Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Lawsuit Targets Snapchat Founders, Venture Investors

A new lawsuit, targeting Venice, California-based Snapchat--the hottest company to emerge out of the area's high tech startup cluster in recent years--says that the company's founders stole the idea for the company from him after forcing him out of the company early on in its history. According to the legal filing--which has now been widely published--Reggie Brown, who says he was the third co-founder of SnapChat--was forced out of the company only a month after it was created, but says he should still own a third of the company. Brown is suing Bobby Murphy, Evan Spiegel, as well as all of Snapchat's investors, which include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, General Catalyst, SV Angel, and others. Snapchat has recently been looking for funding which values the company at $3.6 billion.