Creator's Digest - Issue #1
🖋 News & content about the #Creator Economy
Hi it’s Ange!
Welcome to the first issue of Passion & Creator, the newsletter about emerging trends on the exciting vertical of the Creator/Passion Economy.
Every week, receive some news, resources, deep dives and tips to better understand the ever-growing vertical of the Creator Economy.
Feel free to reach out if you’d like to share comments, or questions. Don’t forget to like this post above and share it with your friends and colleagues. 😉
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The breaking news with Bulletin and other news
The fundings to watch with Karat, Pietra and other roundtables
The top content to read, see and listen with some basics of the Creator Economy
Let's talk about Creator Economy with the funders of the industry
The creator of the week
The post of the week
Have a good reading 💁🏾♂️!
📬 When Facebook becomes the next contender of Substack
When Facebook tries to copy your product, you can say that you have a goldmine in your hands 🏆! Much like the stories with Snap a few years ago, Facebook cloned a flagship of the Creator Economy, Substack’s newsletter subscription model, to create its own called Bulletin!
Bulletin will be the place where podcasters and content writers to publish content and build a community around it. The creator will own his content, his subscription base, and his paying community will pay by Facebook Pay (another opportunity to promote the payment service? 🤔) to have additional features like having access to exclusive content or writing comments. Even if Bulletin is part of Facebook, it is built on a separate website and readers will not have to create a FB account to use it. However, having an FB account will bring them perks such as memberships of exclusive Facebook groups.
One thing we might remember is that Facebook uses each of its assets to promote others ♻️. The main Facebook's asset, the Facebook Groups (1,4 billion users on the groups every day) will be used by creators to keep in touch with their communities. Creators will have access to Facebook Live and Audio Room (aka Clubhouse of Facebook) to promote their content and discuss with their community. Some new Audio Rooms could be discovered by readers on Bulletin. At last, Bulletin's content will be integrated on Facebook Pages to enable distribution on several formats. You get the whole picture...
Finally, one of the competitive advantages of Bulletin is that Facebook will not take any percentage from the creators 🤑 (for now?) or limit the pricing range of the newsletters. Furthermore, like Substack, the product enables creators to be only focus on creating content and growing their community. At this time, Bulletin is still in beta testing: the platform is used by a selected cohort of US high-skilled writers and industry experts who help improve the product for the public!
So, will you go to Bulletin when it is open to all?
And some others interesting news…
TikTok is taking the book industry by storm, and retailers are taking notice
The US NCAA ruling mints new creator class: Student-athletes the July 8
Spotify launched Greenroom Creator Fund last month
💳 The creators have their own bank with Karat Financial!
Freelancers had banking issues: they got Qonto, the creators have banking issues: they have Karat!
Karat Financial, aka the California-based neobank for content creators has raised a $26M Series A led by the VC firm Union Square Ventures and followed by SignalFire. The traditional investors are not the only ones to follow the round: famous creators like Josh Richards (25M of followers on TikTok) and the actor Jared Leto invested in the company. The actor was part of the first circle who invested $4M in it, like Twitch's co-founder Kevin Lin, former TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer, and the YouTube co-founder Steven Chen.
Co-founded by former Instagram product guy Will Kim and the former VC Eric Wei, the YC alumni offers corporate credit cards and credit options like credit for sponsorship payments, without charging interests or fees, for all kind of creators: YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagram influencers, or Roblox avatar sellers. Will & Eric have launched their company based on the need for the creators to have a financial partner understanding that their credit score does not reflect their reality of their financial situation. So, Karat uses its proprietary underwriting analyzing creator's success across several platforms with specific metrics like audience engagement, to offer the best solution to creators while managing the inherent risks in this market.
The creator market is huge. According to SignalFire, from the 50M of creators worldwide, 46M make a living from their content, and 2-3M pass the 6-figures annual revenue. From there, Karat developed their customer base on high new worth creators first, and then extended the scope with the support of its community, so that the company is now achieving a monthly transaction growth around 50%.
The Series A will be used to double the team, which has currently 14 employees, and develop the product & customer success sides. The founders want to push the Karat Card but also develop new financial services to offer a complete financial infrastructure for creators over the long term. The company thinks about developing bookkeeping, tax, money management payroll, or services to help get a mortgage or even incorporate a business.
So, dear creators, if you need guidance to choose a bank, go for Karat! (Promised, I am not commissioned 😉)
🖋 A bank for the creator economy, Karat Financial raises $26M in Series A funding
🛍 Pietra wants to help creators to conquer the physical world!
