$64M Creator Fund: How Megan Lightcap Is Backing the Next Wave of Creator Entrepreneurs

Welcome everyone to another episode of the podcast. I am super excited for today's episode. If you love venture capital, if you love the creator economy, this is going to be your episode. But before we get into that, a quick reminder, please hit that subscribe button or that little alarm button wherever you're listening to this— Apple, Spotify— so that you are notified every single time I drop an episode. If you don't follow me already on Instagram, please do @felix.levine. My YouTube channel. Search my name, Felix Levine, on YouTube. You can watch every video version of every podcast. If you're a TikTok doomscroller like I am, all my clips are on TikTok. So go follow me there as well @felixlevine. Enough of that, though, because let's get into this episode that I have been looking forward to for a while. My guest today is Megan Lightcap. She is a partner at Slow Ventures, where she leads the $64 million creator fund they recently raised and is helping reshape how we think about influence, ownership, and the future of community-first brands. Before joining Slo, Megan spent time across the startup and investing world building a sharp lens for where culture and capital are heading. At Slo, she's betting on a different kind of founder—creators with deep trust, niche authority, and the ability to move both people and markets. What she's doing with the Creator Fund isn't just a shift in who gets backed. It's a redefinition of what early-stage venture can look like in the hands of modern storytellers. It's thoughtful, long view and rooted in the belief that creators are more than distribution and that really that they're the next generation of builders. In this episode, we talk about how Megan approaches creator-led companies, why this moment feels different, and what it takes to build something meaningful at the intersection of influence and ownership. Now, what I love more than anything is because Megan and I both operate in this creator economy and venture space, or at the intersection of both, our work can sometimes overlap, but it can also be vastly different. And there are things that we are both trying to figure out and have ideas and theses on. And so for me to have a sit-down conversation with such a smart mind is something that just gets me so excited. So without further ado, please welcome Megan Lightcap.

And we're live. Yay, Megan! Thank you so much for coming out bright and early, 9 AM on a Thursday. Great, thanks for having me. I've been wanting to do this for a while. A lot of it's my fault, I need to preface, in terms of scheduling. We can share the blame. It's— you know what, we're here and that's all that matters. Um, what's the world not know about you?

This is like one of my go-to fun facts, um, in icebreaker situations. Um, I have never seen an episode of Friends despite knowing the theme song in full. But it's like this bit now where I can't watch the show because I'm like so in—

I'm like in too deep, you know, with my— oh, interesting. Do you have any interest in watching it? Like, not really. So candidly, we might be similar in the sense that like I think when I watched a handful of episodes, it was so long ago that like I kind of don't really remember them that well. Yeah. And then I also had this weird thing recently, which is also really fucked up, that like if something feels like too old or it's not recent, I just kind of don't care.

Well, have you seen Sex and the City?

So Serena's like, like made me watch it. Yes. And it's great. It's excellent show.

Just it's like evergreen in terms of— correct. Yeah.

But like, for example, are you— have you been watching Love Island? No. Okay, so this is my first season ever watching. I thought it was going to be like the dumbest thing on Earth.

I'm like scared to get into it because I know it's like a whole thing.

No, no, no, I'm obsessed. Like, I don't even know how to say it. It's tremendous. Great. It's one of like, psychologically speaking, probably one of those brilliant concepts ever and social experiments, I think.

Interesting.

Are you familiar with the concept?

Yeah, but why? Like, is there something about this season?

So it always— so what I've realized, because I remember last season having not watched, me like, why does everybody care? Is like, is this the best season? It's the fact that, A, it's kind of done in real time. So when— so they like shoot, and I think like maybe the next day or the day after is when that episode comes out. And B, America can vote on what happens. So it's like this relationship between audience and show that's incredible. So if there's someone that you like want to vote off the island, like America can go and vote them off the island and then see it happen in real time. And also the fact that when it's recording, new episodes drop every day, more or less, except for Wednesdays and Saturdays, I think. So it's just like, it's a lot of content. It's a lot. And it's like, and it's drama. And then when people leave the villa, then like they immediately start doing like a podcast run. And so like everyone's like, oh my God, like give me all the tea. Yeah, it's a whole thing. I highly recommend watching. Okay, interesting. Okay, great. Or you could just watch this here.

I know, but I feel like too far behind.

Yeah, no, and it's honestly like so much time. Yeah, yeah, like it's like takes years off your life.

Maybe not this year.

Um, I'm so excited to have you for a handful of reasons. One, because I think you're so smart. I think there's everything about creator— I want to like pick your brain, understand more about Slo, how you guys are thinking about creator. For me, this is also like my space, and I have so many thoughts and theses. Um, for a little bit of context, for those not familiar, really quickly, we just kind of give the 30-second on your background. Yep. How you got to where you are today.

