Bobby Murphy
Title: Co-founder and CTO, Snapchat
Born: April 1, 1988, Berkeley, California
Education: BS in mathematical and computational science, Stanford University
Early Marker: Hired Spiegel pre-Snapchat to design an ill-fated online social network inspired by Google Circles.
Big Idea: Snapchat is an ephemeral real-time picture-messaging app wildly popular with 13- to 23-year-olds that is looking for a monetization strategy while getting multibillion-dollar offers from Google and Facebook.
Wave of Future: App economy, ephemeral social media, photo-sharing
Evan Spiegel
Title: Co-founder and CEO, Snapchat
Born: June 4, 1990, Los Angeles
Education: Product design, Stanford University (dropped out)
Early Marker: Hired by Intuit's Scott Cook to work on txtWeb, an Intuit project that broadcasts Web-based information via SMS texts in India, after impressing Cook with a question at a campus guest lecture.
Big Idea: Sees Snapchat as a way for young people to maintain spontaneity of social messaging without having to worry about managing a persistent online identity.
Wave of Future: App economy, ephemeral social media, photo-sharing