From brand deals to equity deals: creators want a stake, not just a fee

As the creator economy has matured, it’s moved beyond one-off brand deals to pulling creators into the C-suite and onto advisory boards. Now, a new phase is underway: getting creators in at the ground floor as angel investors or with sweat equity. The people building the infrastructure around this revenue pathway expect it to grow fast in the coming months. 

Alix Earle becoming a strategic equity investor in soda brand Poppi in 2024 was just the start. 

“My really smart consumer founders were trying to get creators on cap tables a long time ago,” said Kate McAndrew, co-founder and general partner at Baukunst, a venture capital fund. “2017, 2018, all of a sudden, my B2B founders were coming to me and being like, ‘Is there any way that we could get creators to invest? How do you meet a creator?’” 

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Talent firm 24 Seven consolidates the new business efforts of its three concentric agencies

Ten months after acquiring three agencies of differing but complementary abilities, talent staffing firm 24 Seven has assembled them into a cohesive pitch machine while keeping their individual abilities distinct, creating 24 Seven Agencies as an Avengers-like group.

The three shops acquired last November include design specialists SketchDeck, performance- and digital-heavy Markacy and experiential/content firm Futureman. They’re now being pitched by 24 Seven’s new business team as any combination of the three shops that a client might want to use, touting a menu of strategy, creative, branding, content, design, media, performance and experiential. 

According to each agency’s leaders, clients, from a golf brand owner to a Fortune 500 financial services firm are already expanding their reach from work with just one shop into one or both of the others. And since 24 Seven has an 80 to 100 person new business team helping a range of clients with staffing needs, the full-service breadth of the combined agencies becomes a natural new business pipeline. 

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