February 9, 2013

If SnapChat Is The Next Big Thing…

If SnapChat turns out to be “the next big thing” after Pinterest, Instagram, etc., here are some interesting facts for all of us to consider…:

…the founders graduated from Stanford — not dropouts.
…the company was really built in Los Angeles — not Silicon Valley or SF or NYC.
…the product soared on the back of iOS and SMS — not Facebook or Twitter.
…the company is built around consumer digital images — not hardware, not enterprise.
…the product initially looked like a toy — not a communication tool.
…the product was copied by Facebook — not acquired, because SnapChatters want to avoid FB.
…and, the investor who scooped the deal is Benchmark — the most quiet of the top tier VC firms.

Semil Shah

Semil founded Haystack, an early-stage investment firm now investing out of its sixth institutional fund, Haystack Ventures VI, with his colleagues Aashay Sanghvi and Divya Dhulipala. He is also a Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Prior to investing, Semil held various product and operational roles at earl-stage startups, the most recent one being acquired by Apple. In 2017, Semil was named to Midas Brink List by Forbes, and in 2022 and 2023, he was named to the Midas List for seed investors by Forbes. While working and investing, he has also been a long-time consistent writer about technology and investing at outlets such as Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and Quora.