Saudi Arabia · TikTok · TechCrunch AI
“Mike was welcomed with open arms,” Solomon confirmed
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When Fizz quietly debuted in Saudi Arabia in the middle of March, founder and CEO Teddy Solomon wasn’t expecting the app to catch on like it did.
Key facts
- Within 48 hours, the app hit No. 1 overall on the App Store charts, and users in the country have since sent more than 1 million messages
- In 2016, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched a government plan called Saudi Vision 2030, which aims to decrease the country’s financial dependence on oil
- After raising $40 million and launching on 700 campuses, the app has been pushing beyond its college roots with Fizz Feed, a feature that opens the platform to non-students through location-based
- Solomon and his co-founder, Ashton Cofer, started Fizz in 2022 while they were students at Stanford, before dropping out
Summary
Solomon and his co-founder, Ashton Cofer, started Fizz in 2022 while they were students at Stanford, before dropping out. “We’ve always known that our big goal is to be a generational social product, rather than a college social app, and now we’re finally executing on it,” Solomon said. Solomon said that when he attended a conference in Dubai, he saw the potential for Fizz’s expansion into the Middle East. “Mike was welcomed with open arms,” Solomon said. And social apps are massive in the region, whether it’s Snap, or WhatsApp, or TikTok, whatever other app it might be.”