Founder Profile
Bobby Murphy
Last reviewed: October 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Who is Bobby Murphy?
Bobby Murphy is a founder of Snap Inc, which was founded in 2011 with Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown.
- Company founded
- Snap Inc
- Founded
- 2011
- Co-founders
- Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown
Background
Bobby Murphy grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and studied mathematics and computational science at Stanford University, where he met Evan Spiegel. Murphy is widely described as the technical architect of Snapchat's early infrastructure, building the original iOS application and server backend while Spiegel drove product design and business strategy. Murphy's engineering background in computational mathematics informed Snap's early approach to image processing and compression, which would later evolve into the company's augmented reality capabilities.
Founding Story
Bobby Murphy co-founded Snap Inc. and is its Chief Technology Officer. He built the first version of Snapchat and has overseen Snap's technology, including the Lens AR platform and Lens Studio. Murphy rarely speaks in public. Like Spiegel, he holds Class C shares that carry 10 votes each.
Bobby Murphy was born in 1988. Education: Saint Mary's College High School.