Empowering Creators: Megan Lightcap on the Future of VC Investments in Creators [Ep 42]

you know, we get asked all the time of like, how many, what's the TAM? Like how many creators are there? And I think it's a moving target. I think we generally like to focus on YouTubers, but right, like you see the likes of Huberman or Dr. Becky, who, you know, got her start on Instagram and, you know, those are creators in the same way that Doug DeMuro is, at least from our view. And so really, as it pertains to kind of the slow version of creator, It's anyone who's building a community with deep trust and distribution.

Colin, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great. I'm pretty much at the bar here, so life's good.

I was going to say, I didn't know that you were a big drinker, but maybe you are.

I, you know, I enjoy a good cocktail from time to time.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm excited to join you for a cocktail in Austin at the end of September. We're going to be having a little meetup. We'll leave a link in the show notes for people who want to check that out and see us in person. Uh, but today we've got a cool episode with Megan Lightcap from Slow Ventures, all about investing in creators. How does that sound?

I'm excited. I think this one's going to be totally—

I kind of want to ask her if she thinks you're a real creator or not, but we'll see if I, uh, I'm pretty sure it's a hard no, but you know, maybe I should ask about myself if I'm an actual creator or not. I don't know if we'll put her on the spot like that, but, uh, it's going to be a really great episode. And before we get into that, uh, I want to talk a little bit about our sponsor for today's episode, Carta. So if you're looking for a simple and highly professionalized solution to form and administer an SPV, there's a set of tools out there that we think is worth taking a look at, and it's built by our partners for today's episode over at Carta. So whether you're looking to launch a first fund over here like our friend Colin, or just start with straight simple SPVs like I do, Carta is an option that we all know and trust, and you can check them out at carta.com or just run a simple search for Carta SPV. How does that sound, Colin?

Sounds exciting.

And what, you know what I'm excited for?

Tell me more.

We have an upcoming episode with Peter from Carta.

Don't you know Peter?

Yeah, Peter Walker, the, uh, yeah, didn't he go ahead and go viral last week on Twitter? They shared some chart about, uh, venture returns for funds or some of his data.

He shook things up. The, uh, I think the past couple years cohorts, uh, you know, TVPI and DPI, all, all the, uh, good venture metrics were not looking so hot.

But I think I saw a few rebuttals from VCs that basically said, hey, that's kind of the point, you know. If a company ends up doing really well and it's multi-billion, it's going to take a little while, you know, for it to IPO or exit or M&A. So I don't know, maybe that's a good question, uh, we can ask him about when he comes on the show.

Yeah, I'm excited to dig into it. There's like a lot of valid points on all of it. Um, and I think maybe the data will just point us in the right direction. So I'm excited to talk to Peter. All right, cool.

Well, that will be an upcoming episode, but for today's show, we've got, uh, Megan Lightcap. So I'm excited to dig in. Let's do it. All right, Megan Lightcap is an investor at Slow Ventures, a seed-stage venture fund backing founders and companies across all sectors. At Slow, Megan primarily focuses on backing creators making direct equity investments into their holding companies to enable growth across their content businesses and communities. Prior to Slosh, she held leadership positions at two early-stage e-commerce businesses and was a growth investor at El Catherdin, a consumer-focused investment fund. Megan also started her career in investment banking at JP Morgan. Megan, how are you doing today?

Good. Thanks for having me, guys.

Yeah, I'm excited to chat. You know, you and I connected recently all about the creator ecosystem and the investments that you're making. And selfishly, I was like, oh, this sounds like a great guest. I don't think you even knew that we had the podcast, but I was like, this sounds like a great guest for our podcast. So I kind of roped you into that one, huh?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I actually had no idea that you had a podcast. So news to me.

We're very popular as you can tell.

Yeah.

I'm actually shocked that you haven't heard of it, Megan Lightcap. A little bit of a slap in the face, but all good. We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll move on. All right. So how many investments have you personally made out of the fund and what size is it?

