Hi it’s Ange!
Welcome to the second issue of Passion & Creator, the newsletter about emerging trends on the exciting vertical of the Creator/Passion Economy.
Every week, receive the news, resources, deep dives and the tips to better understand the ever-growing of the Creator Economy.
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The breaking news with $1B for the creators and others news
The fundings to watch with OpenSea, Songfinch and other roundtables
The top content to read, see and listen with key data points of the industry
Let's talk about Creator Economy with the rise of live streaming shopping
The creator of the week
The post of the week
Have a good reading 💁🏿♂️!
💰 Facebook (here we go again 😂) makes another step by putting $1B on the table!
Like in Marvel or DC, a single major event is often the warning sign of a much bigger one (If you don't get it, I invite you to watch the Marvel's infinity saga 🦸🏿♂️!)
I told you in the last issue that Facebook launched its own newsletter subscription service, now Facebook puts its cards on the table and announces to invest $1B up to end 2022 in several programs designed for creators!
Among these programs, we could find new products like Bulletin, the Live Audio Rooms or the two monetization products: Stars, the system inviting viewers to send tips to streamers in exchange of perks (tips which are monthly paid to the creator) and Affiliate, the affiliation tool (the name is crystal-clear 😅).
These programs already exist, and some programs intend to be extended to new creator types, like the gaming creators; but there will be new programs for Facebook and Instagram.
The bonus programs aim to be like an apprenticeship: learning while making money! For example, Facebook's In-stream bonus pays creators using in-stream ads (longer content scaterred of ads) for 4 months, and Instagram's Reels Summer Bonus will pay creators to creator great Reels content on Instagram (Needless to say that the move of Instagram from being photo-focused to video-focused makes its way!)
Finally, Facebook plans to launch its own creator fund, providing seed funding to help creators.
So, Facebook makes a very bold move in a group we could call "Creator Economy GAFAM", gathering among big players TikTok, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube and Snap! As a comparison, TikTok deployed last year $200M for its creator fund, YouTube 100M$ for its own, and Snap expenses 1M$ per day in Spotlight!
So, bringing on the table a full package, including ad revenue, fan subscription, paid online events, branded content and creator shopping tools with this billion dollars is a very clear statement: there's a new sheriff in town 🤠!
And some other interesting news…
Clubhouse is now out of beta and open to everyone
Substack makes first major podcast investment with Booksmart Studios
YouTube launches initial test of live-stream shopping with selected creators
🦄 OpenSea, the first NFT unicorn
Since the auction sale of Beeple's digital artwork for $69M last March, the NFT word is on everybody's lips, but now the NFT world takes another step forward in having its first unicorn: OpenSea!
The peer-to-peer marketplace for crypto collectibles and non-fungible tokens has raised its Series B round of $100M the July 19. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, and followed by the hedge fund sponsor Coatue, the leading talent agency CAA, and personalities like the actor-investor Ashton Kutcher or the NBA player Kevin Durant. This round is not the only one of the year: in last March, the company has already raised a $23M Series A and intends to be to maintain its lead in this vertical who exploded this year.
The NYC-based NFT marketplace, led by Devin Finzer, enables users to buy, sell and discover digital assets backed by Ethereum. By digital assets, we're speaking about common digital assets like digital art items, game items, but also more uncommon ones as domain names. The long-term goal of the company is to create a system where all type of digital wealth could be converted into ownable and free exchangeable and ownable assets.
The NFT sub-vertical is one of the hot spaces of 2021! For those who are not used to the concept, the NFTs are one of the best consumer application for the blockchain. They are identifiable digital assets that have unique properties on the web: they are unique, authenticable through blockchain, liquid, user-owned, and usable across multiple transactions. According to Nonfunglible.com, NFTs are now selling at a rate of $62M a week, and this trend reflects on OpenSea's performances. The company begins the year with $8M of monthly digital asset sales to sold last month $160M last month, that the startup took 2,5% in sales commissions.
With this new round, OpenSea joins the unicorn club, for a valuation of $1,5B, and has many projects to launch. The founder plans to expand OpenSea to a wider audience. The first step is to extend OpenSea beyond the Ethereum blockchain, that has become very expensive for the buyers (for your curiosity, the ETH began in 2021 at $736 to peak at $4155 the May 12 🤯 and stabilize around $2000 today).
So, the company will push other networks like Tezos and Flow, or the gas-free Polygon network (the gas fees is the computing costs for processing transactions on the blockchain, which increase with the crypto value, and are impacted on the users 😕), and as last step, OpenSea officially announced that the buyers will no longer pay the gas fees 🙌!
💽 Songfinch a.k.a your personal singer-songwriter
If you want your own John Legend's "All of me" to make your sweetheart fall in love 😍, stop the singing lessons, we have your new best friend: Songfinch!
