Snap: Trailblazing the Next Era of XR

Andrew Seleznov
Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to sit in and have a meaningful conversation with you. I’m super excited. Yeah, thanks again!

Brad Scoggin
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you’ve been at Snap for eight years, so why don’t we start with you sharing a little bit about what you do in your current role and how you got into AR at Snap?

Andrew Seleznov
Oh, that’s a great question. I remember it was 2016, and I was in between jobs, doing some random work that was unrelated to anything I had done before. My first official job was as a customer manager at an auto service center. I realized I needed to make some changes in my life and started to think about where the world was headed and what I should do next. I talked to a few of my friends who were already in tech—some were software engineers—and they said, “It’s cool, but you need a few years of learning to get a job in this space.” Then I spoke with some designers, and they said, “It’s easy to get into this job,” so I thought, “Okay, maybe I’ll stick around and see what’s on the market.”

At that time, I came across a YouTube video called Hyper by Casey Suda. It was an amazing demonstration of AR. I was inspired by it and decided that this was something I wanted to pursue. I was living in Ukraine at the time, and there was a startup called Luxury that had developed face-tracking technology. Snap acquired the company, and they were hiring aggressively. I joined Snapchat as a lens production manager, which felt incredible—my first AR-related job was at Snap!

Brad Scoggin
That’s a cool story. I actually had a similar experience in 2016. I was back in Oklahoma raising money for a business when Will said, “Hey, you’ve got to try VR.” I put on a headset, and my first experience was Zombie Training Simulator. It wasn’t as advanced as what you saw in the video, but I had the same reaction. I immediately called Will and said, “Forget everything else—we have to do this.” It’s amazing how powerful that first experience can be.

Will Stackable
It’s funny, because even though it’s been eight years, many people still haven’t had that first experience. When they do, it’s still as impactful.

Brad Scoggin
That’s a great point. The first time someone experiences this tech, it really sticks with them.

Andrew Seleznov
I totally agree. There’s always a moment where you decide, “Okay, I’m going for this”—and for me, that moment was watching that video in 2016. It was the biggest inspiration of my life.

Brad Scoggin
That’s awesome. Well, you’ve been at Snap for a while now and have led some major projects with big brands. Can you tell us about a few of those projects, like the ones with L’Oreal, Nike, and others, and their impact?

Andrew Seleznov
Absolutely. Arcadia is now three years old, and we focus on about 5 to 8 major partnerships per year. This is a shift from my earlier work at Snap, where we focused on sponsored lenses, which were much simpler and mass-produced. Over time, we moved toward more complex, custom projects, and that’s where Arcadia came into play. We now take a more personalized approach with every partner, ensuring the value we deliver is aligned with their business needs, not just creating something fun for PR.

We focus first on the technology and how it can serve the business, then think about content. Some of the projects I’m most proud of include our partnership with Live Nation, the company that runs major festivals worldwide. We worked with them to reimagine the festival experience using AR.

We noticed a major challenge for festival-goers was navigating large grounds and finding friends in the crowd, so we created a real-time, interactive map to solve this. It included stage layouts, lineups, amenities, and even GPS tracking to help users find friends.

We rolled out this experience at three major festivals in 2022—EDC in Vegas, Lollapalooza in Chicago, and ACL in Texas. The feedback was really positive, though we also learned a lot about how to improve features like UI and connectivity issues, especially with large crowds.

Will Stackable
What was the user feedback like, and are there any stats or key insights that help illustrate how it was used?

Andrew Seleznov
The feedback was really positive. We even had marketing components like Snap codes on the festival grounds, which helped drive awareness. The app was available a week before the event, so people could plan their schedules. There were still some users relying on PDFs for maps, but once they tried the AR app, many were impressed.

Will Stackable
What lessons did you learn from this project that could help companies looking to implement AR in live environments?

Andrew Seleznov
One big lesson we learned was not to overcomplicate the experience. At first, we thought about adding a lot of creative features, but we realized people at festivals don’t have time to mess around with an app for too long. We kept sessions under 60 seconds, making sure users could quickly access the most valuable features.

Will Stackable
Can you talk a little about the Coca-Cola AR vending machine? That sounds pretty interesting.

Andrew Seleznov
Yes, Coca-Cola came to us with a vision to reimagine the vending machine. We focused on accessibility and creating an experience that could be used by everyone, including athletes at the Olympics and Paralympics. We built interactive AR experiences for locations like the Olympic Village and Coca-Cola’s Food Festival.

Our goal was to make these machines accessible to all athletes, whether they could stand up and interact with them or needed something adapted. It was a big challenge, but I think we nailed it.

Will Stackable
The results were impressive. I saw over 40 million media impressions. When you think about the broader scope of AR use cases, like event navigation or marketing, how do you see AR evolving? Do you think we’re still just experimenting with what works, or have we identified key use cases that will have a big impact in the near future?

Andrew Seleznov
We’ve definitely just scratched the surface. While there’s a lot of experimentation going on, I believe we’re in the very early stages. There’s still so much to explore, and while some use cases are already impactful, we’re still figuring out how to unlock the true potential of AR.

That’s why I feel there is no competitiveness in this area right now, just because there is so much work to be done, so much to go into it.

You can only imagine what’s possible, but at the same time… yeah, we try to invest a lot of our resources and time into understanding and identifying the right use cases and how we can approach them.

But one of the things I can mention is something we rolled out, like jumbotrons last year, for events at stadiums like the SoFi Stadium and others around the world. For me, that was a pretty interesting use case. You know, what is the future of augmented reality going to be? It’s definitely going to be part of the future.

We saw a great response from people and from the businesses that own these stadiums and venues. It was exciting to see how useful AR can be, how it brings fun and joy to events happening there.

