Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel in hot water over alleged comment maligning India

SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — During a 2015 meeting to discuss Snapchat’s creative growth, Anthony Pompliano says he expressed concern that the app was not taking off overseas. Pompliano, who had just been recruited away from Facebook to join the company, insists that he presented ample methods to address the issue, but that Evan Spiegel, the company’s chief executive, abruptly cut him off.

“This app is only for rich people,” Spiegel said, according to Pompliano. “I don’t want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain.”

Pompliano’s allegations were revealed in a recently filed lawsuit, filed in redacted form in L.A. Superior Court in January. On Monday, Snap Inc. — the parent company of Snapchat — dropped its efforts to keep the unredacted complaint under seal and released it in a public filing. In the suit, Pompliano tells the story of his brief three-week tenure with the company, during which he says he learned that the company was exaggerated its user data and that top executives were “completely misinformed” about key metrics.

Snapchat had previously argued that Pompliano’s lawsuit contained trade secrets that were capable of damaging the company, and helping its competitors. But in a notice to the court filed earlier this week, Snap said it was dropping the effort to keep the unredacted complaint sealed because it “has nothing to hide” since going public last month. Snap described Pompliano as a “disgruntled employee fired for poor performance” who filed the lawsuit out of thirst for publicity.

“The simple fact is that he knows exactly nothing about Snap’s current metrics,” the company’s attorneys wrote. “He and his lawyers are — not to put too fine a point on matters — just making things up.”

John Pierce, Pompliano’s attorney, said that Snap withdrew its effort to seal the complaint because the company knew it would lose.

“This attempt to save face by Snap should serve as a reminder that no matter how big you are (or how many billions of dollars you have) in our system everyone has to play by the same set of rules,” Pierce said.

Pompliano says Snapchat was inflating its registration completion rate, which it claimed was about 87%. In fact, Pompliano says it was less than 40 percent. The company was also claiming to retain 40 percent of its users after seven days, when in fact the figure was closer to 20 percent, Pompliano claims.

Pompliano says he raised concerns that advertisers were being misled with several people, including Jill Hazelbaker, the vice president of communications. According to the lawsuit, Hazelbaker said she had raised similar concerns internally but had been ignored.

According to the lawsuit, Pompliano brought up the app’s lackluster performance in India and Spain, saying both countries have high mobile penetration and should be ripe for improved growth, at which point Spiegel made the remark about not being interested in “poor countries” and stormed out.

Pompliano claims that Spiegel then met with two other executives and determined that “Mr. Pompliano presented a risk to Snapchat’s IPO.”

Just days later, Pompliano says he was fired, a security guard handed him a box and escorted him out of the building, and his phone was wiped of Snapchat accounts and data.