Gen Z VCs Founder Meagan Loyst on Building A Global Community of Investors | Seed To Harvest Ep29

Hello everyone and welcome back to Seed to Harvest. For those of you that are new here, my name is Paige Doherty. I'm a founding partner behind Genius Ventures and wrote a children's book about venture called Seed to Harvest. Today on the pod, I'm super excited to be bringing on my dear friend Megan Loist. Megan founded Gen Z VCs. She's also known as the Gen Z VC Queen, um, which is a global community centered around empowering the next generation of leaders in venture. And she's grown the community since starting it in November of 2020. to more than 17,000 members and has hosted events. So I'm excited to dig in. And then she's also the young investor at LayerHippo and has worked with over 12 portfolio companies there. Megan, welcome and thanks so much for taking the time. Thank you.

Thanks for having me. It's so hard to like, I want to like give all the love back to you and be like, this is how amazing Paige is, but everyone already knows who you are. So thanks for having me. And it's like, it's a very full circle moment, of course, cuz you were the first person I talked to when I did the Gen Z VCs interviews before the community started. As you well know, I started in venture in September of 2020 and I had like 50 followers on Twitter at the time. I'd never tweeted before. And my head of comms sent me like a couple, like a very small handful of people. They're like, these people are killing it on Twitter. If you wanna do well on Twitter, like this is who you have to follow. With Paige being one of the people. So I've been looking up to Paige ever since I started, and it's very full circle to be on the podcast today.

Aw, the feeling is so mutual. I think you're talking about Natalie Sportelli, right?

Yes, Natalie.

Exactly. Yeah, she's great. Yeah, so I would love for you to, to kind of go into the origin story of what Gen Z VC started. I believe it was, was it a Business Insider article that it kind of started as, or was it you interviewing people directly?

It was me interviewing people directly. So it actually started from like a, it was an idea at 2:00 AM that I had, and then a tweet, and then an article that I wrote. The, it, it really stemmed from honestly just being lonely. I started investing height of the pandemic in VC. I was living with my parents at the time, and your job as a young person is to like be out in the world meeting people and finding deals. And I was living in my parents' attic, you know, like it was It was a very different and weird time to be investing. And also I was only one year out of school. Like I didn't have a huge network of founders that I should be reaching out to or operators. Like I really had to be super creative. The one thing that I did have going for me was I was the youngest person on the team by like a factor of a decade. And all the Gen Z-esque type of companies that we'd look at, I would be the target customer. So they'd be like, oh, like what are your thoughts on this company? Like would you use it, et cetera? And I was like, There have to be other token Gen Z people at other funds, and I just don't know them. So I, I tweeted about it. I was like, hey, like any investors born after 1996 investing in Gen Z companies? If so, who are you? What are the trends that you're following? I'd love to meet you and maybe write an article. The tweet popped up. I ended up like talking to 71 young investors all over the world, yourself included, and wrote this article, Gen ZBCs. About Gen Z VCs, essentially. I coined the term Gen Z VCs, so people didn't even realize that Gen Zers were old enough to be doing investing.

I remember all the reactions to your tweets was like, I thought these people were in like middle school still. And I was like, nope, we're here.

It's, it's, it's crazy how it spiraled. And then I launched the community on the back heels of that after just talking to everyone, like the 71 investors all over the world. And it was the same question after every interview was like, Hey, like, who else are you meeting? I also just started in venture. I also have no friends. Like, what if we all got together? I was like, great, I'll put together a Zoom call. Like, I love, I love dinner parties and like thinking, thinking through like who sits next to who, who would get along, who's spending time in the same spaces. And community building is basically just that at a like much larger scale. And the first Gen ZBC's event effectively was like a group of 30 people that I knew.

Mm-hmm.

Personally, just through these calls, but they didn't know one another. And so that then launched the community. We went from 30 people to 1,000 in a week. That was when Business Insider first wrote about us. And now we've had probably, probably close to 60 to 100, like, press articles about Gen Z VCs and sort of the movement that we've started, which has been like the biggest honor of my life just to see like the impact of all the things that we're doing. And also. I think the most important thing is flipping that narrative around what it means to be an investor, that you don't need 5 to 10 years of operating experience, and that the Gen Z perspective around the table is actually a very important one, especially when you think about backing and investing in companies that are building, you know, products and services for you.

