Experience-Led and Community Driven: Platforms Driving the Creator's Economy

[Music] hi everyone thank you for staying this afternoon with us uh we'll discuss now a very cool topic which is everything linked to the creators economy how can you build your Venture in that field you know how you can create and engage community and how can you turn it into a profitable business so I think it would be great we have free amazing founders with us all being part of h71 community and I will let them introduce themselves please smile sure um thanks a lot for having me my name is is I'm one of the co-founders at Livelink um we're building an automatic video editor so the ability to take thousands of unedited Clips under the click of a button turning them into marketing videos TV shows movies or fully edited clips for your social media thank you my name is Arthur bdikin I'm the co-founder and the COO of lemonade fashion we built a platform that's for the Creator economy so that they can monetize their content but not because it has entertainment value but because it has economical value so we built a platform that's a lot like Tik Tok where they can scroll through video create content buy product but also sell products from any type of brand or industry that they're using and they participate in the revenue share from that one Sheriff hi everyone I'm shf um and at Dharma we basically work with influencers famous athletes um TV shows and basically turn their IP or their Community into bookable travel experiences so you know think your favorite yoga teacher organizing a yoga retreat all the way through to what does the official experience for Emily in Paris uh look like um so we we enable non-travel professionals to basically monetize their their IP in community Through travel experiences so let's start with Dharma how can you ensure that in fact the platform grow is sync with the community needs and value how can you do the link between both especially that if I understood well your communities are not always in the GCC but you have really reaching out to Global communities yeah I think that's a real uh that's a really good question and I think a real uh tension point in in the business model in the sense of how can you scale authenticity and I think you know our core conviction as a business is that the future of travel is is Passion based and passion le as opposed to geography based so if in the past 50 years you travel to go to Costa Rica or you travel to go to Indonesia or or wherever it is the next 50 years you'll travel to you know Summit the highest peak in North Africa or you'll travel to learn how to surf Etc and I think that requires authenticity and the question becomes can authenticity scale I think some Industries where authenticity has scaled and where it's kept desirability are the luxury space and so I think for us one of our big benchmarks is okay well how do we become an experiential luxury play and I think one of the ways that we think about it is that if you have a a yoga teacher hosting a trip so your favorite yoga teacher which I think is something that everyone can can visualize you have a a natural physical constraint there because the yoga teacher has to be physically there but when you're thinking about let's use the Emily in Paris experience you know we have eight exclusive experiences that are built around the show uh well there you don't have a host and so that the the the kind of Global IP that we can merchandise and and and and reimagine into experiences there we we've removed the constraint of the host and that scales and so I think we're thinking about it um in that direction so you were discussing about uh authenticity I would like to know Harter how do you do to maintain the authenticity you know when you are dealing with so many fast changing Trends in the Creator economy so I think when we when we started the beginning we used to work a lot on creating the content ourselves or even making sure that a certain type of content is being only posted and then remove the rest but we felt that the moment we started doing that it removed a big part of the authenticity so a big part of the platform today is actually giving space for the creators to express themselves the way they want to a big part of the reason why I think current social media is not doing really well is because of the algorithms and algorithms today on social media they're created to either promote or even to limit your reach based on what the intention of these platforms are so a big part of what we're trying to understand at the moment with our creators and with our platform is okay what does the Next Generation want because the numbers are are saying that the Gen Z believe that social media today is more harmful than it is beneficial at the same time they all want to be there because they believe that they can build a career out of it but they don't have a place for them yet and a big part of our job is creating platform for the Next Generation where they can express themselves they can build healthy habits they don't need to be addicted to the platform and where they can monetize and build a career and the future thank you so your mentioning algorithm um can you explain us is smile how do you leverage and use AI to be able to support the Creator ability to scale while at the same time remaining authentic sure so I think it's it's an interesting question around the challenges of of being a Creator so I don't know if anybody's been through um probably during covid attempt to get into the world of become a Creator because everyone's doing it online and what you realize very quickly is that it's actually very time consuming and the larger creators have teams to support them but when you get up and running the infrastructure required to do it consistently week in week