Latest news with #TeddySolomon
Business Insider
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Why consumer tech founders are choosing SoHo over Silicon Valley
In March, Teddy Solomon said goodbye to Silicon Valley and moved across the country to New York City. The 23-year-old founder of the Gen-Z social app Fizz had spent most of his life in the Bay Area, but was eager to move to what he saw as a buzzy hub for consumer tech. "We realized over the years that New York was becoming hotter than the Bay Area," Solomon told Business Insider. He took the company with him. Fizz moved its 20-plus staffers from Palo Alto to Manhattan's bustling SoHo neighborhood. Around the corner, on one of SoHo's famous cobblestone streets, is the 22,000-square-foot office for events platform Posh. Steps away is La Cabra, a café across the street from OpenAI's New York office that has become a hot spot for tech workers. Meanwhile, across the bridge in Brooklyn, startups like digital goods marketplace Whop — which was valued at $800 million in 2024 — and Gen Z's go-to party invite service Partiful have set up shop. New York's consumer tech scene — startups building tech for everyday people rather than businesses — is having a moment. But it's not the first time. The city has long played host to breakout consumer darlings like Glossier, ScentBird, and AptDeco, brands that helped define the VC-backed direct-to-consumer boom of the 2010s before the model began to show cracks. And with the rise of a crop of prominent new consumer startups, New York is experiencing a "consumer renaissance,' as Derek Chu, a principal investor at FirstMark Capital (which backed Posh), put it. "There's a community of founders that builds together in person here in New York," he said. "People want to be here, together, in person, where it's one of the best places in the world — if not the best — to do that. The surge has even reignited one of tech's favorite fights: New York vs. San Francisco. This month, the discourse pulsed through the air at New York Tech Week. "People want to be in New York right now," said Julie Samuels, CEO of Tech:NYC, a nonprofit that works with tech leaders in the city. "One of the most important things I love about working in tech in New York is that people are New Yorkers first. To build in the tech industry here, you really have to love New York." That said, the San Francisco Bay Area still holds the crown in venture funding. According to a report by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Associate, the Bay Area continued to far outperform New York in the first quarter of 2025, with 658 VC deals totalling $58.7 billion compared to 441 deals totalling $7.1 billion, respectively. The same report also found New York to be the city most friendly to female founders, with 372 deals in the first quarter. Consumer tech's comeback Remember Warby Parker, Glossier, and Casper? These consumer brands were the face of a new wave of startups in the 2010s. They were design forward, digitally native, and ready to spar with dusty incumbents — and they were also New York born and bred. Thanks to the success of these companies and others, the city became a magnet for direct-to-consumer startups across fashion, beauty, lifestyle, and other categories. The momentum didn't last, however. Customer acquisition costs soared, supply chains got complicated, and many of these companies struggled to turn buzz into profits. The pandemic heightened the troubles facing many brands as it exposed the fragility of global logistics and hammered consumer spending. At the same time, investors started chasing other shiny objects. The stalwart enterprise software industry promised steady returns. Crypto and Web3 were capturing investor imagination. In comparison, a lot of VCs retreated from consumer tech. It was a tough sell: capital-intensive, with thin margins and operational headaches. At first, the rise of artificial intelligence seemed like another death knell for consumer investing. According to Crunchbase data, investments in consumer-focused social companies slumped to $900 million across just 128 deals in 2024, down from a $3.1 billion peak across 487 deals in 2021. Only 6% of top VC firms' bets went to consumer startups in 2024, according to an analysis of PitchBook data by Silicon Valley Bank. But what was once viewed as a setback for consumer startups is now shaping up to be their biggest opportunity, investors and analysts say. AI, which initially pulled investor attention away from the space, is now powering a fresh wave of innovation. A new class of savvy startups is seizing on the technology to rethink how consumer businesses are built, from product development to operations and customer experience. They're positioning themselves to lead in this next chapter. If consumer tech was