Let’s VeeFriends
Gary Vaynerchuk on NFTs and how creators can get involved
Good Morning. Were you able to catch the first Publish Pizza Party, hosted in NYC last week? It was a great time with creators, east coast readers, and people from the creator industry—eating pizza and talking shop. Shout out to Sam who saw the call-out in last Tuesday’s newsletter and bought a ticket that night to fly out from Montana! If you didn’t make it, hang tight—we’re already planning our next one in LA before year’s end. In the meantime, check out the pics below👇
In Today’s Issue 💬
→ Why creators should get into the NFT game
→ How Victoria Paris struck a deal with finance platform Stir
→ YouTube dives deeper into Shorts
NFT Week with Gary Vee
Last week, Colin and Samir spoke with Gary Vaynerchuk in peak Gary Vee-fashion: in a car at 10:30pm on the way to a secret wine party.
The author and serial entrepreneur shared how he started his NFT collection, VeeFriends, and why creators should get into the crypto space.
Watch the full exclusive interview using password: pizzaparty
Below are are standouts from the conversation (edited and condensed for clarity):
On the appeal of NFTs: “When I launch [a product], I can do everything right with the best intent, but once it goes into the world I can’t fix it. With NFTs, I can always add to the smart contract—I have no fear.”
How he approached VeeFriends: “I viewed my NFT project as my IPO […] an opportunity for the most bought-in [people] to be the winners of my execution over the next four decades.”
On NFT’s tangible value: “In the real world, [NFTs will manifest] however the creator wants. With VeeFriends, every token is a ticket to an actual physical conference. That’s real and there are a million other [possible] executions.”
Our Take
For creators, community is everything—NFTs can be a way to award long-time followers and cultivate a deeply invested like-minded group of people that engage in both idea sharing and business ventures.
Victoria Paris Collaborates with Financial Services Startup, Stir
For a creator that began posting a year ago, confessional lifestyle vlogger Victoria Paris has been one of the most strategic creators out there.
Her latest partnership is with Stir, a financial services platform for creators to collaborate, split revenue, and manage funds. The platform announced last week that she’ll be their first official creator-in-residence.
Paris started her career on TikTok in December of last year, posting over 100 videos a week. By May, she had 1 million followers. She has since reshifted her content focus, scaling back on TikTok to 1-2 videos a day, and increasing her vlogs to a daily cadence on YouTube, where there is a greater opportunity to monetize.
Paris will advise Stir the on their product, design, and partnership teams as well as work on activations and content drops. The residence is part of a larger partnership between her management team, Range Partners, and Stir.
Stir is backed by prominent social players like Patreon CEO Jack Conte and is one of the many creator-focused financial service platforms that have cropped up over the past year, including Creative Juice and Able.
Our Take
Creator economy brands increasingly recognize the value in bringing in creatives like Victoria Paris to get their invaluable point-of-view, and a slew of similar relationships blossoming suggests the next wave of the creator economy could be shaped by the creators themselves.
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YouTube Tests Direct Access to Shorts
While some think views from Shorts are a vanity metric to draw attention to YouTube’s TikTok competitor, YouTube’s recent beta test suggests that the social app wants to invest deeper into the format and potentially bring more engagement to the Shorts creator.
Last week YouTube started testing a new feature among a small subset of users that directs more attention to the Shorts section of the app. Under the test, if a user exits the YouTube app while watching Shorts, and then re-enters the app, they’ll be brought directly to the Shorts page, with a video auto-playing similar to TikTok.
Our Take
YouTube still seems far from making Shorts profitable, despite the overall increase in traffic and engagement that Shorts can bring to creators. To see a first-hand account of the video feature, check out our analysis of Colin and Samir’s YouTube Shorts numbers from October.
🔥 In Other News
Instagram pays bonuses to some creators throughout November.
Podcast and creator consultant Sachit Gupta launches a creator accelerator program.
Amazon rolls out podcast transcripts.
YouTube channel Storybooth gets a Spotify podcast.
MrBeast hosts his biggest food drive to date.
