Why Snapchat Turned Down $3 Billion From Facebook

A few months ago everyone was shocked to hear that Snapchat had refused Facebook’s offer to buy the company for $3 billion. Now that everything has settled down again, CEO Evan Spiegal has decided to reveal the reasons why he didn’t accept the offer and sell the company.

In a Forbes cover story, Spiegel explained: “There are very few people in the world who get to build a business like this. I think trading that for some short-term gain isn’t very interesting.”

When Spiegel says “short-term gain”, Forbes calculated that to actually mean that Speigel and his co-founder Bobby Murphy could have received $750 million each from the Facebook deal.

Reading between the lines, Forbes seemed to think that the Snapchat owners smelt weakness and fear from Facebook. According to reports, Mark Zuckerberg flew out to meet Spiegel in his hometown a year ago with the aim of scaring Snapchat’s founders by saying Facebook was planning to release a rival app. “It was basically like, ‘We’re going to crush you,'” Spiegel told Forbes about meeting.

Facebook did indeed release an app, which was Facebook Poke. It went nowhere. On a second visit, Zuckerberg then revealed the company’s desire to buy Snapchat but by this point the founders realised what a good thing they had and refused the offer.

Since this offer was made, Snapchat has made another $50 million.

[Images via theopendaily & Forbes]

SOURCE: http://mashable.com/2014/01/06/snapchat-facebook-acquisition-2/