  as Snapchat Chief Technical Officer

  Snapchat’s origins and

  at Stanford

  Venice residence

  See also Snapchat

  Musk, Elon

  Myspace

  Nasr, Raymond

  NBA

  NBC

  NCAA

  Netflix

  NFL

  Super Bowl

  Nike

  Nikolaevna, Anastasia

  Nissenbaum, Helen

  Noto, Anthony

  Obama, Barack

  Okuyiga, Julian

  Onavo

  Onavo Protect (VPN app)

  Oracle

  Oscars. See Academy Awards

  Ouimet, Kirk

  Page, Larry

  Palantir

  Pandora

  Panzarino, Matthew

  patents

  PayPal

  PayPal Mafia

  Peanuts Movie, The (film)

  People (magazine)

  Pereira, Michaela

  Periscope (app)

  Perry, Katy

  Philips, Dennis

  photography

  front-facing cameras

  Platco, Michael. See MPlatco (Michael Platco)

  Poke (Facebook app)

  Polaroid camera

  pornography

  Powell, Amy

  Primack, Dan

  Qualcomm

  Quinn, David

  Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan

  QR codes

  Snapcode

  Randall, Mike

  Recode

  Red Bull

  Reid, L. A.

  Revel Systems

  Rhodes, Mike

  Rice, Condoleezza

  Riggs, Jason

  Robinhood

  Rodriguez, Jon

  Rosenblum, Mendel

  Ross, Blake

  Rothfels, John

  Ryan, Rob

  Sacca, Chris

  Sahami, Mehran

  Salesforce

  Salzhauer, Michael. See Dr. Miami (Michael Salzhauer)

  Samsung

  Sandberg, Sheryl

  Sanders, Bernie

  Saturday Night Live

  Sawyer, Diane

  Scan (QR code app)

  Schiffer, Eric

  Schmidt, Eric

  Sculley, John

  Secret (app)

  Sehn, Tim

  selfies

  Academy Awards (2014) selfie with Ellen DeGeneres

  first photographic self-portrait

  history of

  Sequoia Capital

  sexting

  Shark Tank (television program)

  Shonduras (Shaun McBride)

  Shontell, Alyson

  Sierra Ventures

  Silicon Valley (television sitcom)

  Slingshot (Facebook app)

  Smith, Daniel

  Smith, Kevin

  Snapchat

  Android app

  Arsenic

  Bitstrips purchased by

  brand advertising

  Brown lawsuit

  captions

  celebrities and Snapchat stars

  content management system (CMS)

  Council (employee gatherings)

  demographics of users

  Discover

  DJ Khaled and

  and Electric Daisy Carnival (Las Vegas)

  email leaks

  founding date of

  funding and investment

  geofilters

  Ghostface Chillah logo

  Good Luck America (election show)

  hacking and security

  Instant Articles

  IPO (initial public offering)

  Lenses

  Literally Can’t Even (original programming)

  Live Stories

  media coverage of

  Memories

  monetization

  original programming

  origins of

  Our Story

  Picaboo

  publishing and journalism

  Rio Summer Olympics (2016) coverage

  S-1 (SEC filing)

  Safety Center

  Scan purchased by

  Snap Channel

  Snap Lab

  Snapcash

  Snapcode

  “Snappy New Year” promotion

  Spectacles

  Stories

  Vergence Labs purchased by

  workforce and human resources

  Social Network, The (film)

  Sony Entertainment

  Sorrell, Martin

  SpaceX

  Spiegel, Evan

  Brown lawsuit and

  childhood

  education

  Forbes’s “30 Under 30” issue

  Future Freshman

  girlfriend at Stanford (Lily)

  interest in journalism

  internship at Red Bull

  and Kappa Sigma

  Market Street headquarters

  parents of

  proposal to Miranda Kerr

  at $SNAP IPO

  Snapchat’s origins

  at Stanford

  Stanford Women in Business conference keynote address

  worldview and corporate culture of Snapchat

  See also Snapchat

  Spielberg, Sasha

  Spotify

  Square

  Square Cash

  Stanford University

  commencement (2012)

  Donner (dorm)

  founding of

  Kappa Sigma

  Sigma Nu

  Silicon Valley and

  Startup Hau5 (Picaboo headquarters)

  stealth mode

  Stith, Mackenzie

  Stone, Josh

  Streep, Meryl

  Sun Microsystems

  Swift, Taylor

  Swisher, Kara

  Systrom, Kevin

  Taco Bell

  Tam, Donna

  Taneja, Hemant

  TechCrunch (tech blog)

