Teddy Solomon On Raising $41 Million To Build A Community-Based Social App For Gen Z

Teddy Solomon has demonstrated that in the startup world, the best entrepreneurs aren’t just born, they are forged through unexpected challenges, relentless creativity, and the courage to take leaps when the stakes are highest.

Teddy is the co-founder of Fizz, the fast-growing, community-driven social app that has secured funding from top-tier investors like Green Sands Equity, VSC Ventures, Arc180, and Owl Ventures.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Fizz was built to capture the 99% of life that Instagram and TikTok miss, creating a real, meaningful community.
• Teddy’s background in competitive sports taught him grit, focus, and the art of perseverance–lessons he now applies to building Fizz.
• Staying even-keeled through highs and lows is critical. “Death” is the only true failure for a startup.
• Fizz’s impressive $41M fundraising success stemmed from strong metrics, authentic leadership, and financial discipline.
• Teddy believes NYC, not the Bay Area, is the best place today for building high-energy, consumer-first companies.
• The next phase connects campuses and communities nationwide, with privacy, relevance, and shared experiences at the core.
• Fizz’s focus isn’t just scale. It’s about transforming how Gen Z builds relationships in a digital-first world.

 

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About Teddy Solomon:

Teddy Solomon is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fizz an anonymous posting app that is transforming the way college communities connect, engage and sell online.

Connect with Teddy Solomon:

• LinkedIn
• Crunchbase
• TheOrg
• ContactOut

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: All righty, hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMaker Show. Today, we’re going to have a truly amazing founder joining us. We’re going to talk about the building, the scaling, the financing, all of the above. I think that his story is quite impressive.

Alejandro Cremades: Very inspiring, you know, journey too. You know, starting with sports at a very competitive level, you know, early on in his life. But again, brace yourself for impact because it’s going to be quite the conversation. And without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Teddy Solomon. Welcome to the show.

Alejandro Cremades: So, born and raised in San Francisco — give us a walk down memory lane. How was life growing up for you?

Teddy Solomon: Yeah, it was interesting growing up in the middle of a relatively big city — quite different from most people’s experiences. But I had a relatively traditional upbringing, at least within the context of being born and raised in San Francisco.

Teddy Solomon: Growing up, I had a couple of key passions. I was never that much of a school guy. I was always kind of working on my own projects and doing things outside of the classroom. When I was really young, I got into ping pong — or table tennis. When I was nine years old, I went to this rec center near my house and met a guy named Lam. He was 85 years old, spoke no English, and taught me how to play ping pong at the age of nine.

Teddy Solomon: Over the course of the next decade, I ended up becoming a competitive table tennis player. I played in the Olympic trials in 2020 — lost miserably — but still had the opportunity to really play at a high level, which was a great time.

Teddy Solomon: Other than that, I was really into college basketball from the age of three. It was sort of my life’s passion. I wanted to be a college basketball journalist. Growing up in San Francisco, I went to elementary school two blocks away from the University of San Francisco and eventually had the opportunity to build my own media outlet in high school and travel all around the country covering college basketball. That was my long-term dream.

Teddy Solomon: And to this day, it’s still one of my great passions and hobbies. You know, with it being April now, I no longer have any hobbies — just trying to get along now that March Madness is over.

Alejandro Cremades: So entering Stanford was quite a pivotal experience for you, even though it didn’t obtain the desirable outcome because you didn’t really go all the way. But give us a sense of what happened there. You entered Stanford, and then all types of things happened that really pushed you into the venture world.

Teddy Solomon: Yeah, I 100% did not expect to end up where I am right now. Back in 2020, I arrived at college during a really weird time. My senior year of high school was when the pandemic hit.

Teddy Solomon: March of 2020 was my senior year of high school. Then in September 2020, when college was supposed to start, we were really in the core of the lockdowns and the COVID pandemic.

Teddy Solomon: Stanford told us we couldn’t come to campus.

Teddy Solomon: That was crushing for me, as somebody who really loved the concept of the college experience. Through my journeys covering college basketball, I knew I wanted that experience — to meet my classmates and not just live at home. I love people; I think people are interesting.

