Snapchat Online: CEO Evan Spiegel Apologizes for Frat Emails
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel apologized Friday for a set of raunchy emails that were leaked to the public earlier this week, which he wrote to his fraternity brothers years ago while attending Stanford University.
Spiegel, 23, apologized for the emails in a written response to CNN in which he took admitted fault for his actions and called himself a "jerk" for his remarks about women.
"I'm obviously mortified and embarrassed that my idiotic emails during my fraternity days were made public," he wrote. "I have not excuse. I'm sorry I wrote them at the time and I was a jerk to have written them. They in no way reflect who I am today or my views toward women."
The leaked emails also reveal another glimpse into the "brogrammer" culture that is reportedly prevalent in the male-dominated Silicon Valley. In the past, reports of female employees being exposed to sexist comments have surfaced, according to CNN.
The emails Gawker's Valleywag blog obtained revealed that Spiegel encouraged his fellow Kappa Sigma member to coerce women into sleeping with them by getting them drunk. He also implied that members from another fraternity were gay in an attempt to mock them and called a different group of sorority members "sororisluts."
"Hope at least six girl(s) (performed a sex act on you) last night because that didn't happen for me," Spiegel wrote in one email following a fraternity party.
Spiegel had also wrote in another email that the point of a laser-tag game his fraternity participated in was to "shoot at fat girls," according to the Gawker blog.
Another email contained Spiegel's "shopping list" for a fraternity party that took place and showed a history of drug use. The list included "3 kegs, 5 plastic shot glasses, 1 ounce of marijuana, 1 kilo of blow (cocaine)."
"I'll roll a blunt for whoever sees the most (breasts) tonight," according to the Gawker blog.
Spiegel and fellow frat brother Bobby Murphy created the mobile messaging app that allows users to send photos and videos that fade out of existence after a few seconds. The duo developed the popular app while attending Stanford, but Spiegel left before completing his degree so he could focus on Snapchat in 2012, CNN reported.
In July 2011, Spiegel and Murphy named the app Picaboo before renaming it Snapchat, which now has an estimated 30 million users. The company claimed that users send more than 700 million photos and videos a day.
According to CNN, Facebook tried to acquire Snapchat with a $3 billion, offer but the photo sharing company reportedly declined the deal.