Why This VC Is Investing $60M Into Creator Entrepreneurs | Megan Lightcap, Slow Ventures

They have the upside potential of like a standard venture investment because they're, at the end of the day, they're building companies, right? But they have greater downside protection given oftentimes you can just monetize from media and content or even like launch an agency around whatever their vertical is. So it's kind of this, you know, I think if you plot these investments on a graph, you're likely to have fewer zeros and you do in theory still have the same upside potential as like a standard venture fund. So it's sort of like a better risk reward from my perspective, but obviously we have yet to, yet to see the results of that.

Welcome to the Hotstar VC Podcast, the show where we break down how celebrities and creators build billion-dollar brands. Today I'm joined by Megan Lightcap, partner at Sloth Ventures, where she leads a $60 million fund investing directly into creator holding companies. In this episode, we break down what makes a creator investible, how Megan performs due diligence on creators, how their investment structure works, and we dive into some of their recent investments. So without further ado, let's get into the conversation. Megan, thank you so much for coming on.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

So I'm very curious. Slow Ventures obviously has been around for over a decade, and they're known as this early-stage generalist fund that has made some very exciting investments in companies like Slack, FEMO, Airtable, Robinhood, often as also one of the first investors. So how did they all end up actually becoming interested in investing in creators and also how did you end up joining the team to make it all happen?

Yeah, I think, you know, our— that's exactly right. You know, being early-stage investors, our job really is to match early-stage capital with early-stage founders. And I think the idea around creators was kind of this recognition that there will be a class of creators that are founders in the same way that our seed and kind of core fund founders are entrepreneurial and building businesses. Creators just happen to be going about building companies a slightly different way, right? They almost like invert the pattern of business building where instead of building product first and then finding customers or actually building, you know, customers and community first and launching really right-fit products and services for their audiences on top of these like deeply, deeply committed communities, which, which is super cool. And, you know, I think we, we often have to think in decade timelines and just kind of saw, right, the first version of it was like MrBeast and Feastables and I see Prime on your shelf and, you know, Logan Paul and Prime. And, you know, we kind of played that forward and we were like, I think this same entrepreneurial motion is going to happen in the super long tail where You can be the go-to person in woodworking, right? And you build deep loyalty and community around that niche and kind of become the voice of authority and then launch a company and products to sell to that audience. And how I arrived, I kind of came at it a slightly different version. I feel like I tell this story a lot, so forgive me if anyone has heard this, but I come from more of the traditional kind of consumer world, did some early-stage consumer investing and very traditional kind of brands and apparel and accessories, restaurants and retail, and then also spent some time on the operating side. And I think my interest in this, or my like aha moment, was just the level of influence that these creators had over consumer mind and wallet share. Like they were going to be like unbelievable business builders if done right. And it seemed like a very cool opportunity to, to go back them. I had no experience in like Hollywood, digital media, talent, like the whole A&R world. And I think what the Slow team and I really came to is like, that's actually not what we're doing. We're really looking for this. Kind of founder creator, if that makes sense.

I really applaud the whole Slow Team for this because they obviously have been quite successful as early-stage investors, and they still actually looked at something completely new, something that they're not familiar with at all, and kind of made the jump into the deep instead of just kind of replicating what they were already doing really, really well.

Yeah, and I think, you know, we tend to try and think about, even if it sounds crazy on the surface, like, and the term in the venture world, which gets overused, but like from a first principles basis of like, why is something done the way it's done, right? And I think when you look at the creator world at the time where we were thinking about this, there was a lot of investment happening and kind of pouring into the world, but in two forms, right? One was you either fund like the upstarts, right? And startups kind of powering the creator economy. So the LinkedIn bio companies, and there was like a ton of money incinerated in that era. Some companies kind of came out okay and did super well. And then the other version was you basically go and back one specific product or idea. So like you would just put money into Prime or just put money into Chamberlain College. Like the issue with that is that this, whatever the creator focuses on, is ultimately going to be the thing that's successful. So you're kind of taking two risks. One is that the creator continues to be a creator, and then two, that the creator continues to focus on the project that you backed. And so there was just this natural like conflict of interest, and we were like, What is actually the valuable thing here that we want to like be in business with? And it's the creator and the community that they've built. And so we kind of came up with a slightly different structure funding the holding companies, which we can obviously get into. But, you know, it was definitely like a third door that we felt no one was really experimenting with.

