Meet People Who Were CEOs Living in Their Parents' Homes - East Idaho News
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Meet People Who Were CEOs Living in Their Parents’ Homes

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GETTY 111314 Snapchat?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1415914486977Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, 24, worth $1.5 billion, is finally moving out of his parents’ home in Southern California, following the legacy of other chief executives and startup founders who took their time to fly the coop.

Here is more about Spiegel and other business leaders who have lived with their parents while running their companies:

1. Evan Spiegel, Snapchat CEO

Snapchat co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel has finally moved out of his father’s house in Pacific Palisades and bought a $3.3 million home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, according to Variety.

Spiegel had dropped out of Stanford to work on Snapchat while living at his father’s place. He had previously joked he would live there “until he kicks me out.”

2. Reggie Aggarwal, Cvent CEO

Cloud app company Cvent may be a business that employs 1,450 people today, but after the bubble burst in 2000, things were not so good for the company and CEO Reggie Aggarwal.

“We only had about $380,000 in the bank, which sounds like a lot, but not when you’re burning a million a month,” Aggarwal, who founded the company in 1999, told Business Insider.

“I’d be 33 years old, no career, lost all my money, no salary for two and a half years, living with my parents, and I couldn’t practice law because no law firm would hire you if you file Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 [bankruptcies],” he told Business Insider.

3. GauravJit Singh, DroneCast CEO

Known as the teen who started a drone advertising company, GauravJit Singh was a college student who temporarily left Drexel University in Philadelphia to jumpstart his business while living with his parents in Princeton, New Jersey.

Singh said he moved out of his parents’ place in September and now has an apartment and office in Philadelphia. The company hopes to franchise in Canada, India and Brazil, he said.

He plans to return to Drexel in January, with a major in entrepreneurship, while running the company.

4. Michael Kittredge, Yankee Candle Founder

Michael Kittredge started making candles in his parents’ garage in South Hadley, Massachusetts, when he was 17. He made his first candle by melting crayons, then gave it to his mother for Christmas. Kittredge founded the Yankee Candle Co. in December 1969.

“Mike’s early entrepreneurial years were difficult as he struggled through poor cash flow, production woes and marketing challenges,” the company history states. “But by 1972 he’d managed to move the fledgling operation out of his parent’s garage and into an old one-time paper mill back in his native Holyoke.”

5. Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia Founder

Yvon Chouinard built a small shop for climbing tools in his parents’ backyard in Burbank, California.

“Most of his tools were portable, so he could load up his car and travel the California coast from Big Sur to San Diego, surfing,” Patagonia’s website states. “After a session, he would haul his anvil down to the beach and cut out angle pitons with a cold chisel and hammer before moving on.”


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