Z Fellows

Disambiguation. Three “Z…” things collide — keep them separate:

• Z Fellows (this page) — Cory Levy’s 1-week, $10K founder fellowship (zfellows.com). ✅
• “Z Capital” (Cory’s) — the CRM seed says Cory “founded Z Capital.” No public legal fund by that name surfaced. Cory’s investing actually runs through an AngelList syndicate (“Cory Levy’s Syndicate”) + personal angel checks + the Z Fellows $10K SAFEs. Treat “Z Capital” as ^[single-source: CRM seed] / ^[ambiguous] until confirmed. See Cory Levy.
• Z Capital Group / Z Capital Partners — Larry Schloss’s NYC private-equity firm. UNRELATED. Do not conflate. Also note the Thiel Fellowship is a different program ($100K/2yr); Mercor’s founders are Thiel Fellows, not Z Fellows (see ⚠️ in Cross-check).

Firm Profile

What it is. A one-week founder fellowship + lifelong community, founded ~2020 ^[founding year given as both 2020 and 2021 across aggregators; TechCrunch announced it Dec 2020 and the first cohort selected Jan 2021 — treat as “launched late-2020”] by Cory Levy. Each cohort is ~10-12 builders (the firm pitches “ten builders with founders of billion-dollar companies”). It is deliberately modeled on the earliest batches of Y Combinator — Cory’s thesis (his words, via TechCrunch) is that in those small early YC cohorts “people found that mentorship was worth more than the cash.”

The offer. $10,000\ast \ast asan\ast \ast optionalequityinvestmentata$1 billion (post-money) valuation cap — i.e. the “$10K buys ~0.001%” structure that TechCrunch called “so very, very cheap money.” Fellows can decline the equity entirely. There is no age restriction and no deadline (rolling admissions, multiple cohorts/year). Format: mostly virtual (daily ~10-min standups + evening office hours / mentor speaker sessions) with the last day in person in SF or NYC; most fellows show up for the whole week. ✅

The real product = the network, not the $10K. Every primary source (fellow testimonials, the Ali Debow interview, the firm site) says the same thing: the one week is fine, but the value is the post-program community — a 500+ -member Slack, curated IRL events, and “very specific intros” from Cory + Baylor. One alum: “The network and introduction network from there is second to none for young, ambitious founders.” Cory’s framing on the homepage: “We are your first believer.” ✅

Who they back. “Technical builders of all ages working on side projects and startups” — explicitly high-school dropouts, college students, and people with full-time jobs, across consumer, social, defense, healthcare, edtech, fintech, gaming, infra, cybersecurity, crypto, AI/ML, climate, biotech. Selection (per alum Ali Debow): a short written app (incl. a deliberately weird question), then a ~10-minute “vibe-check” interview. They optimize for “ambitious, talented, driven, and kind” people and “invest in the person rather than the product at a particular time” (they expect pivots). ✅

Mentor roster (the draw). Named mentors across sources: founders of YouTube (Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim), founder of Tinder, Dylan Field (Figma), Naval Ravikant, Lucy Guo (Scale AI), CEO of Netflix, Keith Rabois (Founders Fund). ✅

Scale / track record (self-reported). Z Fellows’ own LinkedIn: “has funded dozens of companies who have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from top VC funds including Sequoia, Founders Fund, a16z, General Catalyst, SignalFire and more.” 500+ fellows in the community. ⚠️ Promotional / self-reported aggregate — not independently per-company verified. (Note: SignalFire appearing here is consistent with Cory’s long SignalFire relationship — see Fundraise Relationship + Cory Levy.)

Structure. Tiny operation: run by Cory Levy + “Baylor” (per alum interview), plus a “No Title” recruiter role Cory hired for in 2024. Not a fund with an IC — Cory is the decision-maker; the $10K is his (or syndicate) capital. Lineage: Z Fellows grew out of Cory’s earlier experiment First Text (text-Cory-to-reach-VCs) — the program is, in his words, “a long-term experiment to see whether lowering barriers to VC improves the speed of inception of new startups.” ✅

Partners

• Cory Levy — Founder & decision-maker. Serial founder (After School/ONE Inc., ~20M users, acquihired by Ancestry), first-believer angel (Ramp, Vise, ZenBusiness per his own account), Forbes 30U30. Our live POC. (Deep profile on his page.)
• Baylor — co-runs Z Fellows day-to-day with Cory (per alum interview). ^[surname not surfaced; ^[needs-research]]

Recent pre-seed/seed activity (Pass-1 sketch — ≤5 deals; exhaustive pull is Pass 2)

Framing caveat: Z Fellows doesn’t “do seed rounds” — it writes $10K micro-SAFEs into idea-stage builders. So the table below mixes (a) Cory’s personal first-believer angel investments and (b) Z-Fellows-funded companies + their follow-on rounds (what the cohort produces). Treat amounts as the companies’ later rounds, not Z Fellows’ check.