Yeah. So I got to the creator world by way of consumer. So started my career in investment banking, financial services, like, you know, not interesting at all. Realized that was not for me. Went to a consumer private equity fund called Elkatterton, was there for a couple of years on their growth team, then actually went to a startup incubated inside of Walmart and was there for more or less like 4 years with 2 different teams. And it was just like eye-opening to be kind of in the belly of the beast with arguably one of the biggest, most important consumer brands in the world. Yeah. Missed investing. Want to get back into it. Met the Slow team and I didn't know what they were doing with the Creator Fund or like with this whole thesis and they kind of pitched me on it. I reneged them at first. You know, I was like, I know nothing about talent or like Hollywood. Like I'm a consumer person through and through. And they're like, well, You know, so Sam Lessin is one of the GPs at Slow. This is kind of his brainchild. And we started talking about it and it was very obvious that this was not necessarily backing talent. It was backing like a new form of entrepreneur, kind of building mostly consumer businesses, but also could be B2B. But, you know, now in this world of like there is this interesting blend of, you know, B2B and B2C are kind of coming together in a weird way, which we can talk about. And, you know, I had, I had done two things. One was like reflected on my time at Caterton. And we had not in my fund, but the buyout fund, they had brought Jessica Alba's Honest Company public. They brought Zac Efron to Kodiak Cakes. Like we had tried to, to finance Pat McGrath, which she's like a very famous color cosmetics, like makeup artist. And so I was like, this is happening on the margin around like backing entrepreneurial creators who have a personal brand and, you know, really loyal following. And then very practically, I was like, you know, let me think about the last like whatever, 10, 20 things I've purchased or consumed and like what was the spark for it? And so much of it was either a friend had recommended something to me, a creator that I loved had like, you know, in the makeup space or health, whatever. Or it was like my mom or something like it was not— my purchase decisions were not driven by traditional brands. And I was like, okay, that's pretty interesting, right? And like, I'm an N of 1, but like, this must be happening like more broadly. And so anyway, I just got really, really excited about the thesis and ended up kind of at Slow with the mandate to kind of go figure out this whole creator investing thing.

Where'd you grow up? Uh, Long Island. Amazing. Yeah. And kind of growing up, did you know that this space was what you were interested in? Not necessarily creator, because it maybe— yeah, it didn't even exist. But like investing, finance-y related things?

No, I thought I wanted to be a doctor and got to— I went to UVA for school, um, and very quickly realized I was like, oh, this is not— this is not what I do.

It'll be in school.

Yeah, well, it was more like I'm like a little squeamish. Yeah, with— sounds like this is going to end poorly. And then found my way to the business school. But, you know, I've been asked this question before and like one of the connections I have made is like I'm obsessed with reading biographies or just like stories about people. And I just think there's something so interesting about like the human condition and story, like just how people kind of like build their worlds around them. And now more than ever, I mean, I'm sure you've seen the Martha Stewart doc. Yep. Right. It's like, it's an unbelievable story. And I think, you know, that, that's kind of like the one connection I can draw from like my prior life of like what, what I'm doing now.

So, so when did you get to Slo?

3 and a half years ago.

And when— and it was immediately when you got there that the creator fund idea was—

Yeah. So Sam had been thinking about it for a while and actually it was born out of this more academic idea of What would it look like if we finance people with equity rather than debt, right? Of like, okay, you know, people can, can go take out a personal loan and that's kind of their only financing option. But, you know, as the world gets crazier and more discontinuous and outcomes are more volatile, when you, when you think about that level of volatility, equity is a much better instrument than debt. You know, debt is great when you have super predictable, income streams or, you know, if you're a doctor or nurse, you know exactly what you're going to be making in any given year. That's like so not the case of today. So anyway, it was like this academic idea that he was noodling on for a very long time that I think every college student probably thinks about at one time of like, what if you could invest in my friend or a person, whatever? Practically, it's very hard to do, obviously. Right. And it's like, it's like not actually all that like interesting as a— and so anyway, the, the format that it took was, you know, in 2020, 2021, you saw the rise of these creator brands like Feastables and Chamberlain Coffee and Skims and Prime Energy and whatever. And you're kind of sitting there being like, okay, this is happening at the like 1% version of creator. The natural way this unfolds is like it's going to happen in the long tail. And I think the more that people see it, there's just gonna be, it will attract a more entrepreneurial type of creator to be like, I'm gonna go own a very specific vertical, build a deep community, deep loyalty within that, and use that to like launch products, businesses, services. And so, um, it was this moment of like, now feels like the time to, to really experiment with like, could you invest behind a community and a personal brand? And like, what are the bounds of that? How do you structure it? How do you think about like this as a new asset class? And so I came in, was kind of tasked with basically go figure it out. You know, I think the words that he said to me were like, go draw in the dirt. And like, you know, this is like effectively a startup. So it's been a fun ride.

Do you differentiate a creator and an influencer?

There's so many terms that— I mean, I think for us It comes down to— I think of it on a spectrum almost of like, does the person think of themselves like talent or like a founder and an entrepreneur? Um, and I think they have very different qualities. I think they have different orientations around, you know, what media means, right? Like, is media content, fame, notability like the end game or in the end state, or is it a means to an end? Um, and so, you know, we could sit here and talk about creator versus influencer versus whatever. Um, I don't know, I don't really think about that deeply, but yeah.

Do you see a clear divide between a creator and a celebrity? Yeah. And how do you think about— and I mean that more from a context of like your work and when you're approaching potential investment opportunities or potential upside things That's more where I'm coming from.

