A good friend of mine (a Los Angeles restaurateur with 10 pizza shops and 8 more on the way) called me with a new ice cream concept he was developing. Sounded cool. Then he said: “I want to partner with a creator to develop this and go to market.”
Tell me more.
“I can do with a creator in three years what took me ten. I know operations and scale; they know audience behavior, whitespace, cultural timing. I want to build with someone who brings awareness and expertise.”
Winner. Put that aside for a moment.
The Conversation Happening Behind the Conversation
After Codie ran circles around me on stage @ Vidsummit in Dallas, I spent time with her and the Contrarian Thinking Capital team at their Main Street Over Wall Street event In Austin. Over a thousand business buyers, operators, and investors were in the room… people acquiring laundromats, urgent-care franchises, landscaping companies, appraisal firms, gyms, you name it.
These people aren’t chasing virality or preoccupied with TikTok trends… they are building equity. Real, repeatable, franchisable businesses and learning from each other in the process.
There was a woman live-vetting a fishing-boat operation on an island. A guy had 4x’d his appraisal company after implementing lessons from Codie’s online community. A room full of people quietly building cash flowing businesses most creators don’t even know are available. And it got me thinking:
What happens when Main Street operators pair their businesses with creators who have audience and distribution?
Or even more interesting:
What happens when Main Street operators pair their businesses with EXPERT creators who have deep audience trust and domain expertise?
Imagine the most trusted fishing creator owning the fishing tour company. The top real-estate creator owning the appraisal franchise. A health and wellness expert creator co-owning a fast-casual fro-yo concept with a seasoned operator. This is where the magic can happen: Not just creators with scale. Creators that have authority and understanding of white spaces along with ambition to own IRL cash-flowing businesses that serve their niches.
The Expert creator (nutritionist, the coffeemaker, knitter or needle point guru, the watch seller, the hunter) have what operators crave: deep industry knowledge and insight, trust and community, and distribution to drive outcomes. Operators have what creators can often lack: proven business models, operational excellence at scale, and deal flow. Put them together and you can get something durable, valuable, and transferable, not just another merch drop or sponsorship cycle.
This might just be the next era of small business ownership:
The creator middle class buying and growing cash-flowing businesses instead of just building audiences and monetizing through DTC products and sponsorships.
My restaurateur friend is right.
Attention and expertise meets ownership. That’s a fun future.
Other exciting news, this week we revealed our latest investment from the Slow Creator Fund: Tayla Cannon, a physical therapist and creator reimagining modern PT care starting with Rebuildr — a platform for both practitioners and patients. Read more on Megan’s newsletter or TechCrunch.