Evan Spiegel on building products people love and leading creative teams
In this podcast, Evan Spiegel talks about entrepreneurship, innovation in tech, the importance of improving products quickly, managing stress, and dealing with impostor syndrome.
I finally had time to watch a great interview with Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO of Snapchat, and Steven Bartlett on one of my favourite podcasts, The Diary of a CEO. Steven was also one of the investors on Dragons' Den, probably the best British show if you’re into business and building products.
Evan shares the challenges of growing the company, hiring the right people, building strong teams and facing competition from tech giants like Facebook, which tried to buy Snapchat and later copied many of its features. Despite all that, Evan credits his team’s determination, culture and vision as the real drivers of Snapchat’s success. His advice to founders is simple: care deeply about what you’re building and see change as a chance to get better. Success, he says, comes from passion and resilience, not just having a good idea.
The company’s culture and values
“Culture isn’t something you write. It’s something you do.”
Snapchat’s core values are kindness, creativity, and intelligence. These are the ingredients that, according to Evan, create an environment where people feel safe sharing ideas without fear of being judged. That’s why he only hires talented, creative people who also have humility and kindness. He pushed for moving fast, learning from mistakes, and staying focused on what really matters, even if it means saying no to distractions. He knows that growing a company means dealing with constant change. He also promotes a flat structure where ideas can come from anywhere.
“At Snapchat, critique is normal. No drama, no bloated layers. People are expected to speak up, push ideas, and take ownership. Because when people trust each other, they make different and better things.”
When Evan was 23, Mark Zuckerberg offered him $3 billion to buy Snapchat, but he said no. He believed in the product and wanted to build something different. He kept the team small, creative, and focused on innovation.
When it comes to moderation, he believes content on social media should be handled with care. He fully supports free expression, but also believes in protecting younger and more vulnerable people. His goal is for users to feel safe on the platform and to receive the support they need at all times. He sees it as the company’s responsibility to do this. Today, with AI, understanding the meaning of images and messages, and the context in which they are written, is much easier, and this makes it easier to automate a tedious task that until recently relied heavily on human supervision. Elon Musk, for example, went in a different direction when he took over Twitter. He reduced moderation, relaxed verification algorithms, and allowed almost anything to be posted, with fewer filters and rules.
The ten commandments
These are a set of principles and lessons that helped make Snapchat what it is today:
Love your product:
Passion fuels perseverance and innovation. Care deeply about your product, team, and users.Rapid feedback and iteration:
Build, test, and learn quickly to adapt. Quick product development and user feedback were crucial to Snapchat’s success.Continuous improvement:
Most ideas aren’t great at the start. What makes them work is listening to users and improving things along the way.Go after big, meaningful opportunities:
Build things that can grow and make a real impact, even if they take longer to pay off.Don’t just build products:
Focus on building complex, hard-to-copy platforms and ecosystems.Fail, adapt and repeat:
Adapting quickly and embracing failure are essential for entrepreneurial success.Motivate your team:
Celebrate milestones and successes to motivate teams.Bet on the future:
Think 2–3 years ahead. AI and augmented reality are central to Snapchat’s future innovation roadmap.Create the right culture:
Foster trust, creativity and psychological safety. The company’s culture fuels innovation at Snapchat.Act with care:
Chase big ideas, but make sure you’re thinking about how they affect people and the world around you, especially when it comes to what gets shared online.
Watch the interview
If you want to get a real feel for his thinking on product design and leadership, it’s well worth watching.