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Comment by mbesto | Hacker News Reader

A few friends of mine saw Evan speak at Stanford this past spring. He was in a room with Eric Schmidt and Sam Altman (IIRC) and his attitude towards them was nothing short of smug. I don't remember the specifics of what he said but my friends said he basically "told Eric, Sam and other prominent VCs on the panel off because he thought he was more successful than them".

Take that for what it's worth.

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>Take that for what it's worth.

Which is nothing. We don't have the context and it's always amazing how people, even just observers with no skin in the game, will have wildly divergent interpretations of the same events. There's definitely some interpretation going on here as Snapchat guy almost assuredly didn't say "I'm more successful than you".

It was a room full of Stanford students, many of which had zero context of who he was or what his reputation was. They were there to learn from successful VCs/Founders/etc and every student I spoke with generally agreed he was smug, off putting and dismissive not only to the students but also the other panel members.

Given it's consistent with the public's perception of how Snapchat operates, I'm simply reinforcing the parent comments sentiment.

You don't need expertise in a particular profession to come to the conclusion that someone is being smug, rude, etc. If I saw someone on the street being disrespectful, is it unfair for me to come to that conclusion because I don't fully understand their field of work?

I didn't say anything about the field of work, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. We don't have the context of the conversation or panel in which the supposedly dismissive and/or smug comments occurred and we don't have enough information to make our own conclusion on the behavior or the reliability of the assessment given here.

There are many reasons someone may feel that a speaker is smug. Some may be warranted and some may not. Since we don't know what happened and can't evaluate whether the parent's friends made a correct assessment or not, with this type of matter, it's best to just ignore it entirely. It has nothing to do with our familiarity with anyone's line of work.

> with no skin in the game

I took that as referring to field expertise. If that wasn't the intent, my mistake.

I get what you're saying, but there isn't video documentation of everything, so at some point you take the words and recollections of others.

Not to defend the guys at Snapchat, but can we stay away from second-hand rumor & innuendo?

I've heard nothing but bad things about him from people who have "experienced" him person. It's a shame but douchey, sociopathic behavior is often rewarded in our system.

I saw a user testimony prominently featured on mbesto’s startup homepage. Turns out the testimony is quoting himself on how great his startup is.

Take that for what it’s worth.

Anecdotes wherein the spokesman wasn't even present intrigue me, particularly when it's gossip about notable figures. I'm not sure what value you expect us to find in a retelling of your friend's subjective experience. Hell, for all we know, you could be making the entire story up.

One time I saw Sergey Brin be mean to someone. Take that for what it's worth. Maybe he's EVIL.

Don't read my comment as defending anyone. I really couldn't care less about Evan Spiegel, so I don't dance on his settlement like most comments here are doing, but this whole TMZ "we got video of Evan being smug at a panel, CLICK HERE" comment thread is just the worst of this industry. Ask yourself if you've contributed to life in the manner you expect as you typed out that comment.

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