ONE of the world’s youngest billionaires, Evan Spiegel’s rise to the pantheon of Silicon Valley has been meteoric.
The 32-year-old launched the popular photo-sharing application Snapchat in 2011 and has since then bedded a world-famous Victoria’s Secret model.
Evan Spiegel was born in Los Angeles, California in June 1990 to lawyer parents Melissa and John W. Spiegel and raised Episcopalian.
He studied product design at Stanford University, where he met Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown.
As part of his degree, he proposed the idea of what would later become known as Snapchat as a class project – then called “Picaboo”.
The idea reportedly came about after Brown stepped into his college room and told him about a photo he wished he didn’t send.
Spiegel left university shortly before finishing his degree in 2012, to focus on the photo-sharing application.
He set up multinational technology and social media company Snap Inc., of which he is CEO.
Court documents reportedly showed Spiegel would serve as chief executive, Murphy as chief technology officer and Brown as chief marketing officer, according to the LA Times.
But Brown, who was credited with coming up with the initial idea for the disappearing photo messages, was allegedly locked out of the company’s servers and accounts when Spiegel and Murphy changed the passwords.
He went on to sue the pair in 2013, alleging breach of contract and he was paid a settlement of £128.2million ($157.5 million), the newspaper reported.
The Snapchat CEO’s wealth was valued at over £2billion by Forbes in 2018.
Evan Spiegel became a multi-billionaire after his company Snap Inc went public in March 2017 with 200 million shares being flogged for £13.90 ($17) each.
Spiegel turned down a £2.4 billion ($3 billion) cash acquisition offer from Facebook in 2013.
The deal alone would have netted him £611 million ($750 million) personally.
Today, Spiegel’s bet worth is around $2.8billion, according to Forbes.
Spiegel met Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr at a Louis Vuitton dinner in New York in 2014 and became friends before eventually they began dating.
The model tied the knot with Snapchat billionaire Evan Spiegel back in May 2017.
It included a Snapchat custom filter showing a Bitmoji cartoon proposal and the words: “Marry Me!”
The couple purchased a $12 million mansion in LA in 2017.
On May 10, 2018, Miranda gave birth to a boy called Hart – her first child with Spiegel.
Kerr was previously married to Orlando Bloom between 2010 and 2013 and they have a six-year-old son together named Flynn.
She became one of the world’s highest-earning models when she took the position as a Victoria’s Secret Angel in 2007.
During an interview with GQ magazine in 2014, she came out as bisexual.
