Evan Spiegel

Evan Thomas Spiegel was born in Los Angeles, California, to lawyers John W. Spiegel and Melissa Ann Thomas. He grew up in Pacific Palisades and attended Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica before enrolling at Stanford University, where he studied design and took classes at Otis College of Art and Design and Art Center College of Design.

In April 2011, Spiegel proposed an ephemeral messaging app as a Stanford product design class project. He developed it with classmates Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown, launching "Picaboo" before rebranding as Snapchat. By the end of 2012, Snapchat had reached one million daily active users, and Spiegel left Stanford to focus on the company full-time. He later returned to complete his degree and graduated in 2018.

As CEO, Spiegel guided Snapchat through rapid growth, an initial public offering in March 2017, and a pivot toward augmented reality and camera-first computing. He was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2014 and 2017, and became one of the youngest public company CEOs at age 26. As of August 2025, Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.5 billion.

Beyond Snap, Spiegel joined the board of KKR in 2021 and the Gagosian Gallery board in 2022. He and his wife, model Miranda Kerr, support major philanthropic initiatives including paying off medical debt and student loans, and established the Snap Foundation to create pathways to the creative economy for underrepresented youth.