Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel Just Made Almost $6 Billion With Their IPO Today
DM – Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, debuted to much fanfare on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, beginning trading at $24 dollars a share.
That’s more than 40 per cent higher than the $17 dollars a share the company priced their 200 million shares at Wednesday night, ahead of trading. The company now has a valuation of $33billion, making it worth three times as much as it’s rival Twitter. Their debut on the NYSE is also the biggest tech IPO since Chinese retail site Alibaba started trading in 2014.
The stock, trading under the symbol SNAP, started trading at around 11:30am and has only continued to rise since then.
Snapchat’s 26-year-old CEO Evan Spiegel, who last night earned $272 million by sharing 16 million of his shares in the offering, showed up at the exchange in a suit and tie to ring the bell with his co-founder Bobby Murphy, 28, marking the first day of their company’s trading.
Spiegel is now worth an estimated $5.7billion thanks to the more than 210 million shares he held onto (valued at $25.79 a share at 2:10pm) and the 16 million he sold for $17 a share.
Any time you see anyone suddenly join the ranks of the billionaires (at least on paper, though that $272 million liquidation doesn’t hurt either), it’s pretty normal to hate them and want to steal their life in some sort of Talented Mr. Ripley scenario. Especially when they’re also dating — albeit reportedly not banging — Miranda Kerr. But on the other hand, I have nothing against Evan Spiegel and what he’s accomplished. In a lot of ways, he’s the American dream. He got a fairly radical idea off the ground, settled that lawsuit over the creation of it all, kept trucking, made the company more legit with its ads and publishers on Snapchat Discover, fought off Facebook trying to jack his idea twice, and now got his company to a massive IPO that’s going to make a lot of people super rich. That’s pretty awesome no matter what the road map.
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So congratulations to you Evan Spiegel. You may have lifted an idea and fucked over a guy or ten on your journey to the top but there’s no denying the outcome. And now we all can fantasize about what life would be like with a $6 billion net worth. Me? I’d go to an amazing dinner, get a good buzz going, and spend a substantial chunk of the night figuring out which girl on Instagram to make some sort of Indecent Proposal offer to. To each their own though.