A one in a million guy. Heck, let’s call him one in 3 billion.
Because that’s how much of Mark Zuckerberg’s filthy lucre he turned down.
I’m no great fan of Snapchat. I think it’s a shady operation, at best — see the end of this blog post, where founder Evan Spiegel is reported as saying that the app was thought up during a frat-boy roundtable about sexting.
This guy’s personal résumé doesn’t do him any favours with regular folks, either. He grew up in Pacific Palisades with a $250/week allowance; he hit up his dad for a new BMW just as his parents were divorcing; he was ushered into the high-tech job market before he’d even graduated from Stanford.
Does that sound catty? Here, I’ll let him describe himself for you:
“The rhetoric of the entrepreneur is deeply embedded in Stanford’s history. We’ve all heard the story — young, white male drops out of college to follow a dream. His commitment to this dream helps him through highs and lows. He refuses to be another cog in the ‘machine.’ This romantic business fairytale pervades Stanford culture — it is uniquely Silicon Valley.”
So yeah, not the most relatable guy.
…Until he freaking gave Mark Zuckerberg the finger!
Nothing makes us love someone we used to hate like watching them stand up to someone we hate more. So for now, Evan Spiegel — over-privileged, model-dating, fresh-out-of-the-frat boy — is our hero. Yours and mine. For having the strength of…character, or whatever…to do a far, far better thing than most of us would ever do: turn down Facebook’s $3 billion dollars.
There’s a lesson to be learned from this, about staying true to your dreams and such. I’ll let Spiegel give it to you, in his own words.
“I am a young, white, educated male. I got really, really lucky. And life isn’t fair. So if life isn’t fair — it’s not about working harder, it’s about working the system.”
Flickr photo (cc) by jdlasica
