# Snap keeps its core design team to about a dozen people

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/snap-keeps-its-core-design-team-to-about-a-dozen-people/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Evan Spiegel](https://realalpha.app/people/evan-spiegel/) · Co-founder & CEO, Snap Inc. · Co-founded Snapchat at Stanford and has led Snap as CEO since 2011, building Stories and the Specs AR glasses.
- Host: [Joubin Mirzadegan](https://realalpha.app/people/joubin-mirzadegan/) · Partner, Kleiner Perkins · Took Palo Alto Networks' cloud business from $2M to $50M+ ARR in a year.
- Show: Grit
- Episode: [How Snap Plans to Win the AR Race | Evan Spiegel on Spectacles](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/), Dec 15, 2025
- Moment: 48:05 to 50:56 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/snap-keeps-its-core-design-team-to-about-a-dozen-people/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2885

## Quote

> “As soon as you have coordination overhead, you have more hierarchy and bureaucracy and all of those things **destroy creativity**.”
> — [Evan Spiegel](https://realalpha.app/people/evan-spiegel/) at [50:06](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3006) · Grit

## Takeaways

1. Snap designs around problems shared across age groups.
2. Its core Snapchat design team has nine to 12 people.
3. Spiegel says hierarchy shifts attention from ideas to advancement.

## About this segment

Snap’s core design team has just nine to 12 people, and Evan Spiegel says keeping it flat limits coordination overhead. He believes that helps designers take risks and generate new ideas.

From “How Snap Plans to Win the AR Race | Evan Spiegel on Spectacles”, Dec 15, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[48:12](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2892) Do you feel like you still have feel for who you think the core user is relative to you just building a product for yourself? So I think one of the most important things is like we don't design for a specific like demographic, right? Like we try to solve problems that people have and whether that's things like, you know, lenses so that you can augment your images, which lowers the barrier to creativity, whether it's stories that put your content in chronological order and helps you like start fresh every day.

[48:40](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2920) Right. And whether it's a thing like the map that answers the question, like, where are my friends? What are they doing? Like, when are they going to be here? You know, those are common problems that people of all ages experience. So a lot of what we work on on our design team is solving those common problems that everyone experiences of all sorts of different ages. Obviously, I have a different perspective at 35.

[49:01](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2941) I think it's quite helpful because, you know, as we continue to grow with our community, right, solving problems for 35-year-olds is an important part of the equation as well. But at the same time, we have, you know, lots of members of our design team joined straight out of school. I mean, typically, our point of view is that designers often get ruined by going to other technology companies first because they don't do design like we do.

[49:21](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2961) So we bias towards hiring people directly out of school, usually with like, you know, very limited, if any, actual work experience. And so those folks bring a ton of great new ideas. And what's that ratio of designer to engineer? Do you have a number that you try and keep to? Our design team is very small. The core Snapchat design team is anywhere from like nine to 12 people. It sort of fluctuates.

[49:42](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2982) Yeah. That's it? That's it. nine people out of 5,000? Yep. And it's a flat structure. So everyone's a designer. There's no like hierarchy and, you know, BS and this kind of thing. And we spend three or four hours a week just looking at ideas. What do they report to? They report to someone who runs the design team. So that's in, that's it? That's it. Yeah. Nine. Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes up to 12, because ultimately once you get beyond a certain size, you then have a lot of coordination overhead. As soon as you have coordination overhead, you have more hierarchy and bureaucracy and all of those things destroy creativity. So if you want to really have generative creativity, like new ideas, I think it's very important that you have a very flat structure with a very, very tight team culture and dynamic because then people feel safe and comfortable being creative and

[50:37](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3037) trying new ideas and this sort of thing. And they're not focused on some sort of weird hierarchy, which typically happens in large organizations. As soon as you have a hierarchy, people become more focused on getting to the next level, right? Rather than taking a risk, coming up with a crazy idea, that kind of thing.