"When Spiegel travels between his company's scattered outposts, he normally has a Range Rover with a private driver transport him from building to building. The former employee described it like the president arriving: a black car would pull up and Spiegel would hurriedly pop out with his security detail."

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-work-at-snap...

According to Wikipedia, he has $2b in wealth [0]. I have no idea whether $900,000 / year is high or low for someone of that net worth.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Spiegel#Personal_life

Apple Spends $220K on Tim Cook

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/3444424458x0x921...

And Facebook spends $5mn on security for its CEO and $1m for its CFO.

http://nypost.com/2016/04/28/facebook-has-spent-14-5m-on-zuc...

I would say that Zuckerberg is much more recognizable than Spiegel. Likely gets mobbed where ever he goes.

You forget to Spiegel is engaged to Miranda Kerr, supermodel and is likely to be super visible outside of work.

$1.3M for its COO (Sheryl Sandberg), not CFO.

True, sloppy copying. I guess the CFO is safe as long as the stock performs well :-)

Johnny Depp spends "Over $150,000/month on full-time security for his children" according to current revelations. So $900K/year for someone who's not very famous isn't unreasonable I suppose.

Johnny Depp is also in a huge financial hole for irresponsible spending... Not a comparison.

It's easy to work out the cost of full time security. Lets say you need 2 people on rotation, they do 12 hours per day each (doable because they get to relax while client is at home etc.) then multiply by a reasonable salary for skilled labor like 70k then you get to 140k per year per person easily.

$890k seems high in that for the previous year it was only $328k. I guess they had to triple everything for BCP.

Lots of Venice Beach locals are not happy that Snap is buying up prime property / increasing rents / bringing in yuppies etc. I wouldn't be surprised if he's received threats and is most focused on security while in and around the office.

Could also be that he's married to Miranda Kerr, so they have to deal with paparazzi

A lot of people want to punch that dude.

Why?

He's your typical unfiltered founder, which inevitably gets on people's nerves:

http://i.imgur.com/4h2Y1Uv.png

http://i.imgur.com/LPtAqDW.png

If making fun of windows phone is wrong I don't want to be right.

Those seem like normal things to say. He's obviously being facetious.

If Snap Inc. IPOs at their expected 25B value, Spiegel will be valued at nearly 5 billion (21% ownership), so ~1 million in security per year is not too far-fetched.

Why not just kidnapping insurance?

Maybe he doesn't want to be kidnapped in the first place...

Because he is not the most likable CEO and not everyone is looking for a payday.

I am merely pointing out that his security costs are negligible to him/Snap Inc based on their valuation.

Why not both?

Imagine the insurance premiums on that much wealth, without any security.

ego