Tagged: gen-z
23 results
Figure8
Figure8 is a New York-based, experience-first development company founded by Maryellis Bunn and Manish Vora, the team behind the Museum of Ice Cream. It designs and operates 'experiums' - large-scale immersive, multi-sensory spaces built to draw people offline and into shared, playful, in-person moments. Backed by a $40M Series A at a reported $200M valuation, Figure8 builds and scales its own experiential brands while taking on commissioned activations for outside partners.
Pinterest is a visual discovery and inspiration platform where people find and save ideas for projects and interests, from recipes and home decor to fashion and travel. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in San Francisco, it lets users organize images called Pins into themed collections called boards, and increasingly acts as a shopping-and-discovery engine powered by visual search and AI. Publicly traded on the NYSE, Pinterest reached roughly 631 million monthly active users and $4.2 billion in 2025 revenue, earning nearly all of that from advertising.
DIVE Studios
DIVE Studios is a Los Angeles-based digital media company built around Korean entertainment and global K-pop fandom. Founded in 2019 by brothers Brian, Eric, and Eddie Nam, it produces artist-led podcasts and video shows - including the flagship Daebak Show with Eric Nam - plus original talk, game, and travel series. The company reaches tens of millions of monthly viewers worldwide, runs the DIVE X creator and influencer agency for brands, and spun out Mindset, a celebrity-narrated mental-health audio platform.
Katrin Kaurov
Katrin Kaurov is the Estonian co-founder and CEO of Frich, a New York based social finance app that lets Gen Z anonymously compare how their peers spend, save and invest. A former international model who worked across 20+ countries before age 18, she went on to Harvard's entrepreneurship program and built Frich with co-founder Aleksandra Medina out of a shared NYC apartment.
Studs
Studs is a New York-based ear piercing and earrings brand that pairs licensed, needle-based piercing studios with a large e-commerce and in-store catalog of flatback studs, hoops, huggies and clickers. Founded in 2019 by Anna Harman and Lisa Bubbers, the company coined the idea of 'Earscaping' - curating a personalized stack of piercings and jewelry - and positions itself as a modern, hygienic alternative to mall piercing-gun kiosks and tattoo-shop counters. It operates a fleet of profitable studios across the U.S. alongside a direct-to-consumer online store.
dub
dub is America's first regulated copy-trading platform, letting everyday investors mirror the portfolios of top traders, hedge-fund managers, and even politicians with a single tap. Founded by 23-year-old Harvard dropout Steven Wang and headquartered in New York, the SEC-registered, FINRA-member, SIPC-insured app has surpassed 1 million downloads and raised $47M total, including a $30M Series A in May 2025 co-led by Notable Capital and Neo.
a.k.a. Brands
a.k.a. Brands is a portfolio operator of next-generation, digitally native fashion brands, including Princess Polly, Culture Kings, Petal & Pup and mnml. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, it reaches Gen Z and millennial shoppers who discover fashion on social media and primarily buy online. A data-driven 'test and repeat' merchandising model lets its brands launch fresh, exclusive styles weekly. The company trades on the NYSE under the ticker AKA and reported net sales of $600.2 million in fiscal 2025.
Ciaran Long
Ciaran Long is the CEO of a.k.a. Brands Holding Corp. (NYSE: AKA), a portfolio of next-generation fashion brands targeting Gen Z and millennial consumers. A qualified Irish Chartered Accountant with 25-plus years of financial and strategic leadership, Long joined a.k.a. Brands as CFO in 2021, stepped into an interim CEO role in 2023, and was named permanent CEO in January 2025. Under his leadership the company returned to net sales growth with three consecutive quarters of double-digit U.S. sales expansion, repositioning the portfolio around a demand-driven 'test-and-learn' merchandising model and a major bet on physical retail expansion. He previously served as CFO of Samsclub.com and held senior roles across Walmart's e-commerce division, and earlier in his career he co-founded CleanGrow, a water quality sensor technology startup.
Tarang Amin
Tarang Amin is the Chairman and CEO of e.l.f. Beauty, the affordable cosmetics company he took public in 2016 and grew from a $135 million equity story into a multi-brand portfolio anchored by e.l.f. Cosmetics, e.l.f. SKIN, Naturium, Well People, Keys Soulcare, and - as of May 2025 - Hailey Bieber's rhode in a $1 billion deal.
