🗞 What's New: Creators are going...corporate?

Job listings for creators have soared 489,000% since 2016:

• Tech giants are creating jobs specifically for members of the creator economy, with Amazon and TikTok leading the pack.
• More than 86 million US households go camping, with over 10 million going for the first time last year. These summer startup ideas can help founders kick a new business into gear.
• What makes a community successful? Hint: According to Rosie Sherry, it isn't engagement.

Want to share something with over 80,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

💼 Creators Going Corporate: Oxymoron?

from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch

Job listings for creators have soared 489,000% since 2016. Amazon, Google, and other tech giants are steadily tapping into the burgeoning creator economy by adding creators to their ranks.

Calling all creators

What’s happening: In May, data analytics firm Thinknum scoured nearly 3M job listings across industries to find unique positions relating to creators. Many of these job listings come from social media companies, including Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat. However, Amazon topped the list of employers seeking creators, closely followed by TikTok's parent company, Bytedance.

Diverse industries: A wide array of companies are seeking out creators. Online payment provider PayPal, digital marketing agency Vaynermedia, clothing brand Adidas, and a variety of gaming companies have created positions geared specifically toward those in the creator economy.

The gigs: While many companies are seeking creators to craft brand-specific content, Thinknum notes that many of these positions are not eyeing traditional creators. Rather, they’re looking for engineers, partnership managers, and other professionals that will be able to attract creators to their platforms.

Take a look: A few recent creator job postings are Discord’s engineering manager for the creator economy, Stripe’s product manager for creator economy monetization, and Narrativ’s director of creator community. A quick search shows that many of the listings offer salaries north of $100K, plus benefits.

What it means: The fact that companies are increasingly seeking creators highlights two important trends that SignalFire is watching in the creator economy. First, it shows that companies are taking seriously the risk of creators moving their top fans off of social networks to monetize them. Secondly, it reinforces that creators are gaining power in the media ecosystem to effectively engage audiences. Danny Konstantinovic, associate editor at Thinknum, had this to say:

The road ahead

Oxymoron: Can a creator be a corporate employee? One defining characteristic of those in the creator economy is the independence to create and earn revenue on one's own terms. While not synonymous with the creator economy, the term “passion economy” also implies that its members value having the freedom to pursue their dreams.

Limitations: With corporate constraints such as relinquished editorial control, public relations restrictions, and potential government oversight, it’s hard to see how these creators will be fully free to create content without significant limitations. As of now, the majority of the job listings are “creator-oriented” positions, and skew more towards courting creators than actually creating tons of content. This could, however, change in the future.

Room for growth: While it’s a stretch to dub these employees as sovereign creators, they represent a consistent trend in the growth of any industry. Large companies want to capitalize on what’s hot, and the creator economy is smoldering. At an estimated value of $104B, the creator economy has attracted $1.33B in startup investments in 2021 alone.

Would you take a corporate creator job? Share your thoughts below!

Subscribe to Indie Economy for more.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🦠 This company is creating COVID-19 vaccine strips that you can eat.

💔 Retail investors are 'falling out of love' with meme stocks.

💰 Microsoft is giving all of its employees a $1.5K pandemic bonus.

🏛 President Biden intends to sign an executive order targeting Big Tech.

🌌 SpaceX plans to make space advertising a reality next year.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

💡 Five Summer Startup Ideas on Kernal

from Startup Ideas on Kernal by Joel Hansen

More than 86M US households consider themselves to be campers, and over 10M households went camping for the first time in 2020, an increase that was likely spurred by the pandemic. With expectations for a similar camping season this summer, these ideas on Kernal can help founders get in on the action.

Airbnb camping

What it is: This Airbnb for camping idea is designed to require little maintenance.

Here's how it works:

1. Buy a plot of land in a popular area.
2. Supply the bare bones space, tents, toiletries, and sewage for guests, and open for bookings.
3. Capture great photos, promote it, hack the reviews, and make it one of the top spots to camp.

Signals:

• Could likely get 30% cash on cash returns.
• Tons of demand.
• Supply constrained.
• Can scale pretty easily.

Board of directors search engine

What it is: This idea would build a board of directors search platform that helps startups find external board members (not investors) who have operating experience.

It would allow you to search by:

• Industry,
• Who has taken a company to a particular scale (search for operators who have been at late-stage SaaS companies, or those who’ve been involved in an IPO),
• Specific functions, and
• Particular geographies.

Social updates without social media

What it is: Social media gets you a torrent of updates, but it isn't always the information that you need. We're building a service that allows an individual to create a group to solicit updates that are shared with the group members through a newsletter.

Group members just need an email address, and don't need to create or maintain an account. Updates are never available on the web; they are shared with a group solely via email.

Subscription warranty organizer app

What it is: This idea would build a mobile subscription organizer app to help people manage their online subscriptions and membership plans. It would also remind people about a warranty expiration date to remove the hassle of remembering them.

