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will fade away: not so much through creators ‘breaking through’ into the mainstream (a narrative that already feels out-of-date), as through the opposite - talent that has (or would have) found an audience through...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

The internet has created huge consumer surplus - people value what they’re consuming far more highly than what they are currently paying for it: that’s an incredible opportunity.

The first is around collaboration. I’m fascinated by the delta between the number of people it can take to produce a TV show or a movie, and the fact that many creators work on their own. And yet, to take a very reductive view, both achieve the same goal of entertaining a viewer for a period of time. One conclusion to draw from this could be that... See more

Finally, paying for creator-associated goods is nothing new: creators have been flogging merch, doing brand deals and adding affiliate links in their descriptions and bios for years.

There are fundamentals that I don’t see changing: money comes into the ecosystem either from advertisers looking to reach an audience, or from the audience itself. For the former, the creator economy will continue to capture a greater and greater share of ad spend, mostly because it will capture a greater and greater share of viewer attention. But... See more

We can break viewer payments down into three categories: paying for content, paying for experiences, and paying for goods.

‘Experiences’ include interacting directly with the creator, the content and the community, and standing out from the crowd.

But I’d love to see infrastructure built that specifically supports virtual teamwork for creators, and makes collaboration accessible, and as frictionless as possible, for all.

How to do this in a way that wouldn’t upset the creator community or disrupt the egalitarianism of the ecosystem or - after all, every channel starts with zero subscribers, and every video with zero views - is another question: I’m excited to see if anyone’s figured it out by 2030.