How to THINK Like a BILLIONAIRE: EVAN SPIEGEL’s Top 10 RULES!

So I'm asked one question most often: why didn't you sell your business? It doesn't even make money.

By deleting the images after you sent them, we changed what it meant to take a picture.

I think one of the perks of being a really small company is that from the beginning we got to think about diversity.

He's an American internet entrepreneur. He's the co-founder and CEO of the mobile app Snapchat. He has an estimated net worth of $2.1 billion. He's Evan Spiegel, and here is my take on his top 10 rules for success. Rule number 5 is my personal favorite, and I'm curious if you agree which one you guys like the best. As always, if Evan is saying something that really resonates with you, please leave it down in the comments below and put quotes around it so others can be inspired as well.

So I'm asked one question, uh, most often. Why didn't you sell your business? It doesn't even make money. It's a fad. You could be on a boat right now. Everybody loves boats. What is wrong with you? And I'm now convinced that the fastest way to figure out if you're doing something that is truly important to you is to find, uh, is to find someone who will offer you a bunch of money to part with it. See, the best thing is that no matter whether or not you sell, you will learn something very valuable about yourself. If you sell, you will know immediately that it wasn't the right dream anyways. And if you don't sell, you're probably on to something. Maybe you have the beginning of something meaningful.

Do you worry about making the leap from sort of an inventor to a manager? And how are you handling that?

Yeah, well, I think the solution really is the team, right? And so Bobby and I both have leaned really heavily on some really terrific people that we've been able to hire and Frankly, I think that's the only way to do it. I think the challenging part from like the learning perspective is making commitments that are that big at such a young age to the people that work for us and their families.

It's very hard for me to use my phone, to be honest. I'm kind of like on text message and email and our service. And so I'm always yelling at our people to try and— hopefully not yelling, but trying to— encouraging vigorously. Vigorous encouragement. To make the service just more and more simple. So every time we add a new feature, we try to take a button away. And that's sort of— has spawned a lot of our inventions. Like, we have one camera button on our service and you can tap it to take a photo. But if you want to take a video, you just press and hold. And that, you know, in the past, if you remember, or still happens on a lot of camera phones today, you have to switch into video mode and you end up with all these, like, weird, like, videos that you thought were pictures, pictures you thought were videos. It doesn't really— doesn't really make sense.

So we're much more interested in increasing engagement rather than getting big. So we really focus on a few markets that are really, really important to us, and right now we're working on really increasing engagement, making, making sure the people that are on our service just love it. And that's really what we watch. And I think over time we'll think about expanding the product, but right now it's really just a maniacal focus on making great products and deepening the engagement with our service.

You already have inside of you all of the amazing things you need to follow the dreams that you have. And if you get stuck along the way, there is a ton of free information available on the internet. Have faith in yourself and the person you're going to become. Know that you are capable of all of the growth that will be expected of you and that you expect from yourself. You will tackle every challenge headed your way, and if you don't, it won't be for lack of trying. Someone will always have an opinion about you. Whatever you do won't ever be enough. So find something important to you. Find something that you love.

We really found something special in Snapchat, which at the time was called Picaboo, and we found that by deleting the images after you sent them, we changed what it meant to take a picture. So a picture wasn't about saving a really important moment, it was about communicating. And we got really lucky because smartphones and their camera connected to the internet meant that there was really a big change happening in communication that we, you know, didn't totally identify at the time, but we do now, which is that people prefer to communicate with photos and videos rather than text.

Diversity for us is really closely tied to competency. So for us, we have such a diverse group of people using our products and services every day that in order for us to make absolutely great products and services, for that community, we need a really, really diverse group of people. And it's really that simple. So for us, we just have an awareness that, you know, if we want to make the best products, we need to have, we need to have a diverse group.

So can you describe your diverse group of people? And I mean, what are, what are some of the percentages if you have them?

And again, like, this, this is sort of the challenge, and I should, I should have exact percentages for you, but we just don't think about diversity and in terms of numbers that way. And I think one of the perks of being a really small company is that from the beginning we got to think about diversity, so we didn't end up with a situation where 10 years down the line, oh my gosh, I need to fix my numbers, because it's not really cool to think about people as numbers, right? We think about people in diverse skill sets. And so for us, because, you know, we're 300 people now, we were 30 people, gosh, a year and a half ago, we've been really mindful that as we grow, we need to hire diverse folks.

Conformity is so fascinating and it's so pervasive that it's been studied for a very long time. See, it turns out there are two things that can dramatically reduce conformity in a group setting. The first is a single dissenting voice, and the second is the ability to communicate privately with other members of the group. Our government gives us the right to privacy and the right to express ourselves freely, in the hope that we might mitigate conformity. Democracy wasn't designed to promote popular thought. It was architected to protect dissent. For as President Kennedy said, conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

What circumstances were present that made this idea catch fire?

Sure.

So I think there were sort of two components. And the first component, um, is probably that social media was starting to feel a little stale. So there's only so many beautiful, attractive, cool pictures that you can take. And when you see all of them day after day after day, it just kind of gets boring. Um, so I think there was that aspect of it. And then I think the other thing is that, um, we really identified that this ephemeral thing, um, was core to conversation. And so if you wanted to have a conversation, one of the best parts about it, um, was that you were left with the memory, but not necessarily a transcript. And I think that that really drove the great feeling that you have when you, you know, share snaps with friends and they're silly and, you know, not exactly perfect. You know, there was obviously a place for all of these great photos that you wanted to save and keep, and there wasn't so much a place to have a conversation. And I think, you know, there's a nice balance with both. And so I think we sort of filled maybe a void, the conversation void that was missing.

I'm obsessed with this idea of no standard terms. So when we were first getting started and took financing, our lawyers would take us through the documents and they'd say, "Oh, don't worry about it. It's all standard." And at the time I'm like, "Oh, sure, standard. That's great. No issues." Standard bucket list. Standard. No problem. And I've since learned that standard means either the person who's walking you through the documents doesn't understand them, or you could be getting taken advantage of. So when someone says something standard, just ask why, and why, and why, and why, until you really understand intricately, I think, how the deal's structured. And so I think the big thing that we took away from that is standard terms is a huge red flag. And beyond that, just don't be afraid to just continue asking why.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Prasad Marnay, or Marnay, I hope I got that okay, asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave it down in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I also love to know which of the 10 rules had the biggest impact on you and why. What change you're going to make? What was the most touching after watching this video? What are you going to apply to your life, your business? Leave it down in the comments and I will join in the discussion. Thank you guys so much for watching. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.