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Snapchat's Self-Proclaimed Forgotten Founder May Have Just Gotten Shafted Out Of Millions Of Dollars In Cold Hard Cash

Megan Rose Dickey   

Snapchat's Self-Proclaimed Forgotten Founder May Have Just Gotten Shafted Out Of Millions Of Dollars In Cold Hard Cash

snapchat founder evan spiegel

Steve Kovach/Business Insider

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel

Hot photo app Snapchat recently raised $60 million at a pre-money valuation of $800 million.

As a part of the deal, its co-founders, Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel, each pocketed $10 million in cash.

That means they're both guaranteed to be rich even if the company doesn't succeed.

Meanwhile, one of Murphy and Spiegel former college classmates may have gotten totally shafted.

His name is Frank Brown.

Earlier this year, Brown filed a suit claiming that Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy stole his idea.

In his suit, Brown says he attended Stanford University with Spiegel and Murphy, where Brown received a degree in English. Spiegel majored in product design and Murphy studied math and computational science.

The lawsuit also alleges that Brown is responsible for the original Ghostface Chillah, the mascot that we all grew to associate with Snapchat.

"The logo is a ghost cartoon drawn in black with a yellow background, the ghost is smiling and sticking its tongue out to the side," the lawsuit states.

But in an update earlier this month, Snapchat removed the face from its logo. Snapchat said they replaced Ghostface Chillah with NoFace Chillah because its users are the face of Snapchat, the company wrote in a blog post.

Brown has produced a number of emails and messages that seem to quote Spiegel giving credit to Brown for making photo messages that disappear. At one point, Spiegel even called it a "million-dollar" idea.

He was right. But not for Brown!

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