498. Boarding School Made Her Fearless: Chomp Founder Kiko Zang on Identity, Open Relationships & Authenticity

In this episode of Better Call Daddy, host Reena Friedman Watts sits down with Kiko Zang, business executive, tech founder, and opinion leader building human-centric consumer products.

Kiko is the Founder & CEO of Chomp, a social game that rewards honesty instead of punishing it and she's on a mission to fix what she calls the "performative internet."

Kiko opens up about her path from boarding school in China to New Zealand and the United States, the anti-authoritarian streak she carried as a kid, and the long road to understanding her own identity across cultures.

The conversation gets candid as she discusses her experience with open relationships and how it reshaped her views on love, trust, kindness, and loyalty then turns to the bigger picture: why social media rewards performance over authenticity, why women in particular self-censor online, and why honest human belief may be the scarcest, most valuable data in the age of AI.

Kiko also shares her founder journey from COO at Orca (one of Solana's largest decentralized exchanges, where she helped raise $19M and grow the platform to $1B+ in 24-hour trading volume) to building Chomp, which drew 50,000 beta users sharing millions of honest answers and raised $3.6M from backers including BlueYard, JSquare, and Accomplice placing her among the 2% of female-led startups to raise venture capital. Chomp launches on iOS in 2026.

Equal parts personal memoir and founder story, this episode covers identity, relationships, resilience, the loneliness epidemic, the funding gap for female founders, and what it takes to build something real in a "dead internet" full of bots and AI slop.

Keywords: Kiko Zang, boarding school identity, open relationships podcast, cultural identity, female tech founder, women in venture capital, social media and authenticity, dead internet theory, Chomp app, Solana Orca DEX, honest opinions app, read the room, loneliness epidemic, Better Call Daddy podcast, Reena Friedman Watts

🎙️ What's In This Episode

How growing up in boarding school in China shaped Kiko Zang's identity and friendships

Immigrating from China to New Zealand to the U.S. navigating culture shock and belonging

Childhood rebellion and an anti-authoritarian mindset where it came from and what it taught her

Inside open relationships: what they are, how they work, and the lessons they teach about love