Bobby Murphy has never sought the spotlight. But as the man who built the technology making Snapchat‘s success possible, his vision and inventiveness continue redefining human communication.
From Math Whiz to Media Mogul
Murphy grew up the son of a Filipino immigrant in Berkeley, California. He excelled early on in math and science, earning admission to Stanford‘s prestigious engineering program. There he forged friendships within his college fraternity that soon altered Murphy’s trajectory profoundly.
Teaming up with ambitious frat brother Evan Spiegel in 2011, Murphy combined his software engineering chops with Spiegel’s design flair to create Picaboo, later renamed Snapchat. Riffing off Murphy’s habit of using “snaps” as captions for photos, Picaboo debuted as an iOS app enabling users to share images that self-deleted after 10 seconds.
The app caught on quickly among Stanford students. Still, Murphy remained cautious in the early going. He continued working full-time as a software engineer while nurturing Snapchat’s fledging servers at night on half his salary.
But Picaboo’s runaway growth among millennials soon convinced Murphy and Spiegel to go all-in on Snapchat. They incorporated in 2012 and never looked back.
Powering Snapchat’s Takeoff
While Spiegel drove strategy and fundraising as CEO, Murphy architected the systems supporting Snapchat’s mushrooming popularity. Leveraging cloud computing, Murphy’s infrastructure supported jaw-dropping growth. By 2014 over 700 million “snaps” were being shared daily, with videos also taking off after launch in late 2012.
Central to Snapchat’s addictive appeal was the authentic, unfiltered nature of communication it facilitated. Ephemeral messaging reduced social pressure around photo perfection. Stories stitched together moments into mini-chronicles. Lenses injected visual fun via real-time special effects.
To turbocharge lenses in particular, Murphy acquired Ukraine startup Looksery in 2014, integrating their computer vision and machine learning expertise. Lenses took off soon after, becomingintegral to the Snapchat experience over 190 million daily active users came to love.
| Year | Valuation | Funding Rounds | Daily Active Users |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | $70M | Seed Round, Series A | $50K |
| 2014 | $10B | Series B | 30M |
| 2016 | $17.8B | Series C, IPO | 110M |
| 2021 | $94.08B | Public Company | 306M |
Pioneering an AR-Enabled Future
With Snapchat cemented as the communication platform for a new generation, Murphy turned his sights to the future. He saw augmented reality as the next paradigm for reinventing human interaction and self-expression.
While VR immerses users in virtual environments, AR overlays digital imagery onto real-world scenes. Transitioning Snapchat into an AR powerhouse became Murphy’s new mission.
He ramped up R&D hiring and set up tech hubs focused on computer vision, 3D graphics and camera hardware. Major acquisitions followed of 3D graphics and eyewear firm Cimagine Media and seamless AR toolkit creator Flite.
Snapchat began touting its AR platform and ad capabilities to brands. But to Murphy the real target was accelerating AR adoption via wearable hardware. Which led him to launch camera-fitted Spectacles glasses in 2016.
While the initial hype around Spectacles soon fizzled, Murphy remained undeterred, iterating new versions with sleeker designs, performance upgrades and expanded AR functionality. Clearest evidence of his broader vision taking shape came with the 2022 unveiling of AR Spectacles enabling 3D virtual overlays and gesture interactions.
The Phantom Genius
Murphy’s relentless invention has fueled meteoric value creation. Snap Inc.’s market cap sits around $55 billion. His roughly 5% personal stake gives Murphy a net worth approaching $5 billion. Such riches, however, have little impacted Murphy’s spartan lifestyle and steely focus.
The engineer prefers coding and designing new devices over flashy cars or sprawling mansions. He makes no public speeches, grants no interviews, and eschews social media despite having co-founded its most innovative platform. Only the occasional real estate splurge cracks his enigmatic facade.
What clearly animates Murphy is using technology to forge new modes of communication. That’s why alongside Snapchat’s viral popularity, he takes pride in how Snap Inc. supports youth education via the Snap Foundation he co-founded.
Ultimately Bobby Murphy seems driven not by fame or even fortune, but rather by seeing his inventions advance how people creatively connect. Given computing is increasingly exiting screens into the real world, expect this phantom genius to be powering transformative applications of AR for decades to come.
