Tiffany Zhong

She grew up in Silicon Valley, where, she recalled, she was exposed from an early age to the startups and technology around her; she said that her parents are entrepreneurs who have been quietly building companies all their lives. An article in INSIDE states that her father was the chief executive of a technology company.⁠[1][2]

She recalled that as a child she wanted to build robots, that she played competitive tennis and chess, and that she entered clarinet competitions in middle school; she described herself as “terrible at school” and said she did not like school, homework or tests.⁠[1]

She attended Menlo School for high school; the INSIDE article states that she took part in several hackathons and built her network through Facebook groups.⁠[2]

She recalled that at around 15 or 16 she began asking questions of prominent venture capitalists and founders on Twitter, and that at 16 she started an online magazine covering music, new artists, technology and fashion. In an Elpha question-and-answer session she wrote that she began her tech career at 16, building a network of venture capitalists and other people in tech on Twitter and sharing her observations about Gen Z with them.⁠[1][3]

Engadget notes that she was in elementary school during Myspace’s peak in the early 2000s and never used it herself.⁠[4]

In 2014, while still in high school, she met RedditRedditReddit is an online platform that organizes content and discussion around interest-based communities, founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005. Users take part in communities by posting, commenting, and voting; its operating company, Reddit, Inc., listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2024.Open the full entry co-founder Alexis OhanianAlexis OhanianAlexis Ohanian (born April 24, 1983) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and author, a co-founder of Reddit and the founder of the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 2005, co-founded Initialized Capital, and later expanded his work into women’s sports, climate philanthropy, and investment software.Open the full entry at a Y Combinator hackathon.⁠[5][6]

She recalled working at Product HuntProduct HuntProduct Hunt is a product-discovery and launch community founded by Ryan Hoover in 2013 and operated by Product Hunt, Inc. Makers present new products, while users vote, comment and review them and discover tools through categories, forums and AI search. AngelList announced its acquisition in 2016; as of November 2026, its official website lists Rajiv Ayyangar as CEO.Open the full entry as a teenager in early 2015; on Elpha she wrote that this was during her senior year of high school. A 2018 TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry article states that she interned at Product Hunt while in high school, and the INSIDE article likewise says she interned there before joining Binary Capital.⁠[1][3][7][2]

Her profile on Clarity states that she helped run community and marketing at Product Hunt; her profile on Intro lists community and growth work at Product Hunt before its acquisition by AngelListAngelListAngelList is a startup investment platform company based in San Francisco, United States. Founded in 2010 by Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi, it began as a mailing list recommending startups to angel investors, went on to launch online fundraising, Syndicates (co-investing), rolling funds, and other products, and later shifted into a fund administration and back-office services platform for venture capital funds and private markets.Open the full entry.⁠[8][9]

A 2024 TechCrunch article notes that in 2015 she flagged Musical.ly as a future major platform.⁠[10]

On Elpha she wrote that right after high school she joined a $300 million firm investing in early-stage consumer technology companies; the 2024 TechCrunch article identifies the firm as Binary Capital, where she helped source early-stage consumer deals.⁠[3][10]

The INSIDE article states that she joined the firm at 18, in a seat usually reserved for MBAs or company founders; she had deferred her admission to the University of California. She represented Binary Capital in finding promising startups before larger firms invested, which co-founder Jonathan Teo described as the firm’s main strategy; she looked for startups with natural network effects, taking SnapchatSnapchatA visual messaging and social app developed by Snap Inc., launched in 2011, with photo and video messaging, Stories, augmented-reality Lenses, Snap Map and Spotlight.Open the full entry as an example. The article names SlackSlackSlack is a team communication and collaboration platform developed from an internal tool at Tiny Speck. It organizes work through channels, direct messages, searchable history and integrations, with features including Huddles, Clips, Canvas and AI assistance. Its paid service launched in February 2014, and Salesforce completed its acquisition in July 2021.Open the full entry chief executive Stewart ButterfieldStewart ButterfieldStewart Butterfield is a Canadian-born entrepreneur who co-founded the photo-sharing site Flickr and the workplace messaging software Slack, and served as Slack’s chief executive officer.Open the full entry and former Windows head Steve Sinofsky as her mentors.⁠[2]

A TechCrunch article of August 1, 2016 on Binary Capital’s new $175 million fund describes the 19-year-old analyst Tiffany Zhong as working her way into San Francisco’s young founders scene and tracking where the market was heading for the firm before leaving for college; it adds that it is unusual for a venture firm to interview an analyst candidate who was dropped off by her father.⁠[11]