Yeah, I will ask a follow-up question about that holding investing versus like the underlying companies. But before that, would love to talk a little bit more practical about how you guys invest. So you recently launched a $60 million fund to invest directly into creators. So what does the typical investment look like? What do you guys look for in a specific creator?

Yep. Um, I've written about this a lot, so if people want to dig in further, they can, they can look at my newsletter. But, um, we basically look for kind of 4 broad criteria. One is the person themselves. Like, do they think about themselves like a founder as much as they do a creator? Like, do they have that entrepreneurial drive? Are they thinking really big? Like, do they have this ambition to go build an empire? Like, there's a lot of stuff we actually borrow from seed investing in terms of like, how do you back a good founder? And like, do they have the level of charisma to bring along audience and team members and shareholders and other stakeholders in their business, which is like kind of a crazy thing, right? And maybe like probably not going to succeed if, you know, based on statistics. And then are they just like so deeply obsessed with the problem? Like there's a bunch of factors that we look for in the actual person themselves. So that's kind of bucket number 1, if you will. Number 2 is the community, right? Like ask ourselves a question, you know, why— 2 things. Why is the audience attaching to this person? Like, What is the durable reason why they're watching their least viewed video or doing a deep dive on some product that they mentioned, or they just like laugh alongside them when they laugh and they post it, right? Like they're like, what is that about? And then two, um, is like, who are they? Right? Like, and we don't really care necessarily about, you know, demographic data, but we really wanna understand the psychographics, which is, which is related to point one. But we really wanna understand the, the value set of these people, right? Like what do they care about? What do they prioritize? And by the way, there can be multiple different demographics within a single psychographic. And so that's something we try and deeply understand. And then two, we look for this like cult factor almost of like, we met this one creator who we love, you know, and she gave us some very funny stat, which is like, or some data point, which is like, you know, people were dressing up as her for Halloween. And we were like, that's like, that's like a total like cult signal. And like, we love that, right? Like, has there been, or, you know, what is their ability to convert people from online to offline? And better yet, are they paying for it, right? Like there's all these things you can start to unpack to kind of measure How deep is the community? Third is the category, right? Like, how interesting and, and, you know, commercializable, right, is the category? How competitive is it? Are there other companies in the space that it's going to make it really hard to win, right? You know, what are the dynamics that— or like, what is the, what is the insight that the creator has in their category where you're like, this is probably a good idea, like, even with or without distribution, right? Like, the distribution just helps. And then fourth is, is kind of very standardly, like, you know, evaluating the business that if they, you know, they have a business today and looking at, you know, quality of their earnings and, and, you know, what their, what the makeup of their profitability is, right? Like very standard stuff, but that's like high level how we think about, you know, or what we look for. And then in terms of structure, uh, yeah, it's really in kind of in this holding company model where, you know, we'll invest, call it $1 to $3 million into the holdco, which very broadly, right, represents their creator career. So anything that they launch their audience or promote to them, or like, I don't want to use the word extract, but like extract value from their community, in theory, should go into the holding company. We're passive investors. So, you know, there's no board, we're non-directive. Our stakes are usually like, you know, call it 10 to 15-ish percent. We really just want to be, you know, a consigliere for them when they need us. And interestingly, like this holding company structure is becoming a lot more popular. I think since Beast and Jimmy has become a lot more open about, you know, Beast Industries and all the different sub-companies. There's other big creators too that are now talking more about it. So yeah, we think that we're only going to hopefully see more of that too.

