The remarkable resurgence of Snap Inc. has become the talk of the tech town, not to mention the broader market in general, with shares up roughly 500% since this time last year on the strength of massive ad revenue and user growth. That financial zoom zoom — Snap’s current market cap currently tops $84 billion — has allowed the L.A.-based company’s top executives to live like lottery winners. Chief business officer Jeremi Gorman just bought a $15.8 million house in Hermosa Beach. And Jared Grusd, the former HuffPost CEO whose hire coincided with Gorman’s and who was originally brought on as chief strategy officer but is now a “strategic advisor” to CEO Evan Spiegel, was the buyer of a 90210 mansion that quietly sold for exactly $18 million in November 2020.
Grusd and his longtime wife Randi Kesselman actually scored a big discount on the property, which was never officially on the market but appears to have been privately marketed for $25 million by top L.A. realtors Josh and Matt Altman of Douglas Elliman.
The gated estate, completed in 2020, lies within The Summit, a guard-gated community high in the mountains between Beverly Hills and Studio City. Set privately at the end of a cul-de-sac, the property was previously owned by Jennifer Messer, the only daughter of Robert Greenberg, founder of the Skechers shoe company.
Messer bought the house in 2015 for $8.6 million; she subsequently demolished the existing 6,000-square-foot structure to construct a much larger and more lavish mansion in its place. The replacement house is big — at least 10,000 square feet of living space, with two above-ground floors plus a finished basement level with a full lounge/recreation room. The lot is big, too, with about an acre of usable land. There’s a huge swath of grassy lawn and a circular motorcourt to properly accommodate large gatherings.