Why was he the first person to discover and invest in Snapchat?

Source: Internet
Author: User
Keywords Snapchat people
Jeremy Liew is a keen early-stage venture capitalist, and while other investors are chasing the wave of investment, it finds small Snapchat and Whisper and participates in the early investments of these companies. How did he do that? In March 2012, Jeremy Liew Facebook turned his personal homepage into a photo of him and Obama, according to BusinessInsider. At that point, he would not have imagined that the photo would help him get involved in a crucial early investment. Jeremy Liew is a partner of Lightspeed Venture Partners, a VC company that manages 2 billion of assets. The company has a total of 9 partners, but only Jeremy Liew and Justin Caldbeck are responsible for finding tech start-ups in the consumer-grade market. 2012 March, his eyes locked on the Snapchat. When he first discovered Snapchat, this private application had not been installed for 100,000 times. Jeremy Liew's partner found the application on his daughter's cell phone. The daughter told her father that there were three apps in high school circles, Angry Birds, Instagram and Snapchat. Liew was familiar with the first two, but never heard of Snapchat. The answer, which aroused his curiosity, was to find the mysterious team behind the app. Through Google search, he found nothing, no article mentioned to Snapchat. In this company's page, in addition to the common contact mailbox, also has no contact method. Liew tried to send an e-mail without any reply. Liew again on LinkedIn to find information about the company, sent the mail again, still no reply. Finally, he searched the Web site whois for information about Snapchat, and found that the registrant was Snapchat's former holding company, Toyopa Group, which originated from the father of founder Spiegel, who lived in a block called Toyopa Drive. Then he noticed Evan Spiegel's name. He was a Stanford student and did not drop out of school. Liew, a Stanford alumni network, sent a message to Spiegel's Facebook that he finally responded. At that time Spiegel had no financing plans. Liew invited Spiegel to see him at his office. The fortunes of Spiegel and his Snapchat have changed in the Menlo (Sand Hill M.I.), the most famous neighbourhood of the business world, Menlo Park. It is not far to the left, is Greylock, Sequoia Capital, institutional Venture, the right is not far from the Khosla Ventures.spiegel to Liew expounded their views on and Snapchat. On Facebook, you can share your wonderful feelings for the world. This is what you want to release when you are happy, confident and enjoying your life, but there are other times when you are depressed, crazy and even hopeless. Spiegal that there is a need for a place to vent this unpleasant mood by means of instant messaging. After all, true friendship needs to be shared with Gan and bitter. However, negative experiences are not appropriate for open, socially explicit platforms such as Facebook. Liew recalls that Spiegal's app didn't have much to download, but the user's involvement was high, "people frantically use it and stay on it for a long time." Eventually, Spiegel allowed Lightspeed to participate in the company's investment. In May 2012, Lightspeed A seed-wheel investment worth 385,000. At that time, there are three courses, Spiegal will be able to graduate. After that, Snapchat developed beyond expectations, raising 120 million of billions of dollars in funding and rejecting Facebook's billions of-dollar takeover request. Interestingly, when Liew asked Spiegal why he only responded to his Facebook request, he didn't respond to his other requests. "Because you have Obama in your head," Spiegal said. Liew always said in public that he was lucky enough to be involved in Snapchat's investment. But more is his investment skills. His name is often mentioned in the Los Angeles start-up Circle, and many of its early investments have been successful. Whisper is also an excellent start-up that Liew found before other investors. Headquartered in Santa Monica's whisper, users are allowed to share their feelings in a secure environment anonymously. It's like an open diary. Liew by researching Whisper's trends in the App Store, it's worth spending. Liew the company's 26-Year-old founder, Heyward, in Monday. In Wednesday, Liew persuaded Hetward to meet his partner. In Friday, Liew gave the founder a venture capital deal that he did not want to receive funding. In Saturday, he received a reply from Whisper and Lightspeed Whisper a $3 million worth of a round of financing. Now, the Whisper has millions of registered users, the content of which is 80 times times the content of Wikipedia page, a total of 25 million U.S. dollars to raise financing. Liew is also Shooedazzle's discovery, a start-up company specializing in women's shoes, Kim Kardashian and Brian L.EE created it. Like Spiegel, Lee did not want to see Liew, he told Liew,shoedazzle can have their own profit model, do not need VCs. But Liew didn't give up, "in the end, I flew to L.A. and said, ' I'm here '. Lee met Liew at a café and, through months of engagement, Lee accepted an investment from lightspeed. Liew's partner, Justin Caldbeck, has the same obsession. Caldbeck recently invested in a consumer-level market for start-ups that also ignored his earlier emails. Caldbeck often ran to the start-up company's doorstep, through the invitation to drink coffee way, to start communication. Besides being persistent, Caldbeck and Liew are very keen. If Liew's partner is not a father, Liew probably misses Snapchat. Finding ShoeDazzle was just a coincidence, Liew found a friend collecting pink shoebox. Asked what the shoebox was for, his friend told him it was Kim Kardashian's shoe party, and Kim Kardashian was ShoeDazzle's co-founder. Liew and Caldbeck have a different view of their investment projects. When other VCs look to the right, they deflect their heads slightly. When someone asks "Why don't you invest in this", "This is a good opportunity for a shot." ' I'm going to find out why these secular perceptions no longer apply, ' says Liew. His relationship with the Facebook platform is an example of the "fast start of electronic merchant start-ups". "Start-up E-commerce startups won't have much clout," Liew said. "There is no brand awareness, no user size." Their access to users is too high, and their life cycle is much lower than that of existing electric giants. At the moment, the only thing that makes sense in an e-commerce start-up is that the access to new users can be sustained and expanded. Startups need to be able to take advantage of opportunities to scale up in areas overlooked by industry giants. Such opportunities have occurred once, when Facebook opened up a bridge between the electric business and advertisers. Start-up companies like Gilt Groupe, LivingSocial, ShoeDazzle, Groupon and La were able to quickly expand their numbers. Relying on Facebook's social platform, they were able to make a substantial business expansion before the original electric-commerce giants reacted. Now, Facebook's channel has been "bombed" by a variety of commercial brands, blocking the transmission channel. Electric-business start-ups like Nordstrom and JC Penney can't grow on them. "In Zulily (a US mother and child product2010-2012 years ago, without a successful 1 billion-dollar exit, "Liew said," We're not investing in e-commerce start-ups because of the cheap access to consumer channels like Facebook and no sign of change. "Snapchat and Whisper look more like a suitable investment now. But when Lightspeed was involved, most investors thought social start-ups had peaked. Facebook, in particular, has almost got the biggest social market when it Instagram. But Liew's team is different, and he tries to find innovative businesses in areas that are fecebook neglected. Facebook is like a magazine that records our lives. In its ecology, where there is a need for real information and a clear social relationship, what he publishes will be an eternal record. However, this gives temporary information and an opportunity for anonymous information. So, there is the previous story. Liew likes to hang out on pages where trends are often found. One of its favorite sites, called "Pagedate". This will show popular trends on Facebook. Some of the information represents trends and the value of news reporting, but others imply investment opportunities. Last year, Liew often browsed through popular web pages and graphic content. When he saw Whisper and Snapchat, he noticed that the contents of both were exactly the same as the popular factors it noticed. Like LOLcats and PerezHilton, he believes that Snapchat and Whisper will bring such experiences to mobile devices. Recently, Liew has noticed the popularity of many publications, such as Viral Nova and Upworthy, which are rapidly becoming popular in social sharing. So they invested in a media start-up, PolicyMic, which is growing fast and has a 8 million-month active readership. Liew is also interested in bitcoin start-ups and some start-ups that apply large data to financial services.
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