The Creator Economy Podcast

Andrew is the CEO of CALA a fashion house technology that makes it easy for creators to design, produce, and deliver their own fully-custom apparel. CALA offers creators the customized elegance of couture fashion with the manufacturing capabilities of the largest mass-market players. After realizing the opportunity to disrupt the fashion industry, Andrew took inspiration from Kanye West to create CALA. His journey to this point has been a rollercoaster at one point he had to liquidate all of his assets including his retirement savings to make sure the business stayed afloat.

Joe is the founder and CEO of Stir, a financial platform made specifically for creators. We talked about the need for new creator tools, company culture, and his approach to employee workload.Heads up: Everyone here is extremely passionate about the creator economy, which means you may hear some strong language from time to time.After dropping out of school twice, Joe Albanese created an app that was heavily praised by Apple. The app would ultimately fold over internal disputes, but it opened the door for Joe to work as a developer at Facebook. A few years later, he found himself wanting to start something new.Through an entrepreneurial accelerator, Joe met his soon-to-be co-founder, Kushal. The two immediately hit it off and started running with an idea to give creators a tool that made the financial side of their business easier and more organized. The platform would support existing behaviors in the creator economy by allowing creators to collaborate, split revenue, and organize funds all in one place. Stir proved to be an enticing concept and gained backing from high-profile investors, including Casey Neistat, Li Jin, and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley. 

As CEO of digital experience platform Moment House, Arjun knows a thing or two about bringing art to life virtually. I caught up with him to talk about what it takes to attract the likes of Justin Beiber or Tame Impala, and what the future of at-home experiences could mean for creators.Heads up: Everyone here is extremely passionate about the creator economy, which means you may hear some strong language from time to time.Arjun Mehta was among the first batch of students at the Jimmy Iovine & Dr. Dre Academy for the Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation at USC. After graduating, he found there was no obvious online destination for artists to have high-quality, live experiences. Arjun quickly coded the first prototype of what he envisioned, tested it with dozens of artists, and put together a founding team.Moment House officially launched in October 2020 backed by music powerhouses like Scooter Braun, Jared Leto, and Kygo. In its incredibly short existence, the company has processed 1 million tickets and hosted over 700 moments. These moments include concerts from Justin Beiber, St. Vincent, Kygo, and KSI — events that were streamed in 168 different countries. Arjun hopes the virtual success of Moment House will make the company a key player in the metaverse, leading the way for future interactivity.

From TechCrunch Editor-At-Large to Head of Content at VC Fund SignalFire, Josh is a creator economy virtuoso. Check out what he had to say about the almighty metaverse and why shrinking your audience might be the way forward.When Josh was studying at Stanford, he became keenly interested in technology’s influence on human interaction. How do privacy controls affect children? What’s a meme’s lifecycle? He ended up taking that intrigue and designing his own Master’s degree: Cybersociology.Out of school, Josh began writing for Inside Facebook, a blog where he published over 2,000 articles about the social platform. After a $14 million acquisition, Josh took his knack for journalism to TechCrunch, where he would become Editor-At-Large for 8.5 years. He was literally the most cited tech journalist in the world. But after reporting on tech for years, he’s fresh in the business of shaping it. Josh is currently Head of Content for VC firm SignalFire, which invests in early-stage tech startups.

Li Jin has been thinking and writing about the creator economy for years. She even coined the term, passion economy, to describe people who make a living from doing what they love. She was dubbed the “It Girl in venture capital" by the New York Times and her newest fund is investing in new technologies like crypto and NFTs, which will help creators take ownership of their work.

I met up with tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, to get his take on the future of online communities, content policy, and NFTs for creators. Take a listen.

The Creator Economy Podcast launches on November 15th.