Paperjam: Please, introduce yourself.
Meagan Loyst: I’m the founder and CEO of Gen Z VCs. I also lead social media at the edtech unicorn Classdojo (one of my former portfolio companies when I worked in VC), and I’m a creator with more than 275,000 followers and a public speaker advocating for the Gen Z perspective in technology and innovation on a global stage.
You created Gen Z VCs in 2020. What led you down this path?
It started from a tweet exploring the trends Gen Z investors were following. That led to more than 70 conversations with Gen Z investors that I met via Twitter and Linkedin, and then the first article I wrote coining the term Gen Z VCs: “Gen Z VCs weigh in: Top 4 trends we’re watching and our favourite companies.”
I then organised a Zoom call for around 30 of the Gen Z VCs I spoke with who wanted to connect with others, and then put together a Slack group for all of us shortly thereafter.
What I didn’t realise was that I had made the Slack public, so people could invite others. Our numbers just started growing after the people on that call had a great experience meeting others. Then, I did a post inviting more people to join and it just went viral. We went from around 30 young VCs to over 1,000 in about four days.
In a way, I was an accidental founder.
Overtime, founders wanted to join because investors were sharing dealflow, then founders started sharing hiring opportunities so operators joined and students wanted in on the action as well. It went from being a VC community to representing the future of the startup ecosystem.
Gen Z VCs wasn’t started becauseI felt a need to create it. It evolved from a natural need I didn’t know I was solving at the time I wrote my article. In a way, I was an accidental founder. The community started growing almost by accident at the outset, but it has been built and grown with intention ever since.
Where is Gen Z VCs today?
We’re at more than 30,000 members. We’ve done events all over the world, from global summits for 3,000 people to local events. We’ve facilitated more than 10,000 job applications into startups and VCs, educated more than 1,300 people through our VC 101 course, saved founders more than $8m on their startup stack and more.
The biggest impact is the intangible friendships and connections that come out of the community every day--people getting their first users, meeting their co-founders and beyond. It’s those stories I hear that make me the most proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish.
What’s your mission with Gen Z VCs now?
We want to make the world of VC and entrepreneurship more accessible and transparent for the next generation. That starts with resources, education and awareness.
What about your personal goals?
It’s been interesting to watch my goals evolve and change over the past five years. I’ve been able to turn my passion for writing into a monthly column for The Times, interviewing incredible founders in the past year.
If you listen to your users and build products that make their lives easier, growth through word-of-mouth becomes easier.
My personal goal is to keep leaning into my strengths and create opportunities I wouldn’t have thought were possible.
How do you manage your time across all your roles?
The honest answer is: poorly! [laughs]. It’s something I’m always working on. I do try to batch schedule meetings when I’m travelling to work, which helps me accomplish a lot in a shorter amount of time. I stay grounded by making time for my friends and family and doing things I enjoy, be it going to a ball in Oxford or just going for a walk to clear my head.
What’s the secret to building and maintaining engagement?
If you listen to your users and build products that make their lives easier (community and access to like-minded people being one of those things), growth through word-of-mouth becomes easier.
We’ve never done paid advertising and all our press mentions and growth have been entirely organic, which I’m really proud of.
At Nexus, you’ll speak about tech’s impact on society. Why is this topic important?
Think about how quickly tech is evolving and genuinely changing the way we interact and behave. On the one hand, it’s creating monetisation opportunities for people in a whole new way and becoming an economic equaliser (especially for women, who we think of as traditional “influencers”). On the other hand, it can be extremely damaging to your mental health, no matter your age--but especially for young people, depending on when they get access to it.
Unless you’re properly educated on how to cut through the noise, it can be hard to decipher what’s true and what’s not.
With every new platform or technology there are opportunities and risks.
It’s very important to have discussions on how tech is at the centre and pulling the strings behind the scenes for how we all behave and interact with each other.
What worries you most today about misinformation?
Lies can spread at the same rate as truth today, and unless you’re properly educated on how to cut through the noise, it can be hard to decipher what’s true and what’s not. It’s important to develop a curated feed of people and organisations you trust from different industries to serve as your source of truth. I’m a big believer in the future of curation.
What’s the biggest misconception people have about Gen Z?
I’m often tapped as a voice representing young people in our industry because of my vantage point leading the Gen Z VCs community. A big misconception is that you can take the behaviours and desires of young people in tech and apply them tothe masses. When Web3 was going crazy in 2022, the tech and VC world went bonkers over NFTs and praised Gen Z’s involvement.
But if you looked at the comment sections on Tiktok, Gen Zers were telling a very different story, changing their profile pictures to NFTs’ people had bought and making fun of the whole thing. It’s really important to consider the economic context of our generation and how that shapes our decisions, no matter the sector.
What accomplishment means the most to you?
I recently graduated from my master’s programme at the University of Oxford and I’m really proud of that. My grandparents were immigrants who moved from Italy to the US to create a better life for their children. My grandmother, in particular, had to sacrifice her education to make that happen. I feel like I’m living her wildest dreams by getting to go back to school, get my master’s and do all the things I’m doing. It’s a privilege and I never take it for granted.
Who is Meagan Loyst?
Date of birth: 5 April 1997
Place of birth: New York, US
Biography: Meagan Loyst is the founder and CEO of Gen Z VCs, a global community of over 30,000 young investors, founders and operators. Present in 80 countries, Gen Z VCs is now a larger movement to make the world of startups and venture capital more accessible to a new generation. Loyst began her career in venture capital at General Atlantic and Lerer Hippeau, becoming the youngest investor on both teams. In 2020, she launched Gen Z VCs to make the startup and VC world more accessible to her generation--a mission that has since grown into a global movement.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Boston College and graduated from from the University of Oxford with an MBA in March 2025. Loyst also leads social media strategy at the educational technology unicorn Classdojo and shares insights on tech and Gen Z culture with over 275,000 followers online. She was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2022.
Meagan Loyst, founder and CEO of Gen Z VCs, will be at Nexus Luxembourg on 17 and 18 June 2025. Check out the full programme here.
This article was written for the Nexus 2025 issue of Paperjam magazine, published on 12 June. The content is produced exclusively for the magazine. It is published on the site to contribute to the full Paperjam archive. Click this link to subscribe to the magazine.
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