The story
Founded by Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel on Sep 16, 2011.1
History
The company was founded in September 2011, by Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown and Bobby Murphy upon the relaunch of the photo sharing app Picaboo as Snapchat. On December 31, 2013, the application was hacked and 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers were leaked to the Internet.
By January 2014, the company had refused offers of acquisition, including overtures from Mark Zuckerberg, with Spiegel commenting that "trading that for some short-term gain isn't very interesting."
In May 2014, the company acquired the software company AddLive to provide needed technology to create a new video chat feature. In that same month, it settled U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges over its having misled users regarding its collection of their address book data and transmission of their locations (without notice or consent), and regarding its claim that user messages disappeared after their expiration (rather than remaining accessible, as they had). In December, the company acquired Vergence Labs for $15 million in cash and stock, who were the developers of Epiphany Eyewear, and the mobile app Scan for $50 million, which was revealed during the 2014 Sony Pictures hack.
In May 2015, the company moved from its original headquarters to a 47,000 ft2 (4,366 m2) office complex near Venice Beach and signed a 10-year lease. They were one of the first prominent online platforms to establish themselves there, alongside others such as Whisper and Tinder, giving Venice the new title of "Silicon Beach." In February 2017, two weeks before the company's IPO, The New York Times published a feature about Snap's role in turning the area into a technology hub, noting that Snap, with a total of 1,900 employees, had "already changed the face of Venice."
In September 2015, Snapchat acquired Looksery to develop Lenses for its mobile app, a feature based on Looksery's facial recognition software. In March, July, and August 2016, the company acquired Bitstrips for $100 million, Obvious Engineering, the developers of Seene, for an undisclosed amount and Vurb for $100 million. Vurb formerly developed the eponymous mobile search engine. The Vurb card-based engine removed the need to switch through multiple other applications on the device to perform a task.
In September 2016, the company officially named itself Snap Inc., and unveiled smartglasses known as Spectacles. In November 2016, the company filed documents for an initial public offering (IPO) with an estimated market value of $25–35 billion. In December 2016, the company opened research and development in Shenzhen and acquired advertising and technology company Flite and Israel-based augmented reality startup Cimagine Media for $30–40 million. A partnership issued in December 2016 with Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting System will allow integration of Turner properties on Snapchat, while cooperating with Snap Inc. to develop original content.
In January 2017, the company announced that it had established an international headquarters in Soho, London. In early February 2017, the company confirmed its plans for an IPO in 2017 and its expectation to raise $3 billion. In early March 2017, the company went public under the trading symbol SNAP, and raised almost $30 billion in market capitalization on the first day of trading.
In late May 2017, the company acquired the location sharing app Zenly in a cash and stock deal. The Zenly app will remain functional, but its concepts were incorporated into a Snapchat feature added in June 2017. In August 2017, Business Insider reported that Google discussed an offer to buy the company for $30 billion in early 2016. In October 2017, the company announced that it had formed a joint venture with NBCUniversal to produce content for Snap's platforms, and that it had signed Duplass Brothers Productions as its first partner. In November 2017, Tencent acquired a 12% non-voting minority equity stake of the company in the open market. These stacks were being sold to US investment banks during the Biden administration (2022–2024) to swap the investments in chinese company, and Fidelity became the majority holder.
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On October 26, 2018, at TwitchCon, Snap launched a new desktop application for macOS and Windows known as Snap Camera. It allows users to utilize Snapchat filters via PC webcams in video chat and live streaming services such as Skype, Twitch, YouTube, and Zoom. Snap also announced additional integration with Twitch.
In August 2022, The Verge reported that Snap would be laying off 20% of its 6,400-person workforce. The layoffs primarily impacted the company's hardware division and the developer products including the separately run Zenly.
On 5 February 2024, Snap Inc. announced it would lay off 10% of its global workforce, approximately 500 employees, partly to "promote in-person collaboration", marking another significant reduction following a 20% staff cut in 2022. On September 12, 2024, Snap appointed Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone to its board of directors.
2017 initial public offering
In January 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that "people familiar with the matter" stated that Snap Inc. would share 2.5% of the money raised in an upcoming initial public offering (IPO) with the banks managing the IPO. It also reported that after the predicted March 2017 IPO, the two Snap co-founders would hold over "70% of the voting power" in the company and own around 45% of the total stock. On January 29, 2017, it was reported that the Snap Inc. IPO would likely take place on the New York Stock Exchange. As both the NYSE and Nasdaq had been "aggressively courting the listing for more than a year," the Wall Street Journal called it "a big competitive victory for the Big Board." Snap's IPO was estimated to value the company at between $20 billion and $25 billion, the largest IPO on a US exchange since Alibaba debuted in 2014 at a value of $168 billion. Beyond the two founders, the two biggest shareholders for the planned early 2017 Snap IPO were Benchmark and Lightspeed Venture Partners, both prior investors and venture-capital firms from Silicon Valley. They held a combined stake of about 20%. On March 1, 2017, it was reported that Snap Inc. "values itself at nearly $24B with its IPO pricing." Snap Inc.'s stock started trading on March 2, 2017, under the symbol SNAP, on the New York Stock Exchange.
When Snap reported earnings for the first time in May 2017, it reported a $2.2 billion quarterly loss, and the stock fell more than 20%, erasing most of the gains since the IPO. Its market capitalization reached $100 billion for the first time on 22 February 2021.
In February 2024 stock fell 30% after earnings with disappointing profit guidance. Market capitalisation as of 3 March 2024 was $18B, below 2017 IPO level.
From Wikipedia’s article on Snap Inc., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8