previously defined by direct-to-consumer plays and mobile apps, this next generation will be shaped by AI. "AI remains the top investment theme for the consumer and is the largest opportunity since the internet," Bank of America's Justin Post wrote in a recent analyst note. "Business models around AI are progressing faster than historical norms, and are high quality as consumers are more willing to pay for services." New York, New Consumer If they're not at a coffee meeting at either La Cabra in SoHo or Devocion in Flatiron, you may spot some of New York's consumer tech founders at social hot spots like coworking space Verci, working out at the SoHo Equinox location, or sweating it out at the Othership sauna that's right around the corner from many of the city's VC offices. "If we leave the office at 10 p.m., you still have hours to be able to go do whatever you want, from a comedy show to a bar to anything else going on here," Solomon said. Run clubs, poker nights, and rooftop happy hours on any given weekday night overlap with the vibrant arts, music, and social scenes that give life to the city. "It's human," said Alexandra Debow, CEO of photo-sharing app Swsh. "New York is culture. New York is TV. New York is Gossip Girl." Consumer tech founders also have access to adjacent industries that provide a symbiotic relationship, like marketing and advertising firms, content creators, and several of the largest banks. And just like any other 20-something starting out adulthood in New York, the city offers its own challenges that build grit for those running startups. Posh CEO Avante Price said keeping up with the pace of New York was like keeping up with the pace of a startup. Peter Boyce II, the Brooklyn-based founder of Stellation Capital and a former partner at General Catalyst, described New York's current generation of consumer founders — many of whom are Gen Z — as "building new ways to connect with each other" through novel and niche social networks in a post-pandemic world. (Boyce is an investor in Swsh.) For instance, Sitch, a dating app with an AI-powered matchmaking experience, has ads plastered all over the city. New York is also home to IRL ('in real life') social startups like 222 (which moved from LA to NYC in 2024) and Kndrd. "Founders in New York that are really successful in consumer social are successful because they have this ability to be tapped into the world," said Anant Vasudevan, a cofounder of Verci. Michelle Yin, the cofounder of social app Housewarming, said she felt everyone doing consumer social in New York knows each other. Meet some of NYC's new consumer startups Startup Category Year Founded Doji AI 2024 Sitch Dating 2024 Swsh Social 2022 Pickle E-commerce 2022 Whop E-commerce 2021 Dub Fintech 2021 Partiful Social 2020 Posh Social 2019 Kalshi Fintech 2018 There will always be San Francisco Now, we come to the thorniest question: Will New York supersede San Francisco and Silicon Valley as a tech hub? Probably not. The West Coast is still a go-to for engineering talent, deep tech, and AI. "If you're doing B2B SaaS, SF is the place to be. If you're doing deep AI tech, SF is the place to be," said Michael Giardino, CEO of AI consumer app startup Oleve, who is based in New York. SF has also produced many, many consumer success stories. DoorDash, Airbnb, Instacart, and Uber were all built in the Bay Area, as were direct-to-consumer darlings Everlane and Allbirds and consumer telehealth juggernaut Hims and Hers. But even some of tech's most venerated venture capital firms, like Menlo Park-headquartered Andreessen Horowitz, are singing New York's praises. "NYC has become the best tech hub if you're not on the West Coast," A16z's Andrew Chen recently wrote on LinkedIn ahead of New York Tech Week. Katia Ameri, another A16z partner, echoed this as Tech Week wrapped. "Since the pandemic, NYC has become the top tech hub outside the Bay Area, and that momentum was clear at NY Tech Week," Ameri wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in June. "The city is now a global leader in key industries like SaaS, digital health, e-commerce, fintech, and proptech, and is a fast-rising hub for AI," she said. At the end of the day, however, successful founders will continue their bicoastal ways, jetting off between NY and SF. "That's kind of always been the case," Boyce said, especially as New York's venture scene leans pre-seed and seed. "When these teams need $30 and $50 million checks, it's very productive to make sure to go see Sequoia and Lightspeed and NEA in SF." On the flip side, Boyce added, as SF-based consumer companies mature, they'll find themselves back on the East Coast to meet their "customer community." "It's honestly mutually beneficial," he said about the back-and-forth between the two hubs. "And something I practice myself."
