Emily Sundberg on How Nobody Is Coming to Save Gen Z

Emily Sundberg (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, Odd Lots listeners. You are listening to another special episode of the podcast. It was recorded in New York City on July 26th. In this conversation, we talked to Emily Sundberg of the Feed Me newsletter. We are talking about how Gen Z sees the world, how they think about capitalism, how they think about money, how they think about investing, how they think about spending it, and how they think about how nobody is coming to save them.

Tracy Alloway (0:43)

That's right. I don't think it's a secret at this point that Gen Z seems to love stock market investing and things like that, trying to make money. So take a listen.

Joe Weisenthal (0:54)

First question, been on my mind the last couple of days. You have a very young, plugged in business, capitalism audience. What percentage of your readers do you think voted for Zoran?

Emily Sundberg (1:09)

A young man, I think he was 19, a Yale student, emailed me this morning and asked if I could put that poll in my newsletter and I didn't. It felt a little late, but I should have. I'm guessing 65% cautiously.

Joe Weisenthal (1:25)

Really?

Emily Sundberg (1:25)

Yeah.

Tracy Alloway (1:27)

Can you maybe describe your sort of average reader just for people who might not be aware? Like what population are you plugged into here?

Emily Sundberg (1:36)

So I don't know if any of you use Substack, but they don't give you these analytics. So all of my data about my readership has been quite anecdotal from just looking at people's profiles in the comment section and seeing who shows up to my parties. But do any of you read it? Like, okay, so some of you, that's some of my audience. I like to say that my readership is everyone from bartenders to billionaires, but I would say like if you're paying $80 a year for a newsletter, then you're probably making a decent amount of money or you're at least interested in making money. And I think it's a mostly New York audience, 30 to 45 ish. But if you come to my parties, you'll see who else there is. But I would say like people interested in making money and somewhat interested in New York City business and culture.

Joe Weisenthal (2:24)

So the first time several tries to get you on the podcast, but we're finally making it happen. And I wanted to talk about like Gen Z and capitalism, because I feel like millennials and maybe Gen X, but millennials in particular, like sort of had this love-hate relationship, like sort of apologized for wanting money, sort of ambivalent about it. And I get the impression that the younger generation is like much more comfortable with like, yeah, we want to make a ton of money.

Emily Sundberg (2:53)

Yeah.

Joe Weisenthal (2:53)

And so I'm like, yeah. So talk about if that's correct, this perception.

Emily Sundberg (2:58)

I think one thing that's very clear about Gen Z is that they've repeatedly been told nobody is coming to save you.

You're going to graduate into a job market that barely exists. And if you get a job, you might not even have a desk or an office to go into. A lot of them were home during COVID, and they're also seeing like shootings in schools all the time. And they're seeing their capital getting swarmed. Like nobody is coming to save them, and it's sort of up to them to make the most of this world while it's still in existence. And you hear this sense of like, get the bag while the world is still here for you to make some money out of it. What was your question?

Joe Weisenthal (3:42)

No, that was basically it.

Emily Sundberg (3:44)

That's like an overwhelming sentiment that I hear from these people. Yeah.

Joe Weisenthal (3:48)

I think it was like some survey and they asked all the generations, like what do you need to have a good life? And there's something like 70,000, whatever. And then Gen Z was like $500,000 salary or something like that.

Tracy Alloway (3:57)

Yeah.

Emily Sundberg (3:57)

I mean, you're even seeing like, if you're a creator, even at like Goldman Sachs, you're probably making more money as like making day in the life TikToks than you are from your salary and like there's this growing creator economy and your role model might be somebody who's like made millions and millions of dollars a year from humiliating themselves online. And like there's all these possibilities and tools from entering the creator economy. Like I think Bloomberg published a story last week that even just the market for creator marketing is like $33 billion now. It's massive.