CEO Evan Spiegel may be the public face of Snap Inc., but it's taken more than his hard work to turn what started as a disappearing photo app into a potentially $25 billion social network and camera company.
Since he started Snapchat with cofounder Bobby Murphy in 2011, Spiegel has surrounded himself with a team of seasoned deputies who oversee everything from relationships with advertisers and media partners to the company's planned IPO.
Here are the most important people who help Spiegel run Snap:
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Bobby Murphy cofounded Snapchat and is now CTO.
Unlike Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy has maintained a decidedly low profile since the beginning of the company.
As cofounder and Chief Technology Officer, Murphy leads Snap’s engineering and research teams. Sources say he's also involved with a top-secret team called Snap Labs that works on projects like the recently announced Spectacles glasses.
Murphy and Spiegel each wield 44% of Snap's voting stock, giving them complete control over the company's future. While Murphy's base salary in 2016 was only $250,000, he stands to become a billionaire overnight when Snap goes public.
Murphy and Spiegel's friendship goes back to when they were both in the same fraternity at Stanford.
Spiegel, a product design student, needed someone to write the source code for the app that would become Snapchat. He recruited Murphy, a mathematics and computational science major, after the two had finished working on a failed startup called Future Freshman.
The quiet, 28-year-old engineer remains the author of much of the app's code to this day.
Imran Khan is a former banker who now leads Snap's business strategy.
Imran Khan jumped from the banking world to the tech world in January 2015 when he joined Snap as its Chief Strategy Officer. His connections quickly helped Snap land a $200 million investment from Alibaba — he was the lead banker for the Chinese retail company's IPO — and an additional $1.8 billion in funding in May 2016.
One of Spiegel's direct reports, Khan's main job at Snap is to lead its business strategy and help chart its path to a potentially $25 billion IPO. He's one of the few executives besides Spiegel to represent the company publicly at events, and he's working on telling the story of Snapchat to make it more appealing to bankers and advertisers.
While he's only been at Snap for about two years, Khan has been granted $145 million worth of shares. Those shares will likely be worth a lot more at Snap's IPO price. And he was paid a $5 million bonus last year.
Read our full profile of Khan for more on how he worked his way up to quarterbacking two of the largest tech IPOs in history.
Michael Lynton left his job as Sony Entertainment's CEO to lead Snap's board.
Former Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton stepped down from his position in January to focus on his new role as Snap's Chairman of the Board.
Lynton has been a trusted adviser to Evan Spiegel, and he's been on the company's board since 2013. An industry veteran with close ties to Hollywood, Lynton shares Spiegel's interest in the TV and music industries.
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