Cash isn't the growth engine anymore

Skool, Whop, and Stan all hit 9-figure valuations in the last couple of years using the exact same strat.

Each platform brought on a massive personal brand as an active partner who would evangelise the product to their followings.

Alex Hormozi for Skool.

Steven Bartlett for Stan.

Iman Gadzhi for Whop.

Turns out, at least in the creator economy, audience access is infinitely more valuable than traditional investment.

Each creator used their audience to validate, promote, and scale the platform in ways that traditional marketing could never achieve.

This solves, probably, the most fundamental challenge that creator economy platforms face:

Credibility.

When you're asking creators to build their businesses on your infrastructure, they need to trust that you understand their world and their challenges.

Having Hormozi, Bartlett, and Gadzhi as active partners provides social proof from people who've built successful creator businesses.

They've proven they know how to monetise audiences.

You can't separate building the platform from building the community that uses it.

This model only works because these creators genuinely use and believe in the platforms they're promoting.

The authenticity makes the endorsements credible, which makes the audience integration sustainable.

It's genuine product advocacy that happens to come with equity participation.

A masterful move really.

Instead of building in isolation and hoping creators adopt your tools, you partner with successful creators during the development process and let their needs and feedback shape your product.

The result is platforms that feel native to creator workflows because they're literally built by creators for creators.

I think what I love most about this is that it creates compound growth effects.

As these creators' audiences grow, the platforms benefit automatically.

As the platforms improve and add features, the creators have more value to share with their audiences.

The relationship becomes mutually reinforcing in ways that traditional investor-startup dynamics never achieve.

Looking at the success of Skool, Whop, and Stan, it's clear that this audience-first approach to platform building will become the standard for creator economy companies.

No doubt in my mind.

Maybe cash isn't the growth engine anymore.

Maybe, audience is.

So to anyone still in doubt - the creator economy is not simply a trend.

It's a fundamental shift in how valuable businesses get built and scaled.

Remember, the creator mindset is all you need to grow 🌱

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