Yeah. And I think it also, to a certain extent, definitely makes sense for a lot of creators. Like you already referred to MrBeast, and before that you also talked about Prime with Logan Paul. But actually, if you look at their business history, MrBeast had MrBeast Burger, Logan Paul had Liquid Marketplace, he had the crypto zoo, other companies that actually went under before he actually had his success. Like, if we— we typically invest in the underlying companies. If we would have invested in Beast Burger versus Feastables, and we now actually— we were first investing in Beast Burger, and a year later he launches Feastables, we would not necessarily be mad, but we would be like, hey, normally you would use your ad space to actually promote Beast Burger, and now all of a sudden you're using that prime real estate to promote something completely else.

Yeah, and, and I think you have to— it gets down to like the incentives of creators, right? Creators have so many opportunities and so many ideas and things that they could go launch. And like, by the way, their audience just gives them way more permission to try stuff and fail and then try again. They just, I think, relative to a, a kind of no-name founder, they just have a lot more, they have more shots on goal. And I think they have like more latitude to go pursue that and iterate and experiment and fail and try again. And so as an investor, like, you really want to be covered right on that. And especially when you're investing so early and kind of the stage in which we do, you don't know the thing that's going to work, right? You don't know if it's going to be Beast Burger or Feastables or ViewStats or Step, right? He just acquired the fintech company. And so at the end of the day, you just want to empower and enable the creator to pursue whatever the highest ROI thing is and you kind of want to get out of the way.

Yeah, no, completely agree. I just think it's very interesting to see what's happening, but I'm also wondering, like, given that you guys like to invest in the holding company, I think— and this is just an assumption— but I think that means that you guys are also excluded from a lot of investment opportunities just because the valuation is too high. Like, if you look at MrBeast, he recently raised at a $5 billion valuation. But let's say we look at lower tiers, lower tier creators. If they have 10 million followers or 10 million subscribers on YouTube, probably their valuation is already into the multi-eight figures, close to nine figures, meaning you can't obtain that 10 to 15% or, or not really.

Not like— I would be careful equating follower count to valuation, of course, right? Like, there's a lot of people that have a lot of followers but can't convert a single thing, and then vice versa. There's a lot of people that have, you know, 100,000 followers on Instagram, and you'd be surprised by the numbers that they're doing in revenue. Not from advertisers, by the way, from selling products. So the short answer is like Yes. Right. Like with any strategy, like you're gonna have your buy box and like there's gonna be things that fall outside of your buy box and there's gonna be the things that fall. You just have to be like unbelievably focused to the, like the cohort of people that you actually wanna serve and you actually wanna support. So 100%, we see things all the time that are too big or, or quite frankly, even more commonly like too media focused, right? Like they're not actually building, building a, a, a product or service or thing, or are too general, right? Or not niche enough. There's a whole bunch of reasons why we would be excluded from things. To be honest, it's more, more frequently the latter than it is kind of people being too expensive because you have to remember this is still so new, right? Like this is not an efficient marketplace. This is not, you know, there's not that many huge, huge creators. And I think there's a lot more in the longer tail that kind of fit our size and scope.

Yeah. And talking about kind of the stage of the creator, like, do they already need to have a business or can it also be that they want to launch a business? They have a the plan fully ready, or can it also be that they have a desire to become an entrepreneur, but they still kind of figuring out what direction they want to go to? Like, can you maybe elaborate on that?

