Critical to the success of this strategy is identifying the specific type of creator that Slow considers a sound investment, according to Slow Ventures cofounder Sam Lessin.
The firm broadly sorts creators into two camps: entertainment creators, like MrBeast and Alex Cooper, and niche creators, who are considered authorities in specific spaces by their audiences. The latter might have smaller audiences, but Slow believes the depth of their relationship with those audiences gives them an advantage when launching businesses.
It joins a handful of media organizations, including Morning Brew, Caliber, Smooth Media, and Workweek, in touting that hypothesis.
“I think we’re past the moment of mass-market creators, like Beast Industries,” Lessin said. “What we invest in are cults. The most valuable cults are not the ones that you can talk about on CNBC.”
McGoff, Lasry, and Lee reflect this thesis. McGoff has pioneered a pragmatic brand of career advice for Gen Z professionals, while Lasry and Lee apply the creator perspective to textile manufacturing and commercial fishing, spaces often overlooked by traditional media.
The three are each central “nodes” in their respective ecosystems, according to Lessin. They monetize their followings through a variety of ventures, including a direct-to-consumer CPG flash-frozen fish business, and plan to expand into other sources of revenue.
Critically, none of these creators are explicitly building media businesses. Each of them does monetize their following with advertising or sponsorship, but doing so is not their priority, per Lightcap. They treat their audiences as a means to a broader commercial end, rather than the end itself.
For Lessin, investing in these creators gives Slow access to trusted authorities in durable industries, a commodity that will only become more important as AI fragments the consumer journey and engenders distrust across the open web.
In fact, AI has only strengthened that thesis, Lessin said. As the technology makes products cheaper and easier to build, the product itself becomes less defensible and trusted distribution becomes more valuable.
“The premium on trust has never been higher,” he said. “It is so easy to make a product that having a better product is no longer investable. Trust and community are what is investable.”
The investments are unlikely to yield the same outsized returns as seed funding in technology startups, per Lessin, but that diminished reward reflects, in part, their higher likelihood of success.
Whereas many tech startups receive funding with little more than an idea scribbled on the back of a napkin, these creators have already built large, loyal audiences, revenue, and commercial traction, making a total loss less likely.
Whether this strategy will succeed remains an open question. Slow anticipates deploying the entirety of its $64 million over a two to three-year time horizon, and the results of those investments will likely take years themselves to be borne out.
But the model showcases a new tactic for institutional investors looking to invest in creators, another data point in a growing constellation of evidence that the next wave of influential businesses will likely get their start as single creators.
Talking Heds
Lynch Leaves: Condé Nast chief executive Roger Lynch announced his departure from the company on Wednesday, marking the end of a seven-year tenure with the legacy media operation. According to a note he sent to staff, Lynch is stepping away in order to become the new CEO of Mattel, and he will be replaced on an interim basis by board member Mike Perlis. Lynch, who joined Condé Nast from the music platform Pandora in 2019, presided over the company during a period of immense, challenging transformation. He cites a handful of success metrics in his valedictory note, including the growth of commerce (170%) and digital subscription (155%) revenues since 2020, but does not offer similar data points for advertising revenues or the overall business. His exodus, notably, comes one week after the fifth iteration of Vogue World. During his tenure, Condé Nast shuttered or folded in a number of its smaller titles and has endured, like others, a disconcerting drop-off in search traffic. Whoever replaces Lynch will face a stark reality: the Condé Nast business, while long on pedigree, continues to contract in practical influence.