Yeah, I, I would almost think about it not in terms of the term, but like what they do, right? I think to me, a celebrity or an influencer or, or a creator, right, they're— they create value, but they don't capture that value, right? They create value on behalf of brands that they're helping advertise or sell product or educate the market on. Whereas this like creator entrepreneur that we're targeting creates and captures that. And so it's this— it's like a very subtle difference. You know, take someone like— I mean, Ryan Reynolds is probably the most— one of the most enterprising celebrities, right? You know, there was a version where he was just doing promotional deals and brand deals, but he kind of woke up and was like, I can— I can actually capture a lot of this value for myself that I'm kind of creating in the marketplace. Um, so that's, that's kind of how I think about the difference.

So how tapped in were you to like creator economy, social media before you got to SLO? And then I imagine now, and I heard you talk about on, on, uh, on another podcast, like you kind of have to be scrolling and like knowing what's going on.

Yeah. Um, so not at all. Like I, I, and I knew that coming in.

It's probably great for your mental health, your screen time, all the things.

Yeah. I, when I first got to SLO, I I was like, look, I don't know what I don't know. So I, I basically spent the first year just meeting everyone I possibly could and like building relationships. I was like, you know, what's the difference between like an agency and a manager? Like, which I like kind of still don't know the difference.

I mean, I don't think a lot of the creators know the difference either, and that's not a knock on them, it's more knock on the agency. Yeah, trying to capitalize. But nonetheless, we can go into that.

Yeah, point being, I spent the first year like really getting up to speed on this whole world Yeah, that, by the way, it's a world that's changing extremely fast. Yeah. And it's funny, like, I do think a lot of the job is being online, right? And like scrolling. But it's, it's somewhat of a fruitless exercise to think that just by scrolling you're going to find interesting stuff like that is going to be your only like sourcing mechanism because inevitably you end up in your own echo chamber of things and categories that you care about and people that you follow. But I will say like, I just— my, like, algorithm is all messed up.

They're like, who is this girl? Like, messed up? Like, fucked up?

They— yeah, they just, like, have no idea who I am, which is, like, kind of funny because I'm, like, looking at very different niches all the time. Um, so it's good to throw them off.

But so going to more of, like, the sourcing component. Yeah. And I think that there's— I'm super fascinated by this because I have strong opinions and I think the same way that most first-time founders fail, right? The being a super successful creator does not mean you're going to be a super successful entrepreneur. Totally. And as we've kind of spoken about even offline, like it's only this very slim minority of humans in this ecosystem that could probably do both well. How do you go about the sourcing process? Yeah, the diligence process. What do you look for at Slow? Yeah.

So I'll break it down, talk about sourcing and then kind of what we look for. But so sourcing is funny because unlike Seed, right? And I'm very jealous of my counterparts on the core Slow Seed fund because it's a highly developed and efficient ecosystem, right? Like they're getting inbound pitches all the time. Everyone knows who Slow is. Whereas for, for this creator fund, we kind of have to like unstick the sourcing ecosystem a little bit.

Also, just to pause, sourcing means finding potential opportunities, just for people listening who are not familiar. Also, will you kind of just define really quickly like seed, what that means? Yeah, how it's different versus like traditional versus what you guys are doing?

Um, should I also like tell what Slow is? Say what's up?

Yeah, sorry, I got— I'm getting very excited.

I'm getting— yeah, yeah. Um, so Slow Ventures is a seed stage venture capital firm, which basically just means that invest at the earliest stages. So we will back sometimes an entrepreneur when it's like them and a pitch deck, like no, you know, pre-revenue, pre-launch. Um, so it just— seed just means like it's probably your first institutional round. Yes. Um, and yeah, so Slow has been around for, uh, the better part of a decade. Um, and so, you know, generalist investors, so invested in everything from healthcare and fintech and crypto and consumer. Um, I mean, so you'll go on our website and there's many names that people recognize. But the, the Slow Creator Fund is a new kind of sidecar fund that we launched earlier this year. So $64 million fund, similar LPs, but we very proud to say we have some, some net new LPs in the Creator Fund. And that's where I focus and obviously the basis of this conversation. Okay.

Sorry to interrupt. Now you go back to sourcing. To sourcing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, the trick is we're trying to find this like very specific criteria of person, right? That's, you know, an amazing creator, entrepreneur, kind of fits all these things which we can get into. Um, but there's no like one central place, right? And so we've, we've kind of think about it both in terms of generating inbound and outbound. And so inbound means, you know, you basically put up your flag and you say, hey, this is kind of what we're looking for. If this is of interest to you or you know someone, like come inbound. Um, which is the way to do it because you pre-qualify people. So by the time you get to the conversation, like they're interested in capital, they're interested in what you do. Like you kind of like it's a traditional sales process. Like you want to prequalify as much as possible before you get on the first call. However, sometimes we do outbound or like, you know, I'm doing kind of a thematic deep dive on the equestrian space right now. And it's like a pretty interesting category with like many different, many different kind of subsegments. Obviously a lot of dollars in that space. Um, and so we may go outbound and be like, hey, like, what are you up to? I love your stuff. Um, so it's trying to find this right balance of like inbound and outbound sourcing. And then we do have some clever ways to like shortcut some of the, you know, basically how to find people that are, uh, doing interesting things, have like outsized authority in their space. Um, which, you know, you have to get a little clever on with this. Um, can you give me an example? Yeah, I mean, like, one of the ways, like, there are certain podcasts actually that are unbelievable identifiers of talent and like really interesting creators kind of before they've done anything super big. I won't name names, but there's probably like 20 podcasts I can think of where like I will consistently go through their guest lists and like some of them will be surprising and you're like, okay, these are like really interesting people that we should have on our radar. And like, it's not 100% hit rate, but like, you kind of have to dig or just like find places like that where there's some sort of like aggregation of interesting people. Yeah. But that being said, you know, the folks that we target are so often in their corner of the world just doing their thing and like they're not going to VidCon or they may not be at VidSummit or they may not even know what CAA is or care, quite frankly. And so like the hard part is like finding those folks.

