Unicorns’ distinctive features and Snapchat’s characteristics
| Feature | Unicorns’ distinctive features | Snapchat’s characteristics |
|---|---|---|
| Location | Metropolitan areas, dense clusters (Lehmann et al., 2019) | “Evan chose Venice because Snapchat is primarily an entertainment company, not a technology company. And Southern California is the perfect place to start a popular entertainment company” (Gallagher, 2018, p. 94) |
| Financial Capital | Equity based (De Massis et al., 2016) | “The engagement and retention showed an uncommon excitement around Snapchat. Just ten days after meeting Evan, Liew convinced his partners, and Lightspeed invested $485,000 in Snapchat, valuing the young company at $4.25 million” (Gallagher, 2018, pp. 73–74) |
| Human Capital | Technology specific, high turnover rate (Lehmann et al., 2019) | “Sehn’s (a longtime Amazon engineer) recruitment was crucial, and his willingness to join Snapchat showed the hiring power Evan and Bobby enjoyed as the hottest new startup in the tech world. The hiring spree would continue into 2014, as Peter Magnusson, a former engineering director at Google, left Google App Engine to become a VP of engineering at Snapchat. Mike Randall followed White from Facebook to become Snapchat’s VP of business and marketing partnerships” (Gallagher, 2018, p. 128) |
| Leadership | Charismatic (Lehmann et al., 2019) | “Mr Spiegel, 26, … has since built a budding digital empire based on that initial unconventional insight — and has continued upending the tech industry with his different way of seeing the world, often with a touch of ego. Rather than accept the norms of the social networking ecosystem, he has stuck to atypical viewpoints on matters from mobile video to video-recording spectacles, … «If you want to understand Snap, look at Evan Spiegel» said Todd Chaffee, a partner at IVP, one of Snap’s three largest venture capital investors … «He is the visionary who drives that company» (Benner, 2017) |
| Competitive advantage | Ubiquity in matching markets (Lehmann et al., 2019) | “Why did Poke fail? It failed to solve any problems for young users, who were more than happy with Snapchat, and it solved a problem that didn’t exist for older users, who still didn’t get the appeal of disappearing content” (Gallagher, 2018, p. 99) |
| Growth opportunities | High scalable business model through platform (Acs et al., 2017) | “This is great news for Snapchat as you are mobile first and mobile only and if the user base on mobile is bigger than desktop (which I think it is by a magnitude or more) then you will be valued more favorably than before in absolute terms, and long term at scale you will be more valuable than desktop companies at scale” (Gallagher, 2018, p. 149, quoting Anthony Noto, the co-head of Goldman Sachs’s Global Tech, Media, and Telecom Investment Banking division, and an expert on the way Wall Street valued social media companies) |
| Waiting time before IPO | Around 7 years (Lee, 2013) | Founded in 2011; IPO in March 2017 |
| Founding team | Young; prior start-up or high-tech experience (De Massis et al., 2016) | “Evan was born on June 4, 1990 … he was attracted to technology early on, building his first computer in sixth grade and experimenting with Photoshop in the Crossroads computer lab …. Evan dove into journalism as well, writing for the school newspaper, Crossfire. Evan’s outsized personality could rub people the wrong way at times, but his energy, organizing skills, and enthusiasm made him an exceptional party thrower” (Gallagher, 2018, pp. 16–17) |
| Orientation | Long-term (Stadler, 2016) | “I think we’re all really a group of people that are extremely motivated by the long-term potential of what Snap is doing, and so that’s remained a focus of ours through the last eight years, since the beginning, is this longer-term mindset” (Wilson, 2019) |
| Feature | Unicorns’ distinctive features | Snapchat’s characteristics |
|---|---|---|
| Location | Metropolitan areas, dense clusters | “Evan chose Venice because Snapchat is primarily an entertainment company, not a technology company. And Southern California is the perfect place to start a popular entertainment company” ( |
| Financial | Equity based | “The engagement and retention showed an uncommon excitement around Snapchat. Just ten days after meeting Evan, Liew convinced his partners, and Lightspeed invested $485,000 in Snapchat, valuing the young company at $4.25 million” ( |
| Human | Technology specific, high | “Sehn’s (a longtime Amazon engineer) recruitment was crucial, and his willingness to join Snapchat showed the hiring power Evan and Bobby enjoyed as the hottest new startup in the tech world. The hiring spree would continue into 2014, as Peter Magnusson, a former engineering director at Google, left Google App Engine to become a VP of engineering at Snapchat. Mike Randall followed White from Facebook to become Snapchat’s VP of business and marketing partnerships” ( |
| Leadership | Charismatic | “Mr Spiegel, 26, … has since built a budding digital empire based on that initial unconventional insight — and has continued upending the tech industry with his different way of seeing the world, often with a touch of ego. Rather than accept the norms of the social networking ecosystem, he has stuck to atypical viewpoints on matters from mobile video to video-recording spectacles, … «If you want to understand Snap, look at Evan Spiegel» said Todd Chaffee, a partner at IVP, one of Snap’s three largest venture capital investors … «He is the visionary who drives that company» ( |
| Competitive | Ubiquity in matching | “Why did Poke fail? It failed to solve any problems for young users, who were more than happy with Snapchat, and it solved a problem that didn’t exist for older users, who still didn’t get the appeal of disappearing content” ( |
| Growth | High scalable business | “This is great news for Snapchat as you are mobile first and mobile only and if the user base on mobile is bigger than desktop (which I think it is by a magnitude or more) then you will be valued more favorably than before in absolute terms, and long term at scale you will be more valuable than desktop companies at scale” ( |
| Waiting time | Around 7 years | Founded in 2011; IPO in March 2017 |
| Founding | Young; prior start-up | “Evan was born on June 4, 1990 … he was attracted to technology early on, building his first computer in sixth grade and experimenting with Photoshop in the Crossroads computer lab …. Evan dove into journalism as well, writing for the school newspaper, Crossfire. Evan’s outsized personality could rub people the wrong way at times, but his energy, organizing skills, and enthusiasm made him an exceptional party thrower” ( |
| Orientation | Long-term ( | “I think we’re all really a group of people that are extremely motivated by the long-term potential of what Snap is doing, and so that’s remained a focus of ours through the last eight years, since the beginning, is this longer-term mindset” ( |