Yeah, good question. So I think the latter of like they have a desire, but they don't necessarily know what they want to go launch at is probably a click too early for us. I think we really want to invest when there's either a business already up and running, or they're very actively working on the business plan and they're gonna launch it with or without us, right? Like, it just, you know, they're committed to the thing. They have a team in place, right? Like, they're off to the races. We also meet a lot of creators that are quite frankly in that bucket of like, they're interested in being an entrepreneur. They know that media is not the end and kind of want it to be a means to an end and content is really the growth engine, but they're not yet sure what the thing is or what the idea is. And so those are people that I think are really interesting and You know, we have a whole bucket of like, we should track these people and life is long and some of the best partnerships come out of, you know, meeting these people early and then we push them, we help their thinking a little and then they'll come back, you know, 6 months, a year later and they're like, hey, guess what? Like, had our conversation, went back to the coal mines and figured out like what the interesting thing is and hey, here's this idea, what do you think, right? So there's a lot of that too, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, no, I love that. And are there specific platforms that you guys are most interested in that the creator has built his or her audience like YouTube versus TikTok?

YouTube is, is a big one, right? Like I think a lot of roads lead back to YouTube just cuz it's where the best monetization is. I think a lot of more serious creators are there given the barrier to, to make YouTube content is just higher than let's say TikTok. But I think increasingly I wanna be careful not to like say we only invest in YouTube. Um, because I think it deeply matters the category or, or vertical in which someone like, take for example, parenting, right? Busy moms are not necessarily on YouTube watching, watching, you know, long form videos. They're scrolling Instagram at night when they're, you know, feeding their baby. So it, it It really depends on the category. I also think like Substack is really interesting. There's just like a different buying motion and follow motion. Of all of the platforms, I'd say TikTok is probably the least interesting. The stickiness of the fans there just look a little bit different. That's both because of, you know, the way the algorithm is made, but also just the barriers to making content, right? Um, so yeah, I'd say YouTube and then, you know, depending on the category, Instagram, Substack, sometimes Twitter, which is interesting. So. Yeah.

Yeah. One of our goals at Hotstar VC this year is actually to invest in a creator that has his or her main audience on LinkedIn or on Substack.

Or yeah, LinkedIn's another one. Totally.

It's funny that you brought up Substack. So how is the investment typically used? Is it always used to kind of pursue that launch of the company or acceleration of the company? Let's say you guys are investing $2 million. Can it also be that $1 million actually is immediately funneled through the JV and then the other million dollars is used kind of to run the operations and grow the content business or whatsoever.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's exactly right. It more or less falls in like 3 buckets every single time. One is, one is always like, okay, I have this business idea or like I have this company, I want to go, you know, put more gas on the fire there. The other is realizing that like content and media is the growth engine for that thing. And so they'll, they'll use some of the dollars to uplevel content and production, hire an editor, open a, you know, build a podcast studio, whatever it is. And then to our, to our conversation earlier, a lot of these creators have many ideas. And so I think there's this, oftentimes they'll, they'll a small amount of money, but like kind of use it for like miscellaneous and then some like ideation that, that may, they may not touch today, but they'll touch in 6 months, a year, 18 months, just because they do have so much opportunity available to them.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, how does the Creator Fund kind of compare to a more traditional fund, a fund also from like a portfolio point of view, like construction-wise, like typical early-stage venture fund invest in 25 to 30 companies, reserve some capital for follow-ons. Is that the same for you guys?

Pretty much, yeah. Funny, and even if you think about like the fund is structured like a venture fund, so 10-year fund with 2 2-year extensions, like very standard, very similar portfolio construction of like we have X number of dollars or reserve for these holdco investments, we have Y dollars reserved for follow-on company investments, which by the way don't go into the holding company, go into one of the different sub-companies that is actually starting to work. And then if you think about from a risk-reward perspective, I happen to think one of the more interesting properties of this fund, and this may bore or your audience, depending on who's listening. But like, you know, if you think about it, they have the upside potential of like a standard venture investment because they're, at the end of the day, they're building companies, right? But they have greater downside protection given oftentimes you can just monetize from media and content or even like launch an agency around whatever their vertical is. So it's kind of this, you know, I think if you, if you plot these investments on, on a graph, you're likely to have fewer zeros. and you, you do in theory still have the same upside potential as like a standard venture fund. So it's sort of like a better risk reward from my perspective. But obviously we have yet to, yet to see the results of that. So let, we can talk about it in a decade.

