🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences
The story of Snapchat. How it started as a side project, and later grow into a social platform that's on par with Facebook. How they manage to pull it off with so much tech giant in the arena.
🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?
Anyone who is interested in Snapchat's founding story.
🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways
Don't compete in an established market.
Future Freshman is battling mindshare and dollars with well-established companies that had deep pockets and large sales team. Evan realised in order to avoid getting destroyed by better-funded competition, his next idea had to be more original.
Evan Spiegel, the founder of Snapchat doesn't succeed on his first try. His first startup is called Future Freshman, a website that has all the information you need for applying for University. He ends up competing with big companies with a deep pocket, that solves the same problem as his startup. It's an uphill battle for him, in the end, he decided to pull the plug early, and that leads to his next startup, Snapchat.
Focus on your users.
Evan was willing to try anything to get users. When he was home in Pacific Palisades, he would go to the shopping mall and hand out flyers advertising Snapchat.
It's hard to imagine Snapchat start off with the founders asking their friends to use it, give out flyers, and ask strangers to download it. But actually, it's how most of the products started. No one can ever imagine a company with their main feature as sending a disappearing picture (that's the main function of Snapchat at that time), can be successful. You will never know, you just have to try, and see if the users stick.
Be attractive to mentors.
Evan's two superpowers are (1) his ability to get inside his users' heads and think like a teenage girl and (2) his knack for attracting brilliant, powerful mentors.
In one of the chapters, you can see his email reply to Lasky, his investor. Lasky asked a lot of thorny questions about his company's future, but his reply show how prepared and confident he is. From my experience working in companies, it's very important for you to be prepared and confident. That's how you can attract mentorship from your boss or seniors. As I grow older, I also like to mentor young people that are well-prepared.
💭 Afterthought
Actually, it's hard to share takeaways from this book, because it is more like a story of Snapchat. If you're interested in the founding of Snapchat, it's definitely a good read. I like to read personal/company biography because you can find out what causes them to be successful. It also gives some assurance because you can see how they all are started small, just like you.
🛍 How to Buy?
I bought this book on Shopee for RM16.50. You can click here to buy this book.
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If you have any comments or feedback, feel free to drop an email at barnabas@ebteq.com. Cheers✌️