Forbes
18-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Gen Z's Underground Social Network Just Went National and It's Blowing Up
While most social platforms are trying to become the next TikTok, one startup is building something very different. Fizz is a pseudonymous, hyperlocal app born on college campuses. Until recently, it was known as a kind of private campus message board; part Reddit, part group chat, but with the intimacy of a dorm hallway. No followers, no influencers, no pressure to perform. Just students talking to each other, anonymously or under pseudonyms, about the stuff that actually makes up daily life: dining hall food, econ finals, party rumors, roommate drama. But five months ago, Fizz started quietly testing something new: a cross-campus product that connects students not just within their university, but across the country. The new feed layers shared identity, interests, geography and more, all while maintaining the local anonymity that made Fizz thrive in the first place. Now, the results are in. Fizz's daily active users in the new product cohort have jumped 50% in three weeks. Content creation has nearly doubled. Engagement time has soared. And the app has grown by more than 50 campuses in just the last month—with zero marketing spend. Teddy Solomon, 23, co-founded Fizz during the pandemic after dropping out of Stanford. The app, originally conceived as a hyperlocal space for students to speak freely, grew virally thanks to a flyer campaign and a thousand donuts hand-delivered to campuses. But from day one, Solomon had a bigger vision. 'We always knew that once we became the dominant college app, we could offer something bigger,' he says. 'A global experience built around the same values: shared context, identity, experience—but across schools.' The new version of Fizz, which rolled out to a quarter of its campuses this year, is exactly that. It uses a new personalized feed, powered by a recommendation engine, to surface content not just from a student's university, but from adjacent communities they naturally overlap with. 'If you're a Stanford student from New York, why shouldn't you see what's happening at Columbia or NYU?' Solomon says. 'If you're at Dartmouth, you probably have a lot in common with someone at Princeton. Or if you're at UT Austin, you might care what's going on at Texas A&M.' Fizz didn't publicize the new feed at launch. They wanted to know: would people actually use it? Would it be sticky? Would it still feel authentic? Now, five months in, they have their answer. 'We've nearly doubled the content creation rate within the cross-campus cohort,' Solomon tells me. 'Engagement time has gone way up. And our daily user base has grown 1.5x just in the last few weeks.' The app is also now adding 50 campuses a month, without paid acquisition, brand deals, or growth hacking. 'We don't spend a dollar,' he says. 'No influencers, no ambassadors. Just word of mouth.' Fizz's expansion is fast. The cross-campus product is turning once-siloed communities into a national Gen Z social layer that still feels personal, still feels small. Fizz's rise says as much about what it isn't as what it is. 'We're not TikTok,' Solomon says bluntly. 'We're not entertainment. We're not about performative content. We're about what's happening now, in your world, with people who get you.' It's a key distinction. While Instagram and TikTok chase global virality, Fizz leans hard into hyper relevance: the inside joke, the anonymous confession, the econ final everyone just bombed. On most platforms, only 1% of users post. On Fizz, 30% of weekly active users create content. 'The person who never leaves their room has the same voice as the frat star,' Solomon says. 'That's what makes Fizz different. You don't need to be perfect. You don't even need to be visible.' The momentum isn't stopping at campuses. 'In the next week, we're expanding beyond college,' Solomon says. 'We've built something that works for Gen Z more broadly—whether they went to college or not.' That move is significant. Most Gen Z social platforms don't make it past the campus stage. But Fizz is already seeing demand from users who dropped out, opted out, or never enrolled in the first place. 'When I visit campuses with 10% graduation rates, I know 90% of those students won't still be there in three years,' Solomon says. 'But they still deserve a community. They still deserve a voice.' Fizz is about to give them one. With over $40 million raised, Fizz is quickly becoming one of the most important social startups in years. And it's doing it without the things we've come to associate with 'success' in the creator economy: no massive influencers, no addictive videos, no virality-first algorithms. 'We're building social media the way it was supposed to be,' Solomon says. 'Real connections. Real people. Real time.' This article is based on an interview from my podcast, The Business of Creators.