That was definitely a theme that we have talked at length about is the importance of perspective as a young person in venture. I think when we were both getting started, it was a bit nerve-wracking for us to speak up when there's like partners with years of experience and you're like, actually, like my friends don't think that's cool. Like, I think that like this is actually gonna be the future. And I would love to touch on maybe what were some of the core trends that came out of that initial interview with 71 young investors? And then how have you seen those grow over the past 2 years? 'Cause now you've seen, had some time to like watch those hypotheses play out over time.

Yeah, I think probably one of the, the most obvious ones was just the interest in the creator economy. Mm-hmm. That first year. That was the top trend in 2020. And it makes a ton of sense, right? Because you look at our, you look at our country and 30% of kids in America wanna become YouTubers one day. That makes sense because you see the path of, you know, Ryan Kaji and what he's done with his YouTube channel and Charli D'Amelio and Addison Rae on TikTok, right? Like, like stars being minted through creating and self-expression. And I think also our generation is incredibly entrepreneurial.

Mm-hmm.

And I think being a creator, whether it's full-time, part-time, or just for fun, gives you that path and opportunity. And so I think it's very natural for Gen Z investors who are spending hours upon hours on TikTok, seeing this happen in real time to be like, yes, this is the future because I wanna be doing this. All my friends are spending time here and creators are powering purchasing and influence and so much more, right? And it's gonna continue to be a big theme. And I think fast forward to now, what's interesting is last year when we, when we sort of like, I redid the survey just to see like what had changed over the past year. And fintech was the top trend versus the prior copy. Really?

Was that like more in DeFi and crypto or was it fintech broadly?

Fintech broadly. But I think like, I think people of course consider crypto to be like under that umbrella in some way, shape, or form. Yeah. And I think that's a large part of why. Especially cuz it was like the peak of NFT craziness last year. And also just, I think you look at what's happening in Web3 and so much of the power of Web3 is actually community, which I think is again, like a very inherent part of what it means to be Gen Z. Look at all of the best sort of like Gen Z consumer companies, for example. They're all built off of organic communities and sort of self-empowerment.

Mm-hmm.

And I think identity too. And I think that's a big part of What's magical about Web3 and so many Web3 companies is sort of being a part of these great communities and having ownership over the things that you're doing. So I feel like that's a very, like, that mindset really resonates with me as someone who's Gen Z, and I think for a lot of other people in our generation, but also like fintech becoming embedded into our everyday lives in a lot of ways too, whether it's like group spending, like, you know, like I think there's like a lot of things that like we are thinking about as consumers that flood into the tech that we wanna be using, which is, which is cool. So it, it made a lot of sense.

Yeah.

It wasn't a huge surprise to see that. I haven't done the survey. I haven't relaunched the survey this year. Maybe I will.

I don't know. I feel like it'd be cool to have it as an ongoing survey. I feel like it's, it's interesting to see how the trends progress in the same demographic over time.

I honestly might just do it on Twitter.

Yeah, do it.

It's so funny.

I feel like so many of both like you and I have had things where it's like, oh, it's like a book or like a 17,000-person community that have stemmed from literally us like 2:00 AM being like, huh, this is interesting. Then tweeting and people are like, it's like almost getting blown outta the internet with like a fire hose of demand. And then you're like, oh, okay, I guess, I guess we're doing this. So I'm curious, as, as you've gone through that transition from, you know, kind of happening upon building this community of Gen Z investors, can you talk to me about some of your favorite parts of the journey and maybe some of the things that you really wanted to do when you were younger that you were able to do because you built this community?

