MKBHD became board member and chief creative officer at Ridge Wallet, a rare deal where a creator gets equity and decision-making power. The episode covers how creators can negotiate ownership stakes with brands, from equity to revenue share, and why strategic alignment between your content and the company matters more than follower count.
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Tim, did you see that MKBHD, Marques Brownlee, is now a board member and the chief creative officer at Ridge?
I did. And I also saw your reply underneath it that the CEO, I think in August, posted a tweet where he said he's looking to spend $1 million and give equity in Ridge to a creator to be like the face or like the creative director of Ridge.
Yeah, I think this is super interesting because we've seen creators like point their audience, point their influence at products before, and that could be through an affiliate deal. It could be like, you know, MrBeast has like Feastables, but this is the first time that I've seen a creator like not just go on the cap table, but also like take a seat at the board.
As soon as I saw that, I was like, wow, how cool would it be to be a part of a conversation to make decisions for a company that I use. Like I'm just thinking of like all the brands that I, I'm wearing a Lululemon hoodie right now. I'm a big like Nike guy usually. And obviously the scale and the, the how big of a creator I'd need to be to be making decisions for those companies. Obviously that's massive. Just the idea that you have a say in your favorite brands because of how much content you made, because of how much you've resonated with an audience online. That's wildly intriguing to me.
What I think is interesting about this is MKBHD does these reviews on tech products and like everyday carry products. And so there's a lot of alignment and it makes me wonder about like, so for me, I would love to be a part of BlackBerry's brand, but I don't create any content that BlackBerry would want to do anything with, which is another conversation. But it does, it makes me think about Are there brands that I wanna work with that I really admire that I think are super cool that would like want to bring me on? Should that be even a decision that I'm like making when it comes to like starting the content that I, that I want to do?
So in your case, like you wanna be perfectly aligned with a brand and you want the brand to see you and notice you, or you wanna be able to pitch them and say, hey, very clearly, I'm the guy for you.
Right, right.
And then in the case of, of Marcus Brownlee here, like this is a product that he uses. He does every everyday carry videos. So it perfectly makes sense. I'm really interested in like, can you get a Formula 1 driver to promote like a Starbucks drink or just like these random partnerships where the audiences actually are overlapped, but it doesn't like seem, it's not immediately obvious. That's really interesting to me too.
What we're looking at even on this though is How do we get like equity in what we're doing as creators? And one way that this, I saw this happen firsthand a number of years ago back in 2015 is that Pat Flynn came on the cap table at ConvertKit really early on. Like obviously it was very aligned. He was a believer of the product and what Nathan was doing, but that was like, that has been a huge thing for Pat to like have that, have that equity investment. Then he would promote ConvertKit and like he's continued to do that for a number of years. He's like talks about it when he speaks. So it's something that has been around for a little while, but it has become much more common. And I think what's interesting about what Marquez did is that he is coming on the board, like he is gonna be a part of an existing company and like coming into the fold there. It's a little different than what like MrBeast did with Feastables or what Logan Paul and KSI did with Prime. It's like, hey, we're just going to like create this like single product out of nowhere and we're going to like obviously let other people run it. Now they haven't said like how much like day-to-day work. Like I read in the press release that, you know, Brownlee's day-to-day involvement is still unclear as like what he'll be doing. I was like, he will not be doing like anything with it day to day. It's just my guess is he'll get to drop in and do his thing, which is probably all they want him to do as well. Like, hey, you should, you should do this. But having someone of his caliber on, on board, it's interesting to see like Marquez coming into the fold like this.
The offer that Marquez has can vary, right? He can do one product with them, he can be like an internal like reviewer or like public face. Like he can obviously do videos for Ridge. There's, there's a million different ways to cut it. And I got a call one time from a guy in my network, John Burchard. And the gist of his message was like, hey, you need this. Like you're a creator, but you need to start thinking about how you can own parts of someone else's business in exchange for either making content about them or being their content team. And that opens you up to, at any scale, you can be as big as Marcus Brownlee to have a partnership with a major company in the everyday carry space, or you can be a micro creator who goes to a local business and it says, hey, I have a cute dog, I will use your dog store's toys in my videos in exchange for 10% of the sales on this product. Let's just, just do this one, like individual product as an example, you could, any of us, if we've been creating content for maybe a few months or a year, have any sort of slight traction, can do what Marcus Brownlee has done with Ridge for the other things we're gonna talk about. And that was such a shift for me. And I still like, I'm not the person who's gonna send a cold email and say, hey, can I own part of your business in exchange for content? That's, that's a daunting thing to do. And we can talk about like the ways you and I would go about doing that. But I'm a big fan of like just seeing when the door opens, and I want to open that door for whoever's listening. It's like, hey, there's a chance you could own part of either a small business in your, in your neighborhood, or when you get big enough, like a company that you use.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up and like took it down from like, you know, Marques, and I think he has 18 million YouTube subscribers, and someone who has like 18 subscribers or 18 followers. Because if you're good at making content, and Justin Morris talked about this, if you're good at making content and you can demonstrate that to other businesses, to other brands, then yeah, go to them and say like, I will be your internal video team. I guarantee you there are people listening to this that are better at video and audio and writing and marketing, especially in the online world, than like local businesses or maybe smaller brands that like, that don't know the things that you know as well, but they have more of an audience. You have the skill. Let's bring those two things together and And whether it's through like straight up pay or rev share or equity down the road, those are things that you want to be thinking about. I want you to be like— Nathan Barry talks about this on Billion Dollar Creator a lot, a great, great podcast to check out. This is something that creators need to think more about. Thank you for listening to the Hey Creator podcast. This show was produced by Tim Forkin and would not be possible without the the support of our incredible team at HeyCreator and the HeyCreator community. Make sure you connect with us on all of the socials at @HeyCreatorHey. And for more information on our company, go to heycreator.com and also sign up for the newsletter while you're there. See you next time.
