2020 Recap: @manycreators's First Year.

Hi,

First of all, I’d like to wish you and the people around you a healthy and successful 2021! 

2020 was our first year (read 9 months) as a company and it was a tough year for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Probably not the best timing, but in March 2020 we started @manycreators with the mission to help creators make a positive impact, innovate, and be able to make a living off the things they love to do. 

So far it has been a crazy journey where we’ve navigated through a global pandemic, grew our team, and worked with amazing people and companies. I can’t be more proud of what our creators and team achieved. I’ll summarize some of our struggles, but also our successes. 

We launched with a group of 10 creators. Today, we represent 50 amazing creators in the Netherlands, the UK, China, and the USA, and growing quickly. We are very happy that we were able to help some of our creators go full-time and that we are able to pay our first 10 live streamers a monthly salary. Some of them even became our colleagues! 

Being able to manage and a fast-growing group of creators hasn’t been easy for us. One of our biggest struggles has been the overall communications. We have had moments that were so overwhelming that unfortunately, we weren’t able to respond to creators and brands quickly enough. 

We have been investing time and a big portion of our revenue into improving this as communications and transparency are something we value a lot in the company. From better email management software to trying to be available during the morning, day, and evening in different timezones and hiring creators to overtake the majority of the creator communication has improved this point significantly. We also will start asking for more feedback from our clients to improve our overall delivery. 

Then it’s so amazing to receive messages like this from our creators:

“MANY have helped me be more business-minded and with any problems, I’ve had with TikTok. Everyone has been very friendly and I’ve felt very welcome and heard, along with meeting some amazing other creators.”

Or 

“Love the freedom and openness within MANY! Everyone is super nice and in less than a year after joining MANY, I’ve essentially transitioned into working on (my) social media full time.

I can assure you, our creators are amazing. We did some really cool things to entertain and help their fans during this difficult year. From organizing a Minecraft meet & greet in collaboration with MIND Young to raise money for mental health awareness under teens in The Netherlands to making people smile with our #thuisopvakantie campaign in collaboration with TikTok, reaching over 31 million people in The Netherlands alone. 

Our creators and team members got their first appearances in international publications like The Newyork Times, South China Morning Post, TechCrunch, Business Insider, or locally in the Netherlands on places like the NOS, AD, and Emerce. Also, our resources have been widely used by different well-known companies and organizations in The Netherlands - something we are very proud of.

We opened our first Creator Space in Amsterdam in July - a safe and creative space to give back to the community and a place where creators and brands come to produce short video content, live streams, or podcasts. Even though we couldn’t use the space to its full potential in 2020, we believe that a lot of exciting and innovative things will come from there in the near future. 

We have never taken any outside investment. Our company is funded by the revenue we create every month and I can assure you that that’s often very stressful - definitely if you’re growing. At the moment, the biggest portion of our revenue is reinvested into the company to sustain our growth. To increase a more stable our MRR, we will be focussing on retainer contracts for a fixed CPM. Brands are able to choose from our portfolio of 36 creators (and counting) and assure brand content, guaranteed reach, consulting, and quality assurance every single month.

Besides all the cool projects we did, we also launched an Ethical Conduct to create more transparency and fairness in the industry, started the MANY Impact Program to drive social change like equality and mental wellbeing, and kicked off the MANY Creator Development Program an educational program designed for TikTok creators and live streamers.

In 2021 we’ll focus on 3 specific growth verticals: 

Creating and growing IP: From TikTok-first shows to podcasts, fashion, beauty, and cooking channels. We believe that innovation 

Social / Live Commerce: Preparing all our creators for what’s coming. Enabling creators to grow their commerce by providing on-demand and private label merchandise.

Brand Enablement: Helping brands to navigate in the worlds of short video and live streaming, enabling creative partnerships, and sponsorships with our creators. 

If you’ve worked with us in 2020, or we’ve helped you in a way (e.g. getting your TikTok verified), we would really appreciate it if you could share your experience(s) with us. You can submit and piece of text, or of course, make a short video. If it’s all right with you, we will share it on our website: https://testimonial.to/manycreators

Thank you so much for everything Rosalie, Ahmet, Quinten, Jasey, Andre, Hieke, Tim, Noa, Robine, Veronique, Joya, Julia, Bella, Daniel, Clyde, Paul, Emma, Chelsea, Anique, Keafer, Justin, Myrthe, Jason, Nikki, Danieke, Keian, Luis, Jip, Maria, Jae, Lora, Myrthe, Mila, Daniel, Myrthe, Renaldo, Tyler and Wesley, Erin, KaiKai, Caitlyn, Jane, Aylin, Klara, Xin Tong, and Ronald.

Best,

Fabian, 

Co-Founder & CEO