So there's two ways to think about the, the, the fund here. So there's our core seed fund and then there's the investing in creators, which is my main focus. So on the creator side, I think I've done 5 deals. We have 7, 7 total. And then on the core fund, I think I've done 2 or 3 and then a handful of kind of smaller angel checks.

Very cool. How many investments have you personally, since we're going to focus on the creator fund, how many have you done this year or do you plan to make?

We've done a handful this year and we want to do a bunch more. So it's, it's, you know, top of focus or top of mind for me. So yeah, we have a bunch, a bunch of good ones in pipeline.

Very cool. What's your average check size?

So we'll invest on the creator side, we'll invest anywhere from $500K up to $2 million. Generally in exchange for, call it like 5 to 10%.

Very cool.

And go for it, Conan.

I'm intrigued, not to go break up all of Harry's questions, but you know, what are you actually investing in, in terms of like, is it a holdco? Is it a company? I mean, cause I've seen some creators create like a Cars and Bids. I do marketplaces. So that's what I'm familiar with. Like Cars and Bids did the marketplace for cars from YouTube channel. So yeah. What do you, what are you investing in? What do you get ownership in?

Yeah. So it's the, it's exactly right. It's their holding company, which basically houses, you can think about it like everything creator related from content and media to joint ventures, licensing deals, you know, the marketplace business that they may have created, you know, different C-corps that sit under it. So this model is actually becoming more and more popular with creators kind of as they have different business lines and kind of different components to their business.

Got it.

So you don't have to pick and choose winners that way. You sort of get involved with everything that they're doing.

Yeah. I mean, I think for us, you know, we like to back creators that are explicitly building different businesses and, you know, as seed stage investors, it's important that, yeah, we're not kind of in the position, at least at the early stage, to pick and choose the projects that we think are ultimately going to be the most successful. As you know, right, like the success of a, of a company depends so much on the creator's focus and attention on it. And so we like to be holistically kind of aligned to the creator across whatever they're doing, you know, with the option to have more exposure to a company that they create later on once we know it's working and it's kind of, kind of a standalone thing.

Does it, does this change the like whole like in venture, like, you know, it's got to be a Delaware C-Corp, all this kind of like nor— you know, like conventional wisdom. Does that change all of that?

Um, I mean, just from a simple structure perspective, generally the holding companies are LLCs, um, but the underlying companies are, um, traditional business. Um, so Typically, yeah, that parent co is an LLC.

Got it. So yeah, it's not as vanilla as like the typical, I guess, VC investments and things like that. So you're, I guess you're getting some like rights in the LLC, some kind of like ownership percentage.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Don't worry, Colin. Those were, that was basically my last question before you interrupted me. So all good, but I'm going to take back over because when you were talking, Megan Lightcap, it kind of made me think like, what is your definition of creator. Am I a creator? Is Colin a creator? What's your definition? And what do sort of when you're talking to people, what do they think? I'm curious if it's, you know, if everyone's on the same page or not.

No one is on the same page whatsoever. I mean, I'll get, I'll get comments, you know, from, from folks thinking I just scroll TikTok all day and that's all I'm doing.

I mean, look, I think, you know, I only do that 1 to 2 hours a day, right?

Yeah, exactly. Funny enough, like I really don't spend that much time on TikTok. It's mainly YouTube, Twitter, some Instagram, which is really the, you know, a lot of podcasters now is really the, our main focus. You know, we get asked all the time of like, how many, what's the TAM? Like how many creators are there? And I think it's a moving target. I think we generally like to focus on YouTubers. But, right, like, you see the likes of Huberman or Dr. Becky, who, you know, got her start on Instagram, and, you know, those are creators in the same way that Doug DeMuro is, at least from our view. And so really, as it pertains to kind of the slow version of creator, it's anyone who's building a community with deep trust and distribution on the internet. I mean, or not, I guess, who, you know, it kind of owns their vertical or niche and wants to launch different businesses, you know, around their media, basically. So the term creator or the definition creator changes wildly depending on who you're talking to and kind of what their stated use case is. But we tend to take like a pretty broad view, at least, you know, based on the types of platforms that they're on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I sort of like this, the slow, you know, as in Slow Ventures, the slow definition of creator, sort of like you said, and you mentioned this focus on YouTubers, even podcasters. I feel like one thing that's always stood out to me as someone with YouTube and, you know, podcast, it's like the connection that you make with your audience. I think there's something about hearing them and seeing them that kind of like makes you feel like you know them. Is that what you think? Is that why you're focusing or is that just sort of a side benefit or what do you sort of think about like that trust component? Does it have to be audio and visual?