out can be quite difficult and I think for the first time there's almost a world now where you have entire team equivalents around individuals that are completely automated so in our case for example there are creators that were initially just on YouTube that would have loved to have expanded on to Tik Tok and Instagram and Snapchat and all these are the platforms but it's just it's time constraints and now it is very much a process of here's my one hour video on YouTube at the click of a button I've now got 50 clips that I can then schedule and produce across all of these other platforms simultaneously and this is available not just to the creators that have millions of followers and are generating tons of Revenue but it's actually available from day one so I think what I expect to see more and more as not just live link but other AI video tools come about you're going to start to actually see a massive increase I think in the amount of content being made now imagine this would then extend into platforms like yours where uh creators will be more and more willing to see okay well I've got the time and capacity now to venture out into new platforms that before I just wasn't able to do thank you sherf can you share with us and especially with the audience you know what is your current growth stage and also how are you able to maintain you know Personal Touch and also your Community Connection while you are growing and scaling globally yes of course um we're going into our series a um if there is an investors um and yeah we've raised about 11 million to date um our last round was mostly us-based funds uh which is which was also quite an interesting Journey for us because when we started it was mostly actually hub71 ecosystem so sharuk bvp that backed us and then slowly kind of starting to grow out of that in the last round was mostly US based funds uh so that's been an interesting Journey um and then in terms of how we're thinking about growth and retaining the customer um connection you know I think one of the big conversations we've had our first trip ever I was the one physically putting the yoga mats at 5:00 a.m. you know getting ready for that first Retreat and at that time I when when we had our first VC conversation the fund was like okay I see where this is going but how do you become a company that delivers 10,000 yoga retreats a year and my answer at the time was we don't like that's the last thing I want to become I have no idea how we would even how we would even get there um and and you know and at that time it was like I don't even know how we could be organizing more than one at the same time and you know I think I mean right now we have three trips running across three different countries and two different continents um and I'm completely hands off on that so you know I think with with growth it's you know the the process obviously but also the teams to to handle it and then more and more you know the biggest thing with travel especially experiential travel and luxury travel is that it's very high touch and so there's an entire industry of dmcs or destination management companies that actually are white label and you can start to rely on for delivery of the operations and I think more and more what we realize is where's our space in this value chain where do we have a right to play and where can we actually scale um and and for us it's really around that okay let's license or contract the most inspiring people and brands in the world let's build experiences around them let's design those experiences and then let's partner with operators and Distributors um to deliver and distribute the trips and I think that that is where we scale that is where we play uh and so it's also been quite a process to learn to let go of the operations and to learn to let go of the distribution um and just focus where we think we can win big so when I was in hub71 we spent a lot of time you know trying to brainstorm with different startups making sure that we were doing the first right bet talking about like uh commercial traction you know and potential and user it would be very interesting if you could share with us out here you know how you've been able to because you started with fashion mainly and now you're starting to broadcast um different type of uh creators products can you explain us also your grow and how you've been able to uh have a larger pool of U products to Showcase yeah it's uh it's actually funny because we organically went into the space so lemonade started originally as a Marketplace for emerging designers and Brands we started working with some of the biggest influencers our campaigns went vital like I remember the one big campaign we did we got 30 million views within the first 24 hours but we noticed while we're getting the virality we're not getting the conversions with it and that was a big problem because we noticed it's happening throughout the world because social media was not built for e-commerce especially that you run an ad let's say on Instagram and then you're trying to send people to a different website and that's where 60% of the brands lose their traffic then we're like okay how do we take control of that so we decided to start creating taking the videos that we create for social media and placing it on our own platform and then adding the products to it and at that point we had some investors from San Francisco and they're the ones that called us like guys this is going to be the next Frontier this is social commerce or even now we're calling it more of a social economy so we transitioned into that but we were still focused on fashion products when the creators started coming to our new platform suddenly we saw that there's a need not just to sell fashion through content but any asset so as a Creator I want to be able to go