Thread by @anneleeskates

Why is creator economy exploding now?

Here's the story of one of the brightest examples in the space - @APompliano, and why there will be more solo-preneurs in the next decade, read on 👇

1/ The early years of Pomp's life & career seem similar to that of the rest of us. He played in the system of established institutions: went to college at Bucknell, then joined the US army and spent time at Facebook as a PM. Along the way he got into angel investing and crypto.

2/ Just 4 years ago, in 2017, something changed. Pomp’s name gradually started popping up everywhere. He became known as “the Bitcoin guy”. What did he do and how did he do it? 👇

3/ Pomp built a sizable audience (~1M Twitter followers) through owning a niche, first on Twitter, then multi-platform (@YouTube, podcasts, mainstream media such as @CNBC, a newsletter, his own website). He has become a brand, synonymous with crypto and entrepreneurship.

4/ Now he monetizes through multiple diverse revenue streams: a rolling fund via @AngelList where he makes startup investments out of, merch (yes, T-shirts and mugs), a daily @SubstackInc newsletter, a live cohort-based course via Maven by @gaganbiyani, and fan subscriptions.

5/ Recently, Pomp led @synthesischool's Series A as a solo capitalist:

https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/1392101036848988172

.

There were no VC firms in the round! Pomp does this as a sole owner and proprietor of the “Pomp” brand/company. 👀😲

6/ 3 changes in the past decade made Pomp and other solo-preneurs possible:

6-1/ Decoupling of healthcare benefits and personal credit from full-time employment, in part due to Obamacare. (Tho, still lots more work to be done here on the fintech front!)

6-2/Rise of SaaS low/no-code tools, freelancer marketplaces and social platforms (in diff mediums - from videos to voice to text). The former allows outsourcing. The latter aggregates audience for anyone to build a fanbase. You no longer need to be scouted by agents to make it.

6-3/Work and network from anywhere, and meet in the “cloud” ☁️ (thanks to the pandemic’s incredible acceleration of this trend) has become societal norm.

7/ While @APompliano is one of the most visible examples, his story is not unique. Anyone with access to the internet and expertise in something (anything from sewing formal dresses to playing Magic or curling) can do a version of this. Solo-preneurship is on the rise.

Founders building anything to enable solo-preneurship and creators (doesn't have to be digital, could be any type of sole-proprietor work), I'd love to hear from you!