How Slow Ventures is giving the creator economy a rebrand

Last week, the team at early-stage VC firm Slow Ventures launched its new $60 million fund entirely focused on investing in content creators. Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Lightcap to dive into YouTube remains the dominant platform for serious creators,how niche community trust translates into scalable businesses, and what this new fund means for the creator economy. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How this new asset class has the potential to scale. The firm’s success stories so far, including Marina Mogilko’s baby snack company and other ventures. The parallels between backing creators and traditional seed-stage founders. The “key man risk” and how investors navigate the challenge. Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Ha?

  This episode of Equity is brought to you by Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric, your energy technology partner.

• 0:17Rebecca Bellan?

  Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. I'm Rebecca Bellan and this is the episode where we bring on industry experts to help us explore a trend in the tech world and dive deep. Last week, the team at early-stage B C firm Slow Ventures launched its new $60 million fund entirely focused on investing in content creators. To talk about the first dedicated creator fund, YouTube's dominance for serious creators, and how building trust in a niche community lends itself to building investable businesses, I'm joined by Slow Ventures partner, Megan Lightcap.

• 0:54Rebecca Bellan?

  Megan, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 0:57Rebecca Bellan?

  So, give me a bit of a background. So, you're at Slow Ventures now and one of the things that we wanted to talk about was this new creator fund, but curious how you kind of got your start with Slow Ventures. And you came on specifically for this fund, right?

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I came to the creator world and Slow in particular by way of consumer. So, have spent most of my career in and around the consumer world with a brief exception of working in fake investment banking, but spent some time doing growth investing at a fund called Alcatretan, looking at earlier-stage kind of consumer companies really broadly defined. So, everything from CPG, restaurants, retail, apparel, accessories, some consumer tech, some consumer services. Then went to the startup world, working on two different early-stage consumer technology companies. One incubated inside of Walmart and the next one was like the next iteration of it outside of Walmart. Met the Slow team, they pitched me on what they were doing with Creator. And the thing that really stuck out to me was like just how closely tied to the consumer

• 1:52Speaker 02

  world the vision was in terms of creators kind of capturing consumer mind and wallet share and them having so much influence over how we as consumers think about our own consumption and purchasing patterns. And so, got really excited about honestly what felt like a very novel strategy and felt a little bit entrepreneurial inside of a fund. And so, got to scratch the itch of both startup-like but also investing.

• 2:14Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah, and just to walk it back a little bit for our listeners, so Slow Ventures, I believe that recently, was it last week? Raised more than 60 million for a dedicated creators fund and tell me a little bit more about what the fund will focus on.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so last week, we announced the official launch of Slow Ventures Creator Fund, raising over 60 million from some awesome investors. The likes of MIT, TIF, University of Michigan, Rutgers, so on and so forth. And the basic premise is like, look, there's a new class of entrepreneurs that we've identified, which are these people that are finding very specific verticals and niches and building deep community and trust within those spaces. And then using those communities to launch companies and products and businesses, obviously at lower cost of acquisition and higher LTVs and attachment. And so there's this like pattern inversion of business building that these new entrepreneurs are pursuing, which is like customers and community first, and then company and product building second.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  We saw this happening over the past handful of years. And these folks are generally underfunded, somewhat misunderstood, I think, by traditional investors where, you know, people kind of look at these creators and like, are you a YouTuber? Are you a media business? Like, what is the thing? And for a certain subset of them, like, they're just as ambitious as two kids out of MIT building a software startup. And so we saw an opportunity to kind of match capital with that new type of founder.

• 3:32Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah, you gotta be ambitious, starting a YouTube channel, trying to get people to watch. It's brave, really brave. I would be terrified to do it. So the fund has already started making some seed stage investments, right? So like, can you point to any of these creators and have they gone on to expand their brand in any way yet?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  We, for the past number of years and kind of when I joined Slow, we had a pool of capital inside of our opportunity fund, which is a current Slow vehicle, where LPs basically said, go test this hypothesis, go test this thesis, and kind of experiment with how to finance these folks. And so we made a handful of investments out of that pool of capital. So just to rattle off some names, so one of the first investments we made was into a creator named Marina Mogilko. Her niche is like broadly like language learning and she's an immigrant from Russia to the United States and kind of what it means to be building a startup in the United States and kind of pursuing the American dream. Sounds niche on the surface, but turns out there's a whole bunch of people that like really resonate with her content. And so she's built a number of different companies. She's experimented with different apps. Now she's launching like a baby snack company.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  So she's doing a whole bunch of things. Another creator that we backed is a YouTuber in the car and auto space. So very like high enthusiast, high hobbyist category. His name is Vin Wiki. His real name is Ed Bulling, but his handle is Vin Wiki. And turns out like a lot of people care super deeply about this niche. And he has an app too that coexists alongside his content and has a bunch more ideas that he's working on. So those are kind of two examples. And then now going forward, new investments will sit out of our newly formed creator fund.

