Earlier this year, Johnnie Yu heard about a new startup looking to raise a small round. He liked the idea, so he cut a check. Yu is 21 years old and a junior at New York University. He’s also an angel investor, funding startups at their earliest stages. His investments are small—usually around $2,500—but they’re real: In exchange for the money, he gets a fraction of future equity in the companies, should they succeed. He sees his investments in emerging tech startups as a way to complement his parents’ portfolio, which is made up of more traditional assets like real estate.
Yu is part of a growing cohort of Gen Z investors who are beginning to make their mark on the startup ecosystem. Some of them are now old enough to work in VC firms or pursue careers as investors. Others, like Yu, are newcomers to angel investing, as new platforms and recent regulatory changes widen the aperture of who’s eligible to participate. Like-minded young people congregate on TikTok and Twitter, where talk of startups can lead to valuable connections and deal flow. A Slack group called Gen Z VC has more than 7,000 members, many of them still in their teens.
For many of these Gen Z investors, angel investing is less about getting rich and more about participating in the startup economy for the first time. “Everyone obviously hopes to get returns, but most of the time you’re going to lose your money,” says Dayton Mills, a 22-year-old founder who has started making angel…