I think there's, I mean, there's definitely a conversation around the trust piece, right? What exactly what you're describing, you know, video, audio, what kind of like what that can do in terms of kind of the, this parasocial relationship and trust. But even more like basic than that, YouTube just has an unbelievable monetization scheme relative to TikTok, Instagram, and some of the other platforms. So you see a lot of the more serious creators there, folks who are doing it full-time, and there's just higher friction, right, to longer-form content production. And because they're earning revenue from AdSense, it's this amazing source of non-dilutive financing that can kind of sit alongside our equity. Whereas if you think about like a traditional venture-backed startup, they really only have the capital on the balance sheet that they raise until they turn a dollar of profit, whereas if you're a creator, you're earning cash from AdSense and brand deals and sponsorships and whatnot that can really juice what, you know, what you're doing and kind of get you farther. So that's why we take, take YouTube seriously. But certainly I think there's something to be said about, you know, this like audiovisual kind of component. I mean, I think podcasting is like a uniquely interesting medium for that where You know, if you're walking around and people are just like in your ear for hours at a time, like, you know, their inflection, you know how they talk, you know how they ask questions. Like, it's really intimate if you think about it.

Yeah. Maybe you like, you know them without knowing them.

Right.

And therefore you think they're more important and bigger than life than they actually may be, which I think is kind of an interesting thing. I, you know, with the The, the whole creator space I think has been really interesting to me because the, the whole, like, I don't know, I've done a, I've built a bunch of startups and the, the issue I always found over time was always demand aggregation at scale, right? And that's the hardest piece, right? And to make it cost effective. And that's what I think, you know, creators in a lot of ways, what you're betting on is getting demand aggregation at scale early.

Right.

And making it, you know, relatively cheaper over time with high retention. And so I, I view it as like this really nice, it's more of this like bet on if you can aggregate demand and make a relationship with them and then ask them what their problems are, you can solve a bunch of different things for them. Like that's the, I think the opportunity set in my mind and kind of how I always viewed if you could get, if you get an audience, you just ask them what they want and then totally solve it for them.

Totally. And it's, it's funny, I was listening to this entrepreneur. Have you guys heard of Adam Sandlow?

Sandlow sounds familiar.

He, he recently was on Invest Like the Best and he, he's basically this like print media entrepreneur. And so has a bunch of like print magazines. I think Luxe is one of them. He has like an interior design property, but he, he kind of describes exactly what you, what you just did, which is use the media really as like your distribution and top of funnel, and then use that to spend time with your audience members and, and deeply understand what their pain points are. Not necessarily as it relates to like the media and content, but just industry pain points. Like, what are you guys dealing with? Like, what's top of mind? What keeps you up at night? And as an entrepreneur, he's like, I can go hopefully build a business that helps solve those problems and then sell it via my media and, and kind of community and distribution. And it's the same exact thing I think we're seeing with creators, which is you're so close to the metal on some of this stuff. You basically have a direct line to your future customers to build something that is so rightly built for them and then sell into it at, you know, near zero CAC.

