Bobby Murphy

Co-founder of Snapchat, Murphy is a Filipino-American billionaire businessman who also serves as the platform's Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He co-founded Snapchat with Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown while they were students at Stanford University. Originally launched as an app called Picaboo in 2011, which got little traction, they rebranded the product as Snapchat, which first started to take off in late 2011.

Snapchat is a video messaging application in which users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients. These sent photographs and videos are known as "Snaps". Users set a time limit for how long recipients can view their Snaps (as of September 2015, the range is from 1 to 10 seconds), after which Snapchat claims they will be deleted from the company's servers.

The company continued to capture more interest from investors as the app gained popularity, boasting almost 100 million daily active users. More than 60% of U.S. smartphone users aged 13 to 34 had the free app. According to Snapchat, in May 2014 the app's users were sending 700 million photos and videos per day, while Snapchat Stories content was being viewed 500 million times per day.

Born in the Philippines, his mother immigrated to the United States and raised him in Berkeley, California. Murphy attended The School of the Madeleine and Saint Mary's College High School in Berkeley, California, and graduated from Stanford University, where he was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. He majored in mathematics and computational science.

As of 2015, he ranked as the world's second youngest billionaire on Forbes' Billionaire list, placing as the 1,250th richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of U.S. $1.5 billion according to Forbes. Murphy has resided in Venice, Los Angeles.