Recruiting via Twitter

What it is: Picture it. If a founder is hiring for multiple roles, there are interesting signals that indicate whether someone is looking for a new gig. Examples include recently changing one's bio to remove their previous employer, or changing a blurb to "ex-engineer at (insert company name)."

This idea would sync these bio changes on Twitter with LinkedIn to sort candidates by experience and role.

Want to test out Kernal, or share a startup idea to get featured in next week’s issue? Sign up here or drop me a line at hello@joelhansen.com.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Startup Ideas on Kernal for more ideas.

🌐 Best Around the Web: Posts Submitted to Indie Hackers This Week

🚀 Challenge: Launch a product in 30 days or pay $5K. Posted by Vadym Ovcharenko.

😑 I don't care about market research. Posted by Syed Faraaz Ahmad.

🆓 100 free mesh gradients for indie hackers! Posted by Gene Maryushenko.

✌️ I quit my dream job at Amazon. Posted by Bryan.

✅ Validating on Reddit? Posted by Nathan Maki.

😭 I wasted 18 months building a product no one wanted. Posted by Spencer Jones.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

🤝 The Goal of Community Isn't Engagement

from the Rosieland newsletter by Rosie Sherry

What makes a community successful? I've spoken about visions, not ideas in the past, and how important it is to work towards something greater than one specific idea or project.

This week's post comes inspired by Rob Fitzpatrick and Community Camp. Earlier this week, we held a space to talk about how four people started their communities, and Rob was one of them.

Finding success in community

One thought I have is that a successful community evolves around one core concept: Getting people from A to Z.

How it happens varies. Everyone engages in different ways. Everyone seeks different opportunities. Everyone has different needs. These variables are all what make community-building so hard to measure.

Sometimes people need hand-holding for a long time. Sometimes people just need a space to drop in, ask a question, and get a good answer. Sometimes people just want to read, watch discreetly, and explore rabbit holes.

Some people love written words. Others love audio or video. We're all different, but mostly we all have some kind of personal goals we'd love to achieve.

When we think of community in this way, it seems absurd to think that we should measure the success of community-building on engagement. Engagement is almost irrelevant. What's important is if the community, and the people within it, are getting from A to Z.

What do your members want to achieve?

In Rob's case, his community is still very small. He felt iffy about focusing on vanity metrics. It felt wrong to be chasing and monitoring all of the discussions; the more he thought about it, the more he felt that a better thing to focus on (and a better measurement of success) is how many people can he help to write a bestselling book?

After all, that's really what everyone who joins his community wants. Their goal is to, not just write a book, but to write a book that people read. The icing on the cake is achieving the dream of authoring a bestseller.

When I was working on Ministry of Testing, my mind was always on how I could improve the industry and create better testers. This is a similar mindset. Sure, I kept an eye on things like discussions and traffic, and did things to create a great environment. However, I didn't do it for engagement's sake. I did it because I believed that we needed to create better testers. All of the things that I did were in hopes that they would nudge the industry forward.

An online forum was part of that, as were a multitude of other things: Giving people opportunities, publishing, and running conferences were all aspects of my work. When I look at Ministry of Testing, I consider it a success. I think of it this way, not because of the money it has made, or because of the engagement that we can see. It's because it has changed the lives of software testers for the better. In the time of its existence, the industry has shifted. I believe that Ministry of Testing played a big part in that.

But here's the thing: I can't measure all of it.

Community is only part of the business picture

I think the reality is that, when we build community, it is not just community we are building. We need to become problem-solvers. Communities are the ultimate 'Mom Test.' The discussions that people have. The things they share. The struggles they deal with. All of these things are often openly (or sometimes semi-openly) shared within community.

The challenge for communities, and the companies that support them, is solving people's problems. Only some of this can be dealt with directly via community.

In Rob's Write Useful Books community, he can bring in experts to deliver value. He can help answer people's questions, as can the community. But it can turn into a hamster wheel if people don't seek to do more than just that.

For now, Rob has written a book on how to write a book (how meta!). He's also building software to help people write books. There are now bestselling authors who can connect their success back to Rob.

When we start seeing it this way, we can see that community is a foundation, but what rises up from it may not necessarily look like what we think it should.

Looking at the whole picture

From this perspective, we need to start looking at community in a different light. It's not about how much, how active, or having an upwards growth chart.

It's about understanding that investing in community gives you the roots and foundation to build many amazing things. I believe people are starting to see this. We can't just market to people: Increasingly, people don't care (or don't listen).

The way through this conundrum is to build the trust through community so that when you do have something to market, not only will people listen, they will also happily believe and share on your behalf.

What's your perspective on community? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Rosieland for more.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

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Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, Priyanka Vazirani, Joel Hansen, and Rosie Sherry for contributing posts. —Channing