Stanford VCs seek next Snap after missing out on Spiegel

The Hoover Tower rises above Stanford University in this aerial photo in Stanford, California, U.S. on January 13, 2017. Picture taken January 13, 2017. REUTERS/Noah Berger

As a student at Stanford University, Evan Spiegel often hung around the offices of StartX, the school’s entrepreneurial hub. Spiegel, who was working on a photo-sharing app called Picaboo, would seek advice from people affiliated with the incubator. In return, he volunteered part-time in 2011, helping design some early marketing materials for StartX. 

Spiegel’s side project eventually became Snapchat, whose parent company Snap Inc held an initial public offering last week valuing the business at US$24bil (RM107.04bil). It made the 26-year-old and a lot of other people very wealthy. Stanford wasn’t one of them. In those days, StartX didn’t have a fund for making investments.