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Colin and Samir, just stick to yellow, please.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Creator Camp, the studio behind Baron Ryan’s Two Sleepy People, just launched an ad agency to fund future projects.

“Over the last four years we've had a lot of brands come to us and be like, ‘Hey, we want help on this commercial production,’” Creator Camp’s CMO Simon Kim told us.

Context: Creator Camp started in 2022 as an events business, working with brands like Claude, Notion, and Spotify to host workshops and retreats with film creators. It evolved to fund and produce creator films and shorts, hosting a film festival last year. 

With the agency, it’s expanding its brand services to include organic social strategy, creator-led campaigns, and branded short-form series. Kim hired strategists like Mullet Max to help build operations. 

Training the next gen: The agency will double as a creator incubator for up-and-coming film talent. Creators can develop their directing, editing, or writing skills on brand campaigns—with the ultimate goal of creating a series or feature with Creator Camp.

“We're trying to develop these intermediary steps for people [working toward] their own feature films,” Kim said.

As of now, compensation for participating creators varies on role and brand.

Zoom out: Brand agencies aren’t new to the creator economy (think: Anthpo’s Pufferfish or Alex Cooper’s Unwell Creative Agency). But while many other agencies are centered around a singular name, Creator Camp is building an ecosystem of filmmakers.

“At the end of the day, we are really passionate about the movies, in-person experiences, and the events,” Kim said. “So for us, the agency's a way to just continue to fund that.”

Should creators invest in beverage brands? Or raise their own funds? VC investor Marshall Sandman, founder of Animal Capital, is trying to close what he calls the knowledge gap. 

“There’s an extreme information gap among the people that want to be in venture capital vs. the people who are,” he told us. 

He’s now on day 54 of a 300-day run of short-form videos breaking down venture basics—already pulling 700K+ Instagram views.

Context: Sandman got started in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, with his first fund including live shopping platform Whatnot and bioscience company Colossal. In 2021, he started Animal Capital alongside creators Noah Beck and Griffin Johnson. His expertise? Investing in early-stage B2B startups, targeting founders with "disproportionate reasons to win.” The goal is to get in early before valuations inflate and upside shrinks.

The top mistake he sees from creators? Raising capital to launch businesses in hyper-competitive markets like CPG and retail.

“[Raising capital] is almost always a mistake […] I would much rather see a creator hop into a business at that series-A place where it’s two years into business, and say ‘I might not get 40-50% of this, but maybe I can get 5-7%.’”

Sandman recommends creators consider verticals that are less capital-intensive such as software, or adjacent verticals to a creator’s expertise. 

“I don't think it’s ever too early to consider investing as long as you get really strict with yourself. When you’re making $150K your money is really precious to you,” Sandman said. “But it doesn't mean you shouldn't pick something in an adjacent vertical that you’re passionate about to lend your name and likeness to for equity. Understand the exit opportunities, you have to treat it like it’s your money.”

Operators across the creator economy have been making strategic career and title changes, leveraging their talent in new ways. Here’s what we’ve been tracking so far in Q1→

Critical Role hires former Hallmark exec Alyssa Zeisler as the general manager of its streaming service Beacon. At Hallmark, Zeisler oversaw the relaunch of Hallmark+, the studio’s streaming service.

Data content expert Gwen Miller joins Theorist as its new senior director of strategy and operations. Miller previously worked at Mythical as a senior director of creator growth.

Former Dude Perfect Chief Brand Officer Chad Coleman moves to the LPGA as its new CMO.

“I believe deeply in building content that resonates, travels across platforms, and meets fans where they are, especially the next generation,” Coleman said in a press release. “As a girl dad, this opportunity carries added meaning, and I’m energized to help expand the LPGA’s reach.”