Oops! These 2 Stanford Students Passed On The Chance To Be Cofounders At Snapchat
According to new court documents, CEO Evan Spiegel approached at least two other fraternity brothers in a hunt for a technical co-founder, Jack Dubie and Julian Okuyiga. Eventually Spiegel landed on Bobby Murphy, who is Snapchat's current CTO. Murphy had formerly worked with Spiegel on a failed startup, Future Freshman.
A third cofounder who was cut from the company in the early days, Reggie Brown, is currently suing Murphy, Spiegel and all their investors. He named Okuyiga and Dubie during his April 2013 deposition.
Snapchat is a three-year old app that sends messages that disappear. Its last round of financing valued the company at just under $2 billion. Spiegel and Murphy have both reportedly pocketed $10 million selling their shares in the company to investors, and Murphy later purchased a $2.1 million house.
What are Dubie and Okuyiga up to now?
Dubie is currently an engineer at Dropbox, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was part of Mailbox when Dropbox reportedly bought the email app for $100 million. He received his BS in mathematics from Stanford in 2011 and was in the same fraternity as Murphy, Spiegel and Brown.
Julian Okuyiga is currently a summer analyst at Goldman Sachs according to LinkedIn. He was one year behind Spiegel in school. It's unclear why Dubie and Okuyiga turned down the opportunity to work on Snapchat. Neither responded to a request for comment.
Here's part of Brown's deposition, where he describes his initial conversation with Spiegel about Snapchat and names Dubie and Okuyiga's big missed opportunities.
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