A look at startups like Cameo and Karat, which are building services for creators and influencers, as VCs bet on a now established part of the digital economy
Why 2020 will be a ‘watershed year’ for the creator economy — Danielle Bernstein is just 27 years old, but she's been running her own business for 10 years. Tweets: @kateclarktweets , @benjeffriess , and @taylorlorenz Tweets: Kate Clark / @kateclarktweets : I wrote about influencers, and the new startups looking to capitalize off a rapidly-growing industry. https://techcrunch.com/... Ben Jeffries / @benjeffriess : “What we used to always say to investors was 'I guarantee if you ask your kids about influencers, that will spark a conversation and help you understand the industry and how crazy it's going to become,' ” https://twitter.com/... Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : “Tech entrepreneurs, quick to pounce on any emerging economy, have also begun building services for creators and influencers.” https://techcrunch.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece lands mid-arc: months earlier, [[a:943820|VidCon made clear that influencers' command of social media foreshadows power well beyond entertainment]], and the question shifted from whether creators are a real industry to who builds the infrastructure around them. Cameo and Karat are the answer being pitched — services layering payments, management, and monetization onto individual creator brands.
The bet has since compounded rather than faded: by 2020, [[a:954054|Cameo and Substack had opened ways for prominent journalists and media figures to live off small audiences]], and in early 2021 Stir Money's $100M-valued Series A led by a16z showed the toolkit expanding to creator back-office finance.
First-order effects
- Venture capital flows directly into picks-and-shovels startups serving creators — Karat and peers get funded to serve people like Danielle Bernstein, who was already running her own business at 27 without such tooling.
Second-order effects
- Adjacent players follow the money: Stir Money raises on creator-income management and NewNew experiments with fans paying to steer a creator's decisions, meaning service startups compete to own different slices of the same creator P&L.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the creator economy consolidates into two layers — the talent and the venture-backed platforms that meter, route, and finance their revenue — echoing how earlier direct-to-consumer brands built large businesses largely outside traditional venture.
The trend: The creator economy is shifting from individual influencer hustle to a professionally financed services stack, with venture firms funding the layer between creators and their income.