Creator Economy Club

Today, creators are no longer simply talents detected & developed by an industry. They are entrepreneurs building & scaling businesses.

As a result, the skills and mindset required to work with them are changing completely. Creators need long-term partners optimizing for long-term equity, not short-term cash-flows.

How does this shift impact the role of the manager?

That’s what we’re going to explore with Zack & Kate from One Day Ent, the management team behind Yes Theory, Airrack & The Cheeky Boyos. They're one of the most entrepreneurial management companies in the space focused on building ownership for their creators.

We’ll explore how they’re e.g. enabling Airrack to launch CreatorNow, a 6-weeks cohort-based class to help creators grow their YouTube Channels, as a venture that has the potential to scale beyond just Airrack’s audience & brand.

Just a few years ago, if you said you were a YouTuber, people thought you were unemployed. Fast-forward to 2021 and 75% of kids want to become creators. The narrative around creators has massively changed and who better than VidCon to witness first-hand the incredible transformation the whole industry has gone through.

From a small gathering of ~1000 YouTubers in LA in 2010 to a global event series gathering 75000+ attendees in 2019, VidCon has really become the annual high mass of the creator world. After a 2020 year in all-remote mode, the conference is back this fall IRL! Top creators, industry leaders & operators will return to the Anaheim Convention Center from Oct. 21-24.

That’s why we’re thrilled to host VidCon’s CEO Jim Louderback, who’s not only one of the most knowledgeable people in the industry but also one of its most genuine and enthusiastic advocates!

Creators are working to build engaged audiences from scratch. So why are they still promoting other brands' products and not their own? For a few reasons:

So what do they do instead?

That's where Pietra comes in: They help creators launch physical product lines by taking care of everything from them, from product design and tech to operations and delivery. A game-changer.

Pietra’s ambition is to enable any creator to capitalize directly on the leverage they've built themselves instead of advertising for others. And they’ve recently raised a Series A led by Funders Fund’s Keith Rabois.

So super glad to have hosted Pietra’s CEO Ronak Trivedi to dig deep into this complex topic!

With TikTok, creators and artists are more and more alike. TikTok star Bella Poarch's debut single reaching 400M streams has accelerated the trend. And because music is the first industry to have been taken by the internet tsunami wave, a question arises:

What can the creator economy learn from the music industry? Shady contracts, unfair record deals, funding partners, management, legal representation, etc -- the level of toxicity the music industry has cultivated surely is a warning for the emerging creator ecosystem.

We’ll explore this captivating topic with one of the most fascinating companies in the space: Indify. They’re building an AngelList for the music industry, helping artists raise funding from strategic partners, building their early team, getting discovered through data, etc. Rolling Stone wrote an amazing article about their model if you want to dig further.

We’re thrilled to host Shav, his enthusiasm is contagious and his vision for the future of both the music biz and Indify is crystal clear. That’s how he attracted top investors like former Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Cassius Family’s Emmanuel Seugé to build one of the most exciting companies in the music industry.

This week, we're stoked to talk with Marshall Sandman, Managing Partner of Animal Capital on Creator Economy Club.

Animal Capital is a VC fund with a difference. It's a pioneering company aimed straight at GenZ.

Even Animal Capital's GPs and OPs are all under 30.

Marshall (age 29) brings venture experience, vetting the businesses, networking, and making investments. GP Michael Gruen (23) has already been an entrepreneur for 10+ years. And OPs Josh Richards (19), Griffin Johnson (22) and Noah Beck (20) are the Gen Z Creators using their pulling power to bring millions of fans into the game.

"It only makes sense after having seen an explosion in the number of creators and startup capitals. Well, the next step was obvious creators raising a VC fund." Hugo Amsellem

Animal Capital's Limited Partners bring an impressive array of founder experience and star power to the table too. We're talking Mark Randolph (founder of Netflix), Rich Miner (co-founder of Android), Christina Aguilera and Matt Rutler, to name a few.

In this episode, you'll learn:

"Rich Miner's helpful in the music space… Every single one of my investors provides a unique value to my founders."

"Parallel Learning's a perfect business for us because it's personally meaningful. And we can help affect the outcome there in a bunch of different ways. They're doing something great for people and they're making money."

"When all those buckets align we're able to drive big results for the business and our investors."

"Willing to pivot and know that the business as it exists that pre-seed and seed may not be the business that scales."

"But then they can join in new ventures like Josh starting the BFF podcast with Dave Portnoy. That widens the audience."

Clubhouse audience members join the conversation with questions and comments on Creators and products, the danger of burnout, and trends in the Creator Economy.

Where does Marshall see Animal Capital fitting into the Creator Economy?

How can Creators leverage their popularity for good and create a multi-million dollar business at the same time?

It's all there and more in this week's show.

Marshall Sandman Instagram

Animal Capital

Arm the Creators

How to Invest in Creators by Hugo Amsellem

Half of the world's professional creators are YouTubers. Millions of them are trying to beat the algorithm every day! 

YouTube Wizard Paddy Galloway has been breaking down the strategies of 24 top creators, amassing millions of views on his own YouTube channel. 

So, what did he learn?

Feat. Hugo Amsellem, Rodolphe Ködderitzsch & Uri Levanon.

Creators are building DTC merch empires without retailers. Logan Paul says his ‘Maverick’ Merch brand made $40M in its 1st year. But what seems like a commodity today used to be a headache yesterday.

Just a few years ago it was still very tricky to sell great merch as an indie creator. You usually needed to "have a merch guy" that not only understood your design needs but also could handle the production process with providers and, more importantly, master the e-commerce intricacies!

Fast forward to 2021: you can use Spri.ng and all of that complexity melts away for you. You can essentially have a Merch-team as a Service. That's why we're thrilled to host Spring CEO Chris Lamontagne for our next Creator Economy Club!

They started in 2012 as Teespring, went on raising more than $60M from top investors like A16Z, and historically were enabling anyone to sell great merch. They’ve recently rebranded to Spring and now are 1) focusing on creators and 2) helping them not only sell physical product but also digital ones.

Creators are scalable individuals. They get near-infinite leverage through platforms & tools. More tools mean more complexity and more pressure! The only way to balance this is with education. But who's educating the creators?

Last year, Twitch viewers watched over 1 trillion hours from 6M creators on the platform. Top streamers are earning millions from donations alone. Alber Emegé thinks he can help them earn 4 times more with his platform, Streamloots.

Hey everyone, this week's (Feb. 12th, 2021) program:

Brought to you by Jen, Uri & Hugo.