for a job and be able to tag for example my prej coffee the sneakers that I wore and maybe even my you know the the croissant Boutique that I go to after the run and if I can tag all of these assets into my content and monetize my entire experience and my journey this becomes a platform where I'm monetizing my experiences so that's where we moved from Fashion now we're opening up so we have close to a thousand Brands right now on the platform uh music is a big part of our 20 20 25 plans because even beatport which is the world's large largest platform for electronic music and DJs they have 40 million DJs on their platform so now they're fully integrating with us because even beatport is looking at the future of okay how do artists monetize their content in the future a big part of that has to do with converting whether it's converting their own songs or adding merchandise and experiences to their to their concerts and events so I think the Creator economy is going in the in a very interesting Direction thank you is you're editing more than 150 videos can you share with us you know what is according to you the future of video editing for creators sure so it's um the growth has been interesting so six months ago we were editing around 20,000 videos per month uh 12 months ago it was about a th000 so it's more than doubling on average every uh every month from what we're seeing and a big part of that is the Shar demand that exists around automation I think the way that I think about I guess the future when you look at the journey of any of your favorite creators when they get big enough that they very quickly realize oh there's only one of me if I go there's nothing left and so there's this constant push to try and expand themselves into something bigger so you know you have Mr Beast launching feas bones and this brand and that brand because you know he wants to create an entity or overwatching business or you see creators releasing books but I think what you're starting to see with where AI is moving is for the first time you can almost duplicate the essence of the Creator I'm sure you've seen versions of either videos that look just like the real thing or audio duplicates that are very similar to the actual person and I think you're going to start to see more and more of that being used to actually produce content in any of itself so that although the essence of the Creator themselves isn't being duplicated as an individual because their time is limited through buttons being pressed and a bit of code being written they can start to expand the content pre being produced sorry as if it's just like them and I think that's what we're going to start to see more and more of I have a common question for all of you so you are still in the early stage of your journey uh as all founders and especially in the creating economy you know you are very passionate people can you share with the audience you know because I assume maybe some people are today in what used to be your shoes a couple of years ago which is I have this idea I want to do it but how can you know I mve to the next step and launch my Venture I started can you share with the audience what was maybe the most painful you know like moment in your uh in your journey so far and what was really a game changer we can start with yours now sure um I think not being overly obsessed with the initial idea is probably one of the most important um development periods for me because I think you know sometimes you have these moments where you think of the next big thing and like this is the one that's going to work and you commit to it it sounds great um and if for any reason during your experience it doesn't work you tend to uh feel like guess that's it's just not going to work completely and I think this notion of internal pivot and I'd like to think maybe some of you guys can relate to this internally things do change a lot and that's not a bad thing if anything it's a very very good thing because usually you're changing because of data points that you're receiving something is coming your way and you think like hey I'll give you an example in in our case right we didn't set out to build an automatic video editor the product that we initially released was a teaching platform for creators and our thesis was we would automate things for them make it really easy that's why they'll use us so we automated video editing email marketing and some Community Management stuff but what we started to see was that more and more users were coming to our platform with no intention to teach but instead they were like hey um we've got these videos that we've made before can we use your platform to edit them instead and that's what I mean when I see when I talk about data points there are insights that come your way that can be business changing it's just being open enough to to receive that to actually go about building things in the right way so to kind of summarize the first idea is great to get you going but it's not necessarily the idea that you lend up with and that's not a bad thing thank you ARA I think I think it's very close to what you were saying because when you're when we're building a consumer Tech platform it's it's not that easy to find the proper product Market fit at scale right so what we're building might be interesting for the initial community that we're targeting and and we build it with them but pivoting for us has been part of the journey so now we actually talk about micro pivots because every day is is is is is a lesson that we learned based on what the data is showing and yes some of those campaigns that we tried hurt a lot right both emotionally was painful but also financially for example when we did that very big influencer campaign we also launched a huge TVC campaign at some point and and then you