When you start creating content and monetising your brand through physical products, you think about creating a Shopify store, but what about the whole process? That's where Pietra comes in!
The business-in-a-box platform Pietra raised a Series A of $15M led by Peter Thiel’s renowed Founders Fund, and followed by Andreessen Horowitz, TQ Ventures, Abstract Ventures and the Hollywood mogul Michaël Ovitz. Despite the company has prestigious investors for its round, Pietra has already gathered well-famous personalities & investors for its previous $4M seed round, with Andreessen Horowitz, TQ Ventures and the famous actors Will Smith and Robert Downey Jr.
Led by ex-Uber Ronak Trivedi, Pietra enables creators to bring an idea to a physical product line from start to finish, while maintaining creative and financial control of their brand. The founding team has observed that historically, only the top creators have had access to resources to create merchandise. So Pietra built a platform permitting creators to interface with suppliers, manage orders and fulfillment and set up online storefronts. In exchange for building an equal opportunity platform for all the creators, Pietra only charges creators for the elements that they used and doesn't claim any ownership on the produced merchandise.
So, with this promising value proposition (Pietra pivoted from a marketplace for jewelry sellers to the current platform), Pietra is used by 20 000 creators and wants to reach the M creators mark.
This new round will be used to expand the team, develop the platform (Pietra is working on a Pro version for brands doing multiple production at the same time), bring more suppliers-partners to Pietra, and develop a way to enable creators to easily develop a digital-first commerce brand.
So, if you want to develop your own cap line or create some beauty products, Pietra will be the place to be!
And some other fundings to watch…
Willa, the payment app ensuring creators get paid on time, has raised a series A of $18M led by FinTech Collective, Entrée Capital and EQT Ventures the July 7.
Mighty, the platform for kids helping them customize and sell pre-made products, has raised a seed round of $6.5M led by Animo Ventures, and followed by Maveron, Humbition, Sesame Workshop or Collaborative Fund the July 3.
Minly, the online platform that allows celebrities and fans to connect through a new form of personalized experiences, has raised a seed round of $3.6M co-led by 4DX Ventures, B&Y Venture Partners and Global Ventures the June 28.
Happs, the live streaming news platform that enables creators to livestream simultaneously across several platforms, has raised a seed round of $4.7M co-led by Bullpen Capital, Crosslink, Goodwater Capital and Corazon the June 25.
Rarible, the operator of a community-owned NFT marketplace that allows users to buy and auction off digital art, has raised a series A round of $14.2M from Venrock Capital, CoinFund and 01 Advisors the June 23.
For this first issue, I share you some basics of the Creator Economy
👨🏿💻 Tell me what do you think about this content in comments and what kind of subjects would you like to be treated in this section!
🤔 Who are the funders of the Creator Economy?
As one image is worth a long discourse, I shall be brief with this mapping displaying the big players financing the creators, and the ecosystem around them!
I will summarize all the Creator Economy investors on a AirTable database, do not hesitate to tell me if you want it, and I will send you the link 😉! The database will evolve over time, so you will have more data points over the long term!
As I share with you content on the Creator Economy, I suppose that talking about creators themselves is the least I can do! So, each week, you will discover a new creator and his/her universe.
Today, let's talk tattooing with Pauline Gueho, aka @paghuo!
Pauline Gueho, resumed her lifelong obsession for tattooing after working a year as a VC analyst at Heartcore and XAnge. Not only did she start researching and documenting her findings in insightful articles like this one defining creator tattooing, but she also decided to become a tattoo designer on top of her other activities.
Pauline draws flash tattoos inspired by the Internet imagery that you can see for yourself on her Instagram. Her next step: Flashh, the first Tattoo Creator Community.
😉 Tips for creators : The double approach researcher-doer is a great way to gain legitimacy while developing an expertise on its craft.
So, whether you’re a tat aficionados or just curious about the phenomenon, do not hesitate to start the conversation with Pauline, she may give you a brand new perspective about the category 👾.
As I’ve talked a lot about money today 💶, I’ll leave you with one last number 🤓
NB: The displayed amount dated from Q3 2020 and double at February 2021 👏 (The source if you want to know more about Substack figures)
That’s it for today!
Do not hesitate to reach on Twitter or Linkedin if some content really touched your curiosity, or if you want to suggest your sources 😎
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See you next time 🙋🏿♂️ !
Ange Michaël AHYI
Really great post, can't wait to read more. You make great points about the potential benefits of Bulletin, but based on their non-existent support for creators on their other products, the jury's still out for me.