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"AMAZON PASS"

Snap's R&D investment as a percentage of revenue is far higher than what Facebook or Twitter were spending before they went public. One result of that investment has been a wave of patent filings - about 46 total, according to research firm CB Insights.

They include eye-wear patents for Spectacles, as well as patents for photo and video-capture devices, and object and facial recognition, which is key to developing augmented reality technology.

One former employee said Snap is working to figure out ways to turn the warehouse of data it collects from Memories, a feature for users to save photos on Snap's server, into augmented reality or facial recognition applications.

Spectacles "opens the doors for augmented reality," Elsheshai said. "That's a different direction for the company than just adding more social media capabilities."

The quirky popularity of Spectacles further endears users to Snapchat, he said, but doubted that such niche products can propel the user growth Snap needs in the long term.

The greatest impediment to Snap's innovation efforts, however, may be its hefty losses: the company lost $515 million last year on $404 million in sales. Revenue from Spectacles. was "not material," according to Snap's IPO filing.

Snap, like Amazon.com, is expecting public investors to allow the company to lose money for years on the promise that more investment in innovation will pay off later.

"They are going to have to get the Amazon pass - investors that don't care in the short run," Elsheshai said.

(Reporting by Heather Somerville; Additional reporting by Julia Love; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Tomasz Janowski)