The Snapchat Mafia

ivelina

Published

October 10, 2024

In our weekly tech mafia series we cover the biggest tech mafias in Silicon Valley and beyond, taking a closer look at what companies former employees have started, how much money they’ve raised, and who their investors are.

Before we dive in, if you're a founder at the beginning stages of your startup, make sure to get our resource on the top 100 accelerators. It has all the info on investment details, application links, location, and more.

What is a tech mafia group?‍

Disruptive startups like PayPal have produced a line of ex employees who go on to start their own influential startups. For example, employees who worked at PayPal went on to found companies like LinkedIn and YouTube.

The Snapchat Mafia

Although the company behind Snapchat is called Snap, so technically it should be the "Snap Mafia," we thought it'd be more fun to dub it the "Snapchat Mafia" since everyone knows this name already!

What we love about this tech mafia group is that it has the most rising stars (up-and-coming companies) from all the other tech mafia groups we've covered so far. It seems that in recent years, a lot of founders have come through from this group.

First thing's first, an overview of the stats.

Quick stats:

Total number of companies founded: 50
Total amount of money raised: $970 million

Fun facts about Snapchat: Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel hooked up with Taylor Swift, Snapchat was originally called Picaboo, Snapchat’s mascot is named Ghostface Chilla.

Companies covered:

Verishop
Scale AI
Geenee
TerraTrue
Alloy Automation
Product Science
OK Play
pocket.watch
InfStones
Sunstone Credit
Infinitus Systems‍
Passes
Vendorflow
Well
Traveled
Haystack
HeyGen
Datatron
Zitti
Whym
Single
Origin
Primitives
Astariamayk
Modyfi
Meemo
Home From College
Spatial Labs
LunaSec
ThreatKey
DreamTeamOS
Talentdrop
Arch
Voices
Rill Data
Toonstar
Waffle Journal

Verishop

Founder: Imran Khan
Snap Role: Chief Strategy Officer
Capital Raised: $70M
Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners
Stage: Series B

Verishop is a premium lifestyle destination for everyday luxury in fashion, beauty, home and more.

Scale AI

Founder: Lucy Guo
Snap Role: Product Designer
Capital Raised: $602.6M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Series E

Scale accelerates the development of AI applications by helping machine learning teams generate ground truth data.

Geenee

Founder: Cory Grenier, Nancy Yang
Snap Role: Director of Sales & Marketing, GTM, Accounting Manager
Capital Raised: $22.4M
Investors: IDI Group
Stage: Seed

Geenee is an AI-based, 3D Internet creator tool and infrastructure platform transforming how people communicate, transact, and interact.

TerraTrue

Founder: Chris Handman, Jad Boutros
Snap Role: General Counsel, Chief Security Officer
Capital Raised: $19.5M
Investors: 3L Capital
Stage: Series A

TerraTrue is a privacy platform integrating seamlessly with product development. Founded by ex-Snap execs, it offers intelligent tools to tackle privacy challenges and accelerate execution.

DoltHub

Founders: Timothy Sehn, Aaron Son, Brian Hendriks
Snap Role: Senior Vice President, Engineering, Software Developer, Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $21M
Investors: Alpha Edison
Stage: Series A

DoltHub is a software company that builds an open-source database called Dolt, a SQL database with native Git versioning.

Alloy Automation

Founder: Sara Du
Snap Role: Engineer
Capital Raised: $25M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Series A

Alloy Automation is the control panel for ecommerce brands to organize data and automate actions across 150+ apps.

Sara Du is the CEO & co-founder of Alloy, a Series A iPaaS platform. She manages APIs and develops workflow automation software.

Market

Founders: Sean Friedland, Chris Lorenz, Daniel Druger, James Borow
Snap Role: Counsel & Strategic Partnerships, Product Manager, Global Head of Revenue, Global Director
Capital Raised: $44.6M
Investors: Upfront Ventures
Stage: Series A

A platform to increase eCommerce sales with AI models built for your business.

Product Science

Founders: David Liberman, Masha Liberman
Snap Role: Director, Senior Manager
Capital Raised: $19M
Investors: Slow Ventures
Stage: Seed

Product Science improves mobile app metrics and performance by offering insights into key performance issues that affect user experience. It uses AI to analyze code and runtime data, efficiently providing developers with unique insights through data visualizations. Integrated tools and plugins to include video recordings and performance traces, giving a comprehensive view of app behavior.