• Ramp / Vise / ZenBusiness — Cory claims to have been the “first investor/believer” in all three (now multi-billion-dollar companies). ❓ Single-source (his own fireside recap); entry terms not public — track-record signal, not verified deals.
• OmenAI — $10.5M round (2025), Cory on cap table as angel (CRV/Caffeinated/Pareto co-investors). ⚠️ CB-Insights-single-source.
• The New Era of Shopping — pre-seed, Feb 24 2026, Cory’s most-recent listed angel investment; a16z among co-investors. ❓ CBI-single-source; amount undisclosed.
• Hebbia (George Sivulka) — used First Text (Z Fellows’ precursor); Cory connected him to Ann Miura-Ko (Floodgate), who led his round (per TechCrunch). Now a ~$700M+ AI-search company. ⚠️ The precursor-vs-cohort nuance noted.
• “Nucleus” / swsh — alum-testimonial companies (Nucleus self-reports $15M+ from Founders Fund/776; swsh = Ali Debow, March 2023 cohort). ❓ Self-reported / illustrative; “Nucleus” has same-name-collision risk (not disambiguated).

Full source-tagged data + the Mercor-is-NOT-an-alum flag → /Users/sazzad14/seed-market-scan/firms/z-fellows.csv.

Best data channels for this firm

• zfellows.com + corylevy.com — best for the offer mechanics, mentor list, and self-reported track record (promotional; treat aggregates as marketing).
• Cory’s own X (@cory) + Medium + his fireside-chat recaps — best for his actual philosophy/voice and which companies he claims as first-believer wins.
• TechCrunch (Dec 2020 launch piece) — best independent primary source for the original structure, the First Text lineage, and the early mentor set.
• Alum interviews (boringbusinessnerd / Ali Debow; founder X threads like Oleksii Sidorov’s) — best for what the week + community actually feel like (the high-signal, non-promotional view).
• CB Insights / AngelList syndicate page — best for Cory’s personal investment list (amounts mostly undisclosed; treat as directional).
• ⚠️ POISONED / COLLISION CHANNELS:
  • Searching “Z Capital” or “Cory Levy” returns Z Capital Group/Partners (Larry Schloss PE) and multiple unrelated “Cory Levy”s (a fine-art fabricator in NYC, a construction PM in PEI, an eng-manager who blogs at cory.news about Facebook/Linden Lab). None are our Cory. Disambiguate by Z Fellows / After School / UIUC / @cory.
  • The CRM-seed claim that Cory “founded Z Capital” is not corroborated by any public source. ⚠️

Fundraise Relationship (init.inc)

• Firm facts: Cory’s mentor/backer network includes Founders Fund, a16z, General Catalyst, Sequoia, SignalFire. He has already routed init.inc once: he made the SignalFire / Ryan Wexler intro. The $10Kisanoptional$1B-post-money-cap SAFE (founder-friendly, near-symbolic dilution); the program’s value is the network and “first believer” signal rather than the capital.
• Conversation log (newest first):
  • 5/13: Cory reached out asking for a meeting — Sazzad working on a time. (This is inbound from a well-connected node — high-value; prep specifically, see Cory’s page.)
  • 5/5: Cory’s 5/4 intro produced Sazzad’s in-person meeting with Ryan Wexler (SignalFire); Ryan ghosted afterward — re-engaging Cory is the viable re-nudge.
  • 5/4: Karun intro’d Sazzad to Cory (founder of Z Fellows), and Cory made the SignalFire / Ryan Wexler intro the same day.
• Mutual connections / warm path: Karun (made the 5/4 intro; friend-of-company connector who also bridges init to Suds and FundersClub / Alex Mittal). Cory himself is then a second-degree bridge to SignalFire and his broader fund network.
• Personal & rapport notes (firm-level): Cory’s whole brand is accessibility + bias-for-action + “first believer.” He responds to cold DMs, schedules 10-minute meetings, and prizes “forward momentum.” A crisp, fast, high-momentum interaction will resonate more than a polished deck. (Detailed rapport kit on his page.)
• Live stage: tracked in the CRM (Google Sheet) — not duplicated here.

