In this Business of Creators podcast episode, Lucy Guo, founder and CEO of Passes, explains how her platform enables creators to become entrepreneurs through multiple owned revenue streams such as membership communities, live streaming, one‑on‑one calls, and a soon‑to‑launch marketplace for digital and physical goods. She recounts the origin of Passes—spurred by the loneliness of the COVID era and the limitations of existing membership platforms like Patreon—and describes the hypothesis that a creator‑focused CRM can deepen fan engagement and boost earnings. Guo highlights that the majority of creator income on Passes comes from direct‑message (DM) subscriptions, where tiered pricing unlocks exclusive content and unlimited messaging. She provides examples of diverse creators using Passes, from Shaq’s extended podcast episodes to gymnast Louie Dunn’s behind‑the‑scenes videos and University of Texas athletes leveraging NIL opportunities. Upcoming features include a marketplace that will let creators sell merchandise, signed items, FaceTime calls, and social‑media follow‑backs. The onboarding process involves an application and dedicated customer‑success support. Guo outlines a long‑term vision of cultivating “unicorn” creators through financial education and expanded tools. She observes a broader industry shift toward membership communities as a more reliable income source than brand deals, foresees deeper integrations with platforms like Shopify and Spotify, and shares her views on AI (as a productivity enhancer and future likeness‑licensing engine) and blockchain/crypto (as a royalty‑enabled method for licensing, though adoption remains slow). Finally, she advises creators to post daily, leveraging the high discoverability of short‑form video to increase viral potential and grow audiences.
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So we have creators from all different genres, from like lifestyle to gaming to music to podcasting, and they're all engaging with their fans and doing incredibly well. We have over 1,000 creators making tens of millions of dollars a year. We've created several millionaires, and I'm really excited to essentially help creators build that generational wealth.
Hello and welcome to the Business of Creators Podcast, the show taking you behind the scenes of the creator economy. Today we're joined by Lucy Guo, the innovative founder behind Parses, a platform that's revolutionizing how creators monetize their content and engage with fans. In this episode, Lucy shares fascinating insights into how Parses is helping creators build sustainable income streams, the surprising way many creators are making the bulk of their money through direct messaging, and why membership communities are becoming more reliable than brand deals for creator income. Whether you're a content creator yourself or just interested in the future of digital media, you won't want to miss Lucy's unique perspective as a female tech CEO shaping up the industry. Before we get to the show, let me tell you about Opus Clip. In just one year, Opus Clip's AI video clipping platform has helped over 6 million users create short clips in seconds, and now they're introducing Opus Clip Editor 2.0. With Editor 2.0, you can turn one video into dozens of viral shorts. It offers advanced captioning with 12 creative design templates, customizable fonts, animations, and emojis. You can also cut out filler words, remove captions, and add your own text. Check out the next big thing in online video editing with Opus Clip Editor 2.0 at opus.pro. Right, Let's get on with the show. So on today's show, I'm joined by Lucy Guo. Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
So I'd love to learn all about Passes. Can you tell us all about it, please?
Yeah, definitely. So at Passes, we're creating tools to help creators become entrepreneurs through different revenue streams that they own. So this is membership communities, live streaming, one-on-one calls, and more. And we're continuously building different revenue streams. We have over 1,000 creators making tens of millions of dollars a year. We've created several millionaires, and I'm really excited So much to unpack there.
Where did the original focus for this come from? What inspired you to create the platform?
Yeah, so I have a lot of friends that are creators. I kind of just saw what was very wrong with the creator economy. I think during COVID a lot of, like, people, society in general became lonelier, right? So they started leaning on membership communities, but the only membership community out there really was Patreon. And I wanted to provide an alternative and I had a different thought process on how it should work, I guess, or like a different way to think about it. And I really admire Patreon. I think they've like really paved the way for creators to monetize directly from their fans. But I had this hypothesis that like if you built a CRM system and built tools to make creators and fans feel like even more engaged and have a closer connection, creators would make a lot more money. And I think long-term with these different tools, like I have this like vision on how to turn creators into like unicorns essentially. But to start, I wanted to get like creators to be able to engage with fans directly and like really own their income, be able to like get that monetization data and like really understand what their fans enjoy. So like that means like content that they enjoy seeing, experiences, et cetera. So yeah, just like had the idea and then ended up raising $9 million as a seed round about 2 years ago and went live December 2022. And it's been a journey since.
What type of creators do you see on the platform? Like, is there a particular genre of content or a particular type of content creator that really uses the platform?
Yeah, so we have creators from all different genres, from like lifestyle to gaming to music to podcasting, and they're all engaging with their fans and doing incredibly well.
Amazing. And can you give us a bit more example in terms of some of those different revenue streams that creators are really building on the platform?
Yeah, definitely. So I would say the majority of a creator's revenue comes from their DMs, but our subscriptions actually tie to direct messages. So for example, you could create a $10 a month subscription that only gets you content on the wall, but then you could create a $50 a month subscription that includes like unlimited DMs with your favorite creators. And the, they're selling content essentially like in the DMs and on the wall to generate revenue.
Wow, it's a fascinating and new business model for creators. What, are there any sort of examples of creators that you can tell us about that are using the platform?
