Courtesy of Bulletpitch
NEW YORK – Last week, here in a private dining room at a trendy Hudson Yards restaurant over platters of pasta, three start-up founders pitched their companies to an invitation-only, exclusive group of potential investors: 15 creators who have more than 25 million collective followers.
The ask? For a cash investment, creators get a stake in the next brand to make it big. And, for the start-ups, they hope to bring on board investors with a large social media following and a stake in promoting the new brand.
Inspired by creator-turned-investor Alix Earle’s lucrative equity stake in beverage company Poppi, creators are increasingly looking to become investors in the creator economy’s next business opportunity.
“I think ever since that Alix Earle and Poppi deal, every creator is like ‘Okay, wait, how do I get in on this? I have all of these followers, I have all of this influence, [so] how do I translate that into actually controlling the market?’” said creator Christine Abraham, who invested in one of the companies that pitched at the dinner.
The dinner was organized by Brett Perlmutter and Felix Levine of Bulletpitch, a media, events and investments company dedicated to putting creators on the capitalization tables of up-and-coming businesses. They are driven by the belief that the most valuable edge for any founder is attention. While creators can launch profitable businesses themselves, they’re rarely at the venture scale.
“The next great venture firm that gets built is going to be one that doesn’t just give founders capital, but it also gives them the ability to get attention. And so why we’re actually here tonight is because we want to educate the room on what that actually looks like,” Perlmutter told the dinner attendees. “For the creators in the room, we deeply believe that you all have the ability to change the trajectory of an early-stage business.”
As creators alternated between eating and filming portions of the presentations, mattress cooling company Orion Sleep founder Harry Gestetner, electric flosser Flaus founder Samantha Coxe and happy coffee co-founder Craig Dubitsky pitched their products to a group of lifestyle, dating, makeup and finance creators.
They found a receptive audience, which offered praise and feedback on the products rather than tough questions about the business models, revenue, financial risk or timelines for return on investment.
“I really didn’t hear anybody ask about traditional financial metrics. I think what they were really asking about was, ‘Why would this matter to anybody, or why [does] this matter to me? And therefore I might be a suitable investor, because I believe in the ethos, the purpose, the vision of this product or this brand,’” said Dubitsky, the co-founder and CEO of happy coffee (alongside Robert Downey Jr.).
“This group is a lot friendlier, a lot less sharky,” echoed Coxe, who previously pitched her company on “Shark Tank.” She noted the attendees are also younger and skewed more heavily female than the investors she normally pitches.
“What we’re proving here is that the most valuable investors — and I think I will die on this hill — are content creators. I could not think of someone more valuable to a cap table right now,” Perlmutter argued.
Attendees at the dinner last week included Ben Taylor, Preston Rakovsky, Miranda McKeon, Serena Kerrigan, Laura Galebe, and Victoria Hiegel. Sixty creators have been involved in Bulletpitch’s deals and investments thus far.
Levine acknowledged that most creators have little investment experience.
“These are folks that are starting to make life-changing amounts of money. They have never invested into anything — full stop. Forget private markets; some have never invested in the S&P or anything,” he said. But what they lack in investing experience they make up for in influence and following, which “can genuinely change the trajectory of a business, and especially in early-stage business.”
Bulletpitch began as a newsletter started by Perlmutter in college to cover companies in the process of raising money, while Levine used his college years to launch a podcast. Both consider themselves creators, which has helped them understand both the venture and creator opportunities. Perlmutter said they believe the next big firm — which they’re trying to build — will be the one to “not only give you money” but “actually help you get attention too,” resulting in a flywheel of more customers and more investors.
The firm got a major boost in awareness after bringing together 22 creators with around 40 million total followers who each invested an average of $10,000 to $40,000 in the sauce company Sauz, which participated in the dinner series before the deal. Perlmutter said the company had just raised funds and didn’t necessarily need the cash, but that its existing investors wanted them to pay creators and celebrities to promote the product. Instead, they brought the creators in as investors.
“All other tomato sauces are banned in my home,” said McKeon, one of the creators who invested in Sauz and another yet-to-be-announced Bulletpitch deal. She said she has since promoted the product line and introduced it to her friends and family as well.
After the Sauz deal, Perlmutter said he and Levine were “jumping up and down because what we just figured out is the craziest thing in venture [capital], which is not only how do we have access to all the companies before they get hot, [but] we can [also] get into any hot deal.”
While they said it felt like every consumer goods company in the world was in their inbox after the announcement, most of Bulletpitch’s deals to date have been around software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies or businesses that seem harder for a creator to easily promote, such as an artificial rain company. Perlmutter said they will likely invest in a brick-and-mortar store or restaurant soon because it’s so easily promoted by a creator.
Many of the creators I spoke to at the dinner had found out about the group by seeing others post about it on social media. Creators posting from the dinners begets more creators: After “Love Island”’s Jeremiah Brown attended a creator dinner, fellow cast member TJ Palma messaged Levine asking how to get involved.
Brands are also eager to get a seat at the table: The dinner was sponsored by Hudson Yards, Bilt, Shopify, Blacklane and Lovable. Each company had time to speak to the group of creators.
The creators in the room told me they are excited by the opportunity to take on a more strategic role and build their business portfolio and experience. For some, it offers a potential future beyond content creation.
“Creators want to have an exit strategy, and hopefully maybe one day retire,” said Brooke Yoakam, another creator who attended the event. “Living brand deal to brand deal is kind of exhausting …. One day it would be nice to have an exit, almost like a retirement.”
This story is part of Verified, a newsletter that is published by Washington Post Creator, a new business outside The Washington Post’s newsroom that is focused on the creator economy and content partnerships with independent creators. Learn more about Washington Post Creator.
