Cory Levy

Cory Levy is an entrepreneur and angel investor based in San Francisco. Levy was born and raised in Houston, Texas and studied computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before dropping out in 2011 to co-found One, Inc., where he served as COO until 2019. At One, Inc., Levy built a number of apps including After School, a teen social network launched in 2014 that grew to 20 million users and was acquired by Ancestry. In 2019, Levy founded First Text, which connects ambitious young technical founders at early stages with mentorship, funding, and a network of founders, operators, investors, and experts over text. First Text hosts Z fellows, a fellowship program in which a ten-person cohort are given $10,000 to take a week "break" from school or work to work on their entrepreneurial projects with mentorship support and a series of expert speakers.

In 2016, Cory Levy joined the Board of Directors of international non-profit DoSomething.org. In 2019, he became an advisor for venture capital firm SignalFire, and in 2020 he became a founding advisor for the gaming app Humaning Inc. Levy has spoken on entrepreneurial topics at SXSW, Duke University, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, NYU, USD, Drexel, Indiana University, University of Michigan, USC, University of Maryland, University of Illinois, Stanford, Boston College, and Boston University. Levy is the creator of the NextGen Conference, an annual conference hosted at Stanford University to connect young entrepreneurs with more experienced entrepreneurs, and Internapalooza, an annual conference that conference brings together college students in Silicon Valley with experienced entrepreneurs and speakers.

In 2017, Forbes named Cory Levy on the 30 Under 30 lists in both the Consumer Technology and Dorm Room Founders categories. Levy has invested in Nucleus, POSH, Glowbom, Wander, Voices, Hebbia, and Simulate.