Accounts of the firm’s size differ: on Elpha, on The Kara Goldin Show and in her SXSW 2018 speaker biography it is a $300 million firm, and the SXSW biography adds that its founders made early investments in Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Stitch Fix; her Clarity profile describes Binary Capital as a $500 million early-stage consumer technology fund whose backers invested in Snapchat and Instagram. The SXSW biography calls her the youngest venture capitalist in Silicon Valley at the time, and the Clarity profile calls her the “youngest VC in the world.”⁠[3][1][12][8]

A 2020 Adweek article states that she founded Zebra IQ in 2017, the year she earned the nickname “Gen Z Whisperer”; her SXSW 2018 speaker page gives the company’s full name, Zebra Intelligence.⁠[13][12]

Her Clarity profile states that she was 20 and had dropped out of the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry to start a Gen Z research firm, which it describes as the only Gen Z-focused research firm run by a member of Gen Z; it adds that she worked full time as a consultant and researcher for Fortune 500 companies, doing qualitative research and speaking on Gen Z strategy.⁠[8]

Her SXSW 2018 speaker biography describes Zebra Intelligence as a consumer insights company that helps Fortune 500 companies, top venture capital firms and venture-backed startups stay relevant with Gen Z and build brand loyalty, and states that she also founded Pineapple Capital, a seed fund focused on early-stage consumer technology. An October 2018 TechCrunch article describes her as an investor through Pineapple Capital; her Intro profile states that Pineapple Capital was backed by Naval RavikantNaval RavikantNaval Ravikant is an entrepreneur and angel investor and a co-founder of AngelList. Early on he co-founded the review site Epinions; he and Babak Nivi later grew AngelList out of the startup-fundraising blog Venture Hacks, and he co-founded the cryptocurrency hedge fund MetaStable Capital and Spearhead, which backs founders to make angel investments. His views on startups and life were compiled into the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.Open the full entry.⁠[12][7][9]

In her Elpha question-and-answer session she described Zebra IQ as the place where brands can go for “brutally honest youth feedback” from people aged 13 to 35, run through a mobile app with a proprietary audience of Gen Z and millennial users across the country; clients could work with it à la carte or on a subscription basis.⁠[3]

The SXSW 2018 speaker page presents her as founder and chief executive of Zebra Intelligence and describes her as a youth trends expert.⁠[12]

On October 17, 2018 Ryan HooverRyan HooverRyan Hoover is an entrepreneur and early-stage investor who founded the new-product discovery community Product Hunt in 2013, served as its CEO until 2020, and sold the company to AngelList in 2016; since 2017 he has run the early-stage venture fund Weekend Fund.Open the full entry published an episode of Product Hunt Radio on TechCrunch in which she and Drake Rehfeld were the guests, discussing Gen Z, digital influencers, “finsta” accounts and experimental social apps; he wrote that the two had had more success with their high school ventures than he had.⁠[7]

An Adweek profile published on December 12, 2018 states that she was 22 and that Zebra IQ, which had just launched, was her sixth business, after a magazine, an education technology startup, a social app, a product finder and a stint as a full-time investor. She explained the name: like zebras, Gen Z cannot be tamed and looks uniform from a distance, but each individual has distinct traits up close.⁠[14]

In an episode of The Kara Goldin Show published on March 11, 2020 she said that she had recently turned 23 and celebrated her birthday with close friends, and that Zebra IQ was the company she had set out to build two years earlier, with a fully remote team. The host, Kara Goldin, said that the team had grown from two to 10 people, that its clients included Snapchat, Levi Strauss, Turner Broadcasting and Google, and that she lived in San Francisco. She also said that Twitter was still her favorite platform.⁠[15][1]

An Adweek article of September 29, 2020 states that earlier that year Zebra IQ had pivoted toward community, content and commerce to help creators grow their audiences and revenue, because she saw a gap between creators and the tools available to monetize their work; the company had newly released its annual 2020 State of Gen Z Report, covering up-and-coming social platforms that serve as “third spaces” for Gen Z, the role of fashion and sports in Gen Z’s lives, the changing influencer landscape and how creators monetize their audiences. The article describes her as a 23-year-old venture capitalist and the co-founder and chief executive of Zebra IQ.⁠[13]

On October 19, 2020 Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry published an episode of the a16z Podcast, “Designing for, Marketing to, and Partnering with Gen Z,” a conversation between her and the firm’s general partner Connie Chan; the episode page describes her as the 23-year-old chief executive of Zebra IQ, a company that helps brands understand Gen Z consumers and helps Gen Z creators turn their content into businesses. On the show she said: “I barely even give people my number, let alone companies my number.”⁠[16]

