GenZ began as an accident. I was answering scholarship questions on Telegram in the small hours of the morning, and at some point the answers outgrew the messaging app.
An accidental community
The first cohort was twenty-eight students preparing university applications. The second, a year later, was nine hundred. We added internship matching, bilingual short courses, and a quietly excellent network of alumni who answered each new wave's questions so I no longer had to.
A platform is only as durable as the people willing to maintain its tone.
— GenZ closing letter, 2023
Three years and out
In 2023 I made the unfashionable decision to wind down GenZ rather than keep it growing. The community had become well-served by partnering NGOs — better-served, in fact, than I could continue to be while my own focus shifted to trade.
I closed the platform, handed the community handle to those NGOs, and wrote a short letter to the alumni. It is the cleanest exit I have made from anything.
— Footnotes
- Three thousand two hundred young people moved through the programme. About a hundred and twenty went on to international scholarships.