Evan Spiegel

In 2013, Facebook offered to buy Snapchat for three billion dollars. Evan Spiegel, its twenty-three-year-old co-founder, said no. The app had almost no revenue, and the decision looked reckless to many people. Four years later Snap went public at a valuation of around twenty-four billion dollars, and Spiegel became one of the youngest billionaires in the world.

He was born on June 4, 1990, in the Los Angeles area, at 10:46 at night, as his birth certificate records. Gemini holds his Sun, the sign of communication, messaging and quick, light exchanges between people, in the fifth house of play, youth and self-expression. A Gemini Sun in the fifth describes someone who thinks of communication as a form of play, and Snapchat was built on that idea: photos and messages that were silly, spontaneous and meant for friends.

Uranus and Neptune, both retrograde in Capricorn, sit in his twelfth house, the part of a chart associated with what disappears, dissolves and goes unseen. It is a strikingly apt placement for the inventor of the disappearing message. Snapchat's central feature, photos that vanish seconds after they are opened, made privacy and impermanence part of everyday communication for a generation of teenagers.

Capricorn is his rising sign, and Saturn, retrograde in Capricorn, sits in the first house. Saturn there gives seriousness, reserve and a sense of being older than one's years. Spiegel was known in Silicon Valley for his intense control over product decisions and his formal, guarded public style, unusual for a founder of a playful app.

He grew up in Pacific Palisades, the son of two lawyers, and studied product design at Stanford University, where he developed the app with his fraternity brother Bobby Murphy and another classmate, Reggie Brown. Brown later sued, claiming he had come up with the idea, and the company settled with him in 2014 for about $157.5 million.

His Moon is in Scorpio in the ninth house, a placement associated with intense convictions and strong beliefs. Spiegel has held to his own vision for the company even under pressure from investors and competitors, and he has spoken about meditation and the influence of mentors.

Mercury in Taurus, in the fourth house, and Venus in Taurus, in the third, give a steady, sensory approach to design. Spiegel has said Snap is "a camera company," and the company built hardware such as Spectacles, sunglasses with built-in cameras, as well as augmented-reality lenses that changed how people play with photos.

Pluto, retrograde in Scorpio, occupies his tenth house, describing a public career marked by power struggles and transformation, including fierce competition from Instagram, which copied many of Snapchat's features.

In 2017 he married the model Miranda Kerr, and they have three sons. He went back and finished his Stanford degree in 2018. The Gemini Sun invented a new way to talk; the Neptune in the twelfth made the messages disappear.