Designing for, Marketing to, and Partnering with Gen Z

Especially on TikTok, there’s so much remix meme culture. It’s not necessarily 100 percent original. And maybe that’s part of why it’s so hard to translate [TikTok content] to YouTube: for the most part you have to come up with something completely original.

If you don’t have the youth using your product or talking about your product or sharing your product, I hate to break it to you: you’re irrelevant. And so that’s why every single company that is targeting consumers needs to care about Gen Zs, whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or whether you’re a startup.

Twenty-nine percent of youth in America want to become vloggers or YouTubers, versus 23 percent want to become professional athletes. So more people want to become YouTubers than athletes, which is a massive shift.

The YouTuber Emma Chamberlain is one of the fastest growing Gen Z influencers. She has one of the highest engagement rates across young influencers. Now, her content is all very authentic, she’s very much herself. She mixes in that very relatable aspect with the very aspirational. And I think the best influencers are able to be both aspirational an... See more

Gen Zs are finding their tribe through being able to search in specific hashtags or specific rooms of people who are interested in same things. Going into subreddits, that subreddit leading to a Discord community of people who came from Reddit, to wanting to chat in a room. There are lots of Gen Zs who are tweeting a list of their favorite influenc... See more

I think there’s going to be a future where work is more project-based. The new American Dream for Gen Z is being able to work wherever we want, whenever we want. Now, Gen Z is the side hustle generation because from a young age we realized that we can hustle to make money online.

I think creators are starting the new billion-dollar commerce brands and the new billion-dollar media companies. We’re seeing that with people building tech companies, [like] David Dobrik. He built an app, raised venture financing for it. His merch brand is doing incredibly well.