Yeah. Uh, favorite parts of the journey. I mean, I think it's like the everyday magical moments that sort of happen because of the community and the initiatives that we do. So people have found their co-founders in Gens VC. They've gotten jobs because of Gens VCs. We have a bunch of different initiatives that we do. So we have a founder marketplace that helps founders and every founder, right? Like not just founders that have raised venture money to be able to save money on their startup stack. Super meaningful, especially for founders who are just getting started and maybe don't have the traditional network where they can have a bunch of people to rely on. So that's great for founders. Our mentorship program has been great because we've gotten so many university students involved in venture for the first time where like, you know, I think as a, when I was in college and I graduated in 2019 from BC, I'm actually speaking at their entrepreneurship conference. I'm keynoting it in the fall, which is so crazy for me. But like when I was in college, it was banking, consulting, or accounting. Those were your options. Everything else was just not it. And that's, I think, changing in real time for a lot of people. But step one is education. And so that's why I think the mentorship program is so important. And then other things, right? Like we have a job board that helps connect people to jobs in venture and tech.

Is that run through Pallet?

It is run through Pallet, a Behind Genius Ventures portfolio company, I believe. So yeah, love, we were one of the first communities to go live on Pallet, which is awesome. And so all of the different initiatives that we do just create these magical moments for people where like you're either learning about venture, but more importantly, seeing what's possible for yourself, whether it's Okay, I wanna become an operator because I've heard from XYZ who was an operator first and did. So I would say it's the magical moments, but also just like the friendships like that from that initial group of like 30 people on that Zoom call. Like I've, many of those people are like my absolute best friends now, like people that I get dinner with all the time. And I think junior investors and like VC in general has this notion for being transactional in nature, which I hate and try to disprove with like everything that I do with Gen Z VCs. Because it's like, like I've made the absolute best of friends through, through venture, right? And it's like, not because we're sharing deals with each other on a monthly call, right? It's like we're just, we're going through life together and like I've been able to make like just incredible friends and we just do venture differently than I think people did a decade ago, which is, which is really beautiful. So I would say like it's the friendships, it's the impact. I think that those have been the most special things for me on the Gen Z side.

That's awesome. I think one of the interesting opportunities and challenges of running a large community is how you manage your time. And I think like this is something that I've experienced, but like being very open on the internet, oftentimes like people reach out to you that you haven't like met before and be like super friendly. And, and I think that that can get quite overwhelming as you run a larger and larger community. So I'm curious, as the community grew, how did you think about scaling your time while keeping those relationships? It's really strong.

Yeah, it's, it's something that I still struggle with and I'm still working towards. Like I have 800+ unread texts right now and I don't, I'm not even gonna talk about my Twitter DMs or my, like, I always, I always tell people, I'm like, I'm contractually obligated to answer my emails. Send me an email and I will respond. Nothing else is guaranteed. And it's largely because like, I'm, I, I'm like the queen of disaster town. Like my life is always just kind of a mess cuz there's so much going on and that just means that I'm kind of always on. I mean, all the Gen Z VC stuff that I do, right? It's my side hustle. My full-time job is investing at LayerHippo. And Gen Z VCs is like what I'll do from like, you know, 11:00 PM to 2:00 AM on weeknights and every weekend all the time. Like our, our mentorship program, we do each individual match by hand.

Dang.

And so it's really time consuming. It's taken like 2 months and like every weekend, uh, with like a, a team of friends that I'm doing it with. So it, it really is hard to, I think, find, find that balance, but also The way that I think about it is I'm, I'm 25 years old and I have very little like real responsibility in my life. And so this is the perfect time to be pouring myself into anything and everything that I'm insanely passionate about. And luckily that is Gen Z VCs, right? And so if I didn't love it, I wouldn't do it. But it's, it's super fun for me and it's also created a bunch of amazing and incredible opportunities, right? Like I went from. Again, I had 50 followers on Twitter in 2020. Now I have almost 40,000 followers on Twitter.

You've done some like crazy, like press stuff too. I remember we were talking about that last time I was in New York and I was like, so I was like, doing live TV is so nerve-wracking cuz you're just like, it's, well, I guess you were in studio, right? For that? I was.

