A Creator Economy Manifesto

Buckle up, this is the longest Product People I've ever written (and may ever write). Let's got on a ride through the future of the creator economy.

The first generation of enabling technology for the creator economy set out to accomplish the wrong things.

Companies raised rounds at massive SAAS valuations to provide things like email marketing with recommendations (Substack), paid gated content (Patreon) and masterclass courses from creators.

None of these businesses required the amount of capital they raised from a technology level. And what they chose to execute has been overbuilt from a corporate structure standpoint, and is now late stage enough where profits now really matter (especially with a faltering economy), and the ground underneath their feet is shifting.

With massive fundraising rounds comes pressure for fast results, and the creator economy is anything but fast (except at burning people out).

The world we live in now is one where the potential of a new, more niche-focused economy is almost unlimited.

Every dollar made by corporate conglomerates making food, beverages, cosmetics, apparel, electronics etc is a dollar that can be repurposed by a more niche business that better speaks to its consumer. With democratized access to the global supply chain + the needs of older businesses to up profits to make up for massive corporate infrastructure, small businesses can even relatively compete on price in categories where that would have been previously impossible.

In this new world, we are all either workers or creators.

Being a creator, having your newsletter, your TikTok, your Youtube channel--any medium that has momentum, is the fastest step to a financial freedom the working class has ever had. And if you don't chase it, you're playing by the old rules.

Before I started this newsletter, I was the President of a public company. Today, I feel I have significantly more leverage as a niche creator in my free time--where heads of agencies, major VCs, operators of rollups, and thousands of entrepreneurs read my newsletter--than I did about as far up the corporate ladder as someone with my background could climb.

Anecdote

I've been talking about running a product cohort with a friend, a 10 week run to help people launch their brand. When we looked at the parameters, it became clear that our ideal criteria is that members would be a creator already. If you have that starting following, if you know what it takes to grind out regular content that performs for 6 months or a year or multiple years... I can teach you the rest. If I teach you that and you don't have a creator's audience or understanding of the grind of consistent quality content... I think the failure rate will be a lot higher.

But back to my initial point...

We don't need big funded SAAS businesses that let creators send emails, or charge for paywalls, or sell a course.

Read that sentence above again. Hundreds of millions were raised to execute on these things that already existed and apply them to a nascent niche that would still be in its infancy by the time the businesses needed to generate massive returns.

Those are all commoditized things that don't need a creator specific version with massive backing. In fact, I'd far more place my bets on companies like?ConvertKit, where I write this from now, who focus on what creators actually need (to make money) because the team from that company is in the trenches everyday.

What creators need today is real business infrastructure.

My main comparison for what the creator economy needs is the music industry. If you sign a record label deal, a management agreement, and get a lawyer, that comes with accounting, with legal teams, with distribution and marketing infrastructure, with access to support, features, collaboration, PR, a pre-set and ever shifting set of resources to enable artists to grow. There are various sizes of these deals from major down to smaller independent offerings.

It's one of the main reason's productizing by musical artists is leaps and bounds above that of your average creator. The music business has a foundation to provide capital, has means of distribution to guarantee sales through live events, and the top performers are getting savvy to the fact they don't need to just sell clothes, but can make money in consumeables as well.

Lil Yachty has pizza in WALMART. Plus merch with Nautica... and a respected Nail Polish line.

Breakdown here:? https://www.tiktok.com/@orenmeetsworld/video/7143739782097685802

Justin Beiber has more releases between his merch, Drew House (his fashion line) and Peaches (his cannabis brand) than was in the last J. Crew mens release.

Dua Lipa's latest capsule was manga, some sort of weird hybrid attempt to leverage subcultures. Diplo has a cannabis beverage with Leisuretown. Katie Perry has a non-alcoholic beverage that is becoming unavoidable in LA.

Breakdown here:? https://www.tiktok.com/@orenmeetsworld/video/7142949317072997674

There is infrastructure to support these musicians, somewhere in their agents/managers/labels relationships that hasn't had the surface scratched with large creators, where this kind of productization is the exception, not the norm.