So, and by the time this comes out, this will all be permissible to release. Yeah. You guys just recently made an investment. Mm-hmm. Will you talk about it?

Yeah. So, um, we made the first investment out of our new fund. Um, I should also mention we were doing this in that form of investing as part of our old fund, just as like, you know, wait, so the $64 million creator fund is part of the old or the new? No. So that's a new dedicated fund. Yes. Prior to that, we basically took a piece of our existing fund and said, okay, I see, I see. We're going to go like basically experiment on this strategy with X million bucks of capital. And so we announced some of our investments out of that fund. But out of the new fund, we just— not just, you know, a couple of months ago made our first investment into this amazing kind of expert woodworker on YouTube. His name is Jonathan Katzmosis, and he like has built a really, really strong and loyal community of roughly like 600,000 of people who are like new and kind of middle stage of their woodworking journey and like so prime for like knowledge and tool acquisition. And so he has this e-commerce business where he has an amazing story, which everyone should go watch his video that he'll, he'll put out about this whole thing. But Um, he has this bit like e-commerce business selling tools. 70% of them are tools that he has come up with, patented, makes. Um, 30% are kind of tools that he sells on behalf of others. And it's a pretty big business.

Yeah, I would imagine.

And it's like growing pretty fast. And so, um, you know, and he's working on some other like related business ventures too. So it's not just the woodworking business, but like, you know, super passionate niche. He himself is like a knockout entrepreneur. He's just like, and he's so ambitious, but also an amazing storyteller. Right. And so if you, if we kind of, you asked the question earlier of like what we look for, you know, we have like 4 broad categories of like, you know, they have to like hit these different criteria. One is like, okay, is a creator like truly an entrepreneur, an amazing community builder? You know, they have the charisma to like bring people along, but are also so obsessed with their niche. The second category is kind of the community. So we're like, okay, you know, why are people attaching to this person? And it can't just be because of like they're funny or hot or entertaining. It's like, you know, I'm obsessed with— I'm like just a woodworking nerd and like really interested in like the intricacies of woodworking, right? And it's like this group is bonded by this like very specific shared value or emotional motivation, some psychographic, right? You can kind of sit there and be like, okay, you understand that if this person went away tomorrow, there'd be a bunch of people who would be sad. Yeah. And then obviously you get into the category and you can basically do a very traditional kind of, okay, woodworking, like what's the existing kind of addressable market of woodworking today? Who are the other players? Is there space for, for new company formation? What are kind of the adjacent categories that this person could extend into and like how realistic is that? And then you kind of just look at like, you know, scale and traction today.

I want to come back to this specific individual. Yeah, I think it's fascinating. Yeah. But just even for people to understand, when you write a check into this person, it goes into a holding company. Yeah. Will you describe kind of the model as much as you're willing to disclose? Yeah. Of how Slo views the investment. Yeah. Into the creator.

Yeah. So this is an important distinction. So I think, you know, a lot of people will invest when they're investing in the creator economy, like they'll just invest in Feastables or just, you know, just invest in a very specific project or brand that a creator may launch. Our view is like, that's really challenging, right? Because of the— for the fact that I think I shared this with you on our first call of, you know, take someone like MrBeast, you know, his MrBeast Burger was like the hottest thing ever for a really long time. Investors were clamoring to get in it. Fast forward a year, he's like, look guys, like the quality's not there. I don't have the right partners. I'm actually going all in on Feastables, which is like the chocolate and kind of snacking business. And as an investor, you're like, oh my God, like the value is in what the creator focuses on and what the community kind of follows them to, right? Like these creator businesses are really interesting. And I don't know if this will resonate with your, with your audience or not, but they're one of the only businesses where the brand equity sits off balance sheet of the actual products that they create. Right. It sits with them. Right. You know, and so we kind of look at it and we say we want to invest behind the creator and their community holistically and empower them to go chase the highest ROI thing they could possibly go do. Right. Whether that's Feastables, whether that's the burger business, whether that's ViewStats, whether it's some portion of all three, right? Because maybe there's some like, you know, self-supporting mechanism between these individual things. And so that's how we think about it and why this like holding company structure is important. And so when we consider, you know, what's in or out of the holding company, it's basically things that are like creator-related. So their content and media really is like the sales and marketing engine, right? Which they should 100% invest in. And then the different companies or things that could have enduring enterprise value that fall out of that, i.e., companies. You know, we don't— brand deals are like not all that important to us. You know, it doesn't drive the needle. So the way that we've set it up is we basically say, okay, I don't want to like get too deep in the structure because it's very, very detailed. But effectively, we like kind of carve out brand deals and like those like more cash transactions. Yeah, because like they're emotionally important to the creator. It's like, you know, a source of income for them. And we're like, we just don't care, right? So what we do care about is being in the equity of the businesses.

