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Buzz across the creator financial system has been waning — however the finish of a hype cycle is not at all times unhealthy information.
“Hype is at all times one thing to be cautious of in enterprise,” Rex Woodbury, founder and managing associate of Daybreak Ventures, lately informed Enterprise Insider. “That is actually an business about being contrarian. When one thing is out of favor, that is virtually extra enticing, proper? As a result of then yow will discover firms which can be beneath the radar or founders who’re distinctive, however perhaps not being priced up the wazoo.”
Woodbury, who left his submit at Index Ventures final 12 months to launch Dawn, has been a staunch investor in a number of creator-economy startups over the previous few years. A few of these investments embody Creative Juice, Collect, and, extra lately, social-commerce startup Flagship.
“We actually deal with the appliance layer of tech — web firms, software program firms, AI functions — which have viral adoption and normally a community impact,” Woodbury stated.
His continued curiosity within the creator financial system stems partly from his strategy to defining the broad area.
“I consider it way more as a phenomenon that cuts throughout quite a lot of completely different sectors,” he defined.
From gaming to social networks to commerce to enterprise, the creator financial system engulfs many areas of curiosity. Even productiveness firms like Figma and Notion have creators “constructing on prime of them” with plugins and instruments, Woodbury stated.
The place Dawn Ventures sees potential
The place the creator financial system overlaps with commerce is very fascinating to Woodbury proper now.
“How do you truly flip the creator, which is basically simply the brand new model of curation and tastemakers, into fascinating enterprise fashions?” Woodbury stated.
Dawn’s funding in Flagship, which lets creators construct their very own on-line storefronts, is one instance of the “discovery-driven procuring” Woodbury sees as a chance.
Whereas social-shopping startups aren’t new, there have not been too many clear winners but. Startups like Flip have grown quickly, and customers are shortly rising accustomed to procuring in-feed on TikTok. And disrupters to influencer advertising, like Flagship or affiliate-marketing platform ShopMy, are additionally catching the eyes of VCs.
Like all investor proper now, Woodbury can also be in search of thrilling applications of AI.
“What’s actually fascinating proper now could be the manufacturing facet, the artistic tooling,” Woodbury stated. “In the event you consider the web as a distribution revolution, AI is known as a manufacturing revolution the place it permits us to make issues. I consider it as just like the Industrial Revolution for making bodily merchandise.”
Being a creator may grow to be simpler, Woodbury stated: “As a substitute of needing specialised talent units or costly instruments to make a photograph or video — or quickly to be perhaps a film or a music — you may truly do it with these actually highly effective generative AI instruments.”
No matter what drawback a startup is aiming to unravel, Woodbury stated creators might be a crucial distribution technique for any firm proper now.
“Startups want a distribution edge over incumbents to have the ability to break by,” he stated.