Beautiful. I love near zero CAC. I mean, because to create good content, you have to know your audience well, right? Which inherently means that You have some depth of understanding of them and some relationship. So yeah, no, and you see this with MrBeast, right? Like he, he's kind of figured out what, you know, what people want from him and that it isn't low quality, you know, just volume. It's like, it's gotta be high quality, like his content, it's gotta be high quality. And like, you will get backlash and feedback on it. I just think of like the burger and the, all the different stuff he's done and kind of what he's learned from that. It's just, yeah, it's been, it's been interesting. So. I guess one question I had on, you know, like the venture model, right, is very much predicated on these like billion-dollar outcomes. Like, you know, get significant ownership at a small scale, get it to a billion dollars exit, you know, and like return the fund. And, you know, like you said, there's so many more options with what you're investing in, in terms of cash flow and like what can happen. How do you, yeah, how do you guys underwrite like the opportunity and the outcome? Like, I'm intrigued by that piece of it.

Yeah. So I think people often automatically assume that the opportunity set is limited to like CPG, just because that's what people are, are see and are most familiar with as it relates to creators and celebrities and talent and whatnot. But the folks that we are excited about are actually building businesses that are venture underwriteable. You know, we're chatting with a creator. He's in the construction space and he's building a software business that he's selling into construction companies. And so it's actually B2B, number one. Number two, it's a software business. And it, you know, if you ask him, he's like, I'm building a billion dollar company. And to, to our, to our earlier point of deeply knowing your customers and what they need and kind of what they're dealing with, he, he purpose-built this company to basically like directly address all of these pain points. So I don't know that there's infinite venture underwritable opportunities here, but like they definitely exist in niches and places that I think people tend to overlook.

What do you think about the sort of CPG kind of avenue for, you know, it seems like more of the top creators, you know, the top 0.1%. Everyone has a tequila brand these days, but I think we're also starting to see that, you know, maybe some of these companies have got to $1, $2, $3, $5 billion, but maybe they don't hold that value because it's so predicated on the brand or on the influencer. So how do you think about that? And also at the same time, you know, with venture, it's like if you get out at the right time, it was a good exit too. So I know that's a bit of a loaded question, you know, but you know, what do you think about basically the CPG versus, you know, some of these other areas?

Yeah. I mean, I think you see, or you've seen the proliferation of the CPG creator-led or celebrity-led brands because they're almost like the least common denominator, right, of what these folks can sell because they're so big and they're so general. So like, yeah, MrBeast, I mean, I don't know what the latest subscriber count is, 300 million or something. Like, he basically could sell chocolate bars or like toilet paper, right? Like, what is the one thing that you can sell to all of your, all of your fans? Mm-hmm. Versus if, you know, if it's something way more specific, you know, the conversion is just a lot lower. And so even with celebrities, right? I think that's why people generally default, you know, some of these more general kind of consumer products. And then look, I think on the, you know, getting really hot out of the gates, like the interesting thing is like they're really expensive, like from a venture standpoint, they're really expensive. And so we, we actually, we're pretty bearish on the like whole celebrity general entertainment creator stuff. One, because you kind of can only sell the like the generic super mass products. And then two, they're, it's just, they're so overpriced because the numbers look amazing in the beginning. There's a lot of hype around it.

You mean from an investor perspective?

From an investor. Yeah. From an investor perspective. And maybe, maybe not overpriced, but they're just, they're expensive. Right. And like I see the investor's entry point really matters.

And so for us, one also, there's something about the like cachet of working with a celebrity that people maybe put a premium on. Like I have a bunch of friends, you know, when they graduated college, they go work for the Los Angeles Dodgers for like $30K a year. 'Cause oh, I'm working for the hometown team. You know, there's some cachet there, I guess you would say.

Of course. Of course. So for a lot of reasons, we generally tend to stay away from those types of opportunities and focus more on, you know, niche vertical creators who are kind of deeply owning, you know, a sector or a category. Category.