Yeah. No, I love that. Let's jump on the next call, like in 10 years' time and can kind of reflect on this. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you guys perform due diligence on these great investments versus like the more traditional early stage investments? Like what is similar and what is different? You already touched upon like the creator community and category. And you talked about like quite similar because you're betting on the founder. And that's also what you do in early stage investing. So could you maybe elaborate on what is different and what is the same?

Good question. So the biggest key differentiator is like we actually call people from their community and we want to understand, you know, we'll get on the phone with their superfans, right? And we'll get on the phone or we'll get on the phone with like fans of the vertical, but maybe not fans of them and be like, Why do you follow this category online, but not this person? Or, you know, for their superfans, we'll be like, you know, we'll just ask what we wanna learn. We wanna understand like what makes them so compelling and really trying to, trying to see what else they consume, where else they shop, who, who are they, right? And again, like kind of getting at these like psychographic questions. So that is one of the more fun parts of the job, which is like doing a lot of reference calls, both, both people that, you know, they introduce us to, but then other people that we just kind of find in the industry that they, that they they don't and just do some backchanneling.

Yeah, very interesting. So you're just talking to like lots of consumers doing consumer research, basically?

Basically, yeah, basically. Um, and then, then the other kind of diligence stuff you mentioned, it's, it's again not all that different from kind of seed, seed stage diligence.

Yeah. And how are you guys thinking about exiting your positions? Because like I haven't seen a lot of creators like being acquired, they're holding companies, or actually them IPOing. So how are you guys thinking about like actually returning the capital?

Yeah. So, it's funny. I actually wrote about this a couple of weeks ago because I think for a long time, and really the path of least resistance around exits is like, okay, one of the subcompanies exits, right? Like Feastables sells to Mondelēz or so-and-so sells to a strategic or a private equity group. There's some exit at the subcompany level. That is the most likely path. And I think still the most likely path that we've kind of modeled or at least like talked to LPs about or our fund investors about. But I do, I am very like intellectually curious about like the exit of the holdco. You know, MrBeast is, his team has been, you know, pretty public, at least like more or less between the lines about what would an IPO look like at the Beast Industries level. Right. And even in the past, we've seen Martha Stewart OmniMedia IPO, right? We had this like weird deal with CopyLame, which I think was like more of a sideshow than anything, but like does get the wheels turning on like, could you see some sort of exit at the like holdco level or kind of the basket level. So what I'd say is like, we'll see. I mean, so much of this and a lot of the conversation with LPs was like, guys, like we're still figuring it out, right? Like this industry and this world is so nascent. And I think people are really still in the early innings of like capital flows and value creation and capture and like who the winners are and what exits look like. And so, you know, our message to them was like, this is venture, venture capital, right? Like, don't expect us to have all the answers day one. And if that's not a risk, like, you're game to take with us, like, we're probably not a fit for you, which is like no harm, no foul. Um, so it's— I think it's exciting, and I am very, I'm very intellectually interested in what, what a Beast IPO would unlock.

Yeah, no, completely agree. And you guys also have some universities as LPs, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that is super interesting also from those universities. I actually had a couple conversations also with the like the fund side of the universities. We are first-time fund, so for us it didn't really make sense to get them in, especially at a $10 million fund size. But so many of them were talking about them seeing so many of their students actually wanted to become a content creator and that type of stuff. So it's cool that they're actually willing to support your bet and actually see the same thing back in their students.

