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 up to now, however says it has backed at the least 5 corporations and plans to deploy the remaining capital inside the subsequent 12 months into at the least 15 corporations.
Max Rivera, who as soon as led international 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 crew.
“We had been intentional in regards to the combine,” Rivera, who presently 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 range of thought and expertise is core to how we consider offers and assist founders.”
A lot has modified since he first began at Snap practically 10 years in the past. In the present day, the individuals 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 mentioned. “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 client. Rivera mentioned one of many greatest tendencies he has seen in regards to the subsequent era of social media is how “social” and “media” have really cut up. The thought of what customers know as social media right this moment is a platform that depends closely on advertisements, with an algorithm driving content material and proposals.
“Lots of people are disillusioned with that relative to the unique promise of connecting individuals in your life,” Rivera mentioned. TechCrunch reported final 12 months 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 authentic promise,” Rivera continued. “On the media aspect, [we’re backing] AI native codecs and generative inventive instruments throughout totally different media sorts, from music to gaming, sports activities, and trend, which might be dramatically decreasing the barrier to creation and distribution.”
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