But I guess my fear, if I were to play devil's advocate, is like, well, the creators, especially now, a lot of them that do well are making a lot of money. So, you know, it's not like the scrappy founder who's eating ramen for 12 months. Like, they're in Saint-Tropez. Yeah. For, you know, during the summers in the Hamptons. So you kind of— and again, this is not all of them. Yeah, right. Yeah. Jonathan's in the shop. 100%. Right. Like, but that's like the first part where that's where I do see kind of the influx of money mattering. It also matters in terms of the fact that they can bootstrap if they choose, which means to finance your own business, which then I'm sure is just like maybe not the right fit theoretically for you guys. The other thing that I'm super curious about, and I know is like the question that you guys get probably the most, is more on like the exit strategy. Yeah. And how, you know, you can go and then return totally investment for your fund. I guess I'll like pause there. Yeah. And let you answer.

Yeah, so on the, on the brand deal thing, I agree with you. I mean, creators are making so much money, it's crazy. So much. And like deservedly so. Like, they are— like, their ability to convert is like unbelievable. I forget the stat, but like, I think it was Prime Day or something. Like, basically the influencer and creator channel like outperformed the second best performing channel by like 10x, and it was I was like, oh my God, like this is like just the beginning. So, you know, for us, those aren't the types of creators we're, you know, back to my point about creating value and capturing value. Like there's a lot of creators who create value, right? But there's not a lot of creators who actually like go and capture that value. And so, look, I think, you know, a lot of the creators that we talk to and partner with, they're like, I don't really want to do brand deals because it dilutes what I'm going to ultimately go launch, right? And so they're extremely careful about things they promote, things they talk about. So they're not actually making all that much money from brand deals or sponsorships.

Does that make sense? Yes. But then my question would be on the valuation side. Yeah. How do you then— how do you guys go about valuating, uh, or valuing a, uh, person or holding company, especially when I would imagine for the most part of like successful creators it's primarily historically from brand partnerships?

Yeah, it's, it's a great question. So there is— when I first got to Slo, I like tried to be so scientific about it, because if you think about a creator investment versus a seed investment, right, like a seed investment, the company's making no money. It's like sometimes pre-launch, like coming up with a valuation is like, what feels good? Yeah. Like, no, literally not. Yeah. You know? And so, and so I get to the like Creator Fund. I'm like, this is amazing. Like there's real numbers I can like, you know, and then I very quickly was like, it's just the same thing as seed. You find, you figure out a deal structure and valuation and investment amount in a, in a, you know, ownership amount or whatever where It feels good for us at Slow and it feels good for the creator. And the calculus on the creator side is basically, look, will this capital today increase the overall pie in excess of the 10% or whatever I'm giving up? Right. And so, yes, you can like try to be scientific about it, but like it's not—

it's very hard to do is what I'd say. So then on the exit strategy side. Yeah. Yeah.

So our basic premise on this is like, this is just venture capital, right? And it's the founders just happen to be showing up in the world in a very different way. They're on YouTube, they have community, they're, they're very public, they have trust, they have authority, um, versus, you know, two kids out of MIT with a product idea or a software idea or whatever. Um, And so the happy path for us is that they create some company or companies that could ultimately exit. You know, one of my favorite examples, he's, he's now a very good friend of mine. He's a, he's a creator in the construction space and not like residential construction, like true, like infrastructure, roads, bridges, pipes. And, you know, he's working on this really interesting B2B software company that could— you could 100% see it exiting, seeing that business exit to whatever, some major strategic or even IPOing one day. Now, I do think in the future you may see another version of like a Martha Stewart IPO, right? Like Jimmy, MrBeast, will probably try and do this at some point in the future.

Will be a sick ticker, by the way. Beast. Beast.

Yeah, exactly. I'm not like holding my breath for that as the exit path. But like, it's not all that hard to conceive.

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Now let's get back into it. But then in that case, why not write a check into that really cool B2B company itself?

Yeah, because you have to— like, creators have so many shots on goal, right? And like to your point about them being kind of these first-time founders so often and Mr., like we just talked about this, like MrBeast is, he had to do the burger business and figure out it wasn't the right thing to get to Feastables and so on and so forth. And so, or Jocko Willink is another example. He had this like, I think it was like a boot company or something at first that like, you know, he was like, this is great. It's super congruent with my audience and kind of military adjacent and whatever. It like totally flopped. But then the next business was a killer, right? In the, in the hydration space or drink space or whatever.

So then what happens like structurally when a creator does business? So you write them a check. Yeah. Say it's a $2 million check. Yeah. They go and start a hand sanitizer business. Sure. Flops. Sure. They start business 2. Do you own— how do you own— what do you own And let's say the second business exits. Mm-hmm. How do you then get remunerated as a fund? Is it— does, does the— well, does that business then pay out the holding company which you guys own? Is that exactly—

okay. Yeah.

And by the way, so does that mean like just so somebody conceptually on a very basic level. Yeah. Does that then mean how do you kind of put a mathematical formula to your ownership in every new business created?

