Verified: Shark Tank for creators

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.

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Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is an annual competition that tackles the tech-education gap by equipping grades 6-12 classrooms with the technology, training, and mentorship needed to apply STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills to real-world issues in their communities. Over the years, it has become a force for reshaping the perception of STEM as a vital field for fostering a skilled workforce and informed citizens of tomorrow. Collectively, Samsung has awarded more than $29 million in technology and classroom resources to public schools in all 50 states. Learn more about this year’s recipients here.

#AQUIREDAHUSBAND: Catching up on my scroll time after the back-to-back White House correspondents’ weekend events, my entire for-you page was videos from Acquired Style creator Brigette Pheloung’s bachelorette trip sponsored by Swan Beauty, a beauty technology platform that launched with an AI smart mirror in January. “We knew our next step in our strategy was going to be brand awareness through a high-impact cultural moment such as Brigette’s bachelorette” party Colby Mitchell, Swan Beauty’s founder, told me. 

Mitchell said she first met with Pheloung seven months ago, that they bonded as female founders, and Pheloung became a beta tester of the mirror before they mutually planned the bachelorette activation. “We knew the brand awareness was going to be really organic for her loyal community, and we wanted to spread Swan throughout the community in an organic manner,” Mitchell said. 

Swan provided the private plane that brought Pheloung and her bachelorette crew — which included several other large creators — to St. Barths, and the villa they stayed in. Mitchell herself also posted content from the bachelorette party, and said that while Pheloung had deliverables, the content from other attendees about the brand was organic. Total impressions have jumped from an average of 500,000 to almost 20 million, which Mitchell said exceeded expectations for increased awareness, and that there has been an “overwhelming amount of interest” from creators now looking to partner with the brand. 

Swan Beauty’s total engagement climbed from less than one percent to over eight percent, there were five times as many website user sessions, and app downloads increased by 40x. TikTok profile views for the month were up by 1300x over the previous month’s average, and the company estimates the earned media value of the trip at $1.7 million.

THE CREATOR PARTY CIRCUIT: As I wrote in last week’s newsletter, this year’s correspondents’ dinner weekend had the largest new media and creator presence to date. I saw the largest turnout of creators at YouTube’s two events, UTA’s Friday-night party, Crooked Media’s Friday reception and the Substack new media party during the dinner (that is, before the lockdown — and I left for the White House briefing before the fight broke out!).

The bulk of creators on the party circuit were your expected Democratic political creators, including Brian Tyler Cohen, Adam Mockler, Jolly Good Ginger, Jack Cocchiarella, Olivia Julianna, David Pakman, Alex Pearlman, Elizabeth Booker Houston and Suzanne Lambert. There was also a cast of former legacy media reporters-turned-creators/independent journalists, including Don Lemon, Jim Acosta and Taylor Lorenz. And I saw a handful of nonpolitics-first, D.C.-based creators at events, such as Taylor Krause, Rob Perez and Tony P (of course). 

But it was also a reminder of how far behind the political world lags compared to the creator scene elsewhere. Creators I spoke to on both sides of the aisle expressed that they were surprised there weren’t more influencers participating in the weekend festivities. 

SAME OLD, SAME OLD: Some strategists I spoke with were a bit dismayed that Democrats are still working with the same politics-first group of creators rather than the more cultural creators who helped Republicans make inroads in 2024. In fairness, I didn’t see many GOP creators around this weekend either — politics or culture-first. Multiple creator-world pros joked throughout the weekend that you could have found more creators at any random restaurant in New York or L.A. than at the weekend’s creator-focused events. 

It was also telling that, at most events, the majority of political reporters in attendance didn’t know who many of the creators were. Given these political creators’ growing significance, it’s still shocking to me how many journalists choose to ignore or even dismiss them. 

I could yap about these dynamics all day given my past politics coverage, but will spare you and instead share what the evening looked like from my end and how I ended up at the White House at midnight: