Snapchat CEO shares the ‘presentation test’ he has for news hires on Day 1

Snapchat founder and CEO Evan Spiegel has a controversial approach to onboarding new employees: deliberately setting them up to fail. In a recent podcast interview, Spiegel revealed that new designers at Snapchat are required to pitch a brand-new idea on their first day, with no prior context or preparation.

“When you have no context for what the company is working on, how on earth are you supposed to come up with a great idea? I mean, it’s almost impossible,” Spiegel admitted on The Diary of a CEO podcast. Despite the seemingly harsh approach, the tech billionaire believes this method is crucial for fostering innovation.