Fizz, an anonymous social app, made a quiet entry into Saudi Arabia in mid-March, and its rapid rise was unexpected for founder and CEO Teddy Solomon. Within two days, it soared to the top position on the App Store charts, with users in the country sending over a million messages. This was a surprising achievement for an app that initially targeted college campuses.
The app was founded by Solomon and his co-founder Ashton Cofer in 2022 while they were students at Stanford. They later left the university, having secured $40 million in funding and launched Fizz on 700 campuses. The app is now expanding beyond its college origins with a feature called Fizz Feed, which connects non-students through location-based communities, akin to Reddit but without specific topic communities. In Saudi Arabia, where it ranks first in the news category, Fizz is testing its international aspirations.
“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.
Fizz has not previously disclosed its plans for international expansion.
Solomon mentioned that a conference in Dubai highlighted the potential for expanding Fizz into the Middle East. Consequently, Fizz marketing analyst Michael Fonseca relocated to Saudi Arabia to establish connections and understand the local culture, paving the way for the app’s international debut.
“Mike was really welcomed with open arms,” Solomon said. “I think [Saudi Arabia] changed quite a bit in recent years.” The country is “jumping right now,” said Solomon. “Business is booming. The social scene and social landscape is booming. Snapchat’s huge there. And social apps are just massive in the region, whether it’s Snap, or WhatsApp, or TikTok — whatever other app it might be.”
This transformation in the country’s image is part of a deliberate effort. In 2016, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman initiated the Saudi Vision 2030 plan, aimed at reducing the country’s oil dependency. The strategy includes modernizing the nation’s image, such as allowing women to legally drive, and investing in Western tech firms like Google and Uber. More recently, a state-backed AI company named Humain was established by the crown prince.
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Despite these developments, Saudi Arabia continues to be an absolute monarchy ruled by a royal family that limits free speech. In 2024, the Saudi government sentenced Manahel al-Otaibi to 11 years of imprisonment for tweeting about women’s rights and sharing photos on Snapchat without a traditional abaya, as reported by Amnesty International.
In Saudi Arabia, Fizz faces the possibility of government monitoring, with the potential for content removal requests or arrests based on app activity. Solomon has no defined strategy for handling such situations.
“The answer is, [we will] cross that bridge when we get there,” he said. “We have a lot of confidence in our guidelines. We are moderating very strictly and in a way that is satisfying people in the region and making sure that we’re abiding by the rules of the region and rules of the country.”
Solomon shared that Fizz is investing significantly in Arabic natural language processing tools to enhance content moderation. The company has recruited hundreds of volunteer moderators from the Saudi Arabian Fizz community, adopting a similar approach to its college communities where AI tools and local volunteer moderators help navigate cultural nuances for better decision-making.
Fizz has not received funding from Saudi entities and has not interacted with government officials.
“There’s a lot of care for their community,” Solomon said. “There’s a lot of pride in their country, a lot of pride in the city that they live in, and they like the platform. They want to keep the platform safe, and they take a lot of honor in doing so.”
