Episode

How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)

Evan Spiegel, CEO and co-founder of Snap, explains why consumer social apps rarely last and how Snapchat won on close-friend distribution rather than network effects, then built durable moats through ecosystems and hardware like Specs after learning "software is not a moat." He describes Snap's flat, high-velocity design culture, the origin stories behind Stories and screenshot detection, why product managers arrived late, and how AI agents and jobs-to-be-done thinking are reshaping engineering, design, and Snap's push toward profitability.