Cross-check vs existing wiki

• Karun’s connector stub already lists “Z Fellows / Cory Levy — First Meeting” as an edge — ✅ consistent; this page + the Cory page now back that link.
• Karun’s stub does not show the SignalFire edge; per the CRM seed that intro came through Cory, so it’s captured on Cory’s page (not Karun’s). No contradiction — different connector carrying it. ^[single-source: CRM seed]
• ⚠️ Mercor: init’s wiki has a entities/mercor.md competitor/market page; do not record Mercor as a Z Fellows alum — its founders are Thiel Fellows (Wikipedia + Ceowire). Flagged so a future pass doesn’t cross-wire them.
• No competitor cap-table conflict surfaced for Z Fellows / Cory (grep 2026-05-25). No contradictions.

Related

Cory Levy (founder) · Karun (intro path) · SignalFire · Ryan Wexler (Cory routed init here) · Init Intelligence

Pass 2 deal pattern (2026-05-25)

Structural reminder: Z Fellows has no priced-seed deal flow to measure — its product is a $10K optional SAFE into idea-stage builders, so a “deal list” is really (a) Z Fellows’ rare formal direct positions, (b) cohort alumni’s later/real rounds, and (c) Cory Levy’s personal first-check angel track record. The CSV reflects all three. Net-new this pass: 4 verified rows — Initium Aerospace + Aaru (direct Z Fellows positions), Brellium + micro1 (Cory-angel / cohort follow-on), plus disambiguation fixes.

Pattern / cadence / check.

• Z Fellows direct positions are minimal — only ~5 ever recorded by aggregators (Tracxn: Initium Aerospace seed Nov 2025, Aaru seed/pre-seed, Neurogram, +2 unnamed). The $10K SAFE is below most databases’ radar by design.
• Cory’s personal angel checks are the more legible signal: small first-believer participations in others’ rounds — e.g. Brellium ($16.7MSeriesA,Apr2025—Brelliu{m}^{\prime }sownnewsroomnames"CoryLevy(ZFellows)"),\ast \ast TheNewEraofShopping\ast \ast (pre-seed,Feb2026,a16zco-investor),\ast \ast OmenAI\ast \ast ($10.5M, 2025). He is an angel participant, never the lead.
• Cohort outcomes are where the value shows: alumni land top-tier follow-ons — Aaru → Redpoint Series A (~$1Bval,Dec2025);\ast \ast micro1\ast \ast \to 01Advisors$35M Series A at $500Mval(Sep2025;>$100M ARR); Nucleus Genomics → Founders Fund/776 ($14MA,$32M total); Hebbia → a16z/Sequoia $130M B. Cohort profile = very young, technical, conviction-over-traction.

Best data channel. Company newsrooms that explicitly name Cory (Brellium = gold) > CB Insights / PitchBook for existence of his angel checks (amounts mostly undisclosed; counts diverge: CBI ~23, PitchBook ~44, Tracxn ~15) > Tracxn for the handful of formal Z Fellows positions > zfellows.com testimonials + Cory’s X (@cory) / corylevy.com for the first-believer narrative (promotional). Cohort follow-ons surface in normal startup press (TechCrunch/SaaS News).

⚠️ Pass-2 disambiguation fixes: (1) The Pass-1 “Nucleus” collision is resolved — the alum is Nucleus Genomics (Kian Sadeghi). Nuance: Sadeghi is a Thiel Fellow per Wikipedia, but ZF’s own writeups also claim him as a Z Fellows alum (both can hold — 1-week ZF + Thiel, like Hebbia’s Sivulka). The ZF testimonial’s “CEO of Allergan” investor detail doesn’t match Nucleus’s named cap table → minor ^[ambiguous] mismatch. (2) micro1’s $35M A was LED BY 01 Advisors, not Z Fellows — Cory’s role was connector/early (Josh Browder intro). (3) Mercor is still NOT a Z Fellows alum (Thiel Fellows). (4) No public legal “Z Capital” fund; beware the unrelated Larry Schloss “Z Capital Group/Partners.”