Robert Cornelius Murphy (born July 19, 1988) is an American Internet entrepreneur and

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

. He is the co-founder and the CTO of the American multinational

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

company Snap Inc., which he created (as Snapchat Inc.) with

Evan Spiegel Evan Thomas Spiegel (born June 4, 1990) is an American businessman, co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc. Spiegel was the youngest billionaire in the world in 2015. , he had a personal net worth of $2.6 billion according to ''Forbes''. Early li ...

and Reggie Brown while they were students at Stanford University. He was named as one of the 100 most influential people in 2014 by ''Time''. In 2015, Murphy was first listed and became the second-youngest billionaire in the world by

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

Early life

Murphy was born on July 19, 1988, in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

. His father is an

Irish-American Irish Americans () are Irish ethnics who live within in the United States, whether immigrants from Ireland or Americans with full or partial Irish ancestry. Irish immigration to the United States From the 17th century to the mid-19th c ...

and his mother is a first-generation Filipino-American. Murphy grew up in

and was educated at the School of the Madeleine, a private Roman Catholic grade school there. He received his secondary education at

Saint Mary's College High School Saint Mary's College High School is a coeducational Catholic school located in Albany, California, United States. It came into being as part of Saint Mary's College of California, founded in 1863 by the Catholic Church, and put under the auspic ...

, also a private Catholic high school in Berkeley.

Education

Murphy graduated in 2010 from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Stanford, California Stanford is a census-designated place (CDP) in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is the home of Stanford University, after which it was named. The CDP's population was 21,150 at the United States Census, ...

, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematical and computational science. He was also a member of

Kappa Sigma Kappa Sigma (), commonly known as Kappa Sig or KSig, is an American collegiate social fraternity founded at the University of Virginia in 1869. Kappa Sigma is one of the five largest international Fraternities and sororities in North America, fr ...

fraternity along with

and Reggie Brown.

Career

Murphy was recruited by Spiegel after they finished working on a failed startup called Future Freshman, a website that helped high school kids get advice when applying to colleges. In 2011, Murphy co-founded a disappearing-image messaging app called Picaboo. The name was later changed to Snapchat. After graduating from Stanford, Murphy spent a year working as a software engineer at Revel Systems (an iPad point of sale system for restaurants). Until Snapchat could secure venture capital funding, he used half of his paycheck to cover the cost of Snapchat's server bills. At Snapchat, Murphy has led the engineering and research teams. Murphy has also worked with Snapchat's Snap Labs team, which produced

Spectacles Glasses, also known as eyeglasses (American English), spectacles (Commonwealth English), or colloquially as specs, are Visual perception, vision eyewear with clear or tinted lens (optics), lenses mounted in a frame that holds them in front ...

camera glasses in 2018. At the time of Snapchat's IPO in 2017, Murphy and Spiegel held over 45% of the company's total stock. They also held over 70% of the voting power. In February 2017, Murphy and Spiegel pledged to donate up to 13,000,000 shares of Class A common stock to their newly created Snap Foundation, which will support the arts, education and youth non-profits, over the course of 15–20 years.

Personal life

Murphy is a native of California. In 2015, he was recorded as the 1,250th-richest person in the world, by Forbes Magazine. In 2015, Murphy ranked as the #15 U.S. Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40. As of 2016, he was ranked #374 on the

Forbes 400 The ''Forbes'' 400 or 400 Richest Americans is a list published by ''Forbes'' magazine of the wealthiest 400 American citizens who own assets in the U.S., ranked by net worth. The 400 was started by Malcolm Forbes in 1982 and the list is ...

. In 2018, Murphy purchased the former Pacific Palisades estate of "Green Acres" actor Eddie Albert for the asking price of $19.5 million. In 2021, he purchased a property on the Manhattan Beach Strand for $14.5 million.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Murphy, Bobby 1988 births Living people American technology company founders American billionaires American people of Filipino descent Businesspeople from Los Angeles People from Berkeley, California People from Venice, Los Angeles Stanford University alumni 21st-century American businesspeople American chief technology officers