Snap’s CEO Says This One Trait Is ‘the X Factor’ for Entrepreneurs

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says anyone looking to follow in his entrepreneurial footsteps should develop their creativity, especially in the age of AI.

By Sherin Shibu edited by Melissa Malamut Mar 24, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Evan Spiegel co-founded Snapchat in 2011 while he was a student at Stanford University.
  • On a recent podcast episode, Spiegel gave one suggestion for anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur: nurture your creativity.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, 34, has one piece of advice for anyone looking to be an entrepreneur: Don’t be afraid to be creative.

“I think one of the most important things today is really nurturing creativity,” Spiegel said in a recent episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett. “I think creativity is really the X factor, certainly in the age of AI.”

Spiegel said that the one trait he would advise any entrepreneur to develop is their creativity — and not by building apps like Snapchat either.

“We’re all born creative,” Spiegel said. “It’s only over time I think that we stop practicing that ability or we become fearful of expressing ourselves. And I think that can be overcome.”

Related: ‘Maybe We Do Need Less Software Engineers’: Sam Altman Says Mastering AI Tools Is the New ‘Learn to Code’

According to Spiegel, fostering creativity could take different forms, like pursuing art. He gave the example of his oldest son, 14-year-old Flynn, who loves to draw but doesn’t see a career in art as his future. Spiegel said that drawing was not a waste of time for Flynn but rather one path to creativity that allows him to exercise his creative muscles and visualize something other people don’t see.

Drawing is “one way, one tool, one skill, that he can use to express what’s in his brain,” Spiegel said.

Evan Spiegel. Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Vanity Fair

Spiegel co-founded Snapchat in 2011 while studying product design at Stanford. He dropped out of the university in 2012 to focus on Snapchat full-time, building it into a multi-billion dollar business. In 2016, Snapchat changed its corporate name to Snap to reflect the expansion of its business into products like video-enabled sunglasses.

The company went public in March 2017 with a market cap of about $33 billion, about the same number as Marriott and Target, at the time. Snap had a market cap of about $16 billion at the time of writing, comparable to Best Buy and Domino’s.

Related: Snap Inc. to Cut 10% of Total Global Workforce in ‘Difficult Decision to Restructure’

Though its market value may have declined, Snap has more users than ever. Last year, the company’s daily active users grew by 9% year-over-year to reach 453 million.

Other social media companies, like Meta, have much higher market values; Meta was valued at $1.5 trillion at the time of writing.

Key Takeaways

  • Evan Spiegel co-founded Snapchat in 2011 while he was a student at Stanford University.
  • On a recent podcast episode, Spiegel gave one suggestion for anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur: nurture your creativity.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, 34, has one piece of advice for anyone looking to be an entrepreneur: Don’t be afraid to be creative.

“I think one of the most important things today is really nurturing creativity,” Spiegel said in a recent episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett. “I think creativity is really the X factor, certainly in the age of AI.”

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Sherin Shibu

News Reporter at Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur Staff
Sherin Shibu is a business news reporter at Entrepreneur.com. She previously worked for PCMag, Business Insider, The Messenger, and ZDNET as a reporter and copyeditor. Her areas of coverage encompass tech, business, strategy, finance, and even space. She is a Columbia University graduate.

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