How Snapchat has changed its hometown of Venice
LOS ANGELES — When a hot tech company grows in a small, yet ultra-hip conclave of Los Angeles, change is inevitable.
Los Angeles Times reporters Paresh Dave and Roger Vincent have a great read on the new Venice, courtesy of Snap, painting a picture of mom and pops stores that are seeing rents escalate and sales fall, as Snap grows and grows. Snap is set for a spring IPO that's expected to raise as much as $25 billion.
Snapchat was created in a Stanford University dorm room by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy as a way to share photos that disappeared within ten seconds. It then operated in Spiegel's father's Pacific Palisades home, before moving to a small beach house on the Ocean Front Walk in 2013. The blue house with the yellow Snapchat ghost was such a tourist draw, people posed in front of the home all day long.
Snap quickly found office space right off the main entry-way of Windward Avenue, in unmarked buildings notable for the heavy security outside the building. That one building grew into many, as the firm snapped up many availabilities in the area to house its growing staff. Curbed Los Angeles recently did a piece on how Snap bought a 25-unit apartment building in the area to house employees. The company currently has over 1,500 workers and has morphed from the disappearing photos into the preferred way of communication for young people, who use it to discover content from media partners like BuzzFeed, CNN and Tastemade and buy accessories, like the Spectacles video glasses that went on sale in late 2016.
Once a haven for artists, skateboarders, surfers and those who enjoyed the funky lifestyle, Venice is now the anchor for Silicon Beach, home to tech firms like Snap, Whisper and Cargomatic, with outposts for Google right on busy Main Street. Nearby in Playa Vista are YouTube and Facebook offices, as well.
Tourists still flock to Venice every day of the week, to walk up and down Ocean Front Walk, watch the street performers and enjoy the funky vibe.
"People come here to see the unordinary," Antonio Rendon, owner of an Ocean Front Walk leather and metal goods store, told the LA Times. “Offices shouldn’t be here.”
Listen below to this 2013 interview with Spiegel, telling why he likes having Snap in Venice.
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