Yeah, definitely. So we have Shaq that does podcast episodes on Passes, and he does special Q&As and extended episodes and bonus episodes on Passes. We have Louie Dunn, who is a phenomenal gymnast, and she just posts like behind-the-scenes gymnastics content and lifestyle content. A lot of people don't really get to hear her voice on social media, and on Passes she's doing live streaming and doing more video that include her actual voice. So that's like very special and something that like people aren't getting out of the free social platforms that she's on. We recently onboarded University of Texas's top 40 athletes. So we have everyone from like the football players to the basketball players to the baseball players, et cetera. So it's like very exciting there. We think that like student athletes with like the NIL change are going to finally have a way to like directly monetize their name, image, and likeness.
And can you discuss any of the upcoming features that you've got on the platform, just in terms of things that are in the pipeline?
Yeah, definitely. So I think the feature that we're releasing this month, so this is like the most upcoming feature, is a marketplace. So creators will be able to essentially sell digital and physical goods. We've partnered with a merchandise company, and to start, we're going to be doing custom designs with our top creators, and then we'll handle like the shipping and processing, etc., of the merchandise. But for example, like if you're a creator, you could also sell like signed posters, et cetera. We're already seeing people sell signed merchandise manually in the DMs. So this is gonna be a more seamless way to do it. You could also sell like one-on-one FaceTime calls. You could sell follow-backs on Instagram, et cetera. We've just seen that like people are selling these things already in the DMs and it makes sense to move it into a more structured format.
Got it. I mean, there's so many different ideas there. How does a creator get set up on the platform?
Yeah, so right now they just sign up and then we go through an application process and we essentially determine like if they're a good fit for the platform. And if so, we'll approve that application, and we typically have someone from customer success reach out and help the creator set up their profile.
And what does the sort of the long-term roadmap look like for Parsis? Where do you think it'll be in 5 years?
The goal is to like really create these unicorn creators, right? And we can do so through several methods, but I think in general it's gonna involve a lot of financial education and opportunities. I can't really like dive into our roadmap, but we're The roadmap is set in a way that I think that like we will have those unicorn creators.
And what about the broader creator economy? What sort of trends do you think we're going to see in the future?
I think that more and more creators are moving towards membership communities because they're realizing that it is a more reliable source of income than brand deals. For example, like all our creators tell us that like 80 to 100% of their income comes from passes and brand deals are becoming super unreliable. Like you could imagine that I have friends who are literally working at fast food restaurants that make 6 figures a year off of brand deals. But the problem is that like the brand deals don't pay consistently. So then when they have bad money management, they're kind of like in a pickle. I kind of— I foresee more integrations happening with other platforms via membership communities. So for example, ideally, like if someone is purchasing like a superfan membership on Passes, they can integrate with a Shopify store and they can unlock special merchandise drops or they might get discount codes or early access on Ticketmaster, etc. We're already seeing these integrations with like Spotify, for example. Again, shout out to Patreon. Love them. They have a Spotify integration with their membership community, so it unlocks episodes and it doesn't make sense for someone like Patreon to build the best like podcast platform, right? Like that's engineering resources that they don't necessarily need to use. But by integrating with Spotify, they're able to work with the best podcast platform. And I think that like this is going to continue to happen with all these different applications.
Makes sense. Makes sense. And what about AI and content creation? How do you think that's gonna play a part?
I think a lot of creators are very scared of AI, but like, I think they need to understand that it's really just going to enhance their productivity. I personally think that creators are gonna be selling their likeness in the future. So for example, you'll no longer need to go to a shoot or to do a brand deal. Like, brands can just license out your likeness and you might get paid less per brand deal, but it's much more scalable. Like you could work with 1,000 brands versus just doing like one brand a week.
And what about blockchain and crypto? Do you think there's gonna be, that's gonna make an appearance in the creator economy?
I actually think that blockchain and crypto is probably the best way to sell someone's likeness, especially because it has royalties built in, right? So then it's long-term better for the creator, and then brands can prove that like they have the license to use a creator's likeness. That being said, Web3 adoption has been slower than I would've liked. And I think with the whole NFT wave and how a lot of people felt scammed by like 10,000 JPEGs being sold and like that going down in value, I think it's gonna take a really long time before the world like reaccepts blockchain and Web3.
Yeah, absolutely. Just before we wrap up, in terms of advice you'd give for creators that are looking to monetize their content or their profile, do you have any that you would share with the audience?
Yeah, definitely. One piece of advice I would share is consistency is key, and that means posting every single day. Our top creators, we see them making Reels on Instagram and TikTok daily. And I think this is because for at least TikTok and Instagram Reels, the discoverability is high, right? So like, as long as you're consistent, that one of your clips goes viral is pretty high, I'd say. And then once one goes viral and you get those followers, as long as you stay consistent, you'll continue to grow in following. And including the article are probably around our NIL stuff. So like we started with University of Texas, but we are launching with other universities. Unfortunately, I can't like say names yet, but I do wanna emphasize like that University of Texas stuff. And then like we do have really cool athletes on the platform as well. So like outside of University of Texas, we have a lot of the LSU gymnasts. We have Lindsey Brewer, who's set to be like one of the first female female F1 drivers, which I think is really cool. We are launching Paige Spiranac. She's a really big, like, female golfer. She's actually, I think, the biggest female golfer on YouTube, and we're launching her tomorrow, which I'm super excited about.
Excellent. Fantastic. Thank you. Well, it's great to be with you today. So that was The Business of Creators. Thank you so much for listening and making it this far. I have some really exciting guests lined up in the next few episodes, so please hit subscribe and watch out for the next show.