Teddy Solomon: So, back in August 2020, I got onto a Zoom call with about 100 people who, like me, didn’t want to live at home. They wanted to experience something akin to college, even though we couldn’t come to campus because of the pandemic.

Teddy Solomon: I got put into a breakout room on this Zoom call with a guy named Ashton. He was in Columbus, Ohio; I was in San Francisco. I said to him, “Ashton, I’ve got this idea: a bunch of Stanford freshmen going and living in Scottsdale, Arizona.”

Teddy Solomon: It was 116 degrees, it was super cheap at the time, and we knew we couldn’t afford to live in the Bay Area on our own. Ashton was on board. So we went and convinced about 25 Stanford freshmen to move with us to Scottsdale, Arizona.

Teddy Solomon: That led me on a pretty unbelievable journey over the next few years — which ties into your question about why I didn’t stay at Stanford that long.

Teddy Solomon: I initially wanted to be a college basketball journalist. Like I said, from the age of three, that was my calling. But when I arrived in Arizona and looked around, I saw that people were on Instagram — where they post twice a year, just highlights. It’s not a place where people talk about anything real in their life. It’s entertainment.

Teddy Solomon: Zuck is in court right now saying it’s entertainment and not social media. There was a giant group chat, but maybe three people would speak, because growing up on social media, you’re expected to present the most perfect version of yourself. If you can’t do that, you don’t say anything at all.

Teddy Solomon: So we said, there has to be another way. There has to be some way to bring community together in an authentic way — to encompass the 99% of things that don’t make it onto Instagram and TikTok.

Teddy Solomon: And that’s what eventually led me on the journey — which we’ll talk about — that led to me dropping out.

Alejandro Cremades: Let’s talk about dropping out, because here you are at one of the top universities in the world. Dropping out of it is quite the decision.

Alejandro Cremades: And I know that came out of a frat party, of all places. Walk us through the sequence of events there.

Teddy Solomon: Yeah, where I just left off — we saw the problem with social media and knew there had to be a solution. We wanted to connect with our peers at Stanford. So we spent our freshman year building what we called Fizz — this private, verified community. You verify with your .edu email. Once you’re in, you can post images, polls, videos, GIFs, links, DM people, buy and sell — the whole nine yards. It’s the one-stop shop for campus life.

Teddy Solomon: We always believed there had to be a way to build communities around shared experience, context, and identity — and school was the logical starting point.

Teddy Solomon: So we spent our freshman year jumping around the country — living in Michigan, Tennessee, Florida, Arizona — all while building the app.

Teddy Solomon: Fast forward to the summer of 2021: at 6:00 a.m., a bunch of friends and I walked around Stanford’s campus and threw flyers under people’s doors.

Teddy Solomon: The app, Fizz, which we had been building for the last eight months, exploded on campus. By dinner time, the majority of the school was on it. It was outrageous.

Teddy Solomon: And we — people who didn’t expect to end up in startups — were like, “What do we do about this?”

Teddy Solomon: Within two or three days, we had every single VC in Silicon Valley in our email inbox. We were like, “What is going on right now? I want to cover college basketball — that’s my dream.” It was wild.

Teddy Solomon: We decided not to take money in that moment. But when we came back to school in fall of 2021, I went to a frat party — the infamous frat party you’re referencing.

Teddy Solomon: I showed up, gave my phone number to some people, and met a girl named Hila.

Teddy Solomon: She texted me at 3:00 a.m. and said, “You need to meet my dad. He’s a serial entrepreneur and is really interested in what you guys are doing.” Me and my co-founder, Ashton, were really intrigued.

Teddy Solomon: We had always thought: the reason we’re not dropping out is because we don’t have mentorship. We never wanted to be in the startup world — we just loved our product and solving the problem.

Teddy Solomon: So I went and met Rakesh, her dad. After a many-hour conversation, he basically said to us: “I’ll put $750,000 into the company and come on as the initial CEO. All you have to do is drop out of school.”

Teddy Solomon: Me and Ashton went back, grabbed a whiteboard, wrote out some pros and cons, and really quickly decided: “All right, we’re leaving.”

Teddy Solomon: We dropped out of Stanford. No regrets. The rest is history. It’s been an incredible journey — I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow. So, what ended up becoming Fizz? Tell us — and how do you guys make money too?