Infinitus Systems

Founder: Shyam Rajagopalan
Snap Role: Security Engineer
Capital Raised: $51.4M
Investors: Google Ventures
Stage: Series B

Infinitus is a startup company that develops voice robotic process automation tools for the health care industry.

OK Play

Founder: Ken Chung
Snap Role: Creative Camera, Core Product Engineering
Capital Raised: $9.5M
Investors: Forerunner Ventures
Stage: Series A

OK is a company that helps families establish a day-to-day practice of bonding and sharing with an app that sparks the creation, conversation, and connection between parents and their children.

pocket.watch

Founder: Chris M. Williams
Snap Role: Advisor to Yellow Accelerator
Capital Raised: $21M
Investors: Greycroft
Stage: Series B

Pocket.watch is a new studio creating global franchises from the YouTube stars and characters loved by Generation Alpha.

Chris is the founder & CEO of pocket.watch, a trailblazing studio for kids' content and lifestyle products. With 20 years of online video expertise, he turns YouTube stars into global franchises.

InfStones

Founder: Emily Xu
Snap Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $110.2M
Investors: GGV Capital
Stage: Series C

InfStones provides decentralized blockchain infrastructure service on one integrated platform.

Sunstone Credit

Founder: Sumbul Alvi
Snap Role: Senior Software Engineer (Backend, DevOps, Tooling)
Capital Raised: $20M
Investors: Early Light Ventures
Stage: Series A

Sunstone Credit is revolutionizing solar access for small and medium businesses (SMBs). Through cutting-edge technology and partnerships, they offer SMBs simplified and affordable solar loans, helping them save costs and reduce their carbon footprint.

Rising Stars

Arch

Founder: Himanshu Sahay
Snap Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $2.8M
Investors: Global Founders Capital
Stage: Seed

Arch is a financial technology company that offers credit to alternative asset owners.

Himanshu Sahay is the co-founder & CTO at Arch. He's known for his contributions to popular Android apps like Tinder and Bird, as well as his leadership at Snap.

Voices

Founder: Alex Bystrov
Snap Role: Art Director, Product Manager
Capital Raised: $2M
Investors: Thiel Capital
Stage: Seed

Voices is a live video streaming platform that allows creators to monetize their work through donations and subscriptions.

Rill Data

Founder: Michael E. Driscoll
Snap Role: General Manager, Metamarkets
Capital Raised: $12M
Investors: True Ventures
Stage: Seed

Rill Data is a simple alternative to complex BI stacks—the fastest, easiest path from data to metrics dashboards.

Michael E. Driscoll is the CEO of Rill Data, founder of Metamarkets (acquired by Snap), and an investor at DCVC.

Toonstar

Founder: John Attanasio
Snap Role: Yellow '18
Capital Raised: $3M
Investors: Founders Fund
Stage: Seed

The nextgen animation network made for a mobile world.

John Attanasio is the CEO and co-founder of Toonstar, an expert in media and technology with a mission to revolutionize Web3 entertainment and empower creators worldwide.

Waffle Journal

Founder: Satoru Sasozaki
Snap Role: Snap's Yellow Accelerator Fellow
Capital Raised: $2.5M
Investors: Snap
Stage: Pre-Seed

Waffle is a mental wellness company with the mission to help people foster strong bonds with loved ones through our group journaling app, eliminating loneliness and social isolation.

Astaria

Founder: Justin Bram
Snap Role: Program Associate @ Yellow Accelerator
Capital Raised: $8M
Investors: True Ventures
Stage: Seed

Astaria is an NFT lending platform unlocking instant liquidity.

mayk

Founder: Akiva Bamberger
Snap Role: Software Engineer, Spectacles
Capital Raised: $4M
Investors: Greycroft
Stage: Seed

mayk is the MidJourney for songs enabling anyone to have a singing AI voice and mayk UGC songs for social media and games.

Akiva Bamberger the founder and CEO of mayk is a promoter of human connection and creativity through technology.

Modyfi

Founder: Joseph Burfitt
Snap Role: Group Product Manager
Capital Raised: $9.1M
Investors: General Catalyst
Stage: Seed

A platform for AI-native design, powerful creative tools, and real-time collaboration.