Totally. And, you know, as part of the fundraising conversation, I think when we first set out to do this, We maybe, I think wrongly, kind of assumed it was just going to be high net worth and meaty people and individuals who got it because it was almost probably a bit too, too forward thinking for more traditional institutions. But what you forget is exactly what you said, which is like, these folks are on college campuses. Like they see the activities and moreover, they have kids, right? Who are dragging them to Walmart to buy chocolate, right? Buy Mr., you know, and so they see this sort of, sort of behavior at home and, or whether it's on campus, like I think that there's enough examples where a lot of them are actually like deeply curious about it and know it's a thing. And I think are kind of trusting us to make the right decisions and pick the right people within the space. So that was, in hindsight, like very obvious thing. But I think I kind of misread it going into fundraising, obviously surprised to the upside. And then the other thing I'll say about universities, you know, there's been a couple that have reached out to me to do demo days on campus or just more around, and these are not even LPs of ours, but, you know, just do more like industry development alongside them. And one, one university I'll shout out is Syracuse University up in New York. They've been really, really like at the front end of this, probably along with like University of Miami is the other one that comes to mind. And so both of those places are doing a lot with respect to creators and enabling them and, you know, putting coursework in classes and curriculum around this and really taking it seriously, which I think is super cool.

Yeah, I wanted to talk about the University of Miami too, like the Alex Earle effect. It's crazy if you look at the applications, if you look at how much they actually were able to put that school on the map just through a content creator. It's crazy.

For sure. For sure. I mean, it was, it was always like, I don't want to like understate them because I think it was, it's a, if you're in the States and you know, you probably have heard of them, but, um, yeah, I think them in the, in the, in the lens of content, you know, wanting to be a content creator and them actually supporting it versus kind of, you know, taking the opposite approach. I think they've done a really good job.

Yeah, let's talk practically about some of the investments that you have made in the last couple of months. So you guys have invested in people like Jonathan Katz-Moses and Taylor Cannon. I actually have Taylor on the podcast next Friday. So I'm excited about that. Yeah, I will do. And then obviously Stephen Bartlett. So could you maybe elaborate high over on why you guys invested in them?

Sure. Yeah. And we have a bunch more that we haven't disclosed, but hopefully will soon. We kind of got to like trail them out. But Yeah. I mean, I think like the through line between all of them, right? Like they're all in very, very, very different industries. I think they service very different customers. They have very different audiences. But the thing that is true throughout is like, they're all unbelievable founders and entrepreneurs. Like they just have like all of the qualities that I was describing at the top of the call around, you know, what we look for, they have in spades. And so I think again, like that's really what we look for. And then obviously with the added diligence of like, They all have really interesting businesses around them. They, you know, we can diligence our community, we can talk to their superfans, we can like deeply understand the attachment. And so yeah, I mean, just to— I don't want to ruin Taylor's podcast episode, but like she had a deeply unique insight into physical therapy. And, you know, back to the conversation around like, and this idea or this insight or perspective really stand on its own with or without distribution, and distribution is kind of the cherry on top. Like, what she's building towards is exactly that, right? Like, I think someone is going to win in this space and kind of this more modern, whole-body, proactive PT space. And we hope it's her, and we hope that her trust and her community help her do that. But I think it's one of these things where you meet her and you're like, this is going to happen either way, right? Like, it's just a question of whether it's going to be through her or someone else. And then say with Jonathan, right? Like, his thesis on a lot of this, besides just being obsessed with woodworking and you know, caring deeply about it is like, in many ways, woodworking serves as a little bit of an antidote to like the tech world where I think people want to get back to making things, feeling, you know, tactile and touching the wood and building things with their hands. And it's kind of a way to get off your screen. And we've seen other, other categories like needlepoint and others. There was actually an article in the Wall Street Journal about, about needlepoint in particular, but like there's this kind of like broader trend beyond, or that's helping support some of these creators beyond just like, I like woodworking, so I'm going to make a woodworking tools company, right? Like there's, there's some macro theme that, that is providing a tailwind that becomes pretty interesting.