I mean, look, in reality, people have like a handful of ideas that we talk about. Right. It's not like, it's not like there's going to be some, like, magical business that appears like they kind of, one, think about what they're doing as like a franchise. Right. And so I see if you think about honestly, Martha Stewart is kind of the perfect example, right? Like, and I encourage everyone, if you're, if you're nerdy, like, go read her S-1, go read her investor letters. And she actually talks about this business model, which is she has different touchpoints, right? Whether it's the print magazine, the Martha Stewart Living TV show, in-person events, you name it, right? Like different media and kind of like consumer touchpoints across different categories, right? Food, at-home cooking, weddings, baby, lifestyle. Right. And so it's this really interesting patchwork of categories and then also touchpoints. That all kind of live under her brand. And so if we invested in the Martha Stewart HoltCo, the idea is like, look, don't think about it like a hand sanitizer brand and then like a curtain brand and then like a microphone. Like, that's the wrong way to think about it. You're, you're investing behind a world and a franchise that is underpinned by this like back to my point about like psychographics and community underpinned by this like movement or like, you know, group of people denominated in some shared value or shared psychographic. And so I think where people get tripped up is like, this is kind of like a sandbox model or an incubator model where like you're gonna go away, work on some stuff, and then you get a piece of whatever comes out of that. Like, sure, but that's actually not the right way to think about it. It's like you're investing behind the, like, franchise of this person in their community. And there's going to be multiple things that are generally related, right, that kind of come out of it.

And so is there, in terms of like being competitive with returns of other funds or traditional funds, like what is— was there a fear or is there a fear that sometimes, like any entrepreneur, right, it takes them just a long time to figure it out? And for a creator entrepreneur, it could take them, you know, year 15 to crack it. And maybe for specifically for a venture fund, it's just not good enough. Like, how do you approach that?

I mean, this, this is where diligence becomes really important, right? Like, I think, you know, when we invest, there has to be a very clear use of funds. And by the way, as an entrepreneur, as an entrepreneur, as a founder, creator, whatever, do not raise money unless you know what you're going to do. Literally don't. Like, it's bad for everybody. 100%. Like, it just No one's happy at the end of that. So, you know, we sit with the creator and we spend a lot of time of like, what do you want to build? Right? And like, how do you have conviction in that? Why do you have conviction in it? And it's— it could be, you know, one very specific business, but it could be derivatives of that. And so I think for us, it's not— I think a very unlikely case is going to be like in year 15, they finally get their act together and like come up with a billion-dollar idea. I mean, maybe. But like, that's not actually what we're underwriting to. The more likely case is like, you're going to be some— there's some activity of business building in the first X number of years, 3, 4, 5 years or whatever. And like, hopefully one of those works.

Question: do you, because you have ownership of the holding company, are you then entitled to brand deals and affiliate and revenue generated?

This is where I was talking about is like we basically have figured out a mechanism to like carve it out. I mean, look, I think the way to think about is like your downside case is you have whatever, 10% ownership in a bunch of just like interesting media businesses, right? That like, yeah, there's some value there, you know what I mean? It's not venture value. And so it's interesting when we were talking, when we were fundraising, talking to LPs, you could almost imagine this like distribution of, of outcomes, right, of your portfolio of like like, you know, a very traditional venture fund or seed fund is like you're gonna have a whole bunch of zeros, get a couple home runs, and a couple home runs, and then like maybe you have like a— I don't even know the word— a grand slam. Yeah, like a triple or whatever. Um, and also, side note, I met someone from the Mets last night. Oh wait, and my brothers are obsessed. Like a player? No, no, he like works for corporate or whatever. Um, and he was like, are you a fan? Are you a fan? I'm like, I like know nothing about sports. I was like very embarrassed, but when you think about the returns of this, this creator fund, you're more likely to have fewer zeros than a traditional venture fund because there's like, there's value, right? And at the time of investment in these like basically small businesses, small media businesses, and then the hope is that you have, you know, some, some winners.

Do you want your creators to also create entrepreneurs to be the operators? Because I— so I'm like in this funny one now where because of some of the recent things I posted and done and dinners and been outwardly public about. A lot of my creator friends will hit me up for business advice, which could be good or bad for them. But a lot of them are like, I want to start a brand, I want to start a business. And then like, and I love them to death. I tell them straight to their face they shouldn't even be within 10 feet of the operational because it's going to go to zero. They're going to waste a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of sadness. Yeah. And so for me, especially as first-time founder and it's first-time founders, not because they're dumb or inadequate, it's literally like they just haven't done it before.

Also, building a business is really hard.

It's really hard, especially if you're going CPG, like all of that, right? So how do you view the operators in these creator entrepreneur businesses? Do you want them to operate?

Not necessarily. I mean, I think the, the idea is that they should be the one really driving it in like the short term, right? Like I think we are default skeptical when there's like a CEO in place and they're kind of like, yeah, I'm going to do like the promotion. It's like, well, like, how much are you really involved? I think we would much rather see a creator who is like so obsessed with the thing and building. And it's like, you are going to be driving this ship for like the next X number of years and you have to be comfortable with that. But look, if they down the road like hire a CEO or hire, you know, an amazing team, like Fantastic. And it's, it's not too dissimilar from seed investing where, you know, you back an early founder and like they may not be the CEO by year 4, right? Like they may hire, they may bring in someone more experienced but take a, a president role or whatever, right? I think it's, it's kind of similar.

