20 Snap alumni launched an angel fund for the next generation of social media. They think 'social' and 'media' have split.

At a glance:

• Twenty Snap alumni launched Ghost Angels, an angel fund backing AI startups building beyond ad-driven social media models
• The fund has completed five deals and plans to deploy capital into at least 15 more companies within the next year
• Ghost Angels is betting on the split between 'social' and 'media' as the next major trend in consumer technology

The new fund from Snap alumni

A group of twenty former Snap employees have launched Ghost Angels, an angel fund focused on investing in the next generation of social media and consumer AI startups. The fund has already made investments in at least five companies and plans to deploy its remaining capital into at least 15 more within the next year. While the total fund size remains undisclosed, the formation of Ghost Angels represents a significant move by one of tech's most influential alumni networks to shape the future of social platforms.

Max Rivera, who previously led global partnerships at Snap, initiated the fund in 2025 to formalize what had become a growing community of angel investors among Snap's former employees. Rivera currently works at Microsoft's AI division, bringing his experience from both Snap and Microsoft to the fund's investment strategy. The founding membership includes approximately 20 individuals with diverse backgrounds within the company, ranging from former senior executives to those earlier in their careers, with a small number still employed at Snap.

The investment thesis: social and media diverge

According to Rivera, the biggest trend he has noticed is that "social" and "media" have actually split into two distinct categories. The current social media model that consumers experience today relies heavily on advertising, with algorithms driving content and recommendations. "A lot of people are disillusioned with that relative to the original promise of connecting people in your life," Rivera explained. This disillusionment has led the next generation of platforms to move away from generalized social networks toward more focused, niche communities.

Ghost Angels is strategically positioned to invest in both sides of this emerging divide. On the social side, founders are applying AI to deliver on the original promise of human connection that early social platforms promised but never fully delivered. On the media side, AI-native formats and generative creative tools are dramatically lowering the barrier to creation and distribution across various verticals including music, gaming, sports, and fashion. This bifurcation represents a fundamental shift in how digital experiences are conceived and monetized.

Changing founder dynamics and monetization

Rivera has observed significant changes in how today's founders operate compared to when he joined Snap nearly a decade ago. Modern startup teams are notably leaner, allowing them to move faster and with less overhead. Founders are increasingly launching products quickly and iterating in public, embracing transparency as a growth strategy. Perhaps most significantly, monetization strategies are diversifying beyond traditional advertising models to include subscriptions, token-based economies, usage-based pricing, and outcome-based revenue structures.

This shift in monetization approaches reflects a broader industry recognition that advertising alone cannot sustain the next generation of digital platforms. As consumers become more discerning about their data and attention, companies must develop more value-driven revenue models. Ghost Angels appears to be betting on founders who understand this shift and are building businesses with multiple potential revenue streams from the outset.

Market validation from industry giants

The launch of Meta's Forum app this week provides compelling validation for Ghost Angels' investment thesis. Forum, a standalone app built from Facebook Groups, is specifically designed to capture the community discussion use case that Reddit currently dominates. The fact that Meta is unbundling Groups into a separate app demonstrates that even industry giants recognize the growing importance of niche community tools.

This strategic move by Meta reinforces Ghost Angels' conviction that the split between generalized social platforms and specialized community tools represents a significant market opportunity. As large tech companies continue to experiment with new formats and unbundling strategies, Ghost Angels is positioned to identify and fund the startups that will define the next wave of social and media experiences.

The value of Snap's alumni network

Molly DeWolf Swenson, co-founder and CEO of portfolio company Mozi, emphasized the unique value proposition of the Snap alumni network: "The Snap alumni network is full of brilliant, influential people who inherently understand the problem space I'm playing in." This sentiment highlights one of Ghost Angels' key differentiators—its ability to provide not just capital but domain expertise from individuals who helped build one of the defining social platforms of the last decade.

The broader startup landscape is increasingly rewarding AI-native approaches that build entirely new categories rather than merely optimizing existing ones. Peec AI, for example, hit $10 million in annual recurring revenue in just six months by building for generative engine optimization—a category that barely existed before ChatGPT changed how people search. Ghost Angels is betting that the same dynamic will apply to social platforms: the winners will be those built for AI-native interaction from the ground up, rather than those retrofitted with AI features later.

Snap's legacy of innovation

The Snap alumni network has emerged as one of the most active in consumer technology, a testament to the company's culture of experimentation and innovation. Snapchat's early bets on ephemeral content, augmented reality, and products that initially seemed strange before becoming obvious have produced a generation of product thinkers who now see the next cycle forming. Ghost Angels serves as the vehicle for putting this collective conviction to work, channeling the experience and insights of former Snap employees into funding the next generation of social and media innovations.