Yeah. Many like one of my biggest frustration in this industry is that so many creators and celebrities, they're always launching like kind of similar companies. So another tequila brand, another beverage company, another beauty brand where they often white label stuff, they slap their name on it and they try to sell it for for 3 times the price. So they don't really like innovate on stuff. Is that something that you guys also come across a lot? And what do you think about it in general?

Yeah, and I've written about this too, which is very like flippantly, it was titled like Distribution is Not a Business Plan. I think this gets back to the point of like, and you probably encounter it more than we do, but I think there's a temptation to say, okay, I have an audience, therefore I need product, right? It's like very lizard brain. And you're kind of like, well, like what's the business? Like what's the why here? And like, does the world really need another makeup brand that's just without thought and without insight and without, you know, some different form factor or efficacy level or something. And so I think what we really look for in all these creators, and you see it often more in like the niche creators where they're actually able to have some sort of unique insight or like call their shot on like the way the world is going, right? We certainly need that. And I think in all of the creators that we're currently doing deals with, which hopefully we'll announce in, in the next couple of months, all of those creators have— are able to articulate like what is the actual bet that they're making beyond— and they could do this even if they didn't have distribution and they didn't have an audience. And it would be an unbelievably credible business to go back.

Yeah, I think the justification that is used by a lot of these creators and celebrities nowadays is like, I couldn't find a product for myself, so I— that's why I created one for the market. And I'm like, that's not a problem that you're solving for a wider audience or for creating a better product for human and planetary health. So I think if I look at my own deal flow, I would say that 4 years ago, probably like 95% of the companies or the creators or celebrities that reached out to me fell into that bucket, kind of the wave 1 of these companies, like another tequila brand or whatsoever. And only 5% was really building like innovative products and services. I would say today it's like 80% still in that wave 1 and then 20% in the wave 2. So we're already making progress. But I'm wondering, like, what do you think is needed for the industry to kind of accelerate and move forward? And with that, I mean, creators now focusing on launching companies that are actually innovative and better for human and planetary health.

Well, I think there needs to be this, like, moment, like, you don't— and I'm trying to be pretty public about this— where, like, not every creator has to be an entrepreneur, like, nor should they be. Like, it's really hard. It's really messy. It's, like, not all that fun all the time. And so I don't actually know that every Creator should be an entrepreneur and go launch something. And so I think that's kind of like first and foremost, like the first thing people need to internalize. And then two, I, I do think you need savvier business people or like with different ideas entering the space and saying like, you know, content creation is an unbelievable way and community building is an unbelievably good way to go launch a business. And like they were probably gonna do it regardless, but they just happened to like go through this third door. Um, and then lastly, and I, and you know, again, MrBeast, think what you want about him and, and he's not our target, but like you just need examples of people unsticking it, right? And like doing something like that beyond just like, you know, the ones that everyone talks about. And so I think, you know, this is where I get really, really excited about some of our creators and like fast forward a couple years when these things are public and working and, you know, they're, they're doing their roadshow about them and they're being super public about it. It's like, I think you just need like examples, right? Of like people to, to, you can point to and be like, oh, you know, so-and-so had an idea about his industry that was like a really unique insight. Let me actually sit down and understand the pain points of my audience. And not as it relates to marketing, not as it relates to advertising, but like to running their business or living their, living their day-to-day life. Like, what is that like fact-finding exercise they need to go do? And so I am very hopeful that as this industry matures, as there's more examples, as people are more public with their story, I think quite frankly too, like as the creator economy kind of broadly fractions off into like you know, creator entrepreneur. Okay, just like admit it, you're trying to be a celebrity, right? Which is totally cool. Or like you're trying to be a media company, which is a totally other different lane. Like I think it just needs like a little bit more maturing time, if you will.

