what i learned from fundraising for my startup

lessons from fundraising

(what i've learned while raising $$$ for my startup)

4 years ago, i met my cofounder and close friend Max for the first time. For the 3 months prior we had been internet friends - commenting on each others' posts, hopping on discord calls, and spending late nights chatting about what we wanted to pursue.

(watch this video of our first time meeting here)

At the ages of 17 & 18, we both had somehow convinced our parents to allow us to rent an Airbnb in the backwoods of Montana and drive across the country to meet up with some "internet friends".

Back then we were enamored with this new idea we were working on: a movement on YouTube called the YouTubeNewWave.

At the time, it seemed like no one was making meaningful, story-driven work on social media at all. The word Creator Economy was newly coined and everyone was paying attention to the media/mrbeast game. Funds were raising hundreds of millions to "invest in creators" (i could talk for hours on why this model sucked)

And so, we decided to push back. Each of our films would be tagged with The YouTube New Wave Presents… and slowly, culture began to shift.

It felt indie. It felt underground. It felt like a movement.

Today if you look around at the internet, stories are flourishing - YouTube isn't just a hellhole of optimized content, but a vast land where you can find genuine art.

Real stories in the real world that make you feel something.

I don't think we deserve all the credit here - it was bound to happen. But over the years 15K+ videos were uploaded to YouTube with the #YouTubeNewWave.

All this to say - the thing I learned about being at the center of a movement was that even though no one seemed to care about it, when we explained the idea of the movement to anyone they instantly understood it.

No matter if they were my grandparents, a tech investor, or a random guy on the street, the concept made sense to everyone. That's how you know something is inevitable.

For the past month we've been raising seed funding for Camp Studios/Creator Camp. It's our first time ever talking with VC/family offices. Before this, everyone who has angel invested had just stumbled upon Camp and been compelled to join (i.e Jack Conte)

Some conversations have been incredible and energizing. Others have been ridiculously mundane. Either way it's been a really great way to fully understand our business down to its core. It's also led to this strange realization that my conviction for this company has 100x'ed since the beginning of the summer.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is a billion dollar opportunity that we have a head start on. Honestly, it kind of scares me more than anything. Somehow we went from willing this company into existence and proving we have something to now being on the offense.

Last week, as Chris and I were driving to the office, we had the realization that the goal now isn't to survive -it's to win. That's a scary thing, but also damn exciting. We're now have a seat at the table and people are starting to notice.

Everyone knows that Hollywood is broken. It's such a funny phenomenon. Even the most decorated producers will acknowledge it. Odds are if you know someone that is in the industry they'll echo the same sentiment. In time, everything will start to decentralize. You see this with internet fandoms, financial tools, music streamers, transportation, etc. Hollywood is the complete opposite of this and it's pretty damn good at resisting it. Even as online distribution got democratized through YouTube —they still found a way to continue owning the box office distribution.

Creators and Hollywood are on a crash course and everyone knows it. My grandparents could understand it, a tech investor could understand it, a random guy on the street would probably understand it.

Someone is going to figure this out.

My take on the reason why no one has yet is because it isn't a simple solution. It isn't creating a platform to connect filmmakers with theaters (supply side constrained), it isn't creating some Web3 IP tracking system, it's in getting your hands dirty and building a whole new system and engine to get stories out to the world.

It's in finding the best talent online, funding them, distributing their projects, and letting them participate meaningfully in the upside.

In 5 years they'll be thousands of creator made projects in hundreds of thousands of theaters, making billions that they get to take home. It's inevitable and holy shit it's exciting.

Yancey Stickler (founder of kickstarter) has some great tweets about this. He calls them A corps, we call them micro-franchises. This is the future. Not every creator wants to launch a CPG brand or be a media company like Pubity that poops out content at scale —most want to build worlds. And a lot of them are really fucking good at it.

That's where the future is.