After Meeting Mark Zuckerberg, Snapchat's CEO Immediately Bought Every Employee A Copy Of 'The Art Of War'
AP/Jae C. Hong
In this Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel poses for photos, in Los Angeles. Spiegel dropped out of Stanford University in 2012, three classes shy of graduation, to move back to his father's house and work on Snapchat.
Ever since Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel turned down Facebook's $3 billion offer to buy his app Snapchat, the tech world has been watching to see what's next for the ephemeral photo app.
Forbes published a lengthy profile on Snapchat, which included how Spiegel and Zuckerberg first met.
Zuckerberg flew to L.A. where Snapchat is based for a meeting with Spiegel.
At the meeting, Zuckerberg tried to coax out the plans for Snapchat, then announced to that he'd be debuting Poke, a mobile app for sharing photos and making them disappear...not at all dissimilar to Snapchat.
Zuckerberg clearly wanted to cover the market for here-and-gone photo apps, but Spiegel turned him down.
When Spiegel left Zuckerberg, he immediately returned to Snapchat's headquarters and ordered Sun Tzu's "The Art Of War" for each of the Snapchat employees.
Forbes notes that Chapter 6 of "The Art Of War" specifically addresses the need to attack an enemy where and when he displays weakness. Instead of giving in and selling, Spiegel and co-founder Bobby Murphy aimed to "upend the social media hierarchy, armed with a $50 million war chest raised in December at a lower (but still heady) valuation of just under $2 billion."
Poke went on to debut on December 21, but only briefly ruled the charts in Apple's App Store before Snapchat was once again was in the lead.
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