Will Stackable
I have to ask, then—you’re not representing Snap directly, but what’s your personal take on Meta’s new AR prototype? I know it’s not available to developers yet, but maybe just riff on that a bit. Also, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Snap’s new Spectacles. I’m sure you’ve tried them, so I’m curious how you’d compare and what your take is.

Andrew Seleznov
Yeah, great question. So, my biggest takeaway from Meta’s conference and presentation is that I’m so happy this is happening in general.

At some point, I felt like AR was slowing down, that maybe people weren’t talking about it as much. Businesses still keep AR as an experimental budget item, rather than something fully integrated into their core strategies.But when I went to an event this year in Long Island, I was blown away by how many teams, developers, and creators are still working on building new things, discovering new use cases.

That moment made me realize: it’s not as bad as I thought. We’re on the right track. Then when Snap released the next-gen Spectacles and Meta revealed their new prototype, I thought, “Okay, this is a new wave. We’re moving forward.” This is the future, and I’m excited about it. But I can’t really compare Meta’s prototype to Spectacles at this point because Meta’s is still a prototype, and we have a fully developed product that we can work with and build on. So, this is a completely standalone device—there are no external cords, batteries, or computing units required. Everything happens in the device itself, which is worn on your face. It has a bunch of interesting features. For instance, the hand tracking is really cool, and the field of view is great. I wish it could be a bit better, but even as it is, it’s something that we can start using and building upon. There’s definitely a lot of potential here. It’s still early, but the possibilities are exciting.

When I hear “education” in relation to AR, I think we first need to educate people on how to interact with AR. There’s still a gap in understanding how to use this technology effectively. We don’t yet have enough resources to fully grasp what we need to do with it, what the best use cases are. For example, when we’re working with Arcadia, sometimes we try to launch really complex experiences in public spaces like the subway. But people aren’t expecting to see utility-driven experiences; they want something fun, like bunny ears or dog filters. Right now, it’s a matter of explaining the difference between entertainment, educational, and work-related AR experiences.

Will Stackable
What are you most excited about in the next ten years for AR? I know this is the perennial question, but it always feels like we’re ten years away from the big breakthrough. We now have solid AR glasses on the market, but what’s next? How do you see AR changing our daily experience?

Andrew Seleznov
To be honest, I think it’s still going to take about ten years for us to fully integrate AR into our daily lives, because there’s so much potential in what AR devices can do. But in 20 years? I think we’ll be seeing a much more advanced version of these experiences, ones we can’t even fully imagine right now. But, we can’t get there without first mastering AR wearables and smartphones. It’s all connected. We need to figure out how to make AR experiences work on current devices before we can move on to more sophisticated ones. I’ve had this idea for a while—imagine a personal soundtrack for my life. A device that tracks everything going on around me, understands my emotions, my physical state, and even the state of my mind. For instance, if I’m arguing with someone, it could play calming music or something to ease the situation. It could be like a virtual assistant that helps manage your emotional state. I think that could be amazing. But I know it’s probably at least 20 years away.

I know some people will be skeptical about this, but I’m enthusiastic. If wearables can access the context of your surroundings all the time and help you with your well-being, I’d be down to try it. This could be the next big thing in AR, and I’m already thinking about how we could develop something like this in 20 years. It could revolutionize personal experiences and well-being.

Brad Scoggin:
I like that answer. Most people talk about the next 3 to 5 years, not 20. It’s refreshing to hear that perspective. This has been really exciting, Andrew, hearing about Snap’s commitment to AR and how you’re bridging successes in the consumer space with enterprise and education. That’s something everyone should be excited about. Where can people reach you? LinkedIn?

Andrew Seleznov:
Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place to connect with me. I try to build a network. Of course, right now… And I try to share my expertise. I see a response from the people who are following me. They ask questions, suggest ideas, and get inspired. That’s probably the coolest thing.

Brad Scoggin:
Yeah, I love that. Well, thanks so much for taking some time with us today, Andrew. This has been fun. We’ll look forward to chatting again—maybe we’ll catch up on those conferences. We’ll see you soon.

Andrew Seleznov:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye.

Brad Scoggin:
I really like their approach—the shift from going broad to going deep, and starting with technology. It’s a great way to structure things, with all the content flowing from that.

Will Stackable:
Yeah, Snap’s been on that path for a while. It feels like other companies have come and gone, but Snap keeps coming out with new technology. That’s really interesting to think about, especially considering Snap as a technology-first company, even though we tend to think of them as just a social media platform. I also… I loved that we talked to so many enterprise-use-case-type developers and companies—that’s our everyday world.

But we’re not on the consumer side. So, even when I looked at their website, I thought, “Man, an AR vending machine just seems inherently way more exciting than what I get to talk about every day.” And yeah, you should check out the website if you’re listening. Although I’m sure nobody is, but you know…

Yeah, it’s pretty cool what they’re doing. And the last thing I’d say is, I think it’s important that, you know, new technology is fun. I think that’s a big part of how you get adoption. And I think that’s true for your training program just as much as it is for consumer applications. If you can make your training engaging and interesting, and keep people excited about it, it’s just going to go a lot farther. So…

Brad Scoggin:
Absolutely. I mean, I think it’s interesting—despite all the traction we see with training in the enterprise, there are still so many companies that haven’t gotten into it yet. So, there’s definitely an important role to be filled in just helping people become more familiar with the technology. And it is cool to see, like you said, you know, we call it competition, but there’s enough work to go around that having competition feels super healthy. So, well, as always, we appreciate you spending a little bit of time with us. Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts, and we’ll look forward to catching up with you next time. Thanks!