We Just Finished the Largest Study of Creators Ever Done. What We Found Surprised Us.

As Austin Robey and Severin Matusek put it in their report,

“After the Creator Economy”: “We want work to be financially valued without compromising our integrity. We want to make meaningful work that we're proud of, not please an algorithm. We want to share work in ways that feel right to us, not compete for attention on a feed. We want to feel see

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"creators" have been around for a long time - ever since there's been social media platforms But there's something new: "Creator-led" platforms, where roadmaps, monetization, and policies are aligned to support them from first principles Why the evolution?

Who will we even consider to be creators? I see two trends having an impact here. First, the line between mainstream and digital talent will fade away: not so much through creators ‘breaking through’ into the mainstream (a narrative that already feels out-of-date), as through the opposite - talent that has (or would have) found an audience through ... See more

Gina told me she was excited to see evidence of a shift in how creators build businesses they have more control over. These are “independent” creators—folks building their own platforms and communities. According to Gina, the research shows that there are 4 characteristics of this new way forward:1) Independent creators own their data rather than r... See more

We know it can work, because it already does. Creator-focused companies such as Teachable (courses and coaching), Clubhouse (live audio), and Substack are subverting the attention economy by putting people, not platforms, in charge. These companies are all young, but they already account for millions of daily active users and hundreds of millions o... See more