No More Hustleporn: A Shift in Creator Platforms


Tweet by Andrew Chen 📍SF

https://twitter.com/andrewchen

consumer partner, a16z author, The Cold Start Problem (Harper Business) launching Dec 2021 - next month!


"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?

The change in biz models plays a huge role -- from ads to direct monetization

Old:
Make sure viewers are happy, because eyeballs equals ad views. And advertisers need to be happy w the content too

New:
Make sure creators are happy -- and making revenue! And take a % cut

Growth is changing too, since creators build audiences across platforms, and can move audiences:

Old:
Show viewers with algo-driven, feeds, recos -- sometimes commoditizing content

New:
Let creators build their own sites/communities and they'll bring their audience over

The size and scale of creators is enormous also, as social products have moved from friends/family (your granny is the creator, forwarding emails/videos along!) to mega-platforms where there are millions of viewers/followers

This becomes attractive if you can move big folks over

This entire shift has big implications for how these products will look over time. They'll be more like SaaS companies -- with account management, dedicate eng, etc -- to serve creators. Biz models will reward them generously.

This will let creators to become companies