Evan Spiegel
Co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc., the company behind Snapchat, which he started in 2011 while studying product design at Stanford.
Evan Spiegel did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsAnd I think people don't spend nearly enough time thinking about, you know, distribution and figuring out distribution. And that seems to me uh to be a huge differentiator.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 1st of 22 in this recording
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Their wordswhat really mattered was connecting you to the right people. And so, if you could just connect someone not to all their friends, but to their best friend, to their partner, to their spouse, the people that they cared most about in the world, that that that's where the majority of the value is in the network.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 2nd of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsas we look forward to, you know, sort of these next generation form factors, things like glasses, there's going to be a whole new set of opportunities and a whole new surface for people to build generational consumer companies.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 3rd of 22 in this recording
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Their words15 years ago we essentially learned that software is not a moat, right? Which is something that everyone is discovering today with AI, right?
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 4th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsthe more that we could build a platform uh around our business, the more that we could build an ecosystem with creators and developers, the harder it would be for folks uh to to just copy that.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 5th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsnetwork effects are certainly an important piece of the puzzle for sure, um but I don't think they're enough when it comes to these sorts of software uh you know, software cloning.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 6th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsone of the things that I noticed about computers and I think today with mobile phones, uh is that in many ways they isolate us from one another, right? They actually take us out of our social interactions.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 7th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsI think the time is right for a new a new type of computer. I think people are frustrated um, you know, with the cost of using phones and computers today.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 8th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsI don't think receiving phone notifications on your face is like, you know, a a valuable, you know, proposition for most folks.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 9th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsas soon as you have an organization that's very large and very structured like that, uh people become very focused on getting a promotion, right? Getting, you know, into the next step of the hierarchy. And that means that all of a sudden, uh they become a lot more risk-averse.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 10th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsthe companies that are very successful actually have both types of organizations inside their company. And that the leaders of the organization are the ones who are responsible for creating a healthy, functioning relationship between the two types of organizations.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 11th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsthe velocity of work uh, you know, is really important because our favorite saying is, you know, if you want to have a good idea, you have to have lots of ideas.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 12th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsI would say uh, you have to talk to customers. You have to share your idea. You should share your ideas quickly as possible, as frequently as possible. Uh, it doesn't mean you need to take people's advice or feedback, but it's really important, I think, to listen.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 13th of 22 in this recording
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Our reading
Listening to customers is invaluable, but you should not build the thing they asked you for.
Their wordsAll of those insights that we you know, received just from listening to folks made a huge difference in the product design process, but we didn't build exactly what they asked for. We we empathized and then you know, came up with something new.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 14th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsin the early days, my view was not that we don't need PMs. My view was that designers should do that work.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 15th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsfor us design actually has always operated as like a bottleneck at the company, which is incredibly important, right? It's intentional that things need to be approved by design to ship.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 16th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsstaying close to your customer, staying close to the product and the way that it's serving your customer is the fundamentally most important thing you could possibly do.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 17th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsDesign is really about, you know, empathizing with your customer, empathizing with your audience, your viewer, whoever it is, and then building something that will really resonates with them. And And that means you need to have a an extraordinary amount of range.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 18th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordswhen you're creating a thousand new ideas, who cares if most of them are not great ideas? That's totally fine, right? What we want to get rid of is that sense of, you know, preciousness that people have around ideas
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 19th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsby listing out all these jobs to be done, you know, really for the for the community journey and for advertisers as well, it became very clear where we could use agents, where we needed to be very focused in terms of building cross-functional teams around those jobs supported by AI tools.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 20th of 22 in this recording
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Their wordshumanity is far more important, uh you know, than than the technological developments largely because humanity dictates how technology is adopted
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 21st of 22 in this recording
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Their wordsI think technology leaders think that folks will just blindly adopt uh new technology as it comes out and I think we're going to enter a period of time where there's going to be a huge amount of societal pushback on a lot of the changes that are coming uh with AI.
↗How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)youtube.com 22nd of 22 in this recording