• 5:04Rebecca Bellan?

  And so the businesses that these creators go on to launch with your help, they don't necessarily have to do with that creator's niche or they can or?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  So what's really interesting about creators is oftentimes they start there, right? Because it's the most obvious place to begin. But the difference between creator opportunities and what opportunities may exist for an existing brand is that because the audience attaches to the creator as like a whole person, the surface area and like permission of what they can go build is actually much greater than, you know, a singular product company. So the example I always use is like, if you think about Aloe Yoga, they started in activewear and they launched like a skincare line and everyone was kind of like, feels a little like odd and I don't really understand the connection and maybe who squinted it. Sure, like maybe if you squint it, you can look at it. Now, take a fitness or wellness creator where people are following him or her for

• 5:56Speaker 02

  fitness, skincare, nutrition, family, kind of everything that encompasses that person and their life and what they're sharing online. And so there's just this different like permission level in terms of what creators can go build based upon what people follow them for.

• 6:10Rebecca Bellan?

  And you know, it is interesting. It's like, you know, I've spoken to a lot of VCs who will say that they often back the founder. Like it's not always about the idea. It's about the team or the founder. They've seen something in that person as an entrepreneur and they want to follow it. Do you find like there's a bit of an overlap between those two?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. I always say like, there's more similarities between creator investing and seed investing than I think people would anticipate where you're exactly. Right. When you're investing at the seed stage, it's literally you're backing a person and their idea. And maybe they have some start of a company, but they may go through a pivot or a change kind of down the line. And so it really is the same sort of muscle. And even some of the questions we get from LPs of like, you know, how do you think about key man risk? You know, it seems like it's such a greater risk and greater investing than it is in seed stage investing. And the answer is like, not really. When the first five plus years, when you make a seed investment, you're really betting on the founder. And more often than not, if that person leaves or decides to, you know, no longer pursue that thing, the idea ceases to exist or the company ceases to exist.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  And so you're exactly right in that. There are so many similarities between early stage seed investing and kind of what we're pursuing here.

• 7:23Anthony Ha?

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• 8:01Rebecca Bellan?

  So your team scours YouTube to find these interesting creators that you think would make, you know, good investments. Two things there. One, why YouTube over other platforms? And two, what maketh a investable creator?

• 8:17Speaker 02

  We prefer YouTube. It's not to say that that's the only platform we look at. Oftentimes, people look at their start on Instagram or Twitter or Substack or what have you, and then make their way to YouTube. But YouTube is interesting because first and foremost, it has the best monetization scheme of any of the platforms where their rev share is way better. And, you know, it doesn't really even exist on other platforms. And so the creators have this interesting source of non-dilutive financing, right? That can sit alongside our equity. So that's number one. And then number two, if you think about like the barrier to making a YouTube video versus putting up a TikTok or an Instagram photo or reel or whatnot, it just, it's a lot higher. And so it tends to be where most of the serious creators sit.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  And there's just, there's something about followership on YouTube that is much deeper and more significant than it is on some of the other platforms. So again, preference for YouTube, but you know, it's not a deal breaker. They're not YouTube first or didn't get their start on YouTube. And then in terms of what makes a great creator investment, kind of what we look for, first and foremost, are they doing this full time? Are they treating this really like a career and as an entrepreneur and not just wanting to be talent or a celebrity or in it for the fame? Or do they occupy a specific vertical or niche that's interesting and high value? Do they have deep credibility and authority in that space and like kind of understanding why? As part of that, understanding their community and how deep it is and how loyal.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  And again, like why the audience might be attaching to them for their specific vertical. Then lastly is like, what are they building? Like trying to really understand their business building ambitions, understanding what they've done to date. Is there anything that we can look to to say, oh, you know, you've tried X, Y, and Z, and people are actually pulling out their wallets and engaging with you beyond just kind of consuming your content? And then finally, just kind of evaluating them like truly like a founder. Does their stated ambition kind of match with their saying and doing and, you know, a lot of the same evaluation that we would maybe have on a seed founder?