The— yeah, that, that totally makes sense. There's a, there's a lot of good examples, honestly. The, the CPG thing I always find is like not a— in my mind, not the best strategy because it's not a retentive product, all the— you know, like you're not selling something that reinforces your kind of own growth loop, and it's like you're just extracting value. So I don't know. I think, I feel like that's what MrBeast has done a lot more of in some ways is like trying to switch to products that are a bit more of like branding tool in themselves and like make you more, make money, but also like reinforce the loop of like, hey, keep coming back to me, bring more subscribers in and like really get that growth loop. One of the companies I invested in is kind of, I guess, you know, they met at Knight Labs and it's a company called Rare Candy. They do like Pokemon cards auctions and things like that. And so it's Lionheart is their, one of the co-founders. So he is like, I don't know, 1.6 million, I think YouTube subscribers, but their whole model is predicated on like, hey, look, we have this like nerdcore audience. Like, let's get them involved. Let's get a community going and then build the product around them. Right. And you know, I think it's one of these things where you don't necessarily have the, like the growth, like you're saying of like some super celebrity of like, here's the CPG product that's gonna go. Like through the roof and maybe it has staying power, maybe it doesn't. But you can build really sustainable businesses around these like hardcore audiences that are like doing what you want them to do all day, every day. And just like being around them more allows you to monetize them. And so anyway, I, I've becoming more and more interested in that model. Yeah. And I, I have like a general thesis around marketplaces plus something else, like marketplace plus community, plus content, plus SaaS, plus fintech and suretech. And I think it's really a very similar concept to what you're saying is like, hey, almost if you can bring the audience first and then add something onto it, it's like a content, you know, it's like an audience plus model, right?

Yeah. The community and the audience, I mean, that is the strategic asset, right? And I think some folks tend to overlook it and kind of what can come out of it. Yeah, I totally agree with you.

What do you think about, since we've got Colin the marketplace guy and I'm sort of half a marketplace guy, what do you think about marketplaces for, you know, these creators? Is that, you know, a good opportunity for them or building a marketplace off, you know, I think Colin, you mentioned like the cars, you know, obviously if you're a big car influencer, if you do a marketplace for cars, what do you think about that kind of angle?

Yeah, I mean, I think the way we would think about it honestly is depending on the category that the creator is in and then kind of take a more like fundamental, like, is this a good business depending on kind of the category dynamics, what exists, you know, competitive analysis, all that standard stuff. But I think, I mean, I kind of view it in the same way that I do like any kind of creator business of like, is there a reason for this business to exist? Is it, you know, does it have a sound business model? And is the creator kind of uniquely positioned to do it. And so I don't know that I have like any strong point of view kind of on marketplaces broadly beyond it just has to be taken totally in context of like the category that the creator is in.

Yeah.

I think one of the kind of models for this, and I'm not an expert, it was like MeatEater, Steve Rinella, like he had a show on Netflix and then, you know, obviously spun out. I think that was Churnin and he's done a bunch of different models like this. Oh, and Cars and Bids for that matter. Yeah, no, I just, I think, you know, watching like, hey, you get that hyper-specific group that can be really quite large, right? And it's, you can create a content engine, you can do podcasts, you can add a marketplace if you want, but it's really like, yeah, it's just something they need or want.

Yeah. And if you, and if you think about like the consumption patterns of that group, right? Like those are super high-ticket items. It's a hobbyist category. People, people care rationally about it and are willing to spend not only time, but like, like real dollars on, on different parts of the experience. And so, yeah, I mean, the hunting and fishing kind of outdoors enthusiasts, it's a great category. I think Steve and obviously the Meteor team has done a really good job there.

What's the reception been to this idea of investing in creators? Because I think it's pretty unique, or at least, you know, from what I've seen, it seems like you and Slow are sort of the main ones kind of doing it in this venture fashion? Do you reach out to creators and they're like, heck yes, this sounds amazing. I want money. Is there convincing? What's it kind of been like?

