We have found that consistently delivering our core product value of visual communication with friends and family drives some of our most durable and effective user growth. In contrast to social media popularity contests, Snapchat is a refuge where you can express yourself, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. We will need to be more clear and deliberate about what Snapchat is (a visual messaging app that enhances your relationships with friends, family, and the world) and why people use Snapchat (self expression without fear of judgment). This will require significant coordination and accountability across our communications, marketing, global brand experience, growth, product, and market development teams in addition to many other teams. This means we will continue our market development efforts in each of the Big 5 countries (Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Spain, and Japan), while investing in our age-up strategy to onboard more 30-40 year-old Snapchatters.

To reach our goal of 450 million daily active users in Q4 2023, we need to continue our current global growth trajectory while simultaneously increasing our penetration in at least one new large country or demographic. We have decisively entered a new era, and we must adapt and overcome to succeed in this new reality. We didn’t anticipate the War in Ukraine, skyrocketing energy and food costs, persistently high inflation, and a more than 45x increase in the fed funds rate since last September. We made some good decisions over the past year, including raising $1.5 billion in February to strengthen our balance sheet, but ultimately we failed to accurately predict both the magnitude and speed of the macroeconomic changes. Even after making the difficult decision to reduce our cash cost structure by $500 million, including reducing the size of our team by 20%, we have a lot to be grateful for: a large and growing community of nearly 350 million daily active users, a faster revenue growth rate than Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, and Meta last quarter, and a pipeline of innovative products and features to deliver for our community. We saw challenges on the horizon, and hedged our bets accordingly, but still got punched in the face hard by 2022’s new economic reality.

Snapchat ceo