How does it work when you invest into the holdco and is that a forever thing?

No, it's not a forever thing.

So what's— is it like the fund cycle or how does it work?

So, well, just our fund is like a standard venture fund, right? So 10-year with 2 2-year extensions. Yeah. No. So we basically say, look, we want this to be a long-term relationship. Like, we're not— this is not like a, you know, the next thing, the things that you do in the next like 5 years going to Zulaco is probably more like 10 or 15, but it's not a forever thing.

But okay, but is there usually like a set duration? Like, it's your—

okay. Yeah. But it's negotiable.

And I think like, okay, it's on a per deal basis. Yeah.

And look, I think like the reality is like all of the value is going to be created in the first 7 years, 10 years, right? Beyond that, it's kind of like probably not, right? If they haven't made it in year 10, they're probably not going to make it, right?

Which is the same as any founder.

Same as any founder, right? And so, yeah, that's kind of how I think about it.

Super cool. What when you were raising this fund, what was the reaction from LPs? The ones that were super excited, the ones that weren't? Yeah, like, how do you— especially because a lot of these people, I would imagine, tend to be older. Yeah. Um, are like creator, influencer, like, what? But some clearly, or a lot clearly believed, and I'm curious what the reactions were.

Fundraising was really fun. Like, everyone's like, really? Was it fun? You just like, it's a chance to like refine your story. And I think, you know, when we set out to do it, my default assumption was like, no one's going to get it. We'll probably just get like fancy friends of the firm and high net worth to come in who get media and whatever. I was so wrong about that. And, you know, there was LPs kind of fell into 4 buckets. One was like, no, like, this is so crazy. Like, there's no way. Like, I don't get it. Too risky, like too many questions. I'm just like, not even going to engage. Some of the folks who said yes, they were— they said yes, one, because they were broadly kind of platform supportive of Slow. They were like, look, you guys have made us a ton of, ton of money. Like, we want to be supportive of kind of everything you do. Like, we're in, which was fabulous. University of Michigan was one of those. They're like an amazing, amazing LP partner of ours. The next bucket was, okay, we like know this whole creator thing is important, but we don't fully understand it. You guys seem to have a very specific view and like, you guys are smart and we're going to trust you and like, we're thematically interested. So like, yes. The third bucket of yeses, which I think is like the most interesting, are the people, because you have to remember these folks have kids. Yeah. And so they were like, oh my God, last weekend my son dragged me to Walmart to get Feastables and there was like 10 other kids like tackling the shelves for it. And so they were like, we know this is a thing. And the most fun part was that a lot of these teams have analysts. And so there's one of our LPs who, I'll actually shout them out, Rutgers. And it was a new relationship to Slo, they're amazing. And there was an analyst on their team. And every single name, I kid you not, that I brought up, he's like, oh yeah. And he was just like so plugged in and like so digitally native. And I was like, you are amazing. And like, look, I don't know the conversations behind the scenes, but like he probably was a really big part in it, which is just like super cool. So it was a fun— it was a definitely a fun process.

What keeps you up at night right now?

The thing that keeps me up at night is just like, I know there's this really long tail of amazing creators on— creator entrepreneurs in their weird corner of the world, right? Just like doing their thing. And I'm just like, how do I find them? And how do I like get my message to them in the right channels? And so honestly, like podcasts like this and, um, it's just like a thing I'm constantly thinking about of like, like, how do I just get in front of them and like think of like weird novel ways to reach them?

Is there a fear in this lovely cancel culture of when you're backing a person— geez, we've seen some bad ones. Totally. You know, like some resurfaced tweets, that's always the classic. Totally. Um, is that just like pray for the best and hope that your diligence like probably gives you a good read?

Like, you never know. You never know.

You never know. I mean, look, I have a couple thoughts on One is there's just like schmuck insurance you can do in diligence, right? Like you can do your own desktop research, you can go pretty deep. I think one of the benefits, and we didn't even talk about this, but you know, our target is we like to partner with creators who are super niche and like within a very specific vertical. And one of the benefits of that is typically what you see around their fandom and their community is like, they love the person for that thing. So take Huberman, right? Like, remember this whole like New York— New Yorker takedown or whatever? It's like he's dating like 8 women. The overwhelming like majority of his fans were like, we kind of don't care. Yeah, like we follow him for science, not for like love advice, you know what I mean? Like, we'd like— maybe if it were like Jay Shetty, like that would be a very— or like Matthew Hussey, that'd be a very different story. But it's when you're— when you partner with these vertical creators they're somewhat insulated from the, like, lifestyle cancellation of other choices. And then the other— the other two things I'll say, one is like, you kind of want to see some haters. For sure. You know, something— you're doing something right. And then I had one other point. Oh, oh, people always ask about like keyman risk of like, you know, there's so much relying on this person and their personal brand and like the dirty secret is like, It's the same in venture, right? It's like when you back a founder, especially at the early stage, like the founder's the only person for the first 5 years that's going to make or break that company. Yeah. No one else really matters, right? And so I think people tend to understate the key man risk in traditional venture and like potentially overstate it in what we're doing, um, where it's like more similar than not.

Do you think there's as much upside in this creator fund than a traditional venture fund?

