A year building in the creator economy...
In my first year post-grad, I decided to build a startup.
Funded by savings from KSW and the Delta Fellowship at Human Capital, here's a brief history of some of the products I worked on...
A brief history of the products I Built…
*Some working with co-founders, others not.
Hyphenate
Professional network connecting content creators and talent managers.
Problem: Getting representation was one of the most impactful things I did in building KSW. I knew many of my food creator friends were seeking representation but didn't know where to find it. Additionally, talent managers are always looking for up-and-coming talent. As it stands now, talent managers and creators don't have an efficient way to find each other.
Solution: Professional network connecting content creators and talent managers. Bridging the gap between creators and Hollywood.
Learning: While there was demand amongst talent managers seeking new talent, it's not enough to match the supply of talent. The marketplace was too lopsided. Additionally, we struggled to figure out how to create continuous value after the initial matchmaking (ideas included: legal tools for the contract arrangement, a detailed portfolio page for creators/managers to market themselves, and payment tools for creators to pay out their manager for each project).
Pitchly
Business page for content creators. The entrypoint to a network connecting creators and talent professionals (managers, publicists, agents, etc.).
We decided we needed to expand our scope beyond just talent managers and creators to include publicists, journalists, and agents. This would compensate for the creator-heavy marketplace we saw in Hyphenate.
We also felt we creator acquisition would move faster if we gave them with a "single-player tool" that helped them source and filter their business inbox.
Problem: Creators and talent professionals (managers, publicists, agents, etc.) need a more efficient way to find each other and work together.
Solution: A business-site builder for creators that would lead into a network connecting content creators and talent professionals. Bridging the gap between creators and Hollywood.
Learning: Our marketplace was still too lopsided. There is a reason why the supply of talent professionals was so low in Hyphenate: Hollywood professionals are skeptical of making themselves more available online. They don't want to be contacted with cold outreach.
Granted, we knew this from the start, but did not anticipate how tough of an uphill battle it would be. The creator business page itself went over well with creators, but it was not very defensible as a product (any link-in-bio with existing distribution could easily copy the format).
Collab
Slack group to level-set and learn from creators. Launched a job board, happy hours, peer-to-peer networking.
At this point, my cofounder and I decided to go back to basics and just try learning from our core users (food creators with 1M+ followers) about their problems. Hence, we launched a Slack group to learn from creators and foster a creator community.
Problem: We dove into multiple problems within this group -- peer-to-peer networking, hiring production professionals (editors, graphic designers, etc.), personal finance, etc.
Solution: We tested solutions against each problem listed above. This was more of an exploration of different mini ideas we tested in succession.
Learning: We learned a couple things from this journey.
1) It was even more clear that creators are very busy and not generally actively seeking new business SaaS tools, making adoption of any new product difficult from the get-go. Creators are less like 100-person small businesses looking to procure new software, and more like consumers buying premium productivity software. Except in this case, the consumer is not super interested in premium productivity software from the start. This completely makes sense, but makes it difficult to build a business tool product for creators.
2) Second learning -- because creators are so busy, most just wanted a way to find more brand deals faster. That being said, influencer brand deal matching is a very saturated and difficult space (for another post). In summary, we did not find a product for which creators would pay money for that didn't involve brands in some way.
Curatr
Web app that allows you to curate and save your favorite links. Influencers can paywall certain collections (ex. My favorite cooking tools).
We always loved curating and saving my favorite links/products/ideas in notes, and enjoy seeing what my friends are curating and saving as well. This married our interest in curation with our mutual interest in creator monetization.
Problem: For creators, the problem is "I need to monetize in a way that's ideally passive and low-effort."
Solution: A web app that allows users to curate and save their favorite links. Influencers can paywall certain collections (ex. My favorite cooking tools).
Learning: We targeted too wide of a user group for this to perform at its best. As such, the product was too spread out in types of links saved. In hindsight, we probably should have focused on a Gen Z audience, tailored the design as such, and chosen either consumers or creators as our core "curator" to start.
I still think this space is very interesting and promising, and very possible to crack with the right approach.
Creator Labs
Legal and payments software for influencer licensing deals. As seen in Eater!
By this point, I had a pretty strong thesis about creator tools that 1) enable passive income and 2) help creators build personal brands, rather than take away (for instance, sponsored content takes away from an influencer's brand -- it makes their content feel less authentic to their audience). I started thinking about enabling licensing for creators.
Towards the end of my KSW career, I had started the process of licensing KSW to product manufacturers. This meant "Kawaii Sweet World x Betty Crocker" style baking mixes, jewelry, etc. I thought licensing was a genius way for creators and brands to collaborate. Creators have distribution, brands know how to make product. These two parties just needed a way to collaborate more efficiently.
To the extreme, I saw even small, niche creators collaborating with Etsy sellers on products. The process was now just blocked by the headache of finding the right partners, managing the legal process, and generally navigating the process of licensing. Considering this, I felt there was opportunity in an automated licensing agent for creators.
Problem: Creators and brands need to collaborate on licensing deals more efficiently.
Solution: Legal and payments software for influencer licensing deals.
Learning: Creators were really excited about this -- I onboarded 15 creators with 1M+ followers to start the process of licensing deals.
However, as I somewhat anticipated, recruiting the brand side was very difficult. Granted, it was not as difficult as you may think. The idea sounds more difficult in abstract than in reality -- I would approach an Asian sauce brand with a fast-growing Asian creator and see if they were interested in partnering. Most would agree to at least explore the possibility.
Still, the process was extremely slow, high-touch, and manual. It was difficult to imagine how it would reach venture-scale. I think this is still a good idea, although as a more boutique business than venture-scale.
After one year of building, the opportunity came up to join Jupiter, a company combining food creators and the future of e-commerce. I loved the team, product, and mission, and joined as Product Lead in Oct 2022. While I loved staking it out on my own, I am excited to be working with the team today to build out a vision I feel strongly about 🚀