What Big Tech means for the future of the Creator Economy - Issue #75

To help you navigate this New Creator Economy and make the most of the new business born from it, we have mapped out the 220+ platforms that are empowering creators to make an income by doing what they love. 

In mapping out the Creator Economy, we cover five main categories:

We’ve also leveraged insights and opinions from dozens of industry leaders from founders, employees, creators, and investors from the likes of Shopify, Stripe, Greylock Partners, Northzone, Index Ventures, Atomico, Snapchat, TikTok, Slow Ventures, Mighty Networks, Product Hunt and Hustle Fund. 

A new flock of startups has launched to support content creators to craft (videos, art, newsletters, music, games, courses, etc), find an audience, generate income (subscriptions, tipping, ecommerce, NFTs, etc) and engage their communities.

The answer is not trivial. Estimates show there are 50 million creators in the US alone, and that the number is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, the real number of creators who able to make a living from their passion is much smaller, approximately 2%-5% only are able to generate enough income to make their passion a career.

To be a successful creator, you need to be an influencer after all. The Creator Economy offers independence and the ability to monetise fan’s attention in a variety of ways (as opposed to advertising/sponsorship only), but the road to get there is riddled with challenges.

This is where new startups can help.

Technology frequently produces surprises that nobody predicts. However, the biggest developments are often anticipated decades in advance.

In 1945 Vannevar Bush described what he called the “Memex”, a single device that would store all books, records and communications, and mechanically link them together by association.

This concept was then used to formulate the idea of “hypertext” (a term coined two decades later), which in turn guided the development of the World Wide Web (developed another two decades later).

The “Streaming Wars” have only just begun, yet the first streaming video took place more than 25 years ago.

What’s more, many of the attributes of this so-called war have been hypothesized for decades, such as virtually infinite supplies of content, on-demand playback, interactivity, dynamic and personalized ads, and the value of converging content with distribution.

Patreon CEO and co-founder Jack Conte and Chief Product Officer Julian Gutman spoke on a panel at The Information’s 2021 Creator Economy Summit yesterday, where they were asked about the company’s plans for crypto.

“There’s clearly enormous innovation happening in the crypto and NFT space,” Gutman said.

“Obviously there’s the art market and precious goods market that we’re seeing, with crazy pricing, evolve. It’s unclear if that is sustainable across the entire creator economy, but there’s some fundamental technological components to NFTs as a way to sell value to your audience and sort of continue to gain value from that from secondary sales as what you do becomes more and more important to the world.”

The Great Resignation, the pandemic-caused seismic shift in the way we work, play and live, and the boom of the creator and influencer economy has led to a surge in apps designed to serve those creators.

Talent Hack provides software that streamlines all of that, complete with payment processing, website design and publishing, scheduling software, email automation and CRM.

This allows fitness creators to focus on their clients and their classes, rather than dealing with running their business via software.

The Creator Economy has seen a record $1.3B in funding in 2021 alone.

Dig into how startups are building across the value chain, top investors in the space, and what’s next for the industry.

You can access the report for free here.