Datatron

Founder: Harish Doddi
Snap Role: Engineering Leader
Capital Raised: $12.1M
Investors: Mass Challenge
Stage: Seed

Datatron provides a SuperBowl-proven MLOps platform for all AI/ML models in production.

Zitti

Founder: Dante DiCicco
Snap Role: Senior Manager, Global Commercial Expansion
Capital Raised: $7.5M
Investors: Serena Ventures
Stage: Seed

Zitti is a payment and credit platform built for food industry management and vendors.

Dante is the founder and CEO of Zitti, aiming to empower smaller restaurants in the food industry. With experience in leadership and investing, he brings expertise from roles at Snap and BlackRock.

Meemo

Founder: Wisam Dakka, André Madeira, Ranveer Kunal, Robson Araujo
Snap Role: Wizard, Director of Engineering, Software Engineers
Capital Raised: $10M
Investors: Greycroft
Stage: Seed

Meemo is an AI-powered social finance app that lets users receive personal rewards based on recent activity and transfer money to friends.

Home From College

Founder: Julia Haber
Snap Role: Sales Team
Capital Raised: $1.5M
Investors: Pentas Ventures
Stage: Pre-Seed

HFC is the professional development platform built specifically for career starters and young professionals.

Spatial Labs

Founder: Iddris Sandu
Snap Role: Consultant
Capital Raised: $14M
Investors: Blockchain Capital
Stage: Seed

A leading hardware-software infrastructure company shaping the future of consumer experience and connectivity between brands.

LunaSec

Founder: Free Wortley
Snap Role: Security Engineer
Capital Raised: $1.7M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed

LunaSec - Security & Compliance SDKs to stop data leaks in your software. B

ThreatKey

Founder: Carlos Beltran, Jonathan Haas
Snap Role: Security Engineer & Technical Lead, Security Engineer
Capital Raised: $4M
Investors: Gradient Ventures
Stage: Seed

ThreatKey provides security solutions for SaaS and Cloud applications.

DreamTeamOS

Founder: Brent Barkman
Snap Role: Software Engineering Manager
Capital Raised: $5M
Investors: Bonfire Ventures
Stage: Seed

DreamTeamOS builds a modern project management for builder teams.

Talentdrop

Founders: Janelle Tiulentino, Madeleine Nguyen
Snap Role: Software Engineer, Recruiting Manager, G&A
Capital Raised: $2.1M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Pre-Seed

Maddy and Janelle, experienced in tech companies like Instacart and Snapchat, believe personal connections and network referrals are key to successful hiring, and they're creating tools to make it easier.

Whym

Founders: Kelly Nyland, Rhenee Bartlett
Snap Role: Head of GTM, Head of Snapchat Spectacles Event Marketing & Partnerships
Capital Raised: $8.6M
Investors: Sequoia Capital
Stage: Seed

Whym, a conversational commerce startup founded by former Snap employees, simplifies online shopping by enabling users to shop on mobile devices without lengthy checkout forms or manual payment entry.

Single Origin

Founder: Xiaodong Wang
Snap Role: Engineering Lead
Capital Raised: $3.7M
Investors: Basis Set Ventures
Stage: Seed

Single Origin is the semantic platform to organize, optimize, and share queries across your organization. With Single Origin, you reduce the complexity of your data assets and simplify thousands of queries with ease.

Primitives

Founder: David Gabeau
Snap Role: Software QA Engineer
Capital Raised: $4M
Investors: Redpoint
Stage: Seed

Primitives is a web3 social application.

The founder David Gabeau has worked in LFYT and Snapchat before starting primitives and has interests in social, networks, and messaging.

Haystack

Founder: Haibo Zhao
Snap Role: Tech Lead
Capital Raised: $9.2M
Investors: BoxGroup
Stage: Seed

Haystack is an employee experience platform that connects the company's communication, knowledge, and people to a single platform.

HeyGen

Founder: Joshua Xu
Snap Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $9M
Investors: Sequoia China
Stage: Seed

A generative AI video platform with customizable AI avatars, right from your browser.

Well Traveled

Founder: Samantha (Frampton) Patil
Snap Role: International Marketing
Capital Raised: $1.8M
Investors: Goodwater Capital
Stage: Pre-Seed

Well Traveled offers trip advice and travel booking services.

Samantha Patil is the founder and CEO of Well Traveled, a platform for travelers, foodies, and adventure seekers. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, listening to audio books, running, and practicing yoga.