notice that okay this didn't work what can I learn from it and because it's consumer Tech so it's not like uh B2B SAS where I got a client to to subscribe and then I know that this client is going to generate x amount of money every single month for us because consumers come in and and come out right so you have to capture their attention every single day and when you're building a platform for them it it changes a lot so you have to adapt with with what they want on a daily basis so I think pivoting and growing is is a very painful Journey but it's also very rewarding because once you start finding that product Market fit the positioning that you get is very strong and very powerful my investors tell tell us all the time it's like you're one step away from really exploding but you don't know where that step is is going to be and you don't know which one it's going to be so you just keep on you just keep on going keep on learning keep on listening to the market and for us what really started helping is when we were able to start attracting mentors and investors from Facebook from Google even from Tik Tok that started either investing or joining our Advisory Board and then we started building it together so we learned from their experience and then they help us navigate so that we can build a product for the future rather than the product of the past because you can't just rely also on existing data of historically how users are behaving you need to predict what the next generation is going to do thank you Sheri um I think the most painful moment for me was restructuring um and it's it's tough at a startup and early stage uh you know because people join you um on the basis of of being Mission driven and and really believing in kind of um the the opportunity ahead and then when when you actually when it doesn't pan out especially as kind of the leader of the business when you've set kind of okay guys this is you know this is what's on the other side of this mountain this is what we have to do to get to the top of the mountain and to get to the other side and everyone does what what they're asked to do and and and you know everyone comes together and then ultimately um on the other side of the mountain is something else um I think that's that's pretty painful uh personally and then obviously for everyone who joined for those reasons so um people often say uh you know especially early stage startups are high risk High reward um and I guess everyone who joins the startup is like me fundamentally an optimist so your mind doesn't really doesn't really calculate the high risk part it's all about the high reward part but then when the high risk actually um pans out uh it's it's that was painful that was the most painful I'd say of the past four years um and then on the Breakthrough um you know what made me originally take the take the jump was that I was working at Uber at the time in in London at their headquarters and I was like okay well actually if I organize two yoga retreats a month I can probably make as much as I'm making right now at Uber so that was my opportunity cost was two yoga retreats so I went out and signed two yoga retreats and I'm like okay well maybe I can you know the the opportunity cost is is is covered um and that's what that's what gave me the first impetus is just to cover my whatever I was making at Uber and then since then you know by coming on board Hub 71 accepting us and then the more people kind of believe in the project the more um and see what you see the less um the less crazy or isolated you feel and the more the more responsibility you take on we've been talking a lot this morning you know about ecosystem building and enabling about like value proposition of Abu Dhabi and you have all in common you know to be part of uh Hub 71 ecosystem can I ask you to summarize in one word what hub71 or Abu Dhabi ecosystem means for you again I'm sorry it was not a prepared question so for me it's um ex it's access to exclusive it which means it gives you access to people that usually you cannot reach but Hub 71 allows you to do that very easy I'd say my word is Network um especially if you don't have a background in any given startup ecosystem this gives you access to a Global Network of startups and that in in of itself lets you connect to the US Canada and other parts of the world quite quickly I would say gratitude because uh in November 2020 no one in the world was investing in travel and I asked the H 71 team why did you accept us and they said well we take 10 20 30 your views on things and we believe travel is going to come back so it's a gratitude so I can't take more because in 2019 I I have an aerospace background and I was wor I was I was running the only Aerospace Focus accelerator during Co in up 71 and it's been hard time but as you were seeing we were like this will come back as there question of time so we we we should not give up I I would like to conclude on one thing you know like when you were explaining how painful how challenging has been your your journey so far I would just want to conclude saying you know there is an amazing thing with founders of startup which is a very unique type of Personality as you were saying at the same time you know you need to be crazy enough to give up what you have to explain to your families that you're moving from certainity stab ability to full risk because you're passionate about something because you're obsessed about something you you want to fix and on the other side you need to be humble enough to have the support of the ecosystem to Pivot to be able to do it again and again and again and be resilient and I would like all of us to give a big round of applause for these three gentlemen who get who were brave enough to do it thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh