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Equity

Gen-Z is rewriting the rules of the Internet, and here's how startups should respond

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2372 Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Why the extra edition? Because Battery Ventures dropped an interesting report on Gen-Z and we wanted to talk about it. Alex got Courtney Chow, a vice president at Battery and one of the report's authors to chat about it. You can read the report itself here. This is what we got into: The fracturing of culture: Gen-Z is large, and very diverse. The trend away from monolithic cultural primacy that began years ago has accelerated with the generation, making culture itself more personal, and more distinct. For startups, this means branding will become a different challenge if they want to reach this demographic slice. Everything is short-form video: Given massive usage of TikTok by Gen-Z and the popularity of other platforms that feature short-form video, we were curious how smaller companies can compete with incumbents that already have a Reels strategy, if you will. Ethical capitalism: One of the most interesting areas of the Battery report was its notes on how entrepreneurial Gen-Z is, and how diverse they are. Gen-Z also has expectations around goods and services they purchase relating to the actions of the companies behind the sale. So, if you want to sell to Gen-Z, you might need to care about climate change, for example. Now, that's officially it for us this week. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and we'll catch up on Monday! For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website. Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more! Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpacked the numbers and the nuance behind the headlines.

0:18.0

My name is Alex and today we are bringing you a bonus episode.

0:21.0

On the show with us today is Courtney Chow, a vice president at Battery

0:24.4

Ventures who is focused on early and growth-stage consumer internet, software, and

0:28.4

FinTech investments. Courtney, hey, first of all, how are you doing?

0:32.2

I'm doing great, Alex. Thanks so much for having me.

0:34.3

I'm very excited to be here and talk about all things.

0:37.5

Gen Z.

0:38.5

I know, a generation that neither one of us are part of, but an important generation to understand understand and I want to start there because it's

0:44.8

rare that when I read a report from a venture capital firm it is not focused on venture flows,

0:51.2

valuations and so forth.

0:52.6

In this case, you guys actually sat down and produced a relatively lengthy report on a particular

0:56.8

generation.

0:57.8

So just to set the groundwork here a little bit, why this report and why this report right now?

1:03.4

Yeah, no, that's a really good question.

1:05.0

I'm happy to expand on that.

1:06.3

So I guess maybe just for context, you know, obviously I'm a battery

1:09.4

four-year-old firm, stage agnostic,

1:11.4

venture capital, private equity firm. We do everything from C to buy out. State Capital Private Equity Firm.

1:12.8

We do everything from C to buyout.

1:14.6

I sit on the consumer side of things

1:16.5

where we view really the consumer as our North Star.

...

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