Where are the Platforms for Investing in Creators?

5 min readOct 6, 2021

The internet allows creative individuals to bypass the traditional media gatekeepers, finding and growing audiences directly. These individuals now make up the Creator Economy, one of the most dominant economic forces in the online world.¹ Creators include independent content creators, social media influencers, bloggers, videographers, and community builders.² We’re watching this economy develop in realtime, and we have some questions.

The concept of Creators began with YouTubers, who didn’t even have monetization tools until the “YouTube Partner Program” was created in 2007. Monetization has grown with a vengeance, however: in the last three years, YouTube has paid out over $30 billion to the latest generation of Creators.³

Creators are here to stay. More than 50 million people around the world now consider themselves Creators. More than 29% of America’s kids want to be an internet star. There’s currently a Creator race on, between YouTube’s new $100m Creator-focused fund, Facebook and Instagram working to lure Creators with $1bn in payments, and TikTok, which is set to award Creators $3bn in the next three years.

So who are the Creators?

The Creator Earnings Benchmark Report for 2021, published by NeoReach and the Influencer Marketing Hub, surveyed over 2,000 Creators, and discovered that they aren’t the happy-go-lucky 18-year-olds that many think. Fully 40% of the surveyed Creators were 30–40 years old, with the other 60% evenly divided between over 40 and under 30 years. Over 50% of surveyed Creators report making a liveable wage from their online activities.

The modern Creator Economy exists as a rapidly-developing ecosystem, building new infrastructure for Creator-associated businesses in a flurry of Venture Capital, corporate investments, and new revenue streams (like NFTs).

The numbers attached to this new Creator economy are amazing. The total Creator Economy market size is estimated at $104bn, with a growth trajectory similar to the gig economy (projected value between $1–4.5tn by 2023.)⁴ The Creator economy is already larger than the movie, TV, and music markets put together.

VC Infrastructure Action

Venture Capitalists are having a heyday funding services targeting Creators. Between January and June of 2021, VCs invested $2bn into more than 50 creator-focused startups.⁵ Antler did a report on 220 Creator-based startups, identifying the three biggest categories as audience monetization, creator tools, and audience curation.⁶

We’re also seeing startups that support the financial side of the Creator economy. New products support incorporation (Stripe Atlas and Clerky), accounting and taxes (Earnr), company finances (Pry), and banking options (Lance and Friz), as well as establishing a new type of SAFE for equity (Fairmint).

What we’re not seeing, however, are investment products that give Creators access to growth capital for their businesses — and investors a way to invest in Creator-associated assets.

Creators are businesses. Like every business, they go through their cycles of maturity: the classic stages of (i) bootstrapping; (ii) establishing consistent income streams and monetization; and (iii) strategic expansion and growth. Typically, an established business can bring in capital to grow, but Creators are hamstrung by the lack of investment resources. In his viral article titled Content Creators are Businesses, Sergey Faldin talks about how content Creators are businesses needing capital, but investors are afraid of them.

Corporate Financing Incents Bootstrappers

Many platforms with Creator incentive funds earmark them for bootstrappers. In March, for example, Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison announced the Clubhouse Creator Program to help aspiring hosts build their audiences, connect their brands, and finance their shows. Unfortunately, this type of support doesn’t help established Creators ramp with growth capital.

Li Jin, formerly of Andreessen-Horowitz, and now a Founder and General Partner of Atelier Ventures, talks about the need for wealth creation in the Creator economy. In her article, called The Creator Economy Needs a Middle Class, Jin talks about new models that could provide capital investment to Creators, including social tokens or niche creator-focused funds, like Podfund, which provides capital and revenue financing options to podcasters.

Accelerator Funds Help Bootstrappers Too

For now, Creators are now trying to establish their own Creator investment funds. YouTube personalities Rhett & Link, whose YouTube business last year brought in $20m, have established a $5m investment fund called “Mythical Accelerator”. Mythical Accelerator is acquiring ownership stakes in other social media stars’ businesses. “We think we can invest and deploy a lot of expertise, advice, and guidance to people,” says Brian Flanagan, Mythical Entertainment’s CEO. Mythical Accelerator is hand-selecting investment targets for their fund.

Back in 2020, YouTuber Mr.Beast, (real name Jimmy Donaldson) began talking on Twitter about how he would like to find some YouTubers and invest in them in exchange for a cut of their profits. In March of 2021, Creative Juice announced that they were creating a $2m investment fund and that Mr. Beast would be involved in selecting and mentoring chosen YouTubers.

Donaldson says the idea is to help already-growing YouTubers “pour gas on the fire” for growth. While the Creative Juice fund is seeking to provide growth investment, they don’t specify how they will select Creators, or how they will set up their investments.

Beyond these one-off boutique experiments, Creators still lack access to growth capital at scale. Until now.

Investment Funds Bring Growth Capital, Open New Markets for Investors

Exceed is a fintech company that enables qualified investors to directly participate in the Talent and Creator economy for the first time. Making these markets accessible for investment means that Creator and Talent businesses can now obtain growth capital, either directly, or through the financing of new business models.

Exceed has developed a new fractionalized asset for Talent and Creators: Talent-backed Securities. These securities form the basis of curated, hedged investment funds, populated with high-earning Talent, which are professionally managed, and available to qualified investors. Exceed’s Platform is a marketplace for Talent & Creator funds and their associated tokens.

Opening up the market to tradable securities on an institutional-grade platform lets investors participate in the energy and drive of Creators. With more scalable models for investment in Creator growth, Creators will be able to develop brand IP or valuable franchises. Bringing more financial power to Creators will unlock an entirely new level of possibility in the market.

We can’t wait.