Teddy Solomon: Totally. So, Fizz is a community platform where Gen Z can connect around their shared experience, context, and identity.

Teddy Solomon: It started with colleges — where people are posting everything from parties, classes, memes, jokes, and confessions — everything about campus life.

Teddy Solomon: It has a peer-to-peer marketplace as well, used in place of legacy platforms like eBay or Facebook Marketplace. It’s effectively the one-stop shop for campus life, used by almost every student at Stanford, Dartmouth, Tulane, SMU, Rice, Vanderbilt, Duke — you name it.

Teddy Solomon: These students use it to know what’s going on at their school. And again, the reason we built it was to give people a way to express the 99% of their lives that don’t make it onto Instagram and TikTok.

Teddy Solomon: In practice, that means 30% of our weekly active users are creating content, and 25 million posts have been made on the platform to date.

Teddy Solomon: We’ve democratized content creation and democratized information — where the president of the top fraternity and someone who never leaves their room have access to the same information. It’s all in a centralized feed, hyperlocal, and relevant to each user’s experience.

Teddy Solomon: As for making money: we’ve raised over $40 million over the years to fuel product initiatives, growth, and building our team — now based in New York, previously in Palo Alto.

Teddy Solomon: But in the past six months, we’ve also been building a new type of ads engine — where users actually like the ads. We work with companies that are synergistic with our user base.

Teddy Solomon: We’ve worked with companies like Perplexity, Calci, Quizlet, and a Fortune 500 company.

Teddy Solomon: Not only have we brought in significant ad revenue, but we’re also able to give back to users — whether it’s a year free of Perplexity Pro, a month free of Quizlet Plus, etc. We’re building out a really cool ads business right now, and we’re really excited.

Alejandro Cremades: At what point did you realize: “Hey, we’re onto something here. Dropping out of school wasn’t that stupid after all”?

Teddy Solomon: We always had a lot of confidence, but we never knew if it would go the distance. Social media is a space where nobody succeeds — literally nobody since Snap.

Teddy Solomon: We thought: “Social media is hard, but let’s give it our all.”

Teddy Solomon: I spent a couple of years jumping across hundreds of college campuses — immersing myself in the experience. Not just at Yale and Princeton, but places like Abilene Christian, Eastern Kentucky, and rural schools across the U.S.

Teddy Solomon: I think it was in August 2022 when we did our first big run of launches at lots of schools. I told my friends at Stanford: “We don’t have much money in the bank. We need your help to launch at these schools.”

Teddy Solomon: We hit Yale, Princeton, Tulane, Rice, SMU, Wake Forest, Elon, Creighton — a bunch of schools all around the U.S.

Teddy Solomon: The app just blew up at each school over the course of two weeks. And that’s when I knew: there’s something really special here.

Teddy Solomon: Shortly after that, we raised our Series A — and it’s been off to the races ever since.

Alejandro Cremades: So tell us about the capital raising experience, too, because, I mean, obviously for first-time founders, it’s not easy when you’re out there knocking on doors to get money.

Alejandro Cremades: How was the experience of going through the motions and raising all that cash? Just to get a better sense, how much capital have you guys raised to date?

Teddy Solomon: Yeah, so we’ve raised $42 million. We did that in three rounds, back to back to back. Our most recent round was two years ago, and we still have 80% of that in the bank. So we have no interest in raising at the current moment.

Teddy Solomon: We raised in the bottom market — we raised in 2022 and 2023. People like to say, well, you know, the best companies came out of that market because it was so challenging to raise.

Teddy Solomon: To me, there were a couple of really important things when we went out to raise money. One of them was: the metrics speak for themselves. We have the engagement and retention of the top social platforms that have ever existed.

Teddy Solomon: We have the highest D30 retention in the history of social media. That is not easy to attain — and it speaks for itself. But from my standpoint, when I have the opportunity to talk to investors, I’m always going to be genuine about who I am.

Teddy Solomon: I’m someone who wanted to be a college basketball journalist. I’m somebody who dropped out at the age of 19 and started building this app at the age of 18. I’m someone who has worn a suit and tie maybe twice in my life. It’s not necessarily the typical person who might go to Wharton and then start a company afterward.

