The Creator Manifesto 🎨

Creators won’t crowd out other forms of work; we’ll still have doctors, teachers, engineers. But every person will now be able to amplify knowledge, cultivate community, and earn income on the internet.

At Index, we think of the creator phenomenon in three parts: (1) creation tools, (2) distribution, and (3) monetization. In other words: how creators make stuff, how creators reach an audience, and how creators get paid.

The final and most recent piece of the creator triad is monetization. Being a creator is hard and often unforgiving work. One study found that reaching the top 3.5% of YouTube channels—which means about 1 million views each month—only nets you $12,000 to $16,000 a year, around the federal poverty line.

Some rare companies innovate on all three sides of the creator triad, crossing creation tools, distribution and monetization: Roblox, for example, provides accessible tools in Roblox Studio; allows developers to have their experiences discovered by the community; and shares earnings with developers via the virtual currency Robux, which underpins a ... See more

The first piece of the puzzle is democratizing creation itself. The best tools broaden the scope of who can be a creator: Figma and Canva for design; Kapwing and Veed for video; Descript and Splice for audio; Unity and Unreal Engine for gaming. Elegant, design-first tools unlock new levels of self-expression. They make being a creator more accessib... See more

The internet unlocks distribution. Traditionally, gatekeepers dictated who had influence: record labels, newspaper editors, studio executives. Now anyone can build an online community. You can share videos to YouTube, writing to Substack, music to Soundcloud

What’s striking about the creator phenomenon is that it isn’t a vertical trend; rather, it’s a through-line that cuts across social, gaming, crypto, media, commerce. It is both the future of work, with creators forming a new class of digitally-native entrepreneurs, and the future of leisure. And while the creator phenomenon is often thought of as a... See more