Spiegel speaking at the iHeartMedia headquarters on April 22, 2015 in New York City. (Getty)
Evan Spiegel, 26, is the co-founder and CEO of Snapchat parent company Snap, which just filed for an initial public offering.
As of this writing, Forbes estimates that Spiegel is worth $2.1 billion. That puts him at No. 10 on Forbes’ list of America’s Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40. He’s also estimated to be the 335th wealthiest person in America, and the 99th richest in tech.
Read on for the scoop on Snap’s IPO, Spiegel’s rise to fortune, and other details about his personal life, including his relationship with Victoria’s Secret Angel Miranda Kerr.
1. At Not Even 30 Years Old, He’s a Self-Made Billionaire
Spiegel speaking onstage at the American Magazine Media Conference on February 1, 2016 in New York City. (Getty)
While Forbes has Spiegel’s net worth pegged at $2.1 billion, The New York Times reckons it to be higher.
Following the release of Snap’s first public prospectus, the newspaper calculated that his stake in Snap was worth $3.7 billion at the end of last year. The Times calculated that figure based on the fair market value of a share of Snap at the end of 2015, when it was $16.33.
According to the report, Spiegel owns 227 million shares of the company.
2. He Made $2.6 Million Last Year
Spiegel onstage during the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit on October 8, 2014 in San Francisco. (Getty)
His salary last year wasn’t too shabby.
The Times reported that Spiegel raked in $2.6 million in 2016. That includes a base salary of $503,205, plus a $1 million bonus and $901,635 in “other compensation” (including $890,339 spent on personal security). That’s right, he has an almost $900,000 yearly security detail.
$2.6 million is nothing to be ashamed of, but it pales in comparison to the payday Spiegel, fellow Snap co-founder Bobby Murphy, and early Snap investors will get if their offering goes well. When the IPO is registered, Spiegel’s base salary will drop down to $1, following the lead of other rich tech execs like Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.
3. Snap Turned Down a $3 Billion Acquisition Offer From Facebook
Snap Co-Founders Murphy and Spiegel attend the TIME 100 Gala on April 29, 2014 in New York City. (Getty)
Spiegel founded Snap with Murphy, a fellow Stanford University student, in 2011. In July of that year, the pair released the first iteration of Snapchat, at the time called Picaboo, exclusively for Apple’s iOS. They relaunched it two months later with the name Snapchat.
The app was an instant success. So much so that social media giant Facebook took notice and in 2013 tried to snap up Snap for a cool $3 billion, only to be turned down by Spiegel and Murphy, according to The Wall Street Journal. At the time, Chinese Internet behemoth Tencent was also interested in acquiring Snap. Spiegel would have net around $750 million if they took Facebook’s offer, but Spiegel had bigger plans.
“There are very few people in the world who get to build a business like this,” Spiegel said in a 2014 interview with Forbes. “I think trading that for some short-term gain isn’t very interesting.”
4. Snap is Looking to Raise $ 3 Billion
(Getty)
In its first initial public offering prospectus, Snap said that its advertising business brought in nearly $405 million last year, up from almost $59 million the year before.
The filing also reveals that from 2011 to 2012, Snapchat’s daily user count grew from 1,000 to 1 million, according to the Times. By the end of 2016, the app logged 158 million daily users, on average. At this point, users are sending more than 2.5 million messages and images via the app every day.
Snap is hoping to raise $3 billion. The IPO could value the company north of $20 billion, the Times notes.
5. He’s Engaged to Miranda Kerr
Evan Spiegel and then-girlfriend Miranda Kerr arrive at a White House state dinner on May 13, 2016. (Getty)
Spiegel isn’t only successful in business, he’s also lucky in love. The social media mogul last summer got engaged to Victoria’s Secret Angel and supermodel Miranda Kerr, 33.
“He’s 25, but he acts like he’s 50,” Kerr said in an interview with Net-A-Porter. “He’s not out partying. He goes to work in Venice [Beach], he comes home. We don’t go out. We’d rather be at home and have dinner, go to bed early.”
This will be the second marriage for Kerr, who was previously married to actor Orlando Bloom.