Yeah. Well, if you go to anyone and you're like, here's a million dollars, they're kind of like, I'll take it. So we actually, we kind of take the approach of, or at least I have taken the approach the last couple of years of like, let's just go educate the market. Like, what are we doing? How do we think about the deals? Who's the right Who are the right people that we, that we wanna find? Here's how we structure it. Here's how we think about stuff and kind of just like put the message out there. And I think what you find is that if you get to the right people in the industry who are kind of in these conversations with creators day to day of, hey, you know, I wanna launch some sort of company or brand or, or business, you know, I, I can do it bootstrapped, but it may take me 5 or 7 years based upon you know, my, my cash flow, you know, what about raising a little bit of money? Like, have, do you know anyone who's doing this? Or, or how do you think about it? And so we often get routed those opportunities and we, we kind of think it's an interesting like filtering test of if you're a creator, you wanna raise money, the ability to like find us and get to us via a warm intro is actually a really good signal versus saying, you know, doing totally cold outbound and, and kind of offering people money, which we do do, by the way. Like there are, you know, most of the, most of the interesting opportunities we see are, you know, come inbound, but we do do some, some outbounding and that, that is really from, you know, hey, maybe we have a thesis on the parenting category for whatever reason and want to go poke around and see who's doing some interesting stuff there. And we'll do some outbound, but by and large, these opportunities get routed to us kind of through different industry channels.

What one question for you is like, what are, I guess, what are the perils that you guys have learned or like the gotchas of investing in creator, like, you know, where the head fakes, what, you know, I don't know. I'm intrigued to hear that since it's relatively nascent.

Totally, totally. I was actually just telling this to someone the other day. One of the biggest differences between seed investing and what we're doing the sales cycles are just longer because it's not like you're a startup where you're running out of cash in 3 months and you have a burn and employees and you must close this round because, because of this property of kind of financing from, from different platforms and these are cash generative. There's a different level of urgency, which actually is like potentially a net good thing. I think it, it, it, forces people to make the decision like really eyes wide open and raise money for the right reasons and on kind of the right cadence. But it's been, that has been an adjustment of, you know, I think you can in traditional seed, you can close around very quickly from like first meeting to term sheet to kind of wiring the investment. It just, it looks and feels a little bit different when you're dealing with creators. So that's been like my number one my number one learning.

Got it. So Slo is a generalist seed fund. Is that accurate description?

Yes. Yes.

How does this content— or sorry, creator angle fit into the fund? Is it like number one focus? I mean, obviously, you know, this is what you're focused on, but how does that sort of fit into the opportunities that you guys are looking at? Or how do you rank it? Or, you know, sort of put things in perspective there. Yeah.

I mean, I think if you ask the, the partners at Slow, and I know Harry, you, you know Sam Lessin a little bit. I think what you, you hear is our core seed fund, right? Like we're in all the right names. We have the right logos. We've done well. It's interesting, but it's competitive, right? It's, it's where a lot of other seed funds are playing and other venture funds are playing. And so where I think we get the most excited and quite frankly have made the most money is kind of in these like fringe ideas around our core seed fund, whether it's creator or, you know, we have a strong thesis on small business or whether it's franchise or, you know, back in 2016, 2017, I was, I was not around, but, you know, Sam had an alt Ethereum thesis that led him to names like Solana and whatnot. And so I think those fringe things get, get people really excited and kind of like the, The core seed is kind of just like the, the day job, if you will. So I don't know that there's some sort of like firm priority ranking across these different strategies. I just, I think intellectually people get really, really excited about kind of these more novel and fringy bespoke theses.

Do you think there's potential in it for it to return, you know, one fund, two fund, three fund, or anything like that?

We've definitely had the, these fringe concepts return the fund, not on any creator names thus far, knock on wood, but we definitely have had, I mean, Solana was kind of a huge outcome for us. And we have a couple other, the other names that we'll also do really, really well on that kind of fit within these kind of alt thesis.

Yeah. So sort of like, I think what you said that it was interesting, it's like, it's something that everyone's kind of excited, excited about, you know, maybe less competition. You guys are a bit out there. There's definitely some return. It's not a focus though, but there there is like the potential upside. So sort of like a little bit of a bet or not even an experiment, but I don't know, fringe. I kind of like that, you know, fringe or a risk to what you did. Although I don't know if that's demeaning, but no.