On October 21, 2021 Probably Nothing, an NFT podcast she co-hosts with Alexis Ohanian, launched with weekly episodes of NFT news, deep dives and interviews with industry figures, available on AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry, SpotifySpotifySpotify is an audio streaming subscription service offering on-demand music, podcasts, and audiobooks through a free ad-supported service and a paid Premium subscription. Its parent company, Spotify Technology S.A., is incorporated in Luxembourg, has its principal operations in Stockholm, Sweden, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker SPOT). It helped move the recorded-music business from buying and owning music to on-demand streaming and is one of the largest audio streaming subscription services by users.Open the full entry and itsprobablynothing.xyz. Tubefilter writes that the show grew out of months of conversations about NFTs between the two in Twitter direct messages; it describes her as the founder of the creator startup Islands, which lets creators sell paid memberships to superfans, 24 years old, an active NFT collector and a crypto enthusiast since 2017, and lists announced guests including Bobby Hundreds, PlayboyPlayboy, Inc.Playboy, Inc. is a publicly traded American consumer brand and licensing company that owns brands including Playboy magazine and the Rabbit Head Design, and operates the lingerie brand Honey Birdette.Open the full entry chief marketing officer Rachel Webber, TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry president Keith Grossman, YouTuber Michelle Phan, Wengie and Christie’s NFT lead Noah Davis.⁠[5]

The show’s Apple Podcasts page introduces her as founder and chief executive of Islands; it lists the first episode, “Ep. 1: Introducing Probably Nothing,” on October 21, 2021 and the latest, episode 12, “Best of Season 1,” on February 23, 2022.⁠[17]

Tubefilter wrote on November 30, 2021 that Islands, an NFT startup she founded in 2020 with Nikhil Srinivasan, had raised $3.5 million in a round led by Seven Seven Six, the venture firm of Alexis Ohanian, marking the company’s official debut. Islands aimed to make NFTs mainstream: its website onboards newcomers, improves the display of digital wallets and supports trading and minting NFTs, with communities built on Discord servers; she said the company had no plans to issue its own token. The article gives her age as 25 and states that she and Srinivasan had earlier co-founded Zebra IQ, whose clients included Snapchat and Levi’s, and that Srinivasan’s 2014 startup Distributed Systems was sold to CoinbaseCoinbaseCoinbase is a U.S. operator of crypto asset trading platforms, founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, whose listed parent is Coinbase Global, Inc.; it went public through a direct listing on Nasdaq (ticker COIN) in April 2021 and joined the S&P 500 in May 2025. It provides crypto trading, custody, staking, and stablecoin-related services, launched USDC with Circle, develops the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, and acquired the crypto options exchange Deribit in 2025; its venture investing operates as Coinbase Ventures.Open the full entry in 2018.⁠[6]

The July 2024 TechCrunch article states that she began working on noplace in the second half of 2023, with a remotely distributed, full-time team of seven building it; an invite-only beta launched late that year and, she said, “accidentally went viral” because of its profile color customization; the team gave invite codes to early adopters, including some K-pop fans.⁠[10]

The app was originally named nospace and was renamed noplace after the company received a cease-and-desist letter.⁠[18][4]

Sherwood News writes that about 500,000 people joined the pre-launch waitlist earlier in 2024, after a wave of viral TikToks about the app.⁠[18]

On July 3, 2024 noplace left invite-only mode and quickly reached No. 1 on the App Store. It is a text-based social app with Myspace-style customizable profiles on which users share what they are doing, what they are watching or listening to and their interests; profiles carry “stars,” tags for interests such as astrology signs, personality types, hobbies and fandoms, and a “top 10 friends” section. The app has two reverse-chronological feeds, one for friends and one global; it did not support photos or videos, and profiles could not be made private. Users under 18 see a more moderated feed, and the company built an internal moderation dashboard and has a team focused on safety; AI is used for suggestions and summaries rather than to rank the feed. The iOS app is free, there is a read-only web version, and monetization had not yet begun.⁠[10]

TechCrunch lists investors including Alexis Ohanian’s 776 and Forerunner Ventures; the PitchBookPitchBookPitchBook is a private capital market data, research and software company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded by John Gabbert in 2007, it was fully acquired by Morningstar in 2016 at a valuation of $225 million and operates as a Morningstar subsidiary. The PitchBook segment’s revenue was $671.8 million in 2025.Open the full entry figures given in the article are a $15 million Series A1 round at a $75 million pre-money valuation, bringing total funding to more than $19 million. Sherwood News puts the funding raised at about $19 million; her Intro profile gives $19.5 million.⁠[10][18][9]

TechCrunch describes her as the company’s founder and chief executive, based in Tokyo and San Francisco, who often shares analysis of consumer apps on X; she argues that social media has become mostly “media,” and that personalized content makes community harder to find.⁠[10]

A Sherwood News article of July 5, 2024 notes that she (“TZ”) is the first friend of every user, and compares noplace with social apps such as BeReal, Lapse and Peach that struggled to sustain their early hype.⁠[18]

