Why Creators Fail

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Creators are startups in disguise. But like startups, most creators fail. Out of all of the pieces to write, this one won’t be completely done for a while. Not because it doesn’t follow a similar Power Law. Not because, like traditional founders, it’s not because they’re lazy or untalented. But because media, not content and not creators as founders, can always be a cash-flow business to some extent. As an individual small business, sure, the definition of “success” is different. Specifically, for this article, we’re going to focus on venture-backed creator founders.

The good news is that, like traditional software companies, with enough insider baseball: these mistakes are avoidable. The benchmarks for success and best-practices for venture-scale growth are very, very new. So here is what we know so far.

1. Too Many Cooks; Big Boy Pants.

Read Approaching Equity and Stages for Creators and you’ll be good to go, mostly. Creators in 2024 are having a hard time taking reign of their own distribution. This is why creating that individual holding company is so pivotal into a Creator’s journey.

These are, you guessed it, very similar to the use of venture capitalists to traditional founders. We talk about that more in Stages for Creators.

However, just like how there’s a never ending battle stories of overly directive VCs with traditional founders, there are a growing number of stories of individuals (family members, accountants, employees and, yes, talent managers) that all want to direct the ship.

The fix for this is for the Creator to take responsibility in learning how to steer like a Founder.

2. Short-Term Brain; The Scary “Sellout”

Originally, this whole section was supposed to be about “selling out,” but that felt like a dead horse. There are plenty of video essays criticizing the “Creator Sellout” and most of them are valid. There are a number of Creators that are just making things for cash. And there is actually, no shame in that. The same way that there are traditional founders that are just there to sell products.

I’ll mention this public view of Crea

A lot of that can be optimizing for the wrong metrics. They chase likes, views, or follower counts instead of building something meaningful. However, and a big however — that could just be your thing. You could be a pop-style creator that cares about trends.

At some point, being a creator stops being a hobby and starts being a job. When you take venture money that spans all of your business, you’re really committing to something large. The transition is awkward because most creators don’t think of themselves as entrepreneurs. But if you’re making money from your audience, you’re running a business.

Creators fail when they ignore this reality. They don’t track their finances, they don’t think about scalability, and they don’t invest in the tools or people that could help them grow. They act like employees of their own content instead of CEOs of their brand.

Great creators build systems. They hire people to handle the parts of the job they’re not good at (or don’t want to do). They set up structures—holding companies, licensing deals, product lines—that let their work scale beyond them.

3. Focusing

As simple as it sounds, a company is only as focused as their founder is. For a creator founder, though, where there are multiple entities, streams of revenue, products, individual teams, etc… this is hard. That’s the reason why there needs to be a focus that justifies:

A. Taking venture money

B. Shooting for venture-style returns

C. Employees willing to shift their lives around to equity-style relationships, rather than the typical cash-flow of it all.

Apart from just “personal brand” or “distribution,” once a founder starts creating products & taking big friends - it’s less so about them “distracted,” but more so setting direction and keeping the multiple wheels moving towards that direction.

The simple truth is that it has to be larger than just an individual’s name. There has to be a vision.

As always, if you have any particular questions, feel feel to reach out to em@pre-founder.com.

On this page

• Why Creators Fail
• 1. Too Many Cooks; Big Boy Pants.
• 2. Short-Term Brain; The Scary “Sellout”
• 3. Focusing