The Creator Economy is Booming

It’s not every day one gets a backstage pass to watch first hand how an entire generation is shifting how they work, live, play and learn.

I’ve been fortunate enough to do exactly that, twice, over the last decade. First was during my six crazy but fun years at WeWork, where I got to see thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs feel empowered by space and community. Now, as a venture capitalist at Flybridge Capital Partners, I get to see it and live again with one of our most exciting portfolio companies — Splice.

Splice is enabling music creators to make a life and not just a living by leveraging technology, a powerful marketplace, and an extraordinary community of millions of artists. We’ve had the privilege of working alongside this amazing team for the last two years since their Series A , although we’ve been familiar with them for some time — Steve Martocci, founder/CEO was in the NY tech scene with his former company, GroupMe and Jonathan Lee, Chief Business Officer, was a student of my partner Jeff’s at Harvard Business School. Yesterday, the company announced three really important milestones.

First, we have over 2,500,000 artists on the platform! This figure is a significant percentage of the world’s music creators, who are making music in a faster, more accessible and collaborative way using the platform. While Splice is designed for “serious musicians,” we’re now seeing students, bedroom DJs and famous, chart-topping producers all working together to make beautiful and inspiring music every single day.

Second, the company announced that it has paid out over $15m to artists since inception, double the same figure from just one year ago. The first paid product, Splice Sounds, has enabled artists to share their work such as sounds, samples, and loops for years. Splice Sounds not only allows artists to reach other creators around the globe but represents a whole new income stream that artists can tap into. In a world where artists can share their finished work through Spotify, Pandora, Apple and hundreds of other platforms, Splice Sounds is a unique channel to reach other artists to create bigger and better projects together.

Third, the company announced an additional $57.5m Series C fundraise led by USV (thanks @Andy), True Ventures (thanks @Adam) and Flybridge, along with others. We invested in the Series C at a level typically unheard of for a Seed/Series A fund like Flybridge due to our high degree of conviction in the business and the team. I couldn’t be more excited to continue on this journey with one of the most impressive teams I’ve ever met.

As part of the announcement, Steve observed that “music is going through a beautiful moment,” and we couldn’t agree more. Not only are more people creating music every day but those same people are able to turn their craft into an actual business, in large part, because of what Splice offers. From a marketplace of sounds, samples, and rent-to-own software and instruments, to a community of collaborators to level up with — Splice is empowering a generation of creators to do their best work.

As a parent of a young child, this quote from Josh Constantine at TechCrunch really struck me when the news was announced;

“Parents tell [Steve] that their kids spend all their time playing Fortnite and making music on Splice, but the latter is screen time they’re happy to encourage.”

I can’t wait to encourage my son to leverage technology, instruments and his creative thoughts to make beautiful art.