Creators in Ventures
The top 1% of the Youtubers all have businesses running on top of their channels. From Mr. Beast’s Feastables to Emma Chamberlain’s Chamberlain Coffee, from Ali Abdaals’ Part-time Youtuber Academy to Nas Daily’s NasAcadem - top creators realized growing a youtube channel is not a lifetime career.
For me, because I've been such a YouTube lover since day one, I want to continue doing YouTube but also branch out and do other things simultaneously.
Emma Chamberlain on Interview with Refinery29
A huge catalyst for the creator economy is that creators are going to be entrepreneurs, investors, filmmakers, actors etc. Careers on social platforms are not permanent, but the relationships created within these platforms are, and they follow wherever the creator chooses to go.
Creators make the best entrepreneurs, Why? Because growing a channel is no different from managing a business
Managing a Channel vs a Business
Marques Brownlee, the owner of the largest tech review channel MKPHD, commented during his interview with Colin & Samir that running a channel is like being an octopus, you have dozens of things to work on from ideating, researching, scripting, filming, editing, posting, and marketing. However, as the channel scales, creators had to “cut off” their legs and trust other people to do it. As a result, the organizational structure looks like an octopus, where creators no matter what will be in the front and centre of the business's day-to-day operations.
On the contrary, for traditional enterprises, founders and CEOs are the groups of people who make executive decisions and create a vision for the company to follow, they are no longer involved in operations like what a creator does. It follows a triangular structure where CEOs are decision-makers instead of executors.
Why do creators want to become entrepreneurs? There are 4 main reasons:
Pursuing a bigger objective that aligned with them personally
e.x. NasAcademy on making education more accessible
Solving a problem with market potential
e.x. Logan Paul / KSI on lacking a healthy lifestyle hydration alternative
Entitled to entrepreneurship
e.x. Elliot Choy on his passion for starting his own apparel businesses
Diversifying their income streams
e.x. MrBeast on Beast Burger as a separate identity from its channel
While the idea of entrepreneurship seems enticing to many creators given the reasons above, though it is important to recognize that many other creators have different goals and values that might not make entrepreneurship suited for them. For example, JomaTech and Steven He, are two Youtubers that aspired to become professional filmmakers and actors.
However, I want to hone in on the last point on diversifying their income streams as there are already so many successful examples of that happening in real-time.
SubscribeEquity by Credit Card Review Youtuber Sebestian (aka Ask Sebby)
Bright Trip by Journalist Youtuber Johnny Harris
Jeff Barbershop by Ex-HypeHouse Crew Jeff Wittek
Feastables by Youtuber MrBeast
Dizzy by Celebrity Tana Mongeau
Seeking Discomfort by Lifestyle Challenger YouTubers Yes Theory
Braille Skateboarding by Skateboard Tutorial Channel Barille Skateboard
Creators as Investors
Creators also make great investors for companies because of their knowledge and distribution power. Influencers such as Charlie D’Amelio and Jake Paul have launched 444 Capital and Anti Fund, their own venture funds investing in B2C startups such as Ramp (FinTech), Pair (E-Commerce), Thriller (Media), etc.
Personal finance Youtubers like Graham Stephans, Ranveer Allahbadia, Nate O’brien, Erika Kullberg (and many more) are exploring angel investing - aka, investing in startups using personal savings. There are also non-traditional creators such as Litquidity (meme page for finance professionals) and 20VC (VC podcast host) participating in angel investing.
“With an LP base of the world’s top influencers, we have unparalleled insight into the creator market and can help founders navigate the fastest-growing customer acquisition channel in the digital space.”
Karat Financial, a startup focused on building financial infrastructure for creators, started Supernova, a SharkTank-like series where startups are pitching creators for funding, which has turned out to be super popular amongst creators who are exploring angel investing outside of their creative careers.
Takeaway
In the future, the world will see more creators diversifying into entrepreneurship and venture to invest, creator relationships are fantastic assets to all kinds of busineses. Creators are sustaining their careers outside of social media platforms.
💡 This Week's News In the Creator Economy
Ryan Trahan started a $100,000 Charity Campaign with Feeding America
Reed Duchscher predicted a 30% dip in AdSense and brand deals over next year
Sheryl Sandberg Stepped down as Meta COO (replaced by Javier Olivan)
MrBeast dropped Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory video (feat Gordan Ramsay)
Simu Liu made the cover of Time's 100 Most Influential People
TikTok joining Twitter and Twitch to roll out paid live subscription services
✌️ That’s it until next time!
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