Teddy Solomon: I just care a lot about our users and our product. I went to over 200 campuses around the U.S., and I still love immersing myself in that user experience.

Teddy Solomon: Investors are not used to seeing somebody like me — a college dropout who didn’t want to go into startups or tech — who just loves people and understanding the psychological experience behind why people need a platform like ours and how it changes their lives.

Teddy Solomon: The best moments on campuses are when students tell me, “Look, I’m not the most social person. I don’t go out and interact with everybody on campus, but through Fizz, I’ve had the opportunity to interact vicariously with the community at my school.” That’s really special to see.

Teddy Solomon: By being authentic, being genuine, staying in touch with our user base, and letting the metrics speak for themselves, we were able to raise a lot of money — and we raised it quickly and had really hot rounds when we did.

Alejandro Cremades: So talking about hot rounds — how do you run an effective process? What have been the biggest lessons to be effective at raising money?

Teddy Solomon: Yeah, I think at the end of the day, any founder has to raise from a position of power. You don’t want to be close to zero. If you’re close to zero, it’s hard to raise money because the question is: why are you close to zero?

Teddy Solomon: You need to find people who are going to add value to your company. I’m really happy about the people we have on our cap table. I’m really happy about the people we have on our board. They’re people who add a lot of value every single time I talk to them.

Teddy Solomon: They’re supportive of my vision for how I want to operate the company and are able to provide expertise. Right now, I’m not 19 anymore, but I’m still 23, and I’m still learning. I’m still trying to understand exactly how to do this well.

Teddy Solomon: For founders, it’s super important to put yourself in a position where you’re not close to zero — and never get there.

Teddy Solomon: You need to be careful with your cash. It’s not 2020 or 2021 anymore. You need to run a lean operation. You need to be efficient. You need to grow only where you need to grow in terms of your team. Then you’ll have a great team around you to hit your milestones and get you to the next round.

Teddy Solomon: Where we sit right now, every investor in America wants to lead our Series C. I don’t want to raise yet because we raised a $25 million round two years ago — and $18 million of that is still in the bank.

Teddy Solomon: We have over three years of runway, and we could be profitable in two weeks if we wanted to pour fuel on the fire for monetization.

Teddy Solomon: I might raise in Q4 of this year, and I think it’s likely that I do, but for now we’re heads down. Being heads down is the best — that’s when you grow the product and grow the user base the most.

Teddy Solomon: So that’s what I’m excited about.

Alejandro Cremades: Tell us about the team — how you’ve gone about building the team around you guys. Obviously, coming out of Stanford, there’s quite a network there. But how have you built the team?

Teddy Solomon: Yeah, we have a really awesome team of about 25 people.

Teddy Solomon: As I mentioned, we moved from Palo Alto about six weeks ago, and all but one person who could move made the decision to move to New York with the company. So we’re all in person here in New York.

Teddy Solomon: We have a combination of growth people, engineering people, and operations people. Our VP of Operations worked many decades in supply chain management. He’s been with us for over three years, and he’s really held us accountable — conserving cash, being operationally sound. He’s been an incredible addition to the team.

Teddy Solomon: Our Head of Product is a Stanford GSB grad who spent four years at TikTok heading up creator monetization. He has unbelievable intuition for the product — again, an amazing addition.

Teddy Solomon: We just have a lot of really great people — people who care about the mission, who are empathetic toward the users, and a lot of recent college grads too. You need that if you’re going to build for this generation; you have to have that DNA inside the company.

Teddy Solomon: I’m definitely on the younger end among the people here.

Alejandro Cremades: Now about location — talking about New York — there are probably a lot of people listening and wondering: “Am I in the right place? Should I move? Where should I start my business?”

Alejandro Cremades: Why New York? Walk us through that decision.

Teddy Solomon: Yeah, I’m a big believer that the Bay Area is dying. I’ll say that straight up. I posted that on LinkedIn; I have no problem notifying the world that’s my belief.

Teddy Solomon: And that’s coming from someone who spent 22 years in the Bay Area. I spent my entire life there until I moved to New York six weeks ago.

