Fizz CEO on why anonymous social is winning with Gen Z

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: 

• Why Solomon thinks Instagram and TikTok became pure entertainment platforms, and why that created an opening 

• How Fizz uses 7,000 volunteer student moderators plus AI to keep the platform safe 

• The company's expansion strategy beyond college and what "Global Fizz" actually means 

• Solomon’s case for why New York is a better place to build a consumer company than San Francisco 

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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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