10/31/2016

The People Who Matter at Snap The Information

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The People Who Matter at Snap

By Tom Dotan

Oct. 31, 2016 11:07 AM PDT

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Below are the 51 top executives at Snap, many who operate outside the public spotlight. They include a new engineering chief, Jerry
Hunter, head of research Jia Li as well as new members of the board of directors like former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Laey.
Last updated Oct 31, 2016

Evan Spiegel
CEO

Evan Spiegels Direct Reports

Imran Khan

Drew Vollero

Chief Strategy Oce

CFO

Steve LaBella
Marketing

Steve Horowitz

Hardware

Tom Conrad

Robyn Thomas

Product

HR

Bobby Murphy

CTO & Research

Chris Handman

General Counsel

Jason Halbert

Talent Lead

Tim Sehn

Engineering

Nick Bell

Head of Content

Mary Ritti

Communications

QUICK FACTS
Multiple oces in the US, UK, Western Europe and Australia
Has received investments from both Alibaba and Tencent
Post-money paper valuation of $18 billion, mid-2016
Equity funding: ~$2.5 billion

Board of Directors
Michael Lynton
CEO Sony Pictures
Entertainment

Joanne Coles
Chief Content Ocer,
Hearst Corp

Evan Spiegel

Bobby Murphy

CEO Snapchat

CTO Snapchat

Stan Meresman
Independent Director

https://www.theinformation.com/the-people-who-matter-at-snap

Mitch Lasky
Partner, Benchmark
Capital

A.G. Laey

Thomas Laont

Former CEO, Procter &

Gamble

Coatue Management
Observer

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Photos by Snap, Bloomberg. Visualization by Ian Civgin.

fter some turmoil at senior levels of Snapchats parent Snap last year, things have stabilized considerably this year. Most of the crucial
management roles have now been lled, in time for the companys expected IPO in early 2017.

Earlier this year Snap made interim CFO Drew Vollero permanent, reporting to CEO Evan Spiegel instead of Chief Strategy Ocer Imran
Khan, as Mr. Vollero had been doing. It also hired veteran ad salesman Je Lucas away from Viacom to be head of sales, a position unlled
since the departure of Mike Randall in early 2015.
And yet, the youth of the company is reected in the ad hoc nature of its organizational structure, detailed in this graphic.

THE TAKEAWAY

Snaps unique management structure reects the companys explosive growth, where waves of new executives have blurred the lines
between supervisory roles. Here are the people who will lead Snap through its IPO and beyond.

While more than a dozen people nominally report to Mr. Spiegel, in reality Mr. Khan oversees most central divisions of the company, aside
from engineering and product. Hes even handling some of the traditional CFO duties like leading the IPO process. And while CTO Bobby
Murphy technically oversees the engineering team, he is more focused on higher-ambition technical projects than day-to-day strategies,
according to people familiar with the matter. Other longtimers like Philippe Browning have changed roles from revenue and monetization to
facilities and back to revenue.
The evolving nature of the reporting lines reects how quickly Snap has grown, as well as the multipronged supervisory roles of someone
like Mr. Khan. The companys workforce has expanded to more than 1,000 from around 200 in early 2015. That growth has largely been in
the sales and engineering teams, where the company has multiple oces in dierent cities around the world. Its a growth that has mirrored
Snaps desire in 2015 to transform itself into a true business.
At the same time, senior executives brought in from outside havent always proved a good t. Last year that created something of a revolving
door of executives whose duties had to be quickly lled. Emily White, for instance, had joined from Instagram as COO at the start of 2014
and quit after 15 months. She left around the same time as Mr. Randall. Mr. Khan took over most of their duties.
Mr. Spiegel also has shown a willingness to abruptly abandon initiatives and projectseven laying o entire divisions as he did last year
with its in-house content team.
In this chart, weve mapped out some of the signicant teams in the company that will lead it through its IPO and beyond.
Most of the information in this chart is from discussions with people who currently or previously have worked at Snapchat. Some of it is also
from employees LinkedIn proles.
Bringing Sales In-House
Mr. Lucas ocially came over from Viacom several months ago, but he had been informally advising the company for nearly a year before
that, according to people familiar with the matter. His hiring reects how Snaps ad sales have matured. As Snap was building up its sales
team, it relied on Discover partners to handle a portion of the ad selling. Now that its suciently large and spans several continents, the
company is seeking to bring more of it in-house. Reinforcing that shift is its reported move to pay content partners licensing fees rather than
share ad revenues.

