How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars

March 5, 2018
Snapchat’s long march toward its IPO, which made founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy worth more than $6 billion and $5 billion, respectively, makes for a riveting story in journalist Gallagher’s hands. He fluently relates the app’s development, its early rise in popularity, the significance of corporations such as Taco Bell jumping on the bandwagon, and, perhaps most importantly, Spiegel and Murphy’s reluctance to sell the company to Facebook, no matter the price. Gallagher has followed Snapchat since early on and was handpicked to tell the story by Spiegel, a fellow Stanford alum, because he “understood the product” better than many other journalists. As Gallagher reminds readers, the app’s full potential was missed by the many reporters who initially sensationalized it as a platform for sexting. Gallagher also shows a keen understanding of and familiarity with Spiegel (“Evan hates... open-floor plans”), even if readers may not agree that the wildly successful entrepreneur is as brilliant as the author portrays him. Certainly, few will argue with Gallagher’s declaration that the company “made a distinctive impact” and “marked a rebellion against the social network status quo” of the early 2010s. This is a do-not-miss book for avid followers of the tech world and its financial dealings. Agent: Amelia Atlas, ICM.

February 1, 2018
The photo-sharing app Snapchat is notorious for being understandable only to high-schoolers and college-age users, a reputation founder and CEO Evan Spiegel has done nothing to dispel. While a frat boy at Stanford, Spiegel's classmate Reggie Brown was bemoaning some unfortunate party pictures that ended up online. He, Spiegel, and programmer Bobby Murphy developed Snapchat as the anti-Facebooknot a social network but a mechanism for sharing with friends without the pressure of accumulating likes and shares. Within two years, Snapchat was worth $800 million; that same year, Spiegel, Brown, and Murphy turned down a multibillion-dollar deal from Facebook. Arrogant, driven, and not even 30 years old, Spiegel is a benevolent tech dictator in the mode of Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. In the grand tradition of Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires (2009), Gallagher spends as much time on the excesses, lawsuits, and high employee turnover at Snapchat as he does on the technology. Which is just as well, since we're probably all too old to get it. An engaging look into a fascinating subculture of millions.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)