• 10:09Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah. And you know, so this is coming from a venture firm. Are you looking to these people with an eye towards scale, right? Like how some of these, it might take a longer time than a normal typical VC cycle to grow those kinds of businesses. How do you square the two?

• 10:25Speaker 02

  You would think that, but if you think about the advantage that a lot of these folks have is their community and acquisition advantage, right? And so I think you're able to more quickly get to a place where like you're earning money, you're earning revenue. It's a real company, like the thing has legs more so than you're a founder with an idea or a product and you have to go find customers. And so the scale question, it's funny, that's another one we get a lot of like, how quickly can these grow and how big can they get? And you'd be surprised in terms of like the types of business models, the types of businesses we're seeing. And then also just like how quickly the flywheel starts just because of their embedded audience and distribution.

• 11:01Rebecca Bellan?

  And then is there a revenue share at all for you or is this a pure equity play?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  So the way to think about it is a pure equity play, structurally, the way it works is that above a certain amount and that amount can be very, very high. What they earn in revenue and it's really, you know, net revenue. So after expenses and all that stuff. We do want to participate, but it's really to protect us to say, you know, let's say creator, you realize that you just want to build a like great, more media style business and are not actually pursuing more traditional company building. We want to be able to participate in that. So we have that mechanism in there. But by and large, we're really focused on the equity in the businesses that they build.

• 11:39Rebecca Bellan?

  And then what's the structure exactly? You invest how much into them when you choose?

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. So our check sizes range from call it a million to three million. And we generally like to stay around the 10% equity mark. Could be shy, could be a little north of that, but generally around 10.

• 11:55Rebecca Bellan?

  And that 10 goes into a holding company, right? Which receives the equity and any spin outs and it, and you guys have first right of refusal in any spin outs. Is that correct?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. So the example we always use, just because people are most familiar with it is like Mr. Beast and Feastables. So in the instance where Feastables goes out and raises additional rounds of funding, we as the investors in whatever creator or parent company would have the, we obviously want first look to put more money into that. And by the way, we can also help like structure the round and bring in other investors and kind of make instructions and hopefully be helpful. So many of these folks have no connectivity to Silicon Valley or the venture ecosystem or even capital markets generally. And so I think we can be particularly helpful too, when it comes time for additional fundraising if they need it.

• 12:40Rebecca Bellan?

  Do you see this as kind of like a new asset class within venture or is it more like private equity?

• 12:45Speaker 02

  I don't know. I think you can be like academic about it and like, you know, define a new asset class. But like at its core, our job as venture investors is to match capital with like exceptional founders, kind of irrespective of where they start, what they look like, where they predominantly exist. And so sure, like you may be able to kind of define it as a new asset class. I know Sam last in one of the GPs here. It's like, likes to call it venture, venture capital. I think I take a little bit more of a simple approach, which is just like, give capital to accelerate the best founders irrespective of who they are and what they look like.

• 13:17Rebecca Bellan?

  I do the morning newsletter and so I'm constantly reading over what TechCrunch is reporting on and there's often these kind of creator economy stories that are cropping up increasingly and I think that a lot of the time, you know, when you think creator economy, you think digital and then making money off of ads, right?

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:32Rebecca Bellan?

  But it's slowly expanding. Like, I'm not sure if you heard about, there's this German company called Lanche. Have you heard of them?

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Lanche.

• 13:38Rebecca Bellan?

  They recently raised 27 million and their business essentially taps social media influencers to help develop popular food brands alongside retail networks. So like, ghost kitchens kind of, you know, suck because everyone's like, I don't know what the [__] this brand is, right?

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:54Rebecca Bellan?

  So I don't have any like, brand loyalty to it.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:57Rebecca Bellan?