The music company has raised a Seed round of $2M led by the singer The Weeknd, Atlantic Records's CEO Craig Kallman and other business angels like Reverb.com's CEO David Kalt the July 14.
The Chicago-based music company, led by the serial music entrepreneur John Williamson and its three co-founders, enables users to order personalized songs. The customer can select the genre, the mood and provide personal info and details to the creator, and the musician will produce the personal song for $199 in 3 to 5 days. This service is mainly used for very personal moments like weddings, birthdays or mother's day!
In the music industry, Songfinch found its audience: with the pandemic, the company permits to some indie artists to stay afloat. Besides, the consumers gets used to the concept of custom content, thanks to Cameo's custom videos for example.
So, Songfinch took advantage of this trend and developed a track record of 20 000 homemade songs, to reach $1,5M of revenue in 2020! And it's still going on: Songfinch earned +$2M in revenue and projects to pass the $5M bar.
🖋 The Weeknd Jumps Into $2 Million Seed Funding Round for Songfinch
And some other fundings to watch…
Lumanu, a platform offering creators to manage all of their collabs in one place, has raised a Series A round of $12M led by Origin Ventures, and followed by the Alumnis Ventures Group, 500 Startups and Gaingels the July 28.
Numerade, a EdTech video platform enabling PhDs to provide step-by-step maths or science solutions, has raised a Series A round of $26M led by IDG Capital, and followed by General Catalyst, Kapor Capital, Toy Ventures, Mucker Capital and business angels the July 19.
DeFine, facilitating the NFT and social tokens production for creators, has raised a funding round of $5M led by Huobi Ventures, and followed by several investors like the entertainment management company Abyss and the gaming company Black Desert the July 20.
Popshop Live, offering to creators to create and host their own shopping channel, has raised a Series A round of $20M led by Benchmark, and followed by VCs like Floodgate, TQ Ventures and personalities like Michael Ovitz, Baron Davis and Kendall Jenner the 8 July.
Talkshoplive, a second live streaming shopping community, has raised a Seed extension round of $6M led by Raine Ventures, and followed by business angels the 8 July.
Hiber, the platform enabling creators to create the own Android games, has raised a Series A round of $15M led by EQT Ventures, and followed by Luminar Ventures, Bumble Ventures, Sybo and Konvoy Ventures the June 30.
For this issue, we will focus on the market data points & metrics! My dear investor friends, this is for you 💁🏿♂️
👨🏿💻 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!
🛍 The growing interest around the live streaming shopping
You may note the point: Popshop and Talkshop raising big rounds the same week, and YouTube launching its own feature... 🤔 There is a momentum now around livestream shopping, about which will win the keys of the kingdom!
For this issue, I give you some insights about what is livestream shopping 🤲
Enjoy!
Today, let's talk personal finances with Yoann Lopez & Snowball 🌨️
Before becoming one the best french content writers, Yoann Lopez, "Chief Snow Officer" of Snowball was previously CMO at Comet, one of the best startups of the French tech ecosystem.
The road to become one of the best French content creators began with in parallel of his CMO duties. He used to make side projects, and each year, he creates the YOLO Report, where he makes a review of all his achievements and elements of his life, tracked all along the year in a written report. In one of its report, he wrote about his personal finances (how he spends his money, his savings, his investments).
His transparency about his personal finances management were a great success and generates many reactions from his readers, and it was one of the trigggers which pushed him to create Snowball, a newsletter focusing to helping its readers to better handle their personal finances! Because of his previous works, he's already gathers a community ready to subscribe to his newsletter! But, it is only the tip of the iceberg. Besides writing content, Yoann launched additional businesses, like Snowball NFTs, a WhatsApp newsletter, and recently, a new format specialized in economics!
The path of Yoann is an example for anyone who wants to become a "knowledge influencer", a creator who manages to sell his knowledge and creates a community around him.
Besides launching a paid subscription, he creates a system involving his community in the journey of his project, by making them "shareholders" of Snowball.
All these compounding interests worked pretty well: in a year, Yoann reached on his Susbtasck flagship 15k free subscribers, +2k paid subscribers for +€15k of estimated MRR, pushing him at one of the best Substack writers of his category!
So, if you want to better manage your personal finances, do not hesitate to subscribe! As a Snowball subscribe, maybe I am biased, but go read the last free edition, I am sure you will like it!
NB: Snowball is a FR-speaking newsletter 🇫🇷
I told you in the previous issue that +2M creators earn more than $100k! One of their secrets: multiply income sources 💶! So, let's see how a +200k Instagram influencer has passed the $M mark!
NB: For now, Instagram does not authorize to embed their posts in Substack 🤷🏿♂️, so click here to read this interesting post 😉!
That’s it for today!
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See you next time 🙋🏿♂️ !
Ange Michael AHYI