Social media began as a place where you could stay up-to-date with your friends and see what’s going on in the lives of people you care about. Users flocked to the early platforms, sharing photos of their nights out, moments with friends, and life adventures. But since those initial days, some social platforms have evolved into a place where friends and family are the minority of content, overtaken by entertainment from influencers and celebrities, with a focus on followers and views.
All people have a desire for a digital place to stay connected with their friends and family. While older generations continue to rely on Facebook for this, the platform has struggled to attract young people. GenZ uses TikTok and Instagram for entertainment and Snap for communication, but they aren’t sharing their lives online with friends anywhere. As a generation of true digital natives who have grown up using smartphones in their daily lives, there is a real opportunity for a new social platform that lets young people authentically capture and share moments with friends.
That’s why I’m excited to share Greylock’s investment in Lapse, and to join the company’s Board of Directors. Lapse is inspired by the experience of using a point-and-shoot film camera, letting users install a disposable camera shutter onto their iPhone lockscreen. Photos taken on Lapse are available later, encouraging users to stay in the moment rather than immediately look, edit, and post. Once developed, photos are revealed in a stack of snaps that users can choose to archive or share. Snaps that get shared are added to a friends-only photo journal as a way to collect and reminisce on memories.
I’ve spent my career partnering with visionary founders to build the next generation of consumer products. I joined Snap in the early days and spent years running teams across product, design, growth, data science, analytics, and user research. I see many parallels between Snap’s beginning and Lapse – an initial appeal to help young people connect with their real friends, a valuable product with core utility, and a team that knows how to drive growth. Today, millions of consumers use Lapse, capturing 100 million memories every month, and they are just getting started.
Lapse was founded by brothers Dan and Ben Silvertown, a unique blend of art and science. I first got connected to the founders through a former Snap colleague, and was immediately impressed by their intuitive ability to understand social products. They shared insights that I had only heard from people who had spent a decade in social, and were exactly the types of founders I have been looking to back.
Greylock has partnered early with founders who started with an idea of bringing your network together, and went on to build massive social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Roblox, and Discord. I’m excited to be part of a new social platform with this same goal, and look forward to helping Lapse scale to billions of users.
