How 2 guys with "corporate infinity stones" built a $100M creator bank

Two guys meet playing board games in 2016.

Seven years later, they've raised over $100 million to build financial infrastructure for creators.

This is the story of Eric Wei and Will Kim, co-founders of Karat Financial - and honestly, it's one of the smartest examples of creator-first business building I've seen.

Both Eric and Will were collecting what Eric calls "corporate infinity stones" like they were speedrunning LinkedIn.

Eric: Harvard Economics degree, Blackstone restructuring, McKinsey consulting, Instagram product manager building creator tools.

Will: Stanford grad, Goldman Sachs Special Situations Group (which is basically the Navy SEALs of investment banking), then casually raised $5M for his own VC fund while still in his early twenties.

These guys had literally every traditional success metric you could want.

• Corporate credibility? Check.

• Elite education? Double check.

• Network that opens every door? Triple check.

And they walked away from it all to build financial services for creators.

Absolute madness.

Eric was someone who "always wanted to be a creator" but ended up in the traditional path because that's what Harvard Economics grads do.

Working at Instagram, building products for creators, he saw firsthand what he calls the transition from "art for art's sake" to "art as a business."

And he realised something that would likely make him millions:

The financial system was completely broken for creators.

Alexandra Botez - Stanford graduate, top chess streamer with over a million followers, making serious money - gets rejected for a business credit card.

Multiple times.

Eric's watching creators making six and seven figures who can't get mortgages because they have "irregular income."

Meanwhile, these same creators are generating more revenue per employee than most Fortune 500 companies.

The traditional financial system was treating the fastest-growing sector of the economy like it was some weird hobby.

Eric had a front-row seat to this madness at Instagram.

He's literally building the tools these creators use to make millions, then watching them get rejected for basic financial services.

It's like being the guy who designs Formula 1 cars, then watching drivers get turned down for car insurance because "racing isn't a real job."

The cognitive dissonance was mental.

So Eric and Will decided to become the bank for creators.

Strategy 1: The Six Degrees of Separation

Eric's first move was getting the world's biggest creators to promote Karat for free.

And that can only be done through genuine relationship building.

He started with what he calls "six degrees of separation" - the theory that everyone is connected by six social links or fewer.

Cold emails, sure. But smart ones.

Cold calls, absolutely. But to the right people.

Hosting networking events where insight came first, pitches came second.

Which all enabled him to start podcasting with his ideal clients (Alex Hormozi, Taylor Bell, the CEO of Jubilee).

This wasn't content marketing in the traditional sense.

This was earned media disguised as relationship building disguised as valuable content.

Each podcast episode was:

• Building relationships with potential customers

• Creating content that attracted more potential customers

• Establishing Eric as a thought leader in the creator economy

• Getting free distribution to exactly the audiences he wanted to reach

He grew Karat's YouTube channel to over 90k subscribers by being genuinely helpful first, salesy never.

Strategy 2: Times Square Billboards

Eric bought billboard space in Times Square.

But instead of advertising Karat like a you would expect…

He put up the names of new Karat customers.

On a Times Square billboard.

For everyone to see.

Naturally, getting your name on a Times Square billboard became a status symbol for creators.

Think about the psychology here:

• Creators are in the attention business

• Getting featured on a Times Square billboard = massive bragging rights

• Massive bragging rights = social media content

• Social media content = millions of free impressions for Karat

Plus, it created FOMO.

Other creators seeing these billboards and thinking "wait, how do I get my name up there?"

Word-of-mouth marketing on absolutely ridiculous levels.

Eric turned customer acquisition into customer reward into marketing campaign into status symbol.

That's operating at a different level entirely.

Strategy 3: Creators as Investors

But here's where Eric's strategy gets even more sophisticated.

He brought in creators as investors.

• Graham Stephan (finance YouTuber with millions of followers)

• Nas Daily (viral video creator)

• Josh Richards (TikTok royalty)

They became living, breathing advertisements with actual skin in the game.

The compound effect was ridiculous:

Creator investor uses Karat → mentions it naturally in content → their audience sees authentic usage → some become customers → those customers get Times Square billboards → more social proof → more creator interest → bigger creators become investors → cycle amplifies.

Eric built a flywheel where every new customer and investor became a marketing channel.

Traditional businesses:

• Predictable revenue streams

• Standard employment relationships

• Clear business categories

• Established financial infrastructure

Creator businesses:

• Spiky, unpredictable income

• Personal brand as primary asset

• Revenue from multiple, often new sources

• Zero established financial infrastructure

Banks were trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

Eric built square holes.

Karat is building financial infrastructure for an entirely new economy.

And I mean, the results really speak for themselves:

• $100M+ raised in four and a half years

• Serving creators with over 1 billion combined followers

• $70M Series B in 2023 plus a partnership with Visa

In my opinion, you can't build for creators without thinking like a creator.

You can't serve the attention economy without understanding how attention works.

You can't be the financial backbone of the creator economy without being part of the creator economy.

The framework to follow:

1. Become your customer: Eric became his ideal client. Active podcasting, content creation, building genuine relationships in the space. He experienced the same pain points his customers faced.

2. Product as marketing: Every aspect of the product was designed to be shareable.

3. Community-first everything: Funding came from the community. Marketing came from the community. Product feedback came from the community.

4. Earn attention before asking for it: Provided massive value through content, relationships, and genuine helpfulness before ever pitching the product. Built trust at scale.

5. Status as strategy: Made using Karat a status symbol, not just a financial service. In the creator economy, status drives adoption wayyy faster than features.

You need to understand that in 2025, every business is a media business.

That community beats corp every single time.

That the people you're serving should be building the solution with you, not just buying it from you.

Eric and Will had every possible corporate credential.

They could have built a traditional fintech, raised traditional VC money, marketed through traditional channels.

Instead, they chose to think like the creators they were serving.

And that made all the difference in my view.

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

P.S. - Eric's approach of becoming a creator to serve creators is exactly what I mean by thinking like a creator. If you want to chat about applying this approach to your specific business, I've got time this week for calls.

Book here and let's figure out your version of the this strategy →

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