Aw, Snap!

Evan Spiegel, one of the co-founders of Snapchap and its current CEO (read Snap Inc. NYSE: SNAP), already has an interesting life CV. He’s a Stanford University alumni – well, almost. He dropped out of design school shortly after receiving thunderous ridicule from classmates for his Snapchatesque idea at the time. He’s also the youngest billionaire in the world (or at least was in 2015 – he may be been pipped recently by the adolescent Hugh Grosvenor, heir to the Duke of Westminster’s fortune ).

Snap is facing headwinds though. Social networks appear destined to be hoist with their own petard – case in point was Kylie Jenner’s quip that she is 'sooo over' Snapchat, wiping $1.5bn of value off the company by market close. Shares in Snap fell more than 8.4% to $17.8, falling back close to the $17 price at which the shares were listed when the company floated on Wall Street. A bit like the claymore sword of medieval times which was only marginally more dangerous to the enemy than to its user.

But it’s not all grey clouds for E.T. Spiegel. He received compensation of $637.8m last year after the company went public – this notches him into the record books as having received the third-highest annual pay-out ever by a company's chief executive. Not bad for creating an app that allows users to send a picture message this is only available for a short time before they become permanently inaccessible. And add to this the fact that Evan is now married to Australian national treasure, the beautiful Miranda Kerr.

Life could certainly be worse.