More importantly, when you invest in a startup, in most cases, you are investing in a team, in people.
To achieve success, startups and creators both need to identify a market, a problem and address this market in an efficient and timely manner, to constantly improve, to find a great team and last but not least, to make money in order to continue to exist. Needless to say, such journeys are difficult and “many are called but only a few are chosen”.
The Creator / Startup similarity:
Amazon, Airbnb, Stripe and so many others of these successful companies were and still are “pain killers”. They address their respective markets with a unique solution and in return get millions of users ready to include them in their daily lives in order to continue benefiting from their solutions.
Now, guess what? Pewdiepie or MrBeast did and still do exactly the same thing. They approached the market with a unique value/solution proposition and, just like the companies mentioned above, people liked them so much that they decided to include them in their daily lives.
Money, a result accelerator for startups and creators
Both startups and creators need money to grow. A startup when it will raise funds, it will be able to accelerate its development and its growth. We can observe the same thing with creators. Making videos, creating content also costs money and having money to amortize the costs of production can considerably accelerate the activity of creators.
The difference between Startups / Creators
Startups and creators are not treated the same, access to money to develop is not the same.
Startups raise millions very early (sometimes way too early) while creators have to work their way to the top despite crazy numbers in terms of acquisition (followers, subscribers, etc.) and sometimes even in terms of revenue. I actually wrote an article about this here.
However, this is not about discriminating against creators, of course. One of the reasons there are no venture capitalists in the creative world is that most people think creativity is not scalable (or not as scalable as a business, in the most traditional way of looking at it). And until very recently, this was more or less true. However, things have changed and in the Hypeeo team, we really believe that creativity is scalable. This has already been done by some famous creators and when you apply the techniques and learnings from the startup world to the creative world, well…
Investing early can pay off big
In the world of startups, you learn early on that timing is everything. Also, the earlier the better (assuming you are there at the right time 😉 ).
If you reread the previous part and assume that the startup has the same profile as a creator: Responding to a problem/need by addressing a market, while keeping the money in focus. We can say that investing in creators as soon as possible can bring you a lot of money.
The only missing part for creators is the “exit”, but even there, although most creators don’t exit from their personal name, some manage to exit from a company they created using that same name. The most famous examples are Kylie Jenner who sold (or is still selling) Kylie Cosmetics for $600 million or Jay-Z who sold Ace of Spades to LVMH for about $300 million. Not bad, right?
Nevertheless, this is quite rare in the game of “classic” designers. However, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Designers have proven that they can create a valuable brand out of nothing, not just super stars like Jay-Z or Kylie, but anyone. In fact, what separates the super star from the rest of the popular designers is nothing but funding and support.
What would happen if enough creators started to receive proper investments, guidance and more, as is the case with start-ups?
How to invest in creators?
The best method today is still to contact the creators that you find interesting and that have a good growth (like startups) by proposing them to accompany them financially or humanly. There are also more and more investment platforms for creators that are developing, including the platform: https://getjuice.com/
