5 months after launching Snapchat, Evan Spiegel had only 127 users

"5 months after launching Snapchat, Evan Spiegel had only 127 users. Now 800M people use his app— all because he noticed what even Zuck missed:

The day Evan launched Snapchat (then called Picaboo), he got 0 downloads.

He went to the mall to get people to download his app. It didn’t work.

He wrote a blog about a new “sexting” app. It didn’t work.

Then, after 6 months of no traction, he noticed an uptick from 8 AM to 3 PM. It was his cousin using it in high school with her friends.

I spoke with Jeremy Liew, the partner at Lightspeed who led Snapchat’s seed round in 2012. When he met Evan, here’s what he saw:

August 2011: 127 users

December 2011: 2,000 users

January 2012: 20,000 daily active users with 50% day-30 retention

It was high school students using Snapchat to chat with their friends, because

They liked pictures more than text.
Snapchat was the fastest way to send pictures.
And Snapchat was free— unlike SMS back then.

Of course, it helped that conversations weren’t stored— their parents and teachers couldn’t spy on them.

What Zuck missed was that Instagram and Facebook only captured the best 1% of moments. Snapchat was capturing the other 99.

That’s why he tried to buy Snapchat twice— once for $60M and once for$ 3B.

But Evan didn’t want to work for someone else. More than that, he’s already figured out the formula.

As Jeremy told me, even in 2012 Evan already understood that there was no “digital” versus “real” world.

There was just the world.

It wasn’t about sexting or even disappearing pictures.

The key was to make talking on Snapchat like talking in real life.

So he turned down the $3B offer.

And built an $18B company instead."

5 months after launching Snapchat, Evan Spiegel had only 127 users

Author

ABN ASIA was founded by people with deep roots in academia, with work experience in the US, Holland, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam. ABN Asia is where academy and technology meet opportunity. With our cutting-edge solutions and competent software development services, we're helping businesses level up and take on the global scene. Our commitment: Faster. Better. More reliable. In most cases: Cheaper as well.

Feel free to reach out to us whenever you require IT services, digital consulting, off-the-shelf software solutions, or if you'd like to send us requests for proposals (RFPs). You can contact us at contact@abnasia.org. We're ready to assist you with all your technology needs.