It's a predatory infrastructure, my memories of working in that world are almost all sour, but that's not what has to get built for this new world.

We need repeatable frameworks for creator success at all sizes

Entrepreneurs should focus on tools that really enable creators through services (see?JT Barnett?connecting creators to brands and enabling brands to understand acting with or as a creator) or immensely well thought out platforms (see?Pietra).

Creators need funnels, frameworks to sell and productize. Brands, retailers and conglomerates need creators audiences and their consumer insights.

Pairing these together is unlikely to be done by SAAS, and is more likely to be done by services. As the bull markets raged the last decade, it became out of vogue to run a cash flowing, scaling services business, simply because your multiple for potential exit was so much higher with a (likely not cash flowing) SAAS.

But what happens as we get more and more stuff?

A. Perhaps we'll move from a consumption economy to a customization economy.

It's no surprise one of the biggest customer bases at brands like?SRGN Academy?is Gen-Z and female.

Or that forward thinking brands like Arc'teryx are working with artists to give their long-lasting quality apparel new stylistic life as art pieces--they were on this wave in 2020.

B. In addition, I feel creative direction will really matter. Endless clothing lines, drink brands, new spins on the same product... what will stand out will come from this new breed of Virgil Abloh inspired creative directors who live and breath the unique blend of

DESIGN + CURATION + COMMUNITY + INFLUENCE + CREATIVE + PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS + SPECTACLE + ENABLEMENT

that would be incomprehensible for the siloed creatives of the past.

More on what the modern creative director's role looks like:?https://www.tiktok.com/@orenmeetsworld/video/7143979739919732014

C. Solving real user problems

A friend of mine is involved with a skincare brand?EVME?whose message really resonated. They're tackling something immensely hard (allergens) in something used by so many.?There will never not be an opportunity for Big Ideas, given proper room to execute their vision without unnecessarily large corporate infrastructure.

This is apropos as how?Figma got acquired by Adobe--the Figma team made and iterated upon software so unbelievably well for what their target market needed that using their software became a joy... and disrupted an incumbent that was incredibly well entrenched and also innovating well in its own right. That disruption was worth $20B to give Adobe a combined future. In the design world I liken this deal and it's timing to Facebook's acquisition of Instagram.

I get a lot of inquiries about helping entrepreneurs and brands with their products/projects, and I don't have much interest or time, I believe my time outside of my core projects is best spent more in?1->Many?enablement and conceptual exploration... but the conversations that have most stirred my interest come down to retail.

Distribution is still a kingmaker, even if the power is shifting to consumer demand in the face of more exploratory millennial, Gen-Z and Gen Alpha shoppers. This is part of?why I encourage entrepeneurs to start brands... not "dtc brands".

Distributors, retailers, and conglomerates are asking how do they own more of their own shelf...how do they help make things that resonate themselves? No more just Kroger or value in-house brands, how do their in-house brands mirror Erewhon and charge MORE?

This reminds me of some graphics from Dazed's?Monomass?report a few years back that were remarkably prescient:

This is how these retailers will succeed.?By working through painful organizational rehauls, fast moving iteration, carving out R&D segments and accelerators for creators built with the new economy in mind happening on their dime with methodologies for evaluation and iteration outside of their existing supply chain-- conducted with opinionated, hyper-connected partners who don't just analyze the zeitgeist but play an active role in it, and by following and engaging with talented people who understand what is happening in this new world and are articulating it to new audiences--some of my favorites:?Alex Friedman,?Kira MacKenzie,?Snaxshot...

Whatever the industry--grocery, pharmacy, streetwear, cannabis, alcohol, outdoors fashion, auto, fast food, electronics, cosmetics (who are down this route already), the above is going to continue to be the foundation of a new playbook.

This is an interesting time we live in, writing it out helps me understand my own thoughts and begin to see throughlines... I hope reading this does the same for you.

- Oren