*This post was originally published on my blog, VC Cafe.
The creator economy consists of a new set of tools designed to support content creators from all walks of life (from doctors to hobbyists). Let’s start with a short definition:
[the creator economy] is defined as the class of businesses built by over 50 million independent content creators, curators, and community builders including social media influencers, bloggers, and videographers, plus the software and finance tools designed to help them with growth and monetization.
The creator economy market map, Singalfire
A new flock of startups has launched to support content creators to craft (videos, art, newsletters, music, games, courses, etc), find an audience, generate income (subscriptions, tipping, ecommerce, NFTs, etc) and engage their communities.
I’ve written a lot about the rise of the creator economy and its abundance of challenges, why monteziation is the key to unlock creativity, who are the creators and how they make money and how tools like link-in-bio became a hot piece of digital real estate for the creator economy. I’ve also shared my insights with Techcrunch, in “5 creator economy VCs see startup opportunities in monetization, discovery and much more”.
As venture capital investors, one question we think about a lot at Remagine Ventures is “where are the opportunities for startups in the Creator Economy?” In this post, I will take a stab at how we think about the current trends and opportunities for startups in the creator economy.
Challenges with the creator economy today
Can people make a living by being creators? The answer is not trivial. While Signal Fire estimates there are 50 million creators in the US alone, and that the number is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, the real number of creators who able to make a living from their passion is much smaller, approximately 2%-5% only are able to generate enough income to make their passion a career.
The Creator Economy was supposed to offer financial freedom to creators to live off their passion. But the New Yorker argues that at the current state, the Creator Economy…