In an Engadget article of July 11, 2024 she described herself as a “Gen Z founder,” said “I missed how social media used to be back in the day,” and said that people are “just chasing follower count versus being your true self.” New users are automatically friends with her, a nod to Myspace’s Tom Anderson; users earn levels and badges for actions such as writing on friends’ walls and interacting with posts, a gamification system she called intentionally “vague.” She said that about 20% of posts in the previous week had been questions and that noplace was becoming a social search engine with crowdsourced answers.⁠[4]

As of November 2026 the official website of Founders SchoolFounders SchoolFounders School is an entrepreneurship high school program opened by the Alpha School network in Manhattan, New York, covering grades 9 through 12, which welcomed its first students in September 2026. Students complete their academics in the morning with AI learning software and spend the rest of the day running their own companies under the guidance of entrepreneurs; the school has drawn attention for its promise to refund tuition if a student’s business does not reach $1 million in profit and for its $150,000 annual tuition.Open the full entry lists her among its mentors, with noplace as her affiliation.⁠[19]

Her page on Intro presents her as founder and chief executive of noplace and offers advice on positioning and viral narratives, trend and culture monetization, idea validation, consumer product and go-to-market strategy, growth, fundraising, community building, content strategy and founder or executive coaching, priced at $1,000 for a 15-minute video call and $5,000 a month for a strategy-advisor or founder-advisor subscription.⁠[9]

An Apple App Store editorial story, “These Apps Reinvent How We All Connect,” writes that after reviewing the social media landscape she found nothing for Gen Z or Gen Alpha that recreated the online experience of her own youth, and that she wants to help people form friendships based on interests rather than proximity, as she made some of her closest friends. She said: “I wanted people to just be able to find their people again, because that’s how I grew up on the internet.” The story states that users skew Gen Z and Gen Alpha and that many call the app the world’s biggest group chat; users can filter the feed by stars and search combinations of stars to find people with overlapping interests, the global feed shows who is online, profile themes can be saved and switched, and a post can receive an unlimited number of likes.⁠[20]

The Kara Goldin Show’s episode description names her one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 and the “world’s youngest VC”; the episode page also lists her among ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry’ top 10 Gen Z experts, Vanity FairVanity FairVanity Fair is a magazine and digital media brand owned by Condé Nast, covering politics, business, arts and culture, entertainment and fashion. The title traces back to Dress & Vanity Fair in 1913, ceased publication in 1936 and was relaunched in 1983; it has since built a historical digital archive and hosts events such as its Oscar party.Open the full entry’s Future Innovators and Adweek’s Young Influentials, as The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is a U.S. news publication founded in 1889, with a focus on business, finance and economics. It is published by Dow Jones, part of News Corp.Open the full entry’s youngest VC, and as having appeared on the cover of The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American morning daily newspaper published in New York City. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company.Open the full entry and The Wall Street Journal. Her SXSW 2018 speaker biography names her an Adweek Young Influential and one of TIME’s 30 Most Influential Teens.⁠[15][1][12]

A profile page of the Asian American Business Development Center dated March 14, 2022 lists her as a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree (Marketing & Advertising), an Adweek Young Influential, a Vanity Fair Future Innovator and a TIME Most Influential Teen; it also states that she was a board advisor to Otto Radio, later acquired by Ximalaya, and to Distributed Systems, later acquired by Coinbase, giving valuations of $3 billion and $8 billion respectively, and that she advises Fortune 500 brands.⁠[21]

Her age as given by different sources: 18 in the INSIDE article; 19 in TechCrunch in August 2016; 22 in Adweek in December 2018; in March 2020 she said on a podcast that she had recently turned 23, and Adweek in September 2020 and the a16z episode page in October 2020 also give 23; Tubefilter gives 24 in October 2021 and 25 in November 2021; the Asian American Business Development Center profile of March 14, 2022 gives 23.⁠[2][11][14][1][13][16][5][6][21]

On The Kara Goldin Show in March 2020 the host, Kara Goldin, remarked that she was “not a parent yet.”⁠[1]

On the a16z Podcast she said that she had converted a few Gen X friends to Gen Z-style texting, and that she watches many TikTok videos on topics such as videography and iPhone tricks.⁠[16]

Personal website: https://tiffanyzhong.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[22][23]

X: Public account: https://x.com/tzhongg (opens in a new window).⁠[12][1][23]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/tzhongg/ (opens in a new window).⁠[24][1]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tzhongg/ (opens in a new window).⁠[25]

Podcast “Probably Nothing” (co-hosted by her and Alexis Ohanian): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/probably-nothing/id1591462508 (opens in a new window).⁠[17]

Advisory profile on Intro: https://intro.co/tiffanyzhong (opens in a new window).⁠[9]

Product Hunt: Official website: https://www.producthunt.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[26]

Founders School: Official website: https://founders.school/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19]