Evan Spiegel's Most Underrated Skill

Yesterday, Snap introduced a (fantastic) new feature called Snap Map. At first, people pointed fingers at its similarities to social location-sharing app, Zenly, until TechCrunch’s Josh Constine revealed that Evan acquired the company for $250M to $350M. PLOT TWIST! 😲

Zenly co-founder Antoine Martin laid out the company's mission in their Product Hunt launch last year:

“We’ve been on a mission to popularize constant location sharing for the past 5 years. Zenly is now the closest thing to a social network built on a map, with your friends and family.”

Unlike Snap’s acquisition of Vergence Labs (which turned into Spectacles), Zenly isn’t an obvious acquisition for the “camera company.” The deal, it appears, is just the latest in a series Snap Acquisitions that make up an essential part of the Snapchat core experience. More on that here.

Evan Spiegel, known for being one of the great product visionaries of our time, has an underrated skill: knowing when to acquire and when to build.

Snapchat's Core Acquisitions 💰

So we’re just… talking to software now?

ElevenLabs has been the go-to for voice for a while. Now they've turned that expertise into agents that actually get things done. You set one up, it talks like a real person, listens, responds, and helps handle the task — support calls, bookings, whatever the job is. Not a demo, not a "press 1 for sales" situation. It's ready to deploy. Feels like one of those shifts where the interface quietly changes. Less typing, less clicking, more just saying what needs to happen and letting it play out.