- VC Slow Ventures has raised $ 60 million to invest in content creators.
- The company will make bets from $ 1 to 3 million in exchange for a decrease of 10% in creative companies.
- The company targets creators with niche audiences, superfans and big ideas on where to innovate.
YouTubers are the new dropouts of Stanford.
Slow Ventures, a venture capital company at an early stage, has launched a new fund of $ 60 million focused on content creators. He is looking for creators with the “DNA of a founder of YC”, Megan Lightcap, a partner leading the creator of Slow’s Creator Fund, told Business Insider, referring to the Accelerator of Startup Silicon Valley y combinator .
“Everyone looked at the creators and the companies they build and said:” Oh, it’s cute. It’s like a small lifestyle “”, said Lightcap.
However, Lightcap poses that some of these companies are on a business level.
“There will be a subset of creators who are very entrepreneurial, have deep confidence and expertise in a specific vertical, and are manufacturers,” said Lightcap. “They are founders.”
Investing in creative companies is not new for slow. The company has been testing the model for a few years. Other companies like Jelysmack and Spotter Also offered capital to creators by emphasizing the license of their content catalogs. But it is the first time that Lent has been implementing a dedicated fund for caterers of the participation of institutional investors such as MIT and the University of Michigan.
For slow, investing in a creator does not simply mean obtaining a reduction in their media business built on YouTube advertising revenues and brand offers. It is a question of obtaining a share of the benefits of derived companies which they launch, such as a gardening influencer which sells rakes or a creator of food publishing a kitchen book.
The company said it will invest between $ 1 million and $ 3 million to obtain 10% stake in Creator portfolio companies. These portfolio companies will house all the different sectors of activity that an influencer could compete.
Lightcap said that the capital allows flexibility, allowing creators to “test and experiment” with content and production, team hiring and larger business construction.
Where slow money will flow
What type of creators are slowly looking for? Not a general practitioner like MRBEAST, but rather a creator of content passionate about a specific niche that understands which products are missing in this category.
The creator of Slow of Slow sees this opportunity, knows that their audience feels in the same way and says: “I will build it”, “said Lightcap.
While some creators can be more focused on platform advertising advertising or brand offers, Slow is looking for creators whose companies exceed the traditional career of influence.
“They consider the media not as the end, but as the means of the end, and really think of their content and their community, like this strategic asset on which they can launch other types of businesses”, a- she said.
The creators with a substantial YouTube company are at the top of the slow mind.
“There are many ways that these creators can emerge,” said Lightcap. “Most of them find themselves in a way or a form or form on YouTube.”
Lightcap highlighted Slow’s previous investment in the business of the creator of YouTube, Marina Mogilko, as an example of a successful agreement.
Creators as a new type of founder
Investing in a youtuber may seem risky for a traditional VC. After all, your return is based on the performance and sustainability of an individual.
But Lightcap said that the situation was not very different from the bet on a startup founder, who often carries the future of a business on the back for years.
She said that creators can actually be much easier to make reasonable diligence than a startup that only takes off. The public of a creator, the presence of superfans and the ways in which he earns money is easy to examine.
“As the investors in seeds, we are so used to examining an opportunity with zero data,” said Lightcap. “When you look at the creators at this level, there are actually a ton of diligence.”
In the end, there is a precedent for media figurines that push niche content into large companies, with lucrative outings.
“You don’t have to fold your eyes very difficult to say:” Is a creative portfolio company never be an IPO? “,” Said Lightcap. She underlined Martha Stewart and the Oprah Winfrey Network as examples of media players who have managed to set up. “This is not something that we necessarily subscribe today, but it will be very interesting to see how it all changes.”
businessinsider