  But if we have an influencer who builds the brand and will talk about panda sodas or whatever.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 14:04Rebecca Bellan?

  Then that could help push the business along. It's really interesting that we're kind of, it's almost like we've moved past celebrities being the only influencers that matter.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  For sure. And even taking a step further, I think when you think about celebrities pushing products versus your go-to person for parenting, or for lawn care, or for auto, the level of trust is so much greater than just someone with like, the most number of followers, that the conversion on the people that are in these micro communities with trust, with real authority, is like, a million times greater than that of a traditional celebrity who really just has reach. And so, yes, I think we are for sure moving beyond the age of celebrity. We're entering this world where homogenous culture is no longer and that's just like, a product of the internet, where you can kind of go find your tribe and whatever it is that you love and deeply care about, no matter how niche it really

• 14:56Speaker 02

  is. And it's kind of this beautiful thing that has led to a tremendous amount of creativity and community formation and I just think it's really interesting.

• 15:04Rebecca Bellan?

  Well, one of the great things about this creator economy influencers, again, as you said, you build this trust, you believe them when they say, I've tried this product, it rocks, right? So now that venture has entered the chat and is, you know, incentives shift to having to please your investors and get a return on the investment and everything, like, is there a threat to that mission changing?

• 15:27Rebecca Bellan?

  And influencers being less authentic.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's such a good question. And I think the best people to get this right are ones who think about business building and like selling product not as extractive to their community and not just like I'm looking to make a buck, but really accretive to the community and the space that they occupy. And you think about it like the formation of these ideas is like actually no different from a traditional founder where they're like, you have a problem, you go build a thing to fix that problem. Oftentimes, the best ideas of these creators come from just existing with their audience, with their customers, in their niche, in their vertical. And they're like, oh, man, X, Y, and Z should exist. And this is a problem that I'm hearing again and again and again from my community or from just like spending time in a space, I'm gonna go build it, right?

• 16:14Speaker 02

  And like, people want it and it doesn't feel like it's a cash grab or extracted or shilling or whatnot. And it's actually, you know, tailor made for the community and for that specific problem set that they've identified. And so I would also add that to the list of things we look for. When we ask a creator, you know, what are you excited about? What do you want to go build? More often than not, it's born out of this idea of like, there's a problem that I'm seeing and I'm hearing about all day long. And like, I want to go fix it. Last week, we were on the phone with a creator in this specific model where she's like, there's supply and demand, but I'm hearing the problem from both sides and I want to go build this like sort of marketplace of sorts. And she's kind of uniquely suited to do that where oftentimes a marketplace is like a cold start problem and she can kind of shortcut that with her audience. So.

• 16:56Rebecca Bellan?

  Can you give me more information about this creator?

• 16:58Speaker 02

  I, I can't because it's, it's too new. We have, we're a couple of conversations in, but if and when it comes to Christian, I will follow up and we can talk more about it. She's fabulous.

• 17:06Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah, I would love to hear more about it. It's interesting. I'm thinking about my own instances, buying like kind of branded items, right? And when I was younger, I really liked Rachael Ray. I don't know why, but I bought her like olive oil like at the supermarket with my mom. I was like, I must have Rachael Ray's EVOO. But now, you know, one of the people that I pay close attention to on YouTube is an influencer, I guess, is this dermatologist who talks about skincare and like breaks down the ingredients and she's amazing. And she's launched her own skincare line, which is a little too expensive for me, but I still, I trust her. You know, I trust her generally. So I guess, yeah, there's definitely something to say for this.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Totally. And I think I can't tell you how many creators I've talked to where the story is the same of like, there's this real problem or white space. Let me actually like validate it for you with all of my data and conversations. And then here's something about building to solve it.

• 17:54Rebecca Bellan?

  And as you say, they're super tapped into the community, right?

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Super tapped into the community. And so they can kind of build it in a very specific way. That's like really, really tailor made for the feedback that they're getting. Now, I think there's also some magic in following your intuition and how they think it should be constructed. But that's all details. And the other thing I say is it's not just CPG. It's not just food and bed and beauty and that type of thing. As I mentioned, the other creator we're talking to is she's thinking about a marketplace and a tech idea. Yeah, the other person is he has a B to B like enterprise software company. You know, I think the range on these things can be very wide. It's one of the things that excites me kind of as we get deeper into it.