Brendan Foody
Brendan Foody is the 22-year-old co-founder and CEO of Mercor, the AI talent and data company that became a $10 billion decacorn in under two years. A Georgetown dropout and former Thiel Fellow from Menlo Park, California, Foody co-founded Mercor with high school debate teammates Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha at a São Paulo hackathon in early 2023. Mercor connects AI labs — including OpenAI, Meta, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic — with domain experts (scientists, doctors, lawyers, bankers) who train frontier AI models through human feedback, growing from $1M to $500M in annual run rate within 17 months and making Foody one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires.
Matt Lee
Matt Lee is the Founder and General Partner of Progression Fund, a pre-seed and seed-stage consumer technology VC firm co-founded with alumni from musical.ly and TikTok. Based in Oakland, California, he backs visionary founders building AI-native products for everyday consumers and prosumers, with a particular thesis around generational behavior shifts - specifically Gen Z and Gen Alpha. His portfolio spans consumer tech, gaming, entertainment, social platforms, live streaming commerce, and digital health, with notable investments including Perplexity AI and Dapper Labs. He brings a global perspective from prior roles at ChinaRock Capital Management, Pereg Ventures, and engineering and consulting stints at Macquarie Group and Capco.
Nico Perdomo
Nico Perdomo is the Guatemalan-American co-founder and CEO of Catch, a San Francisco-based fintech startup that built an alternative payment and rewards platform for direct-to-consumer brands. A Stanford Symbolic Systems graduate who spent time building products at LinkedIn and Affirm, he launched Catch in 2020 with the thesis that every payment transaction should delight the customer. Backed by Sequoia, Index Ventures, and Forerunner, Catch grew to serve hundreds of thousands of primarily Gen Z shoppers across nearly 100 brand partners including Rare Beauty, PacSun, and SoulCycle before ceasing operations in April 2025.
Vanessa Didyk
Vanessa Roth Didyk is the CEO of ZeeMee, a social platform serving 2.6 million college-bound students across 3,000+ institutions. A serial edtech entrepreneur with 16+ years in the field, she founded Scholar's Station at UC Berkeley, sold it, built a tutoring marketplace at Rev.com, ran MathElf, then took over a struggling ZeeMee in 2018 and turned it into a top-10 App Store social networking app used by roughly 1 in 3 US college freshmen annually.
Jack Raines
Jack Raines is a writer, investor, and author who turned a $150,000 trading loss into a media career and a Penguin Random House book deal. He writes Young Money, a newsletter with 61,000+ subscribers covering behavioral finance, career philosophy, and what your twenties are actually for. He's now an investment associate at Slow Ventures, where he works on their $63M Creator Fund. Known for viral LinkedIn satire that got him reported to Columbia Business School as the 'Bacon Bandit of Hell's Kitchen,' he combines intellectual rigor with a refusal to take himself too seriously.
Sadie Jean
Sadie Jean Wilcox is an independent indie-pop singer-songwriter from Tustin, California, who turned a dorm-room song written as revenge on a cheating ex into a viral TikTok phenomenon. Her 2021 debut single 'WYD Now?' went Gold in the US and Silver in the UK, earned 100M+ Spotify streams, and went so viral mid-finals that she dropped out of NYU's prestigious Clive Davis Institute to pursue music full-time. Since then she has released the EP 'Simple Like 17' (2023) and her debut studio album 'Early Twenties Torture' (2025), toured with Rod Wave, Snow Patrol, Cian Ducrot, and Lauren Spencer Smith, and built a devoted fanbase through her 'Jeanmail' newsletter - all while remaining fully independent.
Olivia Rodrigo
Olivia Isabel Rodrigo is an American singer-songwriter and actress who burst onto the global stage in January 2021 with 'drivers license', a debut single that shattered Spotify streaming records and debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 - making her, at 17, the youngest artist ever to top the chart on debut. Her debut album SOUR (2021) and sophomore record GUTS (2023) both opened at #1 in multiple countries, cementing her as one of the defining voices of Gen Z alt-pop and pop-punk. The GUTS World Tour (2024-2025) grossed over $209 million - the highest-grossing tour by any artist born in the 21st century. A three-time Grammy winner, Billboard Woman of the Year, Time Entertainer of the Year, and founder of reproductive rights initiative Fund 4 Good, Rodrigo is simultaneously a chart phenomenon, an arena headliner, and a outspoken activist - with her third studio album due June 2026.
