Emily White, the COO of the popular media sharing service, had made the move to resign from her position. This decision comes just days after Snapchat obtained $200 million dollars in funding from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and was valued at $15 billion. Snapchat started as a project for now CEO Evan Spiegel’s classes at Stanford University where he was a product design major.

 

Snapchat confirmed Emily White’s departure from the LA-based startup, but did not say why. White was with the startup for just over a year, and it seems her decision to resign comes shortly after Spiegel’s decision to take a more direct role in business operations. It looks as though her move out of the company was based more in politics than anything else: butting heads with Spiegel may have driven her out.

 

White is, in fact, the third top executive to leave the company in the last two months. This fact alone suggests “growing pains” for the rapidly growing company. Although it could be by chance, the three top executives leaving comes simultaneously with Snapchat’s dynamic takeoff and expansion. Since January, the company has made a huge push into media distribution with the launch of its Discover channel, which features video content from a number of big media brands like Vice, National Geographic, and ESPN. Snapchat has even launched its own exclusive, Netflix-style Internet TV series and has begun making the necessary moves to obtain the streaming rights for NCAA basketball games.