Snap alums unveil Ghost Angels fund

Snap 前员工成立 Ghost Angels 基金

A group of 20 Snap alumni has come together to launch a fund called Ghost Angels to back the next generation of social media. The fund declined to disclose how much it has raised so far, but says it has backed at least five companies and plans to deploy the remaining capital within the next year into at least 15 companies. 由 20 名 Snap 前员工组成的团队联合推出了名为“Ghost Angels”的基金，旨在支持下一代社交媒体的发展。该基金拒绝透露目前的募资规模，但表示已投资了至少五家公司，并计划在未来一年内将剩余资金投入到至少 15 家公司中。

Max Rivera, who once led global partnerships at Snap, started the fund in 2025 to formalize the already-growing Snap alumni angel-investing community. Though Rivera runs the fund, there are around 20 other founder members and investors, including a small number of those still at Snap, alongside alumni like Alexandra Levitt, who ran Snap’s corporate accelerator, and Will Wu, who was a founding member of Snap’s product and design team. 曾负责 Snap 全球合作伙伴关系的 Max Rivera 于 2025 年创立了该基金，旨在将日益壮大的 Snap 前员工天使投资群体正式化。尽管由 Rivera 负责运营，但该基金还有约 20 名创始成员和投资者，其中包括少数仍在 Snap 任职的员工，以及曾负责 Snap 企业加速器的 Alexandra Levitt 和 Snap 产品与设计团队创始成员 Will Wu 等前员工。

“We were intentional about the mix,” Rivera, who currently works at Microsoft’s AI division, told TechCrunch, noting that Ghost Angels wanted to bring in former senior executives alongside those earlier in their careers, too. “That diversity of thought and experience is core to how we evaluate deals and support founders.” 目前在微软 AI 部门工作的 Rivera 对 TechCrunch 表示：“我们在人员构成上是有意为之的。”他指出，Ghost Angels 希望既能吸引前高管，也能吸纳职业生涯早期的成员。“这种思维和经验的多样性是我们评估交易和支持创始人的核心。”

Much has changed since he first started at Snap nearly 10 years ago. Today, the people building companies have much leaner teams, while “founders are launching fast and iterating in public.” 自他近 10 年前加入 Snap 以来，一切都发生了巨大变化。如今，创业团队更加精简，而“创始人们正在快速发布产品，并在公开环境中进行迭代。”

“We’re seeing experimentation of different monetization models beyond ads with subscriptions, token [and] usage-based, or even outcome-based,” he said. “Founders are also more in the forefront, with founder-led GTM as a key pillar.” 他说：“我们看到了除广告之外的各种商业模式实验，包括订阅制、代币制、基于使用量的计费，甚至是基于结果的计费。创始人们也更多地走到台前，以创始人主导的进入市场（GTM）策略作为核心支柱。”

At the same time, Molly DeWolf Swenson, co-founder and CEO of Ghost Angels portfolio company Mozi, said that the “Snap alumni network is full of brilliant, influential people who inherently understand the problem space I’m playing in.” 与此同时，Ghost Angels 投资组合公司 Mozi 的联合创始人兼首席执行官 Molly DeWolf Swenson 表示：“Snap 的校友网络中充满了才华横溢且极具影响力的人，他们天生就理解我所处的领域。”

Naturally, the fund is focused on investing in pre-seed to seed AI startups that are building in social media and consumer. Rivera said one of the biggest trends he has noticed about the next generation of social media is how “social” and “media” have actually split. The idea of what consumers know as social media today is a platform that relies heavily on ads, with an algorithm driving content and recommendations. 该基金自然专注于投资社交媒体和消费领域的种子轮前（pre-seed）到种子轮 AI 初创公司。Rivera 表示，他观察到下一代社交媒体最大的趋势之一是“社交”与“媒体”实际上已经分道扬镳。消费者今天所认知的社交媒体，本质上是高度依赖广告、并由算法驱动内容和推荐的平台。

“A lot of people are disillusioned with that relative to the original promise of connecting people in your life,” Rivera said. TechCrunch reported last year that the next generation of social media was moving away from building generalized platforms and toward niche communities. “与最初连接生活中人们的承诺相比，许多人对此感到幻灭，”Rivera 说道。TechCrunch 去年曾报道称，下一代社交媒体正在从构建通用平台转向深耕垂直社区。

“On the social side, we’re backing founders that are applying AI in creative ways to finally deliver on that original promise,” Rivera continued. “On the media side, [we’re backing] AI native formats and generative creative tools across different media types, from music to gaming, sports, and fashion, that are dramatically lowering the barrier to creation and distribution.” “在社交方面，我们支持那些以创造性方式应用 AI 的创始人，以最终实现最初的承诺，”Rivera 继续说道。“在媒体方面，我们支持跨不同媒体类型（从音乐到游戏、体育和时尚）的 AI 原生格式和生成式创意工具，这些工具正在大幅降低创作和分发的门槛。”