Hello World
Welcome to the CreatorScape newsletter. We are Ryan Angilly and Niel Robertson, co-founders of influence.co. Thanks for subscribing!
Last year when we launched the 2020 CreatorScape, our goal was to document the growing number of companies sprouting up to serve creators. As founders of a creator-focused company, part of our passion has always been to track the companies, products, and people who are building the tools that are actuating the creator economy. We thought a good place to start was simply to catalog every company we could find and try to come up with a taxonomy that might add something to the conversation.
It took us about a week of sleuthing (with lots of help from Andrew Kamphey who built the original list in 2019) to find most of the companies that would go into the 2020 edition. We ended up with 290 companies in 15 categories. While it was a bit of work, it never felt like a naive task to try and accomplish.
Oh what a change a year can bring!
As we started to think about the upcoming CreatorScape 2021 edition, we were overwhelmed by the sheer pace of new products, companies, financings, and entrepreneurs announcing something every day. What was just a cottage industry with a handful of companies (and an even smaller handful of venture investors) has turned into a full blown movement and has become a serious core investment thesis for many venture funds.
Putting the 2021 CreatorScape together is going to be a hell of a lot more work, but we are psyched to see the insane logo field we end up with. Inevitably there will have to be an evolution of the taxonomy needed to describe the space as well. After all, the LumaScapes on which we modeled our CreatorScape structure are notoriously dense logo eye charts when it comes to developed industries.
Along the way we realized this was much more than a once a year story to tell. We looked at all the newsletters we could find about the creator economy (there are some great ones, here, here, and here for example) but none of them focused on the companies, products and people building the space. It felt hand-in-glove to expand our yearly CreatorScape with a regular companion newsletter. So here we are.
As we write this, we plan to produce three type of pieces for the CreatorScape newsletter:
Weekly - A roundup of product and company announcements in the creator economy. With so much going on, it’s easy to miss things.
Once a month - An in depth dive into one of the categories from the CreatorScape. As operators of a professional platform for the industry, we are constantly trying to understand what tools our members are using and are interested in. We think there is a real need for micro-analysis pieces on categories like link-in-bio tools or digital goods platforms. Most folks just don’t have the time to do that themselves and we’re living and breathing it daily. Where we can, we’ll include relevant commentary from co-founders, investors and users of the companies and products we cover.
Once a month - A broader thought piece about the something percolating in the creator industry. This is mostly just whatever has been rattling around in our heads that month. Might be 250 words, might be 2000. We’ll see where it takes us.
For now the CreatorScape newsletter is free. Our goal is twofold. First, we want to become part of your weekly media diet. We hope that happens - and if it does - we hope you share it with your peers in the industry. Second, we wanted to make sure that we, ourselves, were staying creators at heart. It’s easy when you’re running a venture backed company to slide into the blinders of being a daily operator. This newsletter and the work around it is a pledge to stay close to the hustle and struggles of what it takes to become a successful creator. We’re literally starting with zero people on our substack mailing list so we’re in it with you.
Let’s all go build something amazing!
Ryan and Niel, co-founders of influence.co