How the Creator Economy is Helping Dismantle ‘Old Media.’

Jonathan Tower
Counter Arts
Published in
8 min readJul 9, 2021

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Creators have quickly matured from crude meme videos to distributing full cinematic-quality productions to rival the best of Hollywood, with budgets to match.

Recent announcements across the worlds of technology, media and venture capital are serving as a harbinger for how traditional media will be fundamentally transformed in the years ahead. While none of these events might appear seismic on their own, in the aggregate they mark clear territory for the battles ahead that will both determine the future of media and the lasting influence of the Creator Economy.

In May, one of the industry’s most prolific venture capital firms, Andreessen Horowitz, rebranded its content site, Future, and issued statements implying it was evolving into a new kind of organization — one some characterize as ‘a media company with a venture arm’. Weeks later, Harry Stebbings, the 24-year old founder of the popular 20-minute VC podcast, announced that he had raised $140mm across a pair of inaugural funds, making his fledgling firm, 20vc, one of the largest seed investors in Europe virtually overnight.

So, in the space of a month a respected VC fund announced plans to become a content creator, while a respected content creator announced plans to become a VC fund.

Separately, in late May, Amazon announced it was acquiring media giant Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), home of…

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Counter Arts
Counter Arts

Published in Counter Arts

The (Counter)Cultural One-Stop for Nonfiction on Medium… incorporating categories for: ‘Art’, ‘Culture’, ‘Equality’, ‘Photography’, ‘Film’, ‘Mental Health’, ‘Music’ and ‘Literature’.

Jonathan Tower
Jonathan Tower

Written by Jonathan Tower

Jonathan (@jonathan_tower) is Founder and Managing Partner at Catapult, a global early stage venture firm with assets in multiple geographies.