The Rise of the Venture Creator

What can influencers, content creators, celebrities teach venture capital?

From ad dollars to brand owners to their own venture funds, they’ve come a long way. The venture landscape is increasingly populated by new entrants who started as media brands, before evolving into investment powerhouses. Mr Beast’s Night Capital, Kevin Durant’s investments in Postmates and Robinhood, Ryan Reynolds’ ownership and sale of Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile, the music producer duo The Chainsmokers setting up Mantis. These aren’t traditional investors; they’re influencers who own the distribution. They’ve mastered the art of building massive audiences and are now applying that expertise to venture capital.

In an increasingly competitive and commoditised industry, they’re showing how venture can be done differently.

At this year’s Pulse Summit, I discussed this trend with Harry Stebbings, creator of 20VC, and Jordan Schwarzenberger, Manager of The Sidemen. They’ve leveraged their own platforms to build venture funds and have redefined what it means to be an investor in today’s world.

Under the influence

In some ways, this is nothing new. It started with Fred Wilson’s newsletter and Paul Graham’s essays. They were the ones who went out there, built a voice and reputation – and everyone wanted to be part of it. In a way, they were the first “influencers”, understanding the needs of the next generation of founders for clear insights and essential guides to building a startup.

But, now, every firm has a blog, a newsletter, a podcast, an event series. And creation has been democratised; it’s easy, and getting easier, to be a publisher or video creator. If you want to stand out, you need to create something unique and engaging that cuts through the noise – but that’s hard to build and sustain when almost everyone in the industry treats it as a sideshow.

This is where being a creator first is such an advantage. You build that muscle of audience engagement from day one. You not only develop a massive following, but also bring a different set of skills and expertise to the traditional venture model.

Venture creators

Take 20VC. Harry’s reputation and audience make it easier for him to source opportunities, conduct due diligence, and ultimately win deals. His thousands of interviews give him a database of insights into what makes a successful investor – ‘Jeff Lieberman from Insight says, famously, it costs $50 million to learn to be an investor,’ said Harry. ‘It’s very expensive.’ – and the signals that mark out a great, or not great, founder. And the skills he’s developed as an interviewer are directly applicable to venture, which, at core, is a talent spotting business. You can get more from a conversation, and better assess founders and their potential.

The Sidemen, with over 244 million followers across their various channels, have used their influence to launch multiple brands – a restaurant chain, breakfast cereal, a vodka brand – and their debut $10m venture fund, Upside. They’re flipping the traditional influencer marketing approach on its head; not just promoting brands, but owning and growing them.

Their audience is a testing ground; a database of 244 million people, with which they can iterate quickly and at scale. In the last couple of years, alongside everything else, they’ve successfully launched a Christmas number one single and a reality show, Inside, that got more views on its first episode (and 40 million views in a week) than Love Island, for a tenth of the cost. This constant innovation and feedback loop is invaluable.

So their strength as investors lies not just in their distribution, but in the expertise they bring as producers and creators, and the deep understanding they’ve developed over the last decade of building an audience, branding, and launching products. And they’ve partnered with seasoned investors who have spent that $50m and made their own mistakes to complement this expertise. It’s a powerful combination.

Choose your own venture

This venture creator model is powerful – but it’s just one of many.

The lesson isn’t to copy it, but to recognise how different approaches to venture are a strength – not only for investors in differentiating themselves, but for founders, too, who can find the best fit for their journey. The tech ecosystem has expanded enormously and to take things to the next level we need a lot of different players bringing their distinct models. The point is about having an edge and developing that.

As Harry put it, the best investors, like companies, are anomalous. Find your own thing – your thesis, your unique angle, where you as an individual or team can add the most value and make the most impact and double down on it. Don’t get swayed by what everyone else is doing. I think YC has done a great job of this.

At Moonfire, we’re creating our own sort of venture by building our own in-house data and AI tools to identify and support the best European early-stage tech founders. There are many ways to succeed in venture, and it’s awesome that we’re getting a broader spectrum of approaches that are uniquely powerful. This specialisation brings more value to founders, who can pull together different approaches and get the best of different worlds.