Teddy Solomon: For our company specifically, in New York, we can get closer to our users — but also closer to young consumer talent.

Teddy Solomon: If you’re a young person — graduating college or in your late 20s or early 30s — you want to be in New York. You don’t want to leave the office at 8 p.m. and find the entire city shut down. You want to walk out into New York City — comedy shows, bars, restaurants — you can do whatever you want.

Teddy Solomon: We’re also closer to advertisers in New York, which makes sense for us.

Teddy Solomon: Plus, we like the startup energy out here. It’s go, go, go. There’s a lot of partnering with other companies, trading ideas with founders and investors. Roe, the startup bank out here, does a great job of bringing founders and investors together. It’s been really cool.

Teddy Solomon: Our team — especially the ones who had the Palo Alto experience — if you walked around our office and asked which they like more, they’d all say New York. And that speaks volumes.

Teddy Solomon: People love it here. I think New York is on the rise — and the Bay Area is dying. I’m excited we’re here.

Alejandro Cremades: Let’s talk about the future. We’ve talked about the team and investors — they’re obviously betting on the future you’re building. So let’s say I put you in a time machine. You’re able to open your eyes in a world where the vision for Fizz is fully realized. What does that world look like?

Teddy Solomon: I’ll start with the social space in general, then what that means for us.

Teddy Solomon: People ask me, “What will the social space look like in five years?” I tell them: there are four companies — but I’m not sure they’re actually social media companies. I think we’re the only one.

Teddy Solomon: Instagram and TikTok will still exist. They’re the 1% of your life. Zuck himself says they’re entertainment, not social media. It’s about influencers and entertainment — not your friends.

Teddy Solomon: X, or Twitter, is a global news platform — answering “What’s happening now?”

Teddy Solomon: We answer that same question, but on a hyper-local, meaningful basis: what’s happening at the dining hall, what’s happening down the street — not across the world.

Teddy Solomon: Fizz is about bringing people together around shared experiences, context, and identity.

Teddy Solomon: We recently announced in Forbes the launch of Global Fizz — which has been blowing up. We’ve seen a 60–70% increase in daily active users over the past four weeks.

Teddy Solomon: Global Fizz says: this siloed product of just your school isn’t the end vision.

Teddy Solomon: If I’m a student at Stanford, I also want to connect with students at Santa Clara, USF, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth — people who share something academically or culturally with me.

Teddy Solomon: We’re crossing communities while keeping the privacy component.

Teddy Solomon: It’s not just a college thing — it’s a Gen Z thing. We’re getting ready to move beyond college too, and we’re really excited.

Alejandro Cremades: Now, let’s say I bring you back to when you were thinking about dropping out of Stanford. You can have a chat with your younger self and give one piece of advice before launching the business. What would that be — and why?

Teddy Solomon: I would say: how you perform, act, and think at the lowest points of the company will determine how well the company does.

Teddy Solomon: You need to take the lows and highs in moderation.

Teddy Solomon: There will be low points — and at those times, you need to operate at your best. As long as the company isn’t dying, you have a chance.

Teddy Solomon: At the highs, don’t get too high. At the lows, don’t get too low.

Teddy Solomon: Stability, being grounded, and just pushing forward — that’s how you build a great company.

Teddy Solomon: Back then, we wanted to celebrate the wins. But staying locked in, staying composed — that’s key.

Teddy Solomon: Nowadays, we’re in the best position the company has ever been — strong cash, strong engagement, lots of users — but we stay composed.

Teddy Solomon: Things can go poorly at any moment, and we have to be ready to persevere. That’s what’s key.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, this is fantastic, Teddy. For people listening who would love to reach out and say hi, what’s the best way?

Teddy Solomon: They should reach out to me on LinkedIn — Teddy Solomon, Fizz. You’ll see it there.

Teddy Solomon: Always happy to chat. You may even see me on a college campus because I still like to go every month to talk to users and understand how we’re doing.

Teddy Solomon: So yeah — no worries reaching out by email or LinkedIn.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, Teddy, thank you so much for being on The DealMaker Show today. It’s been an honor to have you with us.

Teddy Solomon: Likewise — it’s been an honor. Thanks for having me.

*****

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