On Friday, we hosted a demo day with Syracuse University's Center for the Creator Economy. A dozen or so student creators pitched us their businesses and we grilled them Shark Tank style. At the end, two winners were announced: one chosen by us and the other by the room full of students and attendees.
It's neat to see SU investing so much into this space. They launched the nation's first academic center dedicated to the creator economy, complete with a minor open to all majors and a dedicated physical space on campus (among many other initiatives). The program doesn't just support aspiring creators themselves but also caters to operators, producers, managers, and those who want to learn the business of creators and how to build for longevity. It's a cross-disciplinary and ambitious bet that creator entrepreneurship is a real career path worth teaching.
Here are three of the ~dozen pitches we heard:
DylanDoesBasketball — best in class video essays, retrospectives, and documentaries all centered around the NBA (*our voted winner*)
SU Motivates — community and mentorship for SU men of color, helping them navigate campus life and individual accountability. Soon expanding to other campuses (*attendee’s voted winner*)
Utopia Beauty — a beauty retailer and community focused exclusively on skincare, makeup, haircare, and bodycare brands that are scientifically tested and backed by clinical studies
Beyond it being such a fun event, I left the afternoon thinking about this emergent creator energy on college campuses more broadly. We've seen this arc before. Fifteen years ago, "I'm starting a startup" was kind of a punchline at most universities. Then Stanford built an entrepreneurship program, MIT followed, and within a few years "founder" went from fringe to arguably the most prestigious thing you could be on campus. The institutional scaffolding validated the path, and meaningfully accelerated the culture around startups.
I think the same thing is happening with creators. "Creator" is no longer code for aspiring celebrity but an increasingly viable avenue for entrepreneurship. The fact that Syracuse's center lives across both their communications and business schools points to the marrying of storytelling with business fundamentals like IP, monetization, hiring, and capital strategy. They’re treating creators like the founders they are. The same institutional legitimacy that turned "startup" from a weird thing to an obvious one is now being extended to creator entrepreneurship. The Demo Day convinced me this is already happening.
Huge thanks to the Syracuse team for having us and to every student who pitched.
— Megan
P.S. Take a few minutes and read this post from creator Pia Baroncini about her daughter, Carmela, for Autism Awareness Month. Absolutely beautiful.