The Slow Creator Fund was born out of Slow Ventures — a decade-old, seed stage venture fund that invests at the very beginning of a company’s life. Put differently, Slow’s job is to match early stage capital with early stage founders.
Through that lens, the Creator Fund is no different. Our ‘founders’ just happen to be creators with deep communities on top of which they are building companies. Rather than a separate strategy entirely, investing in creators is really an extension of our seed practice, where we often invest when it’s just a person and an idea.
While there are important differences between backing a creator and backing a company founder, several lessons from Slow’s seed fund have informed our approach over the last few years.
Team and theme. In early stage investing, you have very little data on which to make a decision. You often have to rely on instincts about the founder, knowing there might pivot away from the original idea, and your belief in the overall theme — whether you agree with their hypothesis on the category. The same holds true for creators. You’re making a core bet on the person, their community, and their thesis about the opportunity set within their niche or beyond.
Key man risk. This comes up in almost every conversation about creator investing and our view is simple: it’s ostensibly the same risk for early-stage founders. It’s nearly impossible to replace the founder of a company early on, certainly before it becomes a fully functioning machine. Even beyond that point, there are many examples of companies ‘losing their touch’ when the founder steps away. Founder mode is a meme for a reason. No one is going to care more about the idea, mission, and business than the person who originated it. For founders and creators alike, the point is to build products that the world actually needs such that they transcend any personal brand overtime.
Role of the founder. A job of a founder and a creator-entrepreneur is fundamentally the same. Their mission is to set the direction and vision for the company and get buy-in from customers, audiences, investors, and employees to join them on an audacious journey. Creators might just be better at the storytelling part :)
Ability to hire. Just like a founder, a creator doesn’t have to excel at every operational role, but they do need to be able to hire effectively to cover their gaps. The ability to identify their weaknesses, recruit talented people to support them, and delegate appropriately is equally critical whether you’re a founder or a creator building an empire.
At its core, backing creators isn’t a departure from seed investing but rather a remix of it. When we invest at the earliest stages, we’re not buying into a fully-formed business with predictable metrics and a proven playbook… we are backing a person with conviction, a community that believes in them, and a hypothesis about where the world is going.
The difference with creators is that we get to see this dynamic play out in public. Creators have audience, existing revenue, and multiple lines of business — the community is there, the conviction has been tested, and the ability to inspire buy-in is often proven. In many ways, creators give us more signal, not less, to help us answer the core question of early stage investing: can this person build something that matters?