Geneva App Gets More Funding
GenZ favorite is making chat more accessible with $21 million Series A
Hey Everyone,
I have an eye for startups in the Creator Economy. I’m not going to lie, if your startup doesn’t appeal to GenZ, you have a serious problem. This is because GenZ will moreover dictate the evolution of the Creator Economy.
While we can debate if Twitter can ever attract Creators, or if Substack chat has any viability I’m a huge fan of GenZ focused Geneva App. I’ve actually covered it before back in August.
Kaya Yurieff of The Information, seems to cover Geneva App as well. While some compare it to Slack or Discord, it’s not really that. It’s GenZ focused and mobile-native and feels a lot different.
While Substack thinks a chat is just a discussion thread, in reality it needs to be so much more!
New York based Geneva gets it. And while their Series A boost of $21 million isn’t much, given the importance of things like Facebook Groups or WhatsApp clubs, the app that does it better will become very important. Geneva’s chat rooms have a stack or suite of useful features including full-featured chat complete with @s, threaded replies, reactions, GIFs, attachments, polls, pins, and typing. It’s well designed for GenZ, though I doubt Substack writers (typically older) would be early adopters.
I’ve seen Newsletter Creators use Slack, FAcebook Groups, Discord and other chat apps and platform for their “communities” with mixed results. Sure if you have scale it can work out, but churn is also very high because the experience is not optimized. You need audio and a full suite of features to make it fun enough to stay.
GenZ Women as Trend Setters
I’m a huge believer in how younger women set trends for new apps. This where I place my trust in Geneva.
The Information said (sign up for its Creator Economy Newsletter btw): that Geneva and others—including SMS texting service Community—are attracting interest from investors who like this play on the creator economy.
On Monday, three-year-old startup, announced it closed $21 million in Series A extension funding led by cryptofund Multicoin Capital. Other crypto-focused investors are also backing the company, including Polygon Ventures, Dapper/Flow Ventures and Solana Ventures. Last month, The Information first reported the startup was in discussions to raise new funding.
The app has become popular with Gen Z women as well as creators who use it as a way to connect with fans. While I don’t see Geneva as necessarily related to the blockchain community, I do think it’s building rapport with a new kind of chat for evolving communities.
That they have Audio rooms is what you want to see, where I’m impressed by their product. This is sort of what you wish Subsack would be capable of after a few years of growing. Instead Substack’s app is a bare-boned as an RSS reader that’s almost nostalgic for its lack of real app features! It makes you wonder what Substack is itself spending its money on!
My huge concern with Substack’s audience is it seems to ignore younger demographics and GenZ audience. This is evident in the kind of categories that do well on substack and in its lack of younger Creators that resonate with Substack’s vibe. It’s a headscratcher for a Creator Economy startup. This is where smaller indie startups like Gumroad have a visible identity, in being playfully open like GenZ are.
This is not to say that it will be easy for Geneva, many such apps in its space have died.
Better groups and chat have to be part of the Creator Economy experience if we ever want to build a tribe and community at scale that is truly meaningful and not just some rants on a Newsletter comment section. We need immersion and peer-groups to be able to organize, mobilize and join social causes they truly resonate with and make a difference. Here you think of apps like Telegram, Signal or Discord that have been able to scale into interesting fields and use cases.
Slack became sustainable because Startups found it a useful way to do comms in a small company. How can a small startup like Geneva make its app useful? Snap would actually be a good acquisition candidate for Geneva, but Snap has its own financial concerns in the great Advertising slowdown.
Geneva is going to have to be really smart in 2023 and 2024 to grow on a lean and limited budget in a competitive space.
Discord was first chat for gamers, it doesn’t scale very well into group management to be honest unless audio rooms appeal to you. Geneva has to carve out a product-market fit that utilizes and showcases its strength. I’m not sure if they have found the sweet spot or low-hanging fruit quiet yet in 2022 and as such you dear reader have likely never heard of them.
More Private than Facebook and More Fun than Slack
But Geneva is brand new! A $21 million Series A is quite reasonable and actually impressive. Here is the original value proposition of the app - Geneva — a social platform developed to help users stayed connected to friends and online groups, in a way that is “more private than Facebook and more fun than Slack,” the app’s website reads. Founded in 2019 out of New York City and set live in March 2020, Geneva is not unlike Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces, but seeks to serve as an “all in one communication app designed for organised, ongoing conversations,” the description reads.
So at a time when Reddit Subreddits changed the internet and where real discussion is happening and how some Twitter users are migrating to Mastodon, Geneva can silo chat groups, forums and audio rooms exceptionally well. I was on Mastodon years ago and it’s cute, but it ain’t no Reddit. Reddit is very retro and text based and sorry but not very mobile-native.
Even the few YouTubes I could find on Geneva don’t really do it justice either:
I do agree that Geneva is ideal for Creators to develop networks and communities that can be helpful. Facebook Groups needs a spiritual successor and it might really be the Geneva App.
Geneva is a bit like if WhatsApp and Reddit had a baby. I think for me that’s the definition that makes the most sense. What do you think?
Geneva App has $36 million in funding now, which is not so bad. Consider that Substack only has $82 million, stuck precariously at Series B stage due to valuation down marks.
For Creators it’s really a question of aesthetics. Discord is creepy, Slack really is dull, Teams is too corporate, Reddit feels kind of rude - Geneva might be a “Middle-Earth” for chat-apps. Aesthetics and not just features are important and here is where I feel Geneva offers some balance.
Geneva asks users to set up a “home”. This acts as the landing page for users to create and navigate through “rooms” for different topics or sub-groups. Rooms can be open or secret and can be set up specifically for audio, video, broadcast conversations or chat, with @ mentions, threaded replies, emoji reactions, attachments, polls and pins
Try the app yourself.