Cory Levy
Category: People Website: corylevy.com Twitter: @cory Summary: Founder of Z Fellows, co-founder of After School, early-stage investor, host of Internapalooza Last updated: 2026-04-06
Overview
Cory Levy is an entrepreneur and early-stage investor. He is the founder of Z Fellows and the co-founder of After School, a teen social network that reached ~20 million users before being acquihired by Ancestry. He dropped out of CS at UIUC. Forbes 30 Under 30 in Consumer Technology.
He is also the person who hosts Internapalooza - the Bay Area intern mixer where Jack met Leo Zhang.
Background
Cory Levy’s path is unusually early-career by any measure:
- High school: interned at Founders Fund and Union Square Ventures - two of the most prestigious venture firms in the world. Getting internships at both, in high school, is exceptional
- UIUC: studied CS, dropped out to build
- After School: co-founded a teen social network that scaled to ~20 million users. Acquihired by Ancestry (the genealogy company). The acquihire path is less glamorous than an IPO but represents a real exit
- Forbes 30 Under 30: Consumer Technology category, plus “Dorm Room Founders” recognition
- Z Fellows: his most significant current project - the rolling $10K fellowship for builders
Z Fellows
Z Fellows is Cory’s bet on builders before institutions validate them. The full write-up is at Z Fellows, but the key points:
- $10,000, no equity
- One week, work on your side project
- Rolling applications
- The name references the generation “after Y” - Y Combinator’s brand is so strong that the next combinator had to be called something else
The Z Fellows Medium post title: “Skip class or work for a week and get paid $10,000.” The framing is deliberately anti-credentialist - class is the institution, work is what matters.
Sorry Parents and Z Fellows Camp
Two newer projects listed on corylevy.com: - Sorry Parents (sorryparents.com) - a platform for students to manage their parents’ expectations about their unconventional paths. The name says everything about the philosophy. - Z Fellows Camp (zfellowscamp.com) - a Navy SEAL-style bootcamp format applied to the Z Fellows builder ethos
Both are extensions of the same thesis: the credential system is for people who want safety; the people who build the future are the ones who skip class, drop out, and build.
Internapalooza
Cory hosts Internapalooza in the Bay Area - a summer mixer for tech interns across companies. This is the event where Jack met Leo Zhang. Leo’s famous observation (“prestige is bullshit”) was made at this event. The event itself - a room full of interns at the world’s top tech companies, hosted by someone who dropped out and built a 20M-user app - is its own kind of statement about the relationship between prestige and building.
Investor Profile
Cory describes himself as “the very first believer into first-time technical founders” - investing in 20+ startups as the first check. This is the highest-risk, highest-reward position in venture: before anyone else has validated the team, before the product exists at scale, before the market is proven. First checks into first-time founders is a bet on human quality more than market dynamics.
This is consistent with Z Fellows: the same thesis applied as a grant rather than equity.
Connections to Jack’s World
- Z Fellows: direct connection - the fellowship is a concrete option in Jack’s startup ecosystem navigation
- Internapalooza: the event where a defining friendship (Leo Zhang) was formed
- The thesis: Cory’s worldview - build over credentials, ship over study, first-time founders are undervalued - is the same worldview Jack operates from