• 18:31Rebecca Bellan?

  Well, yeah, again, it's about you talk to any founder and you ask them like, what kind of research did you do? And they're like, I talked to a hundred different people who deal with this problem every day, right? Like if you're doing like a trucking software platform, it's like, I went and like hung out at truck stops and talked to these people every day. But if you're actually less embedded in the community, constantly getting those updates, like the comments, you're replying to them. You really see what the problem and people like weirdly share a lot of their personal lives, I think, with with creators in the comments, you know, so you really get an inside look. When you pitched this to LPs, what did they, were they excited? Did you have to convince them?

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was a range of responses, everything from there's no way I'm going to convince my older IC. Like they're not going to understand this. And then, you know, obviously the, the folks that were excited and came into the fund. Not only did they understand it, either themselves were consumers of it or their kids, right? They were kind of watching this behavior unfold in their, in their kids and their kids' friends. There was a lot of excitement too, just around in back to your point about like it being a new asset class, it being different, right? I think there's been a lot of very similar funds that have come to market with differences on the margin or different flavors. But a lot of the feedback that we got from LPs was like, man, this like really feels different. And so far as, you know, we have LPs and this little creator fund that participated that are not in the slow funds. And they were like, look, love slow, but like we have enough early stage seed exposure.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  This actually feels different. And so we just want to be a part of this low creator fund. So it was a super fun process. I think we learned a lot and it was always fun to see kind of the range of responses to what we were pitching.

• 20:01Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah. Are they worried about like volatility on the platform, right? Like someone could be hot right now, but people's attention wanes, right?

• 20:09Speaker 02

  For sure. And it was one of the questions that we got a lot. And I think it's something, by the way, that we think about and why we are so indexed to niches and verticals, where it's not really about attention and trying to like keep eyeballs and keep virality. It's just, that's a very, very hard thing to sustain and a very hard thing to monetize. And more importantly, a very hard thing to underwrite. You know, it's just one of the many reasons why we're like, go niche, go vertical.

• 20:35Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  There's more business building opportunity that's durable. There's also like a category you can diligence and understand how big is it? How competitive is it? What are the spaces for company formation? What's the typical margin profile? How much did people spend last year? How much are people spending? You can do this like Bain style analysis.

• 20:51Rebecca Bellan?

  Yeah.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  And there just tends to be a different, and I want to overstate this, but like a different psychology around the creator in those verticals versus someone who's more, what I'd say, like celebrity adjacent.

• 21:02Rebecca Bellan?

  Are you looking for people who've been doing it for a certain amount of years? Or are you interested in noobs, you know?

• 21:07Speaker 02

  I mean, all over. I think it's very helpful when there's like history to diligence. When someone has been doing it for many years, I think you can kind of look at their trajectory. There's more data to understand. There's more community elements to kind of ingest and diligence. So ideally there is some track record, but if someone is newer onto the scene, it's not that we're not going to have a conversation with them.

• 21:26Rebecca Bellan?

  How can creators pitch you and try to get funding? Or are you, is it pure outreach on your end?

• 21:32Speaker 02

  It's both. I would say if creators are interested and want to have a conversation, they can go to our website, creatorfund.co, C O, or email me directly. It's just Megan at slow.co. We try and be pretty efficient. Like we're not trying to waste people's time. So if, you know, it's not a fit, we'll generally be upfront. So it's good just to know sooner rather than later.

• 21:53Rebecca Bellan?

  Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I really enjoyed talking to you about this and learning more about this. Is there anywhere else our listeners can find you?

• 22:01Speaker 02

  I'm on Twitter. It is M M Lightcap.

• 22:04Rebecca Bellan?

  Okay. M M Lightcap on Twitter.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, on Twitter and then LinkedIn and email is best. So.

• 22:11Rebecca Bellan?

  Okay, great. Listeners, you can find me on X and Blue Sky, or I guess Twitter, we can call it that. You can find Equity on Blue Sky and X as well. Talk to you on Friday.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Thanks so much, Rebecca.

• 22:22Rebecca Bellan?

  Equity is produced by Teresa Locan Solo with editing by Kel. We'd also like to thank TechCrunch's audience development team. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.