I’m giving some Tuesday talks to the Microsoft brass in Monte Carlo on how creators are currently approaching the AI market. Already reconnected with some wonderful friends at Microsoft, Wild Vision, Studio71, Underscore, and more. And seriously, can I always present in such a beautiful room!?

This is also my first conference as the CEO of Stealth Talent. And in the name of radical transparency, I’ll show you the math around why we’re doing what we’re doing, why we think it’s needed, and what would have to happen in order for us to fail.

Also in this edition:

💄 Salish Matter is Bigger Than MrBeast

📈 The Creator Economy Nasdaq Raises $4m

🎥 Vimeo’s $1.3b Exit

🌴 California’s AI Safety Bill

💪🏼 Jobs from TikTok, Influential, and Spotify

🎭 …and a dank meme from yours truly!

Let’s get into it.

NEWS:

Talent Representives are Start Ups Too

TLDR:

• If most creators lost their social profiles tomorrow, they would have nothing

• Most talent representatives are not incentivized to think long-term

• Influence can (and should!) be invested just like capital

The four co-founders of Stealth Talent (Phil Ranta, Brian Foster, Katarina Marossy, and Kasia Turek) have a combined 50+ years of experience in the creator economy.

In terms of this market, we died of old age 20 years ago.

When I was working in this market back in 2005 it wasn’t a ‘get rich quick scheme’ or even profitable. We knew we were too early. It was passion-driven.

And we planned and executed like start ups.

No shade to those launching talent management companies with the plan to simply manage talent well. There’s a lot of creators out there that need business-savvy people.

But that’s not Stealth.

Here is our initial start up framework, and you can do this exercise with your start up whether you’re selling granola bars or building SaaS:

WHAT DO WE DO?: We bring together the most impactful creators and entrepreneurs to build generational companies.

WHY?: Most creators would own nothing if their social media profiles disappeared tomorrow.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?: Talent representatives have no incentive to truly focus on the long-term. They are incentivized to sell brand deals, which is the fastest way to revenue. Once talent orgs raise money they can’t be ‘talent first’. They have to be ‘investor first’. It is complex for representatives to participate in true company building, as structures that involve equity are often too complex and most representatives don’t have experience scaling and creating liquidity for start ups.

PROBLEM SUMMARY: Focus an organization wherein creators are incentivized to focus on lower-liquidity company builders for higher-revenue and stability intiaitives, and provide outsized value for talent representatives to seek and secure these opportunities.

SOLUTION SUMMARY: Simplify the process for the three cohorts with the greatest need: creators who are seeking stability (get off of the ‘brand deal’ hamster wheel’), entrepreneurs who are stuck in the zero-to-one step for too long (raising money to get the marketing to prove market fit), and investors who are seeking de-risked creator companies (they know creators are valuable, but struggle to find creator-led companies that have the maturity of builder-led companies).

PROVE IT (Phil’s Phavorite Step in Start Up Planning!): A TikTok creator with 1 million followers may make $100,000 per year doing 10 brand deals for $10,000 each (quick note: this is a real example of a real TikTokker, but in-line with the market. Most brands mentioned how great the creator performed in these campaigns, implying a positive ROI! The creator spends, on average, 20% of their work time on brand deals (securing, negotiating, and execution). They are in a niche market with lots of start up activity.

SCENARIO #1 (without Stealth):

• 10 brand deals, $10,000 each

• Ownership: social profiles, ‘community’ on socials

• Time spent on brand deals: 400 hours

• $100,000 in cash value for the year

With Stealth Talent, the same creator partners with an entrepreneur with a software product that’s a perfect match for the creator’s audience. The entrepreneur will happily provide a valuable commission structure (30% of revenue from gross sales) for 10 full-throated promotions of the company. In return the creator gets 10% of the company vested over the year.

SCENARIO #2 (with Stealth):

• 10 owned-company mentions at 2x previous ROI ($200k in sales x 30% take = $60,000)

• Market values similar companies at 5x revenue, so $1m in value is created. Entrepreneur does great and adds another $1m in value. ($2m company value x 10% equity = $200,000 in equity value)

• Ownership: social profiles, community, customer data, $200k equity

• Narrow brand deals down to 5 per year (200 hours spent for $50,0000)

• $110,000 in cash, $200,000 in equity value

That’s $200k in value the creator would have if they get cancelled tomorrow while actually making $10k more annually.

And we’ve also seen since promoting their own company involves less notes and creative guardrails for their own companies, so time dedication to ‘branded time’ would be similar for 10 owned company videos and 5 branded videos.

RISKS:

Interested in working with us? Shoot me an e-mail at my new e-mail address: [email protected]

FAME & FORTUNE

What creators, brands, governments, and platforms are making waves this week in the name of fortune, fame, and fun?

💄 Salish Matter, 15 year old daughter of creator Jordan Matter and mainstay at the top of the Famous Birthdays ‘Most Popular’ list, launched the beauty brand Sincerely Yours at the Dream Mall in New Jersey, the same mall where MrBeast launched a physical Beast Burger location drawing 10,000 fans. The result? Depending on the reporter, between 60,000 and 80,000 fans showed up. I think this influencer thing is going somewhere…

📈 Gigastar, a platform where fans can ‘invest’ in creator companies and get paid a percentage of AdSense revenue on an ongoing basis, raised $4 million in an equity crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder. So how much of your stock portfolio is locked up in vloggers?

🎥 Creator video hosting OG Vimeo has sold for $1.38b to Italian company Bending Spoons. I’m old enough to remember when Vimeo and YouTube were still duking it out for creator dominance, and Vimeo went the ‘premium’ route while YouTube went the ‘everyone can make stuff’ route. As a longtime Vimeo fan, I’m so happy to see the legacy continue.

🌴 California’s AI Safety Bill has passed the state legislature for Governor Gavin Newson to sign. And boy would I hate to be him right now. If he signs it, he annoys all of his big tech donors ahead of a likely run for president (though a bill asking for transparency for safety protocols doesn’t feel like it should have so much backlash…but here we are). If he vetoes it, that will turn off a lot of libs who feel big tech is out of control with a truly scary technology. Option 3: maybe he flies to Cancun until this all blows over?

JOB BOARD

TikTok, Creator Manager - TikTok LIVE

You’re probably sick of me saying ‘TikTok is never getting banned’ (not-so-humble-brag, I’ve been saying this since day-one), and their LIVE product is crushing it. The amount of gifting for creators doing it the right way is incredible, and this role would likely get you in front of a lot of innovative shortform creators looking for a stronger monetization story.

Influential, Specialist, Creator Manager

I’ve done countless campaigns through Influential and really like their CEO Ryan Detert (is he still CEO after the acquisition by Publicis?…I should check…). This will likely be a lot of volume, but will teach you how to organize projects in often chaotic creator workflows.

Spotify, Partner Manager, Digital Culture Creators

I don’t know if you’ve opened the Spotify app lately, but video is a huge push. I’m seeing videos from people that have nothing to do with music or podcasting. Welcome to the ‘everything has a feed’ world! Getting in front of digital culture creators will not only get you deeper into the creator world, but this role will help you build with the creators that ‘influence the influencers’.