Snapchat quietly entered the smart glasses race by acquiring Virgance Labs for $15 million to develop its Epiphany Smart Glasses. On Business Wars, host David Brown revealed the extreme secrecy surrounding the deal, quoting a source who insisted, "We're not doing a press release, not putting anything on the buyer's website or ours." This stealth acquisition by CEO Evan Spiegel set the stage for the company's hardware ambitions.
That hardware push eventually culminated in a full rebranding to Snap Inc. and the debut of its first physical product. David Brown recounted the viral 2016 launch of Spectacles on Business Wars, describing how a "single gleaming yellow vending machine that appeared overnight" on Venice Beach drew massive crowds. The quirky, limited-release strategy was a deliberate attempt to build hype and differentiate itself from competitors.
But while the company's hardware experiments have met with mixed success, its origin story remains the ultimate dream for aspiring tech entrepreneurs. Speaking on On with Kara Swisher, Stanford student journalist Theo Baker explained that campus hackathons function as feeders for Silicon Valley because "so many people come to Stanford thinking they can be the next Snapchat founder" or DoorDash founder. Whether Snap can recapture that early, culture-defining magic with its future AR endeavors remains to be seen.