'A fast-paced, highly readable history of one of the defining companies of our time. If you're interested in Snapchat, or just plain mystified by it, you must read this book' -- Brad Stone

Would you turn down three billion dollars from Mark Zuckerberg?

When he was just twenty-three years old, Evan Spiegel, the brash CEO of the social network Snapchat, stunned the world when he and his co-founders walked away from a three-billion-dollar offer from Facebook: how could an app teenagers use to text dirty photos dream of a higher valuation? Was this hubris, or genius?

InHow to Turn Down a Billion Dollars, Billy Gallagher takes us inside the rise of one of Silicon Valleys hottest start-ups. Snapchat began as a late-night dorm room revelation before Spiegel went on to make a name for himself as a visionary CEO worth billions, linked to celebrities like Taylor Swift and his fiancée, Miranda Kerr.

A fellow Stanford undergrad and fraternity brother of the companys founding trio, Billy Gallagher has covered Snapchat from the start. His inside account offers an entertaining trip through the excess and drama of the hazy early days with a professional insight into the challenges Snapchat faces as it transitions from a playful app to one of the tech industrys preeminent public companies. In the tradition of great business narratives,How to Turn Down a Billion Dollarsoffers the definitive account of a company whose goal is no less than to remake the future of entertainment.

BILLY GALLAGHER is an MBA candidate at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He has worked in venture capital and as a writer atTechCrunch, which he joined as a Stanford sophomore, writing a profile of a popular startup on campus: Snapchat. Billy wrote over a dozen exclusive pieces on Snapchat. His writing has also appeared in theNew York TimesandPlayboy.