The Sony hacking has revealed that Snapchat, and its CEO Evan Spiegel might have been involved in trying to get himself some lucrative deals involving secondary shares in the company.
According to Business Insider the inbox of Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton was exposed by the hackers. Lynton is a Snapchat board member, and the emails from him to another Snapchat board member Mitch Lasky of Benchmark Capital are exposed.
In November of 2013, the pair suggested that Spiegel may have tried to get $40 million flogging secondary shares of his company. Secondary shares give company insiders some of an investor’s money in exchange for stock.
On October 31 at 2:43, Lasky wrote that Spiegel proposed a new deal today to Tencent that includes $40 million in secondary shares for him. Lasky was cross he was never told about it.
At the time, Snapchat had rejected an acquisition offer from Facebook. New emails confirm the offer was over $3 billion.
Snapchat never raised money from Tencent. It was reportedly in talks to raise $200 million. Tencent was a previous investor. And Spiegel had previously taken $10 million for him and his cofounder off the table.
Snapchat raised $50 million a month later from Coatue, a hedge fund with offices in New York and Silicon Valley. Its Silicon Valley offices are on Sand Hill road, right next to Andreessen Horowitz, and the rest of tech’s elite venture capitalists.
We will never know if Spiegel and his cofounder ever got their $40 million.
