A group of 20 former Snap employees has decided that the best way to stay in touch is to launch a venture capital fund called Ghost Angels. Because nothing says "we're still friends" like pooling money to back the next generation of social media startups.
The fund, which is being cagey about exactly how much cash it has raised, has already invested in at least five companies. It plans to deploy the remaining capital within the next year into at least 15 companies - so, basically, they're speed-dating startups.
Max Rivera, who once led global partnerships at Snap (and now works at Microsoft's AI lab, because apparently one tech giant wasn't enough), started the fund in 2025 to formalize the already-growing Snap alumni angel-investing community. Rivera runs the fund, but 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, a founding member of Snap's product and design team.
"We were intentional about the mix," Rivera told TechCrunch, noting that Ghost Angels wanted to bring in former senior executives alongside those earlier in their careers. "That diversity of thought and experience is core to how we evaluate deals and support founders."
Much has changed since Rivera 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." Apparently, the era of bloated startups is over - now they're just slightly less bloated.
"We're seeing experimentation of different monetization models beyond ads with subscriptions, token [and] usage-based, or even outcome-based," Rivera said. "Founders are also more in the forefront, with founder-led GTM as a key pillar."
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.
"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.
"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."