🚨 ANNOUNCEMENT: Today I’m excited to announce we’ve closed a major investment to build the Disney of the creator economy! In 2017, on my way home from work I picked up a $100 mic from the Apple Store, went home, plugged it into GarageBand, opened my diary and started talking about the things inside it. I edited the episode (terribly) and published it as a podcast called “The Diary Of A CEO”. That decision changed the course of my life… 💡 That’s the day I became a “creator”. It cost me $100 and a laptop to start my own show and build my own audience in 2017. Thirty years earlier, in 1992 when I was born, I would have needed millions in funding, a warehouse full of broadcast equipment, and - most expensively - permission from network executives who controlled the only distribution channels that had any reach! WE NO LONGER NEED PERMISSION TO CREATE! 👊🏾 A seismic shift is underway in the “attention economy” and I don’t think most people realise how profound it is... When attention shifts from institutions to creators, everything shifts: how elections are won (as we saw in the last US election cycle), how society is shaped, how companies are built (funds are now investing in distribution not ideas), and how capital is allocated (we’re seeing the rise of creator-investors / funds). The new centre of gravity is not the institution, it’s the individual creator. 🏰 For the last century, companies like Disney demonstrated the power of a single piece of intellectual property. 🐭 They built a global empire by taking a character like Mickey Mouse and building a universe around him - films, theme parks, and merchandise. 💸 This created a flywheel of immense, compounding value which changed the course of the last century. We are building the modern version of this model. But in our world, the IP is not a fictional character. The Creator is the new franchise. Our mission is to turn individual creators into global brands with the same scale and impact as Disney - but in the modern internet era. We focus on three core pillars: Creator Media (like The Diary Of A CEO), Creator Ventures (their products and companies), and the Creator Technology (like Flightcast) that powers it all. We’re already powering some of the world’s most exciting creators and today we're announcing a major 8-figure strategic investment into Steven . com at a $425m valuation that brings some of the world's most forward-thinking investors and many of my favourite founders on board to build this future with us! Thank you to all of you for the support and encouragement over the years ❤️ and to my 100 colleagues who are building this future alongside me. If you want to join us on this mission, please let me know below! 👇🏾