Yep. Yeah. The, yeah, I've been on Bloomberg I think 3 times now and I was on Fox Business and I think The in-studio experience is definitely my favorite versus doing it on Zoom, but I found that I really like it. I actually used to be terrified of public speaking. I was valedictorian of my high school and I remember I had to give a speech to 2,000 people. Like I went to like a giant high school on Long Island.

Wait, what was your theme for your valedictorian speech?

We, I didn't really have a theme. I think it was more so like disproving the notion that like there's always the, like, you know, high school, it's the best years of your life. Enjoy it.

Kind of just, I am not peaking in high school.

No. And also like, I was not popular in high school. I was like super nerdy and I was like an athlete, but like, I never felt like I had found like my people or like really myself. I was like, this can't be the best years of our lives. It's like, so just pumping people up for college, honestly. But it was terrifying. It was like so scary for me. I remember actually I like flubbed in my speech at the end and I was like, ooh, sorry. Like I would never do that now. But it was just so funny cuz now looking like fast forward, like I do a bunch of stuff on TV, even like this week I get a bunch of press inbound to my Twitter. I've spoken to, I think, 5 reporters on like Gen Z, TikTok, like what's going on in the world. I was on Bloomberg talking about the war in the, in the Ukraine and how like creators are taking a part in that, right? It's like crazy opportunities where like high school me would've like, would look at me now and be like, what happened? Like, who is this? What happened to her? But I think the biggest insight or what changed for me is like, I don't love that scripted, like, like version of like what it means to be speaking in front of people. I think I'm my best when I feel like I'm an absolute expert in XYZ thing that I'm talking about. And I can just leverage that expertise and experience and just speak from the heart and the brain as well. And so like all this stuff that I do now with press and speaking and It's all kind of off the cuff where like I have, I just feel like I'm a true thought expert where like it, you know, it's not like I can mess up because I misspoke, right? It's like I'm speaking my mind and speaking my thoughts and opinions on a space, which I think is, it's so important for young people to sort of use that muscle and express themselves and have opinions. 'Cause I think that's actually the biggest, I think the biggest mistake I see with young people in particular when they're doing thematic deep dives with investing. Or presenting to a partnership, you have to have opinions. That's why they hire you. It's not just to like, oh, this is what's happening in the world. It's like, this is what's happening in the world and this is what we should do. This is why I think this. So it's been a really good muscle to build both privately, like from an investor perspective, but also publicly in sort of building, building a brand, if you will.

Yeah. So I wanna dig a bit deeper into working at Layer Hippo because we've spent most of the time Speaking about Gen Z VCs and the community that you've made, and I would love if you could share, we were talking before the show about this, but I would love if you could share a bit more about your most recent investment and kind of like the interesting dynamics that were at play there. Totally.

So, so yeah, I think one of the, when you're a young investor or a Gen Z investor, and again, I'm, I'm 25 years old, I'm 3 years out of college, a lot of investing comes from relationships, especially at the partner level, right? It's like, oh, I worked with this person for 10+ years. They're an absolute rockstar. Like they're a blank check person for me. I think as a young person, you naturally have less of those just because you haven't been working for your entire life. You know, like we're 3 years post-college. Like I've only worked with so many people to sort of see that in real time. And so we recently invested in a company called Footprint, which is hopefully the last identity form that you'll ever fill out. It's a data privacy play and identity play. They're selling it to fintech companies and it's awesome. But I think more importantly, what's been really cool for me as an investor is being able to, like, for the first time in my life, sort of, you know, making that career bet, if you will, on a friend of mine, like someone who is a blank check founder for me, where I've sort of seen them grow from friend to founder in all the amazing ways. They just launched a self- Yesterday, raised $6 million. It was led by Index and Other Hippo invested. And just being able to sort of like see a friend of mine and be like an advisor, right? So like every hire that they closed, like I was the closer, like getting on the phone with them being like, you should join Footprint. They're amazing. This is what they're doing. Like they had a launch party last night in New York that I went to and got to like spend more time with the team in person because I've only met them remotely. And again, like they're all people who are my age, like Eli, who's the founder, Eli Walks, he's incredible. He's, I think, a year younger than me, but the smartest, like one of the smartest people that I know. Like he takes like data encryption courses for fun. Like he's been doing, like been so obsessed with this space for, for so many years. And also he's using the tech for good. Like he started this amazing initiative called Tech Fights DOBs where, you know, they're building this tech, which is amazing for fintech companies, but now they're also using it to help companies that are helping to protect women's privacy after the, you know, the DOBs. And so really great example of just leveraging your relationships and being able to like support the people that you really believe in, which is, I think, you know, I think that'll happen more and more as I get older, but the first time sort of seeing that in practice as a young investor who's, you know, still kind of like learning the ropes in a lot of ways, but being able to sort of like support my friend and like, just like watch him become, I feel like the founder he's always been destined to be.

