Snap CEO Evan Spiegel<\/a>, 34, has one piece of advice for anyone looking to be an entrepreneur: Don’t be afraid to be creative.<\/p>\n “I think one of the most important things today is really nurturing creativity,” Spiegel said in a recent episode of The Diary of a CEO<\/a> podcast with Steven Bartlett. “I think creativity is really the X factor, certainly in the age of AI.”<\/p>\n Spiegel said that the one trait he would advise any entrepreneur to develop is their creativity \u2014 and not by building apps like Snapchat either.<\/p>\n “We’re all born creative,” Spiegel said. “It’s only over time I think that we stop practicing that ability or we become fearful of expressing ourselves. And I think that can be overcome.”<\/p>\n Related:<\/b> ‘Maybe We Do Need Less Software Engineers’: Sam Altman Says Mastering AI Tools Is the New ‘Learn to Code’<\/a><\/p>\n According to Spiegel, fostering creativity could take different forms, like pursuing art. He gave the example of his oldest son, 14-year-old Flynn, who loves to draw but doesn’t see a career in art as his future. Spiegel said that drawing was not a waste of time for Flynn but rather one path to creativity that allows him to exercise his creative muscles and visualize something other people don’t see.<\/p>\n Drawing is “one way, one tool, one skill, that he can use to express what’s in his brain,” Spiegel said.<\/p>\n Spiegel co-founded Snapchat in 2011<\/a> while studying product design at Stanford. He dropped out of the university in 2012<\/a> to focus on Snapchat full-time, building it into a multi-billion dollar business. In 2016, Snapchat changed its corporate name<\/a> to Snap to reflect the expansion of its business into products like video-enabled sunglasses.<\/p>\n The company went public in March 2017 with a market cap of about $33 billion<\/a>, about the same number as Marriott and Target, at the time. Snap had a market cap of about $16 billion<\/a> at the time of writing, comparable to Best Buy and Domino’s.<\/p>\n Related: <\/b>Snap Inc. to Cut 10% of Total Global Workforce in ‘Difficult Decision to Restructure’<\/a><\/p>\n Though its market value may have declined, Snap has more users than ever. Last year, the company’s daily active users<\/a> grew by 9% year-over-year to reach 453 million.<\/p>\n Other social media companies, like Meta, have much higher market values; Meta was valued at $1.5 trillion<\/a> at the time of writing.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assets.entrepreneur.com\/images\/misc\/1742848787_Evan-Spiegel-GettyImages-2202988971.jpg?width=1000\")
Evan Spiegel. Photo by Neilson Barnard\/Getty Images for Vanity Fair<\/i><\/sup><\/p>\n