A gaggle of 20 Snap alumni has come collectively to launch a fund referred to as Ghost Angels to again the following era of social media. The fund declined to reveal how a lot it has raised thus far, however says it has backed at the very least 5 corporations and plans to deploy the remaining capital inside the subsequent yr into at the very least 15 corporations.
Max Rivera, who as soon as led world partnerships at Snap, began the fund in 2025 to formalize the already-growing Snap alumni angel-investing group. Although Rivera runs the fund, there are round 20 different founder members and traders, together with a small variety of these nonetheless at Snap, alongside alumni like Alexandra Levitt, who ran Snap’s company accelerator, and Will Wu, who was a founding member of Snap’s product and design staff.
“We had been intentional concerning the combine,” Rivera, who at the moment works at Microsoft’s AI lab, advised TechCrunch, noting that Ghost Angels wished to herald former senior executives alongside these earlier of their careers, too. “That variety of thought and expertise is core to how we consider offers and help founders.”
A lot has modified since he first began at Snap almost 10 years in the past. At this time, the folks constructing corporations have a lot leaner groups, whereas “founders are launching quick and iterating in public.”
“We’re seeing experimentation of various monetization fashions past advertisements with subscriptions, token (and) usage-based, and even outcome-based,” he stated. “Founders are additionally extra within the forefront, with founder-led GTM as a key pillar.”
Naturally, the fund is concentrated on investing in pre-seed to seed AI startups which might be constructing in social media and shopper. Rivera stated one of many greatest tendencies he has observed concerning the subsequent era of social media is how “social” and “media” have really cut up. The thought of what shoppers know as social media in the present day is a platform that depends closely on advertisements, with an algorithm driving content material and suggestions.
“Lots of people are disillusioned with that relative to the unique promise of connecting folks in your life,” Rivera stated. TechCrunch reported last year that the following era of social media was shifting away from constructing generalized platforms and towards area of interest communities.
“On the social aspect, we’re backing founders which might be making use of AI in inventive methods to lastly ship on that unique promise,” Rivera continued. “On the media aspect, (we’re backing) AI native codecs and generative inventive instruments throughout completely different media sorts, from music to gaming, sports activities, and style, which might be dramatically decreasing the barrier to creation and distribution.”
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