How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story

by Billy Gallagher

They would need a logo for the app, something that instantly enticed users to download and use Picaboo. Reggie and Evan sat together and created the logo over the course of a few hours, going back and forth on ways to symbolize the disappearing nature of the app. They settled on a friendly ghost who was smiling and sticking out its tongue. Evan drew the ghost in Adobe InDesign while Reggie tossed in ideas. Reggie named the ghost Ghostface Chillah, after the Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ghostface Killah. Evan studied the hundred most popular apps in the app store and noticed that none had yellow logos. To make Picaboo stand out, he put the Ghostface Chillah logo on a bright yellow background. Reggie slapped the logo on Facebook and Twitter pages he made for the app. While Evan worked hard on the design and vision for the product and Bobby coded, Reggie contributed less. Plenty of successful Silicon Valley founders do not write code; but they play other roles, relentless hustling in the early days of their companies, dominating nontechnical jobs like marketing and user growth. Reggie simply wasn’t doing that. Having recently turned twenty-one, he wanted to enjoy the Los Angeles nightlife, and he stayed out into the wee hours of the morning. While Evan and Bobby lived the plot of Silicon Valley, Reggie was more Entourage. Evan had always remembered and valued what Clarence Carter had told him when he worked at Red Bull, “When everyone is tired and the night is over, who stays and help...