Well, so it's funny, I can't remember who I was speaking with, someone like in the venture world and they're like, oh, where do you work or whatever? I was like, I'm at Slow Ventures. They're like, oh, like you guys just do weird stuff. And I was kind of like, it's like not the, not the worst branding to have, or at least like I think we'd probably be happy with that branding. So I don't know, maybe that's, maybe that's our—

a lot of the best and biggest outcomes sound pretty weird at first, right? You know, drive someone stranger around in a car, you know, some stranger sleep in your, your bedroom, right? All these other ideas. That's why they don't exist. So very cool.

Yeah. Fair enough.

What one, I guess one interesting point about the, and I don't know if you guys have had any exits, so to speak, in the creator side, but I'm kind of intrigued because you're kind of, I know it's a holdco, but you're kind of buying like equity in them. Which seems like more like an evergreen position than it does a like closed-end fund, like, you know, 10-year, you know, these people have long lives, hopefully, and more of an, more of an, like an annuity almost, right? Like off of their, you know, lifetime earnings. I don't know. How do you guys think? I mean, I don't know if you guys have set this up as a traditional venture fund, but like, how do you guys think about continuity from that? Because I could see people selling off certain products or certain pieces of the business, but not necessarily the whole co. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. So the thing we really hang our hat on with these creator investments are the company is like the company formation piece, not necessarily, you know, I'm just in it to do brand deals and kind of generate, yeah, a cash annuity effectively. Like it's obviously an interesting product, but not necessarily how we think, what we get excited about as venture capitalists. And so Yes, they're like longer-term deals, but I think, you know, the traditional kind of company formation pattern and then ultimate exit should follow that of a more traditional venture fund, maybe plus a year or two, right? Because you have this idea of you're investing at the holdco, maybe it takes them 18 months to actually start the first company or second company or what have you. But like, we're really indexing on kind of this company formation and less actually about kind of this cash flow component that we think about actually that more like tail protection or kind of downside protection.

But there is sort of like, I've been running my business for 10 years. I don't really plan on going anywhere anytime soon. There is sort of like, I mean, this is kind of just going to be around, you know, if you build up a pretty solid business, you know, 50,000, 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, I mean, you're making, you know, $5,000 to $10,000 a month off ad revenue at least, plus all the brand deals, you know, you have real revenue coming in and it's kind of like, it's not impossible, but it's kind of hard to screw that up in a way. So I guess like you do, this is kind of like a lifelong partnership or what do you think?

Well, I think it depends on like if we met a creator and they were like, I, that, that is my, that is my circumstance and I'm kind of just going to grow it at a healthy clip. Like they're probably not all that interesting for us. I mean, I think we really want creators who are going to take a big swing on company formation. And so I think it's just—

I think you kind of take a big swing, even if it doesn't work out, and then they still sort of have that core business after that.

Totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And in that case, like, you know, maybe there's some terminal value there and we figure out how to exit our position or whatever, but I don't, you know, that's not necessarily how we think about kind of the big outcomes coming out of this. Strategy.

Fair.

Fascinating. This has been such a fun conversation. I'm— my head is spinning and in a good way.

We might rename the title for this episode, Wanna Be Creators instead of Wanna Be Angels. That was my big shower thought the other day. So Megan, really appreciate you coming on and sharing all of your knowledge about the creator space and then also your investing strategy when it comes to this. So you kind of mentioned you like the warm intro. Should we not leave your contact info, not leave slow and sort of leave it a bit of a mystery and in case anyone's listening and that could be their first test.

That would be a very funny test and very on brand for Slo, but no, you know, people, I'm totally reachable.

Okay, cool.

My email is just megan@slo.co or occasionally I check Twitter DMs, but I'm a professional.

I looked at your Twitter. Yeah, you didn't seem too active on Twitter. So it sounds like maybe email, LinkedIn, and I know Slo is often putting out a lot of cool content and Sam is tweeting out screenshots and things like that. So I think the whole ecosystem of folks at Slow are always good follows. So we'll leave links to that in the show notes and really appreciate you coming on, Megan.

Perfect. Thanks for having me, guys. This is fun.