Evan Spiegel quotes: Sir Snapchat on creativity, tech, money, ‘n’ more.
“I think everyone is born creative but it can be suppressed by fear.”
“Everyone is born very, very, very creative, but at some point it can be scary to try to do something new, that feels different.”
“Someone will always have an opinion about you. Whatever you do won’t ever be enough. So find something important to you. Find something that you love.”
“When we face uncertainty, we encourage everyone to press forward and believe in the values of the product.”
“On perseverance: in times of despair, you may believe the cynic who tells you that one person cannot make a difference – and there are times it may be hard to see your own impact. I beg you to remember that it is not possible at this time or any time to know the end results of our efforts.”
“Conforming happens so naturally that we can forget how powerful it is. We want to be accepted by our peers, we want to be a part of the group. It’s in our biology. But the things that make us human are those times we listen to the whispers of our soul and allow ourselves to be pulled in another direction.”
“It’s not about working harder, it’s about working the system.”
“I think the big issue with advertising over the next decade or so, frankly, is going to be education.”
“Don’t feel bad if you sell out. Just don’t stop there. Find something you aren’t willing to sell.”
“It would be better for everyone if we deleted everything by default and saved the things that are important to us.”
“Somewhere along the way, when we were building social media products, we forgot the reason we like to communicate with our friends is because it’s fun.”
“The intent to preserve and capture something is very different from the urge to share, but they had become intertwined. Creating a representation of yourself for the internet stopped making sense when we were all on phones and connected everywhere.”
“I think, with any new product that’s difficult to understand, there are always lots of questions and criticism. I think we have all the right criticism. We’re just going to keep executing on what we believe.”
“[On not giving up before Snapchat] We would experiment and fail. We must have attempted nearly 34 projects.”
“We probably release 1% of the products that we are working on.”
“Generally speaking, the people who come to work at Snapchat believe in personal growth. It’s part of why Snapchat’s stories are ephemeral, because you will be a different person tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to disrupt anything. We never conceive of our products as disruptive – we don’t look at something and say, ‘Let’s disrupt that.’ It’s always about how we can evolve this and make this better.”
“I think diversity is a challenge everywhere.”
“The social marketing teams of big companies will always figure out a way to advertise on Snapchat. I’d like to create a space for people who have a lot of talent but not a lot of reach.”
“We do tend to market our products directly to younger people because, frankly, they are more interested in learning how to use new technology products. And that’s sort of – is partly inspired by trying to teach my grandma how to use email; and she’d really prefer to just talk on the phone. So I think now a lot of grandparents are using email, but 20 years ago it was a little different.”
“When Google came along, everyone really felt like they needed a search strategy. When Facebook came along, everyone felt they needed a social strategy. And now I think with Snap, with our company, we believe that everyone is going to develop a camera strategy.”
“I think the more that we can remove friction from this creative process, the more people want to use our service. And that’s our strategy.”
“The reason why I think that that prompted such an explosion in creativity is because it really lowered the barrier to creation on our service, because people enjoy looking like a puppy and things like that.”
“I think the bottom line is, like, if you want to be a creative company you’ve got to get comfortable with and basically enjoy the fact that people are going to copy your products if you make great stuff.”
“I think, at the end of the day, just because Yahoo, for example, has a search box, it doesn’t mean they are Google.”
“I think it feels crumby to have to market yourself all day long; the whole notion of a personal brand got very, very popular and still persists today, as people manage all their profiles.”
“It seems odd that at the beginning of the internet, everyone decided everything should stick around forever.”
“It’s no surprise companies that quickly grow in value attract those who may want to also profit from the hard work of others.”
“There is a real value in sharing moments that don’t live forever.”
“When we’re in that kind of childish space, we’re more genuine and feel more comfortable with our friends.”
“We don’t want to own people’s photos. We want to help them communicate with friends in whatever way makes them happiest.”
“The feed was probably the biggest innovation in social media of late. But the interesting thing about the feed is that the more content you consume, the farther in time you go.”
“We’re just going to keep executing on what we believe.”
“We do all sorts of silly things to avoid appearing different.”
“We do have a sense of entitlement, a sense of ownership, because after all, this is the world we were born into, and we are responsible for it.”
“It’s important to be thoughtful and mindful about the things you say to other people.”
“When we first started working on Snapchat in 2011, it was just a toy. In many ways it still is.”
“I just try really hard to be me, and sometimes that means I’m unfiltered. I try to give people myself because I think making a great product is being in touch with how you feel about things and being able to express things. I really hope I can stay in touch with how I feel about things and I’m able to express that.”
“I’m not a great manager; I try to be a great leader. And for me, that’s been going through a process of not how to be a great CEO but how to be a great Evan, and that’s really been the challenge.”
“There are very few people in the world who get to build a business. I think trading that for some short-term gain isn’t very interesting.”
“I am a young, white, educated male. I got really, really lucky. And life isn’t fair.”
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