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Under Mr. Lucas, Snaps sales team has organized into so-called pods dedicated to certain categories like consumer packaged goods or
retail. One of the biggest categories of advertisers is entertainment companies, who are overseen by Snaps head of West Coast sales Luke
Kallis.
Among the people who help lead Snaps non-video ads, a person to watch is Peter Sellis, the head of monetization product. Hes responsible
for the apps sui generis ad types like sponsored geolters, which are a big part of its appeal among marketers.
From Prototype to Feature
Tim Sehn, vice president of engineering, has been leading Snaps engineering team since 2013, making him one of the longer-tenured
people at the ve-year-old company. Hes respected for his straightforward and ecient leadership of an organization that has a tendency to
be a bit aggressive internally. A former Amazon engineer, hes brought over a number of Amazon employees into the group, including
recently hiring Jerry Hunter as another VP of engineering to help him oversee the team. Much like the ads team, the engineering team is
divided up into groups led by directors who oversee dierent portions of the app, like camera or content and Discover. Other new areas like
search have their own teams of directors and engineers. It's still being determined which engineering teams will be reporting to Mr. Hunter
and which will report directly to Mr. Sehn.

Absent from the board are representatives of investors Alibaba and Tencent, which have each put hundreds of
millions of dollars into the company. That reects Mr. Spiegels desire to not bring any potential competitors
into the boardroom, says a person familiar with his thinking.
In general, ideas for new features and products in the app come from Snaps design team as well as Mr. Murphys research team. The former
is a tight group of employees who conceptualize and build out mockups of new products, then pass them along to the engineering team,
which nalizes and implements them. Mr. Spiegel works very closely with the group, though this year the company hired former Pandora
CTO Tom Conrad as vice president of product to oversee them. People close to the company say Mr. Spiegel remains heavily involved.
Growing News Ambitions
Nick Bell oversees content on Snapchat, both the publishers and TV networks that are up on the Discover platform, as well as Live Stories.
Peter Hamby, the former CNN reporter who joined the company last year as head of news, has fronted the Good Luck America channel,
which has followed the 2016 election. But after the election his role and the types of Snap news shows could expand.
Beyond the pure content side, Snap has extensive partnerships with leagues like the NFL. Though it falls underneath the content section,
those types of relationships are managed by director of partnerships Ben Schwerin, who technically reports up to Mr. Khan.
Products and Moonshots
As Snaps CTO, Mr. Murphys purview includes the companys technical team. But his role there is largely hands-o governance rather than
management. Instead, hes more focused on leading the research team developing features that involve more ambitious technical
challenges like emojis that track peoples faces or rening technology like lenses. Beneath him is Jia Li, who has a team of other employees
with backgrounds in elds like computer vision.
Mr. Murphys areas of oversight also extend to side projects like Spectacles. That group is more directly led by Steve Horowitz, a former
Motorola executive who is a VP of engineering. Hes brought over other members of his team like Seshadri Tangutur, its director of
engineering. There are also marketing leaders within that unit like its director of marketing Kelly Nyland, as well as assembly line experts
like VP of Operations Mark Randall, formerly of Amazon.
Board and the Anti-team of Rivals
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Many members of Snaps board have been with the company since its earliest days: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, who has a long
relationship with Mr. Spiegels family, and Mitch Lasky, a Benchmark Capital partner who represents the preferred shareholders on the
board. Early Snap investor Thomas Laont, a senior managing director at Coatue Management is a board observer. Stanley Meresman, a
longtime business executive in Silicon Valley, has served on a number of tech boards including LinkedIn and Zynga. He specializes in
preparing private companies to be publicly reporting companies, according to his website. Many of the other directors bring strategic
experience that reect the companys areas of interest. Hearst executive (and former editor of Cosmo) Joanna Coles came aboard this year.
And former Procter and Gamble CEO A.G. Laey quietly joined the board this year.
Absent from the board are representatives of investors Alibaba and Tencent, which have each put hundreds of millions of dollars into the
company. That reects Mr. Spiegels desire to not bring any potential competitors into the boardroom, says a person familiar with his
thinking. Its a tricky line that Uber tried to negotiate with David Drummond, Alphabets senior VP of corporate development, who had
served on that companys board until the companies increasing rivalry forced the two to sever the relationship.
-Amir Efrati contributed to this report

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