Snapchat’s youthful founders are fearless in their race to go public
San Francisco — Snapchat, the red-hot messaging company, is seen by many tech investors as the next Facebook or Google, but its youthful founders are pushing far more aggressively than its predecessors in moving from scrappy start-up to public company. At a time when it is fashionable in Silicon Valley to stay private as long as possible, Snapchat is planning an initial public offering (IPO) valuing it at more than $20bn just two years after it first began to generate revenue, even though it has plenty of cash and ample opportunity to raise more on the private markets. It is expected to be the biggest US tech IPO since Facebook’s 2012 debut. It is also defying convention by declining to bring in "adult supervision" to help 26-year-old co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel and 28-year-old co-founder and chief technology officer Bobby Murphy manage the company. Imran Khan, a former Credit Suisse banker who played a big role in the Alibaba Group Holdings IPO in 2014, is emerging as a key fig...
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