Fizz is betting that Gen Z is tired of performing their lives on Instagram and TikTok.
What started as a pandemic-era group chat frustration has turned into the dominant social platform on college campuses across the US, focused on the 99% of life that doesn't make it into a highlight reel. Capturing the attention of a demographic typically glued to Instagram and TikTok, the app's hybrid anonymous model and hyperlocal focus has made it what Solomon calls "the biggest college social app since Facebook.”
Today we're bringing you a conversation that Dominic Madori Davis had with Fizz’s co-founder and CEO Teddy Solomon from this year's Disrupt, digging into why he thinks social media stopped being social.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
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Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
01:34 - What broke in social media
04:03 - Building for the 99% of life
07:29 - Content moderation at scale
11:16 - The risks of anonymous social
13:22 - Pandemic origins and IRL community
16:49 - Why the company moved to New York
19:45 - Scaling with "arguably the most retentive social product in history"
21:32 - Almost getting arrested at Pepperdine…for donuts
26:09 - The future of social media
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