Last year, Snapchat turned down a $3 billion cash acquisition offer from Facebook, which shocked much of the tech community.
Evan Spiegel, the CEO of the app, which recently experienced a security breach has finally revealed the reason as to why they rejected the bid.
According to him, trading for some short-term gain isn’t very interesting. Spiegel and his cofounder Bobby Murphy would each have received $750 million from the Facebook offer, and the founders sensed weakness and opportunity.
Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO first flew out to meet Spiegel in his hometown at the end of 2012, and proceeded to try scaring Snapchat’s founders by telling them that Facebook planned to release a nearly identical app a few days later.
“It was basically like, ‘We’re going to crush you,'” Spiegel said about the meeting.
Apparently, that app was Facebook Poke, which proved to be a flop.
Spiegel said Zuckerberg paid another visit to the young company the following fall to make his bid to buy it, but by that point Snapchat’s founders felt they had an edge.
Snapchat has since raised another $50 million at a reported $2 billion valuation, and they seem to be getting to the $3 billion offer made by Facebook.
Credit: Marshable