Yeah.

And be like a part of that story along the way, which I think is the most fun part about being an investor. It's like investing in legendary companies where you are, you're like that, you're that guide, that coach, and help them power through this.

Well, it's like also before they're legends as well. Yeah. I was, I had coffee with one of my investors this morning and he was, he was talking about it and he was like, yeah, over my, you know, 30-year career, these relationships of, you know, the, the first person that I went up to at an event because I wasn't nervous to talk to anyone else, like Ended up being the person that was like sitting on the other side of this deal that we were desperately trying to win like 20 years after. And I feel like it's, it just comes with the passage of time that the people that you like meet and become friends with become legends in their own right, which, and I think like one of the most exciting things about investing for me, and it definitely sounds like for you, is watching the founders that we back and support become legends in their own right. I think that, yeah, that's been super cool. So you talked about dinner parties. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You talked about dinner parties early, earlier on in the podcast, and I wanted to ask if you, you mentioned you love hosting them, but if you're, if you're hosting a dream dinner party, who would be your dream guests? They can be historical, present, friends or figures. And then what would you serve and where would it be?

Oh gosh, that's so hard. I feel like I would, mm. I have, like, I mean, I'd love to meet Taylor Swift one day. I'm a dedicated Swiftie, but I think more importantly, like, she's sort of seen so many ebbs and flows in her career where like, you know, she's had to deal with rewriting her masters and people not believing that she, like, I think she's had such a, like, an amazing trajectory as an artist. You can't branch out of country into pop. Like, she's defied every odd throughout her entire life and I, I just think she's so cool too. Like, I think she's great. So I'd love to have Taylor Swift over for dinner at some point. Taylor, if you're listening, you're more than welcome to come hang. I think we both live in New York. And what would, where, where would I serve and where would it be? What would I serve? Oh God, I have no idea. I'm, I'm like a terrible chef, but I'm a great baker. So like maybe I would make some like really cute, I love, I love making macarons. So maybe we'd actually bake together instead of having dinner. And it would be, I love a themed party, so it'd probably maybe some like type of, some, some maybe would be like themes of her albums over time or something like, I don't know.

Wow.

Something really, really thoughtful where I could go like all out with the bells and whistles. And where it would be, I truly don't know. Maybe somewhere in New York, just cuz I think like New York is, is the center and it's home for me. I think it's home for her. So. Maybe New York. Not super specific, but I'm a, I'm a Swiftie for life. I'm a top 2% or 3% fan on Spotify. So she's iconic.

Well, as we're wrapping up, Megan, I wanted to thank you again for joining us today. I really appreciated it. For those of you that wanna follow Megan on Twitter, I'll drop her handle in the show notes and Any parting words of wisdom for our listeners before you hop off?

So I would say probably my biggest, and I, I, I harp on this a lot, like don't ever tell, don't let people tell you you're too young to do X, Y, or Z, or like to take your time. And like, if you're, if you know what you wanna do, go after it and do it now regardless of what people say. 'Cause you know yourself best and you know what you're capable of. So I think it's good, good advice for, for anyone who's young and underestimated just for I love that.

Well, thank you so much, Megan. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for tuning in today to Seed to Harvest. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe wherever your favorite podcast listening platform is. I'll be releasing new episodes weekly, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to let me know on Twitter. That's Paige Finn, Paige and then Finn with 3 N's. Thanks and see you again next week.