What e-mail leaks reveal about Snapchat's Facebook snub

Last year, Facebook famously offered to buy Snapchat for a few billion dollars. Snapchat declined. Some people thought Snapchat and its CEO Evan Spiegel, now 24, were insane. Others thought it was a gutsy move to build a great company alone.

So why did Spiegel and Snapchat really turn down Facebook? And who leaked the deal to the press? And what was the offer amount? A bunch of those questions are discussed in dozens of emails sent between Sony, Snapchat board members, and Snapchat's CEO.

The emails were leaked as part of a massive attack on Sony's systems:

The price offered: More than $3 billion

Malcolm Gladwell sent an email to Snapchat board member (and Sony Entertainment CEO) Michael Lynton asking if the company was crazy to turn down $3 billion.

How much Spiegel would have gotten if he had sold: $1 billion

One email written by Benchmark's Mitch Lasky, who sits on Snapchat's board, wrote about it in a ticked-off email about a botched deal with Tencent: "Evan proposed a new deal today to Tencent and DST that includes $40MM in secondary for him and Bobby. Never told me ... in fact told me the exact opposite. When I confronted him about it, he said, 'well I just turned down a billion from Zuck'". [all sic]

Who leaked the deal to the press? Zuckerberg blames Snapchat.

According to an email written by Lasky, Zuckerberg pulled Snapchat investor and early Facebook employee Matt Cohler aside and accused Snapchat of leaking it.

From Lasky's email: "Zuck pinged Cohler during the peak of the news cycle on the acquisition leak. He was disappointed that the deal didn't get done, but also believes that you leaked this to the press in order to bolster your fundraising efforts. Cohler told him that he could easily make the argument that FB leaked it to put pressure on Snapchat. My advice is to be the bigger person and call Zuck and apologise."