Do I think these creator— one of these creators is going to like deliver the next Facebook? Like, probably not. But I also like, I think on venture as a whole, like, I don't know that we're there anymore, right? Like, I think you're seeing— you see a lot of the like really, really, really, really big names and there's like only a handful of them, right? And so your, your average venture fund who are really not in those names, like they probably have, you know, what's that like baseball terms like, you know, they're hitting a triple or whatever, right? Like not a grand slam. I don't know. But, you know, double. Yeah. And I think a lot of the like anyway, so I think there's like probably some commentary to be considered kind of on the whole around venture returns. Yeah. Yeah. Like from the typical venture fund. Um, as it relates to, to this, I mean, the thing that's really interesting about what we're doing is like on a risk-reward basis, what we're, what we're buying for 10% is like way more de-risked and way farther along than a traditional seed fund, right? Because you already have the metrics, you have customers, you have, you have an embedded focus group that's kind of telling you what to go build, right? Like you have of love and, and higher LTV and lower CAC. Like, there's just a lot to like here. And so, um, and I think just for what it's worth, like, we're kind of one of the only people doing it. Um, and so in theory we should have like the most interesting, highest opportunity people, you know, in this fund at least. Do you feel like the fund is going so far as you expected it to, hoped Yeah, the thing I'm like— what surprised you? Yeah, that's— yeah, the thing that I'm most surprised by is like, I'm trying to like navigate— there's always a spectrum of like, are you a founder building in public, or are you a creator building like, you know, the next Martha Stewart franchise, right? Like, and I think we, we want to obviously find the latter But like, we keep getting pulled more towards the, like, the form of like, you know, the Clueless guys, right? Yeah. It's like there's so many versions of that.

Also, I've seen a lot of founders recently that I would put into like traditional founder bucket that are going— that are really good at front-facing camera social. Yeah. And I'll be honest, I kind of give them an advantage if they know what they're doing. And like, there's a couple of people I have in mind. Um, one of which we're looking at right now. And it's like, I kind of love it because you understand digital native stuff.

Totally.

And you understand how to get your CAC to zero. And at the same time though, I know that like if you go and hire somebody for $20 an hour, they can handle all of it, but you'll know what to say to the camera, know what to do, and you can just still run and operate your business the way I kind of want founder too. Yeah. So it's funny, but I wouldn't put them in the bucket of a creator. Like, they might have 10,000 followers, which, like, candidly, I know people that are— that have— forget creator, entrepreneur, whatever it is— that have 10 or 20,000 followers that can drive 6 figures of sales or 7 figures of sales.

And conversely, you know people with millions of followers.

I know. Yeah. Oh, do I? Like, it's like— it's a very, very fascinating world, and I think it has to I think you— and this is why, like, I ask the question— you have to be kind of plugged in to know because it's moving so quickly. There's a lot of frauds out there. There's a lot of, like, people buying whatever— followers, likes, shares. It's so interesting. It's such a white space. And I think, like, you know, to kind of wrap things up, like, I, I think it's so cool that there's a handful of players, yourself included, that have, especially in the conviction game, have conviction, are doing things that are so interesting and so smart and tailored to like what you guys are looking for and what you're looking to do. And then it's also— excuse me, it's so funny to hear how everybody's kind of approaching this world in this space because it's like, who knows who's right to some extent, right? Like, I might have an opinion, you might have an opinion. Both can be right. Both can like change and it like moves a little bit over time.

And by the way, like, I think everyone is like, all of these different models will work. Yeah, right. And I think it's just, it's, it's so dependent on the type of person the creator is. Yeah, right. And like, I think as people, the more creators can be honest with themselves around like, are you like a Martha Stewart or are you like basically just really good at like marketing, distribution, and community building? And like, you should really go with like a venture studio, like I think that all of them will be successful. It's just a matter of calibrating, like, and being honest with yourself around, like, which one are you, and going to fit, like, find the right capital product or build product or whatever it is.

Where are you personally in 10 years from now?

Oh my gosh, um, well, hopefully on, like, fund 3. Okay, doing this. And, and in a perfect world, I, like, I— and we actually talked about this in fundraising a little bit because is, you know, a lot of people like to dream and kind of understand where this is going. But look, I think this is going to be like a global strategy, hopefully, knock on wood, right? I think there's so much opportunity even outside of the US, even outside North America, which is so hard to say no to stuff that we see now. But like, we want to kind of stay focused on home territory, at least for the time being. And then look, I think there's— I think there's a version of this where Could you have an athlete vertical? Could you have a musician vertical? Could you have, you know, so on and so forth? And we get calls now from other venture funds being like, hey, I have this idea around someone, like, our fund really isn't like designed to do it, but I kind of want to do this personally. Can you walk me through the structure or whatever? And, um, obviously happy to do that and share that information. Um, it may not be like the right target for us today, but like, you don't have to squint very hard to see it kind extending to different types of creators, right?

Megan, thank you so much for taking the time. Uh, we could probably talk for like 12 hours on this stuff. Um, but I think it's so cool what you guys are doing. Yeah. Um, what you're personally doing, your trajectory. I'm super excited to kind of like stay posted and see how this all goes. Um, but thank you so much for the time and, uh, I appreciate it.

This is fun. Thanks for having me.