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"The founders that we invest in, the last thing that they want is our money. They want us."
Every big tech company has an alumni investing group, and until this summer Snap was the exception. On this episode of 30 Minutes, Daniel and James sit down with Max Rivera, founder of Ghost Angels, the Snap alumni fund that officially launched in June. Max walks through why he built it: a company that never topped 5,000 employees now has alumni running teams across big tech, the AI labs, and the hyperscalers, plus a bench of founders and investors that includes people like Brian Kim and Jacob Andreou. The fund is deliberately angel-sized, writing $25K to $50K checks that slot into the strategic part of a cap table even in oversubscribed rounds, and it stays focused on social, media, and ad tech where a group of 20 Snap operators is actually useful to a founder. Max shares the first five portfolio companies, including Intangible (a16z speedrun), Ev Williams' new contacts app, YC-backed Lightberry, Snap alumni-founded Auto, and Gen Z location app Corner.
The back half gets into how Max actually runs this while holding a full-time job at Microsoft AI. He started angel investing five years ago with what he called "tuition capital," backing about 20 startups purely to learn venture by doing, and he now runs Ghost Angels as what he jokingly calls a vibe-coded fund, with AI handling deal flow ingestion, a custom CRM, LP dashboards, diligence research, and even legal review of SAFEs. He makes the case for being public about side hustles, why operators make better cap table members than career investors, and where Ghost Angels could go next, from a 100-member group to a syndicate for non-Snap believers. Listeners will come away with a practical playbook for starting an alumni fund and a clear picture of why the Snap diaspora is one of the most underrated networks in tech.
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