Yeah, no, completely agree and love those insights. And yeah, I think a lot of people forget that the word influencer didn't even exist like 15, 10 years ago. So this whole industry is obviously very new. So yeah, you talked about not every creator needs to be an entrepreneur. And I wonder, how do you think creators should actually balance between being a creator and entrepreneur, especially given that being a creator has given them an unfair advantage? It gives them a platform that they can basically leverage to put free eyeballs on their own companies, which is something that traditional brands have to pay millions of dollars for. But now if they launch a company, they actually have to spend more time on that, which means that they can spend less time on content creation and actually lose kind of your USP to a certain extent. How do you think they should balance that?

This is like the age-old question, but a lot of, you know, this is one that I think a lot of creators struggle with. And it's going to sound like a simple answer, which like doesn't necessarily inform like a change of workflow or whatever, but it's actually more of a mindset shift, which is like, I don't think you should think about content and business building in tension with one another. I think you actually need to think about them as like in service of one bigger thing. Whereas like in the same way, anyone, any, you know, company or startup in our core fund thinks about sales and marketing, right? Thinks about product development, thinks about engineering, thinks about go-to-market, right? Like it's the same sort of like mindset I think creators need to adopt, which is like, this is actually all in service of like one bigger thing and they're not actually in tension with one another, right? And it's, and there's different ways to kind of unpack that and, and kind of build that into your workflow and build that into your culture. But I think that is like the core. Core mindset shift around this. Hard to do, easy to say.

Yeah. Given that obviously your value proposition is so new, not a lot of creators know about it. And also creators, they're not very like into venture capital and investing and understand the whole space. So how are you guys actually putting your value proposition in front of them and promoting the fund?

It's a great question. It's one that like keeps me up at night and I think about a lot, which is just like, how do we get in front of the right people, especially knowing that there's not one central node or aggregation point for these folks. So, we've kind of landed on, you know, we do content, right? I have my newsletter. We do events and dinners and we have industry and network conversations. Referrals are also big. A lot of the smart creators know one another. So, look, I think it's like, you know, I look at my peer Yoni, who's a partner on the Core Fund, and I'm so jealous, right? Because he kind of like, all of the deal flow really comes to them and comes to Sam and Yoni and Will and everyone. And it's just a very efficient and developed sourcing ecosystem, whereas that's not the same for creator investing. And so hopefully when we have our conversation a decade from now, it'll be like really efficient and it's getting, we're getting there and we're making progress. But yeah, we're still at some days it still feels like we're turning over rocks.

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, last question from me, like what is next for Slow Ventures and what is also something that you're most excited about?

Next is just doing more great deals and helping support, you know, best-in-class creators. So if you or anyone in your audience or anyone listening knows, um, feel free to, you know, reach out and let us know. And then one thing I'm really, really excited about, which we're doing some programming around, which I'll put in my newsletter hopefully this week or next week, is just like enabling creators or helping creators leverage some of these AI tools in a way that helps them massively accelerate their businesses. Like The tools are just so darn good now. And I think it just takes a— it oftentimes like falls to people, me, myself included, like falls to the bottom of the priority list. And it's like, there's still some technical, there's still some, some on-ramps, right, that you need and set up and, and, you know, tool sets and starter packs, if you will. So we are doing a lot of programming around that. And I think it'll be massively helpful for creators.

Yeah, no, I would definitely love to see what you guys are building. Like, and this is something actually that is keeping me up at night, because kind of we are entering this last phase where you can actually build a personal brand, I think, because so many of the AI tools are actually going to be replacing traditional content creators or whatsoever. So yeah, I love that insight. I'm definitely going to link your newsletter in the description. I think it's one of my favorite newsletters that I read and I love the insights there. But where else can people find you?

MeganLightcap.com, which is like where the newsletter exists and creatorfund.co. There's a link to apply if you, if you want to talk to us about raising money. My My Twitter handle, I think, is Megan Lightcap. So I usually check my DMs. I'm always on Twitter, not super public on Instagram, but I'm a big lurker. And that's about it. LinkedIn.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

All right. Thanks so much, Scott.

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