Sabrina Carpenter
Sabrina Carpenter is an American singer-songwriter and actress who transformed from a Disney Channel kid into one of pop's sharpest wits. Her 2024 album Short n' Sweet debuted at #1 in 18 countries and yielded global smashes 'Espresso' and 'Please Please Please,' earning two Grammy Awards. Known for confessional lyricism wrapped in bubblegum-pop hooks, she headlined Coachella 2026, released her seventh album Man's Best Friend to another Billboard 200 #1, and remains one of the defining pop voices of her generation.
Reneé Rapp
Reneé Rapp is a 26-year-old actress and singer-songwriter from North Carolina who rocketed from high school theater champion to Broadway's Regina George to pop music headliner - all before most people her age have a LinkedIn. She won the Jimmy Awards at 18, debuted on Broadway in Mean Girls a year later, built a cult following as Leighton Murray on HBO Max's The Sex Lives of College Girls, reprised Regina George in the 2024 film musical that grossed $101M worldwide, and has since released two critically acclaimed albums (Snow Angel and BITE ME) while selling out arenas on the Bite Me Tour. Known for radical candor, zero media training, and a goose-like live performance ad-lib that became a fan religion.
sombr
sombr is the stage name of Shane Michael Boose, a Gen Z singer-songwriter from New York City who built a global fanbase from his bedroom before ever stepping into a proper studio. Born July 5, 2005, he went viral in 2022 with 'Caroline', signed to Warner Records in 2023, and broke through to mainstream pop in 2024-2025 with 'Back to Friends' - a song that spent 44+ weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 (peaking at #7), hit #1 on Alternative Airplay and Pop Airplay, earned RIAA Platinum certification, and earned him a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. His debut album 'I Barely Know Her' (August 2025) cemented his status as one of the defining voices of indie-bedroom-pop's crossover moment.
Ty Myers
Ty Myers is an 18-year-old country-soul singer-songwriter from Dripping Springs, Texas, who turned a catastrophic football injury into a music career that has amassed over 1.1 billion global streams. Signed to Columbia Records at 17, his debut album The Select went Gold, spawning the Platinum-certified singles 'Ends of the Earth' and 'Thought It Was Love.' With a sound critics call 'John Mayer's Texas country cousin' — bluesy guitars, soulful vocals, and classic country storytelling — Myers released his second album Heavy on the Soul in March 2026 and is opening for Luke Combs on a 2026 arena tour.
Kyla Scanlon
Kyla Scanlon is an economist, author, and content creator who coined the term 'vibecession' and has built a multi-platform media presence dedicated to making economics accessible. Her debut book 'In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work' (2024) became a New York Times bestseller. She reaches over 1 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Substack, and Twitter/X, and has been named to Barron's 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance. A triple major from Western Kentucky University, she left a career in institutional asset management at Capital Group to pursue financial education full-time.
Rex Woodbury
Rex Woodbury is the founder and managing partner of Daybreak Ventures, an early-stage VC firm, and the creator of Digital Native, a weekly newsletter with 72,000+ subscribers exploring the intersection of technology and culture. A Dartmouth and Stanford Knight-Hennessy Scholar, former Goldman Sachs analyst, TPG and Index Ventures partner, Guinness World Record holder, LGBTQ+ advocate, and competitive runner, Woodbury is one of the most distinctive voices in venture capital — blending anthropological observation with market analysis to decode how Gen Z and emerging technology are reshaping commerce, communication, and culture.
Brooke Averick
Brooke Averick (@ladyefron) is the Philadelphia-born preschool teacher turned TikTok royalty with 1M+ followers, 68.4M likes, and zero shame. She went viral in April 2020 reading her childhood diary, quit teaching, launched Brooke & Connor Make a Podcast (named Best Comedy Podcast of 2024 by Adweek with 30M+ YouTube views), started a solo show called Obsessed with Brooke Averick, and is now publishing her debut novel — Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It — with Crown/Penguin Random House in May 2026. The internet's favorite oversharer, described as 'the app's Jewish voice of Gen Z' by Hey Alma.