00:00 This episode of the podcast will discuss Facebook's attempted acquisition of Snapchat for $3 billion in 2013 and evaluate what would have happened if the deal had gone through.

04:55 Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, the founders of Snapchat, initially worked on a social app called Peekaboo during their time at Stanford.

10:42 Snapchat starts off with a janky website prototype that gets a negative response from VC judges, but the founders decide to keep working on it and eventually gain 127 users by the end of the summer, leading to further growth and the need to pay for server costs.

16:20 Snapchat gains traction and reaches 100,000 users, leading to the need to raise a seed round of $485,000 from Lightspeed and prompting Evan Spiegel to drop out of Stanford; the core of Snapchat is built throughout 2012, with the addition of video and the launch on Android, while Mark Zuckerberg's attempt to clone Snapchat with Facebook's poke actually brings more attention to Snapchat.

21:37 Snapchat gains legitimacy and becomes an existential threat to Facebook after being installed on iPads blocked from accessing Facebook and receiving a boost in downloads from a gift given by Facebook, leading to the announcement of 60 million snaps per day, a series A funding round, and a lawsuit from the third co-founder.

26:42 Snapchat's valuation increases dramatically after raising an $80 million series B funding round and rejecting a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook.

31:49 Snapchat has a high level of engagement with its users, with 100 million daily active users and almost 1 billion snaps sent every day, challenging the traditional model of user participation on social platforms.

36:35 Snapchat's innovative use of QR codes for user growth and adding friends challenges the traditional playbook of social platforms and demonstrates a level of product visionary thinking.

41:32 Snapchat's acquisition by Facebook would have resulted in it becoming a business unit of Facebook rather than a standalone app, with its own ad sales team and unique advertising strategy.

46:44 Snapchat's opportunity lies in becoming the television of the future and stealing brand advertising dollars from traditional television platforms.

51:56 Snapchat's content format, which is cut up into small pieces, allows users to continually be entertained and immersed in the app, resulting in an average time viewed of 30 minutes with just two taps and one swipe.

56:48 Facebook's decision not to acquire Snapchat was a smart move, as the two companies have fundamentally different cultures and would not have been able to coexist effectively.