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Good morning Launch Key 🚀 community!

The energy around the Creator Economy feels like an anti-IPO plan.

The IPO market rises and falls like the tide, decreasing over the past 2 years as investors focus more on financial stability and profitability.

But the growth of solopreneur revenue and work from anywhere trends means more knowledge workers are striking out on their own - without the need for outside investment.

Welcome to the Creator Economy.

Comment below and let me know if we’re on the right track.

🎂 Happy Birthday to Launch Key subscribers Cathy N. and Dave S. Crank it up a notch today!

Table of Contents

• Pull to Eject

  • Creator Economy

• Modern Tools

• Old School Wisdom

• Free Knowledge

• Recommendations

• Visual Crapshoot

Pull to Eject

The Creator Economy feels like the anti-IPO plan.

Don’t get me wrong. There are still plenty of $100 million dollar deals happening around the world. The majority around AI and FOMO.

And large follow-on investments are setups for 2025 and ‘26 IPO’s. Big startups need huge money.

But talk to founders who have taken big investment, and they generally feel like they lost control of their baby. And in today’s environment, they are taking a valuation haircut with any new infusion.

Anti-IPO sentiment is not a new thing.

There is much more freedom of operational control when private. So much, that occasionally big publics will find a way to return to private.

Twitter (X) is just the most recent huge public company to be taken private.

Heinz, Dell, Panera, Hilton, Burger King - all were publicly traded, then restructured as private - and in some cases even IPO’d again.

New management, new financial backing, complex and messy.

They didn’t all fire 75% of their work force, but their founders are long gone.

Creator Economy

The Creator Economy has leveled the playing field allowing people using tech and creativity to connect with audiences around the world. No outside investment necessary.

You are the founder 100% in charge. Scale if you want to.

It doesn't matter which platforms you're on or how many followers you have: If you produce and seek to monetize content – you’re a creator.

And the results are eye-opening.

Goldman Sachs thinks the Creator Economy will approach half a trillion dollars by 2027.

More than 207 million people worldwide are creating content right now.

• 23 million have less than 1,000 followers.

• 139 million have between 1,000 and 10K followers.

• 41 million have between 10K and 100K followers.

• 2 million have between 100K and 1M followers.

• 2 million have more than 1M followers.

46% of them are full-timers.

The average annual revenue for full-time content creators can be over $100,000. The median revenue is $50,000.

Homemakers, students, retirees, military, self employed folks - make up the majority of the part timers.

Most creators aren’t getting rich, but they are earning enough to keep doing what they love.

Most start earning money after about 6 months.

• Only 6% of beginner creators — creators with one year of experience or less — earn over $10K per year.

• 35% of beginners have monetized but aren’t earning enough to quit their day jobs.

Of course making money doesn’t happen overnight. A topic we covered in last week’s 15-year overnight success.

What are they creating?

It’s NOT all AI video and 20-something social media influencer hype.

In fact, it’s the boring kind of content that you have been creating for decades.

It’s the written word.

If – like me – you write proposals, emails, sales intros, presentations, marketing material, manuals, software documentation or a host of other business communication - you already have the necessary skills.

And it’s easy to upskill. If you want to improve your writing skills there are literally thousands of great resources.

I chose to start a newsletter because I could create weekly topics, change direction with feedback and success didn’t depend on the algorithms.

But you can deliver written words in the medium you are most comfortable with.

That could be Linkedin, Meta, X, Medium or Substack. It could be Pinterest. It could be a PDF. It could be an ebook via Amazon. It could be a script.

At least 60% of the most common creator types require writing skills.

In the ConvertKit survey, more than 30% of all creators were over 50 years old.

And that’s where we come to rest today.

Late-career folks have the most to share - worthwhile knowledge gained over decades of experience.

What’s holding you back?

Now go launch something 🚀 

Modern Tools

Have you been thinking about putting your knowledge into a course?

You don’t have to overthink curriculum, modules, or other “big” concepts to turn content into a structured course format. Build your interactive mini-courses easily and quickly thanks to super-simple card structure.

Free to start of course.

Old School Wisdom

I’ve found that you get more of what you write down.

One of the old school things I’ve reverted back to is hand-written notes before I type them up.

No one has given more thought to making the perfect journal than James Clear. These have open pages for all your notes plus daily habit tracking templates.

Free Knowledge

The 25 Micro-Habits of High-Impact Managers.

Sharp folks from across the First Round community share the small habits that great managers do, including delivering feedback with care, opening up about failure, and sending praise up the chain.

Recommendations

🧠 Seven Deadly Stupidities : This newsletter will help improve your decision making by removing bias, unnecessary information, and emotion from your process.

💪 Dealroom : Learn directly from billionaire entrepreneurs on how to grow a business.

📕 MGMT Playbook : Practical management insights straight to your inbox every Wednesday.

📰 Marketing Memos : Proven Marketing Tips for Founders

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Visual Crapshoot