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Lenny's Podcast · 3 min · Apr 26, 2026

Snap needs a profitable core before Specs can become its next chapter

Evan Spiegel says Snap must prove Snapchat can be profitable while growing audience engagement. He sees that foundation as necessary to compete long term in Specs.

Evan Spiegel

Evan Spiegel is co-founder and CEO of Snap.

Co-founded Snapchat at Stanford and has led Snap as CEO since 2011, building Stories and the Specs AR glasses.

  • Lenny Rachitsky, Host · Host, Lenny's Podcast

    Spent seven years at Airbnb; his product newsletter has over 1M subscribers.

About this segment

Evan Spiegel says Snap must prove Snapchat can be profitable while growing audience engagement. He sees that foundation as necessary to compete long term in Specs.

From “How to win when software is not a moat | Evan Spiegel (Snapchat CEO)”, Apr 26, 2026. Watch the full episode

“it's still not net income profitable, for example, because we've been investing so heavily in the future and making the choice to do that.”
Evan Spiegelat 55:03 · Lenny's Podcast55:03

Takeaways

  1. Snap was not yet net income profitable while investing in its future.
  2. The company wants to grow engagement through products like games and Spotlight.
  3. Spiegel says a strong Snapchat foundation is key to winning with Specs.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 3:11Close relationships helped Snapchat solve distribution2:50
  2. 9:32Software features are easy to copy, but ecosystems are harder3:09
  3. 17:52Snap pairs a small, flat design team with a scaled operation3:50
  4. 25:01Stories came from listening without following requests literally3:35

  5. 53:59Snap needs a profitable core before Specs can become its next chapter2:33

  6. 45:37Snap uses agents to find bugs and organize work around customer jobs3:15Up next
  7. 12:53Specs are designed to move computing back into shared spaces5:08
  8. 39:35Snap hires designers for range and the story behind their work4:51

Transcript

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

  1. 54:09

    So kind of along those lines, you put out this letter, I think it was the end of last year, where you described this coming year as the crucible moment for Snap. app. It's so interesting, just like you guys have a billion monthly active users. That's just absurd. I don't think people realize this. You're making six billion a year in revenue, something like that. One of the very few social networks that lasts, that is durable with like a very valuable, interesting audience. On the flip side, the stock hasn't been killing it. There's like these investors coming at you, trying to tell you to change all these things.

  2. 54:45

    I guess just thoughts, reflections, and what do you think people are missing about where this might go? Well, that's really one of the reasons why I called this year a crucible moment. I mean, the company's almost at the scale of entering the Fortune 500, which is really exciting. It's almost at a billion monthly active users. It's about to launch specs after 12 years of investment in this future computing platform, you know, but at the same time, it's still not net income profitable, for example, because we've been investing so heavily in the future and making the choice to do that. And so I think this is the year that we have to prove that Snapchat, you know, can be a really strong, profitable business, that it continues, you know, to grow both in terms of the reach of our audience and their engagement, you know, with new products,

  3. 55:36

    whether it's, you know, topic chats or spotlight, or, you know, we, I think we've got 200 million people playing games every month on Snapchat now. So gaming is becoming a big part of, you know, the engagement driver, you know, engagement drivers on Snapchat. And the reason why that's so important is that it's going to be very hard for us to win long-term in specs without a really solid foundation. And so I think we need to demonstrate that, you know, after a couple years of rebuilding.

  4. 56:00

    Our ad platform, rebuilding our go-to-market efforts, really accelerating the growth of the small-medium customer part of our business, which has grown really rapidly for us, that this year we have a really solid foundation to launch the next chapter in the company's history. So it's a real turning point for Snap that's really exciting, but it's definitely an all-hands-on-deck moment for the company.

  5. 56:22

    You had a really interesting way of describing Snap in the market.