Building the Middle Class of the Creator Economy

Numerous startups are attempting to help creators set up their standalone, owned properties online; earn more from fewer, truer fans; and lessen their dependence on social media platforms. But unless we radically change the foundation of the creator economy—how creators find and connect to a community in the first place—these solutions are incremen... See more

-Empower more diverse creators to participate in the creator economy. Our hypothesis is that funding the long-tail of creators can create more long-term business impact than funding top creators who can already monetize in myriad ways and are highly sought after by many platforms.

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.

For platforms, the idea is simple: use company revenue to fund a Universal Creative Income program for emerging creators on the platform. For instance, companies like Facebook or YouTube could carve out a fund to support creators on the platform and send them a monthly check to cover basic living expenses, regardless of skill, training, or backgrou... See more