  Disrupt conference

  Tencent

  Teo, Jon

  Tesla

  ThankYouX (Ryan Wilson)

  That White Bitch (blog)

  therealdrmiami. See Dr. Miami (Michael Salzhauer)

  Thiel, Peter

  third-party content (Snapchat Discover)

  Thompson, Nicholas

  Thorning-Schmidt, Helle

  TigerText (app)

  Tinder

  Trainor, Meghan

  Trump, Donald

  Turley, Ben

  Turner, Elizabeth

  Turner, Sarah

  Twitter

  demographics of users

  innovation and

  Snapchat account at

  Snapchat compared with

  txtWeb

  Uber

  Valleywag (Gawker blog)
<
br />   Van Natta, Owen

  Vanity Fair

  Venice, California

  Venmo

  Vergence Labs

  Vine (app)

  virtual private network (VPN)

  Viterbi, Andrew

  VMWare

  Vollero, Drew

  Warner Music Group

  WeChat (app)

  Weiner, Anthony

  Wendell, Peter

  WhatsApp

  Whisper (app)

  White, Emily

  Wiley, Marcus

  Wilson, Ryan (ThankYouX)

  Wolf, Michelle

  Y Combinator

  Yahoo

  Yelp

  YesJulz (Julieanna Goddard)

  Yik Yak (app)

  YouTube

  Zedd

  Zero to One (Masters and Thiel)

  Zuckerberg, Mark

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BILLY GALLAGHER is an MBA candidate at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Previously, he was a member of the investment team at Khosla Ventures and a writer at TechCrunch, which he joined as a Stanford sophomore, writing a profile of a popular startup on campus: Snapchat. His writing has appeared in The New York Times and Playboy. He lives in Palo Alto, California. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Prologue: Initial Public Offering

  PART I: AN EVAN SPIEGEL PRODUCTION

  1. Rush

  2. Future Freshman

  3. Million-Dollar Idea

  4. The Other Startup

  5. Lawsuit Possible

  6. The Fight

  7. Snapchat

  8. Sexting

  9. Betrayal

  10. A Not-So-Innocent Toy

  11. Poked

  12. Reggie’s Return

  13. The Phenomenon

  14. Stories

  15. How to Turn Down Three Billion Dollars

  16. Happy New Year!

  PART II: TOYS ARE PRELUDES TO SERIOUS IDEAS

  17. Hangover

  18. The More Personal Computer

  19. Snapchat Everywhere

  20. Goodbye Reggie

  21. Snapchat Live!

  22. “We Need to Make Money”

  23. Blank Space

  24. Discover

  25. Major

  26. Keeping Secrets

  27. Evan’s Empire

  28. The Road to IPO

  29. The New TV

  30. Discover Falters

  31. Fear and Loathing in Menlo Park

  32. Snap Inc.

  33. Spectacles

  Photographs

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Works Cited

  Index

  About the Author

  Copyright

  HOW TO TURN DOWN A BILLION DOLLARS. Copyright © 2018 by William Gallagher. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Chapter geofilter art courtesy of: here: Stuart Monk / Shutterstock.com; here, here, here, here, here, here, here: BYUNGSUK KO / Shutterstock.com; here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here: Jon Bilous / Shutterstock.com; here: Mark and Anna Wilson / Shutterstock.com; here: Sean Pavone / Shutterstock.com; here: Dmitry Islentev / Shutterstock.com; here, here: Sundry Photography / Shutterstock.com; here: CHRISTIAN DE ARAUJO / Shutterstock.com; here: MILA Zed / Shutterstock.com; here: EarthScape ImageGraphy / Shutterstock.com

  Cover design by Ervin Serrano

  Cover photographs: Evan Spiegel © Jae C. Hong/Associated Press; camera © Zaur Rahimov/Shutterstock.com; icon illustrations by Ervin Serrano

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Gallagher, Billy, 1992– author.

  Title: How to turn down a billion dollars: the Snapchat story / Billy Gallagher.

  Description: First edition.|New York: St. Martin’s Press, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017037545|ISBN 9781250108616 (hardcover)|ISBN 9781250108623 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Snap Inc.|Snapchat (Electronic resource)|Internet industry—United States.|Businesspeople—United States.|Entrepreneurship—United States.

  Classification: LCC HD9696.8.U64 S6343 2018|DDC 384.3/8—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017037545

  eISBN 9781250108623

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: February 2018

 

 

 


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