Welcome to YC for Creators. Here’s what it is and why we did it.
YC for Creators is exactly what it sounds like.
Two things to acknowledge upfront:
Both are true. This isn’t an attempt to mimic YC or breathe life into a dead model. Instead, it's a homage to what YC represents: demystifying the startup journey and making it accessible for founders. If you’re here looking for criticism of YC, you won’t find it. What you’ll find instead is a story—a realization that drove me to create this.
Creator deals are getting done. And they are happening at over $1B per pop. This is whether you like it or not. And yes, there are only a handful of VCs doing them and, no, they do not look like standard investments.
Who is supporting them? How are they navigating this deal structure? How does investing in a creator affect their business? There are a lot of questions that come down to this cold reality: the capital is there. The creators and investors are figuring this out live-time, but not in front of anyone’s eyes.
This directly inspired to write & start a “YC for Creators” cluster of resources and community dedicated to supporting Creators navigating their newfound Founder experiences.
My main goal in this is simple: helping creators founders start startups.
Creators are no longer just individuals. They’re businesses. They’re impactful across verticals, from consumer goods to technology. And yet, the way they’re funded, supported, and structured hasn’t caught up to the reality of their influence. The difference is, the modern founder journey doesn’t look like it did 15 or 20 years ago. Brass tax: one, amongst many, great things about Y Combinator is that it demystified and simplified fundraising for founders. This aims to do the same thing for a new startup company structure and founder type: the Creator.
This founder type lacks what’s called Context. Half because 1) most of the financial & business content is focused on bare sustainability as a small business & nothing on extreme growth (for the exception of the few individual creators pioneering that narrative as founders alone) and 2) the Context is proprietary and still being formed live-time. We’ll get more into that in a later section.
The Content Creator industry is still relatively new, but is settling in old ways. It’s no secret in the industry there are some bad deals out there. 50% revenue split. Full NIL rights for ten years. 40% equity of a subsidiary & two board seats. Etc. Etc.
What gives? Quite frankly, Creators are very obviously powerful on 1) influence and 2) money. Why are there so many bad deals getting done? A lack of education. To us, leaving them uninformed with founder-friendly standards and documents is blocking from the real innovation and money to be made in the early-stage investing business.
There are maybe 5-10 creators out there taking very massive swings.
Room to Breathe. There hasn’t been a real business innovation in a very long time (re: SaaS.) Most people can agree on that. I say it because I was actively looking for it. I spend hours every day meeting exceptional people, yet I rarely hear something genuinely new.
Even the Founders I’d champion as a VC knew it. But they’re good, I’d argue to my colleagues. And they were.
But this is supposed to be early-stage investing. It’s supposed to be about radical ideas, not safe bets. If I’m questioning why I’m pushing for ideas I don’t fully believe in, then something is off.
They are good. And this is supposed to be early. Why am I even fighting the idea?
Next →
On this page