Evan Spiegel

Snapchat really has to do with the way photographs have changed. Historically, photos have always been used to save really important memories: major life moments. But today... pictures are being used for talking.

I keep hearing about battery innovation, but it never makes it to my phone.

There is real value in sharing moments that don't live forever.

We are not advertising ourselves as a secure platform. It's a communication platform. It's not our job to police the world or Snapchat of jerks.

Cars bring me sheer joy.

Ephemeral should be the default.

Creating a representation of yourself for the Internet stopped making sense when we were all on phones and connected everywhere.

Traditional social media, in the view of our company, has become a bit repetitive. It doesn't feel very good to be marketed to by your friends. Snapchat is different because it says, look, friends aren't valuable to you just because they can get you into a cool party.

I snap with my mom. It was a great way for me to see my dog when I was in college. We send selfies, too.

Having been bullied growing up, it's something that's really near and dear to my heart. You probably won't have many friends on Snapchat if you're being a jerk.

It's no surprise companies that quickly grow in value attract those who may want to also profit from the hard work of others.

There's this weird thing that happens when you contribute something to a static profile. You have to worry about how this new content fits in with your online persona that's supposed to be you. It's uncomfortable and unfortunate.

TheIinternet is a timeless void - you put something in there, and it's there forever and loses a lot of context.

We never saw Google+ Circles or Facebook Lists as reflective of the way our friendships play out.

We believe that the next generation of powerful mobile companies have a deep understanding of the world as a unified whole, where digital and analog experiences affect each other rather than transporting analog experiences into the digital realm.

In tech in particular, everyone is so serious all the time and has these grand visions.

I text nonstop, and I love emoji. I'm also on the phone quite a bit for work - probably more than 10 calls per day.

If we take a step back and look at what Snapchat is, it all starts with the camera.

When we look at social media, we really look at it on a continuum, and the continuum is from accumulation to instant expression.

I think diversity is a challenge everywhere.

I'm not a great manager; I try to be a great leader. And for me, that's been going through a process of not how to be a great CEO but how to be a great Evan, and that's really been the challenge.

I just try really hard to be me, and sometimes that means I'm unfiltered. I try to give people myself because I think making a great product is being in touch with how you feel about things and being able to express things. I really hope I can stay in touch with how I feel about things and I'm able to express that.

One of the things I'm trying to get better at is apologizing when I make mistakes. That's been a big priority of mine.

Generally speaking, the people who come to work at Snapchat believe in personal growth. It's part of why Snapchat's stories are ephemeral, because you will be a different person tomorrow.

Online one day, you log in, and you realise, 'This is not me.' Everything you're posting, you're doing it in the context of everything you've posted before. Let's delete everything, save the stuff that's important, and then you only have to organise the one per cent that's worth keeping.

Talking with pictures and making memories is universally appealing.

Five years ago, we came to the realization that the camera can be used for more than capturing memories. We showed it can be used for talking. The dream for us is expanding the camera and what it can do for your life. It has capabilities beyond making memories.

Someone will always have an opinion about you. Whatever you do won't ever be enough. So find something important to you. Find something that you love.

Conforming happens so naturally that we can forget how powerful it is. But the thing that makes us human are those times we listen to the whispers of our soul and allow ourselves to be pulled in another direction.

We no longer have to capture the 'real world' and recreate it online. We simply live and communicate at the same time.

We built our business on creativity, and we're going to have to go through an education process for the next five years to explain to people how our users and that creativity creates value.

More people are watching college football on Snapchat than they are on television.

People are going to copy your product if you build great stuff. Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn't make it Google.

We're kind of looking at a future where people acknowledge the hybridization of digital and analog, and appreciate and understand that they both affect each other.

The intent to preserve and capture something is very different from the urge to share, but they had become intertwined.

The fun thing about Snapchat is really the surprise and the joy that comes from learning how to use it.

The social marketing teams of big companies will always figure out a way to advertise on Snapchat. I'd like to create a space for people who have a lot of talent but not a lot of reach.

It would be better for everyone if we deleted everything by default and saved the things that are important to us.

Somewhere along the way, when we were building social media products, we forgot the reason we like to communicate with our friends is because it's fun.

People started conceiving of their friends as networking tools, like, 'Friend me so you can be friends with someone else,' or, 'The more people you know, the more networked you are.' But we see real value in having a fun conversation with your friends.

It seems odd that at the beginning of the Internet, everyone decided everything should stick around forever.

I am a young, white, educated male. I got really, really lucky. And life isn't fair.

Snapchat changed that perception of deleting something as bad. Online, typically you delete something if it's bad or if it's really embarrassing.

What Snapchat said was if we try to model conversations as they occur, they're largely ephemeral. We may try to write down and save the really special moments, but by and large, we just try to let everything go. We remember it, but we don't try to save it.

Social media is about friending someone so they'll invite you to a party or get you a job. If that's the work, Snapchat is the playground.

We've never been anti-permanence. We just belief deletion should be the default.

It's not about working harder; it's about working the system.

For Snapchat, the closer we can get to 'I want to talk to you' - that emotion of wanting to see you and then seeing you - the better and better our product and our view of the world will be.

Typing and read receipts make a lot of sense for messaging. You write a letter, you put it in an envelope, you send it to a friend, and you want to know when they get it. It's like FedEx - they let you know when the package gets dropped off.

The essence of conversation is not which media format we choose to talk to each other with, so we don't differentiate between snaps and chats. It's just someone wanting to talk to you.