Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, revealed its plans to become a public company today. And although Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy founded Snapchat together, it seems that Speigel had been making double what Murphy was. From the filing:
In October 2016, we entered into an amended and restated offer letter agreement with Evan Spiegel, our co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, with respect to his continuing employment with us. The offer letter provides for an annual base salary of $500,000, which will be reduced to $1 on the effective date of the registration statement in connection with this offering, and an annual cash bonus of $1,000,000 based on achievement of performance criteria to be mutually agreed on by Mr. Spiegel and our board of directors, provided that, after our initial public offering, Mr. Spiegel will not be entitled to any bonus except as may be determined by our board of directors.
Murphy, on the other hand, was making half that:
In October 2016, we entered into an amended and restated offer letter agreement with Robert Murphy, our co-founder and Chief Technology Officer with respect to his continuing employment with us. Mr. Murphy’s annual base salary as of December 31, 2016 was $250,000.
Although Spiegel’s cash salary will drop to almost nothing when the company officially lists on the New York Stock Exchange in a few weeks, it’s interesting that the two, who created the company together while at Stanford, were not paid as equals. According to Snap’s filing, Murphy’s salary is actually only $10,000 more than Imran Khan, who left Credit Suisse to become Snap’s head of strategy in 2014.
Snap’s filings also indicate that Reggie Brown—a third Stanford student who started Snapchat with Spiegel and Murphy, Brown actually came up with the original idea for disappearing messages—who left the company and sued over not getting equity, was paid $157.5 million as a settlement for his lawsuit.
Snap wasn’t immediately available to comment on why the two co-founders weren’t paid the same amount.