OverSubscribe Will Make You Money

Jessy: Peter, I have been looking forward to having this conversation with you. I’m super excited to just learn more about you, to learn more about the really cool stuff that you guys are doing over at, Oversubscribe, how our members can benefit from all the cool stuff that you’re doing at Oversubscribe, and everything else.

But first and foremost, welcome to the show, and thank you for being here.

Peter: Thanks. Thanks, Jessy. And first of all, we’re delighted to be here as well. Excited to, have been excited to get to know you and Stacy and the team over a whim and excited to be able to get on the podcast and speak to your audience cuz we do think they’re some of the people who might have the best perspective on what we’re doing and how we’re trying to help creators.

So thank you for having us and excited to have this conversation.

Jessy: Same here. I think a perfect place to start is 

I would like for our audience to learn a little bit more about you, your background, and what, in my opinion, makes you so uniquely positioned and perfectly positioned for your role today at Oversubscribe. So tell us a little bit more about you.

Peter: I appreciate it, Jessy. We’re a company that’s based out here in New York, but I am not a lifelong New Yorker. Moved out here about six years ago, to do this company and to make the move out here. But prior to that, I was out in the Bay Area for about 15 years. I lived in Silicon Valley and worked largely in the tech world.

I’m more on the finance side. So started out my career, in what’s called equity research or stock research. So if you’re ever watching CNBC and Jim Cramer say, the Morgan Stanley analyst upgraded, google to a buy from a hold. That was my boss and we were covering enterprise software companies, businesses, and software companies, and getting to know companies really well while living in the Bay Area.

So I did that at Goldman Sachs and then moved over with the senior analyst I was working with over to Citigroup. And it was a great job, really even the skills I learned there still play into what we’re doing here today with Oversubscribe. So it was a great foundation for my career.

After that actually moved over into a world that’s even closer to what we’re doing as a startup here. I was in the venture capital world for a while so at a firm called Emergence Capital Partners, so wasn’t a well-known firm there. It was just starting out. I was actually the first non-partner, the first non-founder to join, the firm on the investment team there. 

And this company this VC firm was actually unique in that it really had a strong thesis about how would Wanda Invest and what I wanted to do. And, had this big thesis about this new development in technology called The Cloud. 

They happened to make the right bet and succeeded wildly and ended up investing in salesforce.com and in Zoom and, Box and then a company called Viva Systems, which really did really well for them as well.

So really got to know the startup world, really well there. My last role out there was at a company called Corel which is, a global software company at that time was owned by a big investment firm and I was part of what’s called the corporate development team, where we were acquiring other companies to help Corel to continue to grow.

So we’re acquiring small startups or we’re taking pieces of other companies and integrating that into our company. And that really ended up feeding all that we’re doing here with Oversubscribe and in different ways, I was connected to the tech world and the, the finance world, but also the startup world.

We started to see that a lot of the tools we learned about in business and in finance could really be used in a lot of different arenas, including for individuals who are starting, and really growing in their careers as creators. So we can get into that more obviously, in terms of Oversubscribe, but as you were saying when I look back now, there’s nothing to really say that all those skills and all that experience would really be something that would be a package in the end that would help creators.

But all those experiences really tie into what we’re doing here and all the ways we’re looking to empower up-and-coming creators and established creators that Oversubscribe. So that’s my journey. Also, have a co-founder, his name’s Jay. He comes more from the Wall Street side of things.

He is a lifelong New Yorker himself, though we’re actually old friends. We met as undergrads way back in the day, as our much skinnier selves back at MIT. We’ve been friends for more than 20 years. But Jay went more on the technology and finance route in a different way.

So he actually started off as a programmer and then went into the pure Wall Street side of things. So he worked at firms like Credit Swiss and Perello Weinberg. And what he did was trade, and structure, really complicated, securities and found ways to build those products and trade those on Wall Street.

So again, that really ties into what we’re doing for creators at Over Scribe, how we’re trying to help them with the funding they need. So again, as Jay was trading all these, complex securities with other traders on Wall Street he probably didn’t think that would be something that could help creators, but we found a way to use all of that here to really be the foundation of what we’re doing at Oversubscribe.

Yeah did it all down in the Bay Area. Moved out here about six years to New York. Love being out here on the East Coast. Was actually born out here, but never really lived in the city. So it’s been great being out here and building the company here. We actually have a small office right here in the heart of the city in Midtown.

And we’ve been hard of work on this in building this platform and this solution, here at Oversubscribe.

Jessy: So I would venture to say that the creator economy needs more people like you guys, right? Because while some people might be listening to all of that extensive experience and being like, but how does it tie in? Wait, there’s more. Because we’re gonna be telling you exactly more about what Oversubscribe does and how it perfectly ties into the creator economy.

But I would also venture to say we need more people like you guys. Why? Because I’m privy to lots of conversations on the creative side, right? Like especially, I’m a former talent manager myself, and I still coach managers to this day. And like managers are like the backbone in my opinion, of a lot of creator businesses.

They get to a certain point where they’re like, oh my gosh I can justify having management managers want me, and let’s do this together. But then a lot of managers get stuck in that I’m gonna negotiate and facilitate partnerships and lots of value there, tons of value there.

In fact, one can argue that’s like a majority of creator earnings for a significant amount of time. But what I hear from a lot of people is that cut to, the time that we’re in now and budgets are getting a little bit smaller and creators are just perhaps even wanting more and not putting all their eggs in one basket.

And so I’ve been privy to other conversations where managers in particular creators are like, how do I diversify? Like, how do I put my eggs in other baskets? How else could I monetize? How could I build community more so maximize my community more? All the things. And so when you and I connected through another member of Wiim and she recommended that we connect, shout out to Desiree.

I knew exactly why she put us in touch because we were telling me all about what you guys do. I was like, this is great and because it has to do with, getting money having your background, having your partner’s background is in integral. So I would love for you to tell us, I guess first, now that you’re in the creator economy, what do you love so much about it.

And tell us a little bit more about Oversubscribe. Cause I know everybody’s dying to hear.

Peter: Sure. It’s been an exciting time for us to really become part of the creator economy. Really dig into things here. And the thing that I like about it the most is just how innovative it is. So obviously, the creativity from the creators and all the different types of content, all the different concepts they bring to life through their content.

It’s always so exciting to see trends that we all see and that we all follow. And when you think about what goes into that, both from the product side, but also the content side it’s one of the most innovative places out there now that’s, being said by somebody who comes from a tech background who lived on Silicon Valley, but the amount of innovation and creativity from different creators of all sizes, it’s just always, a lot of fun to see.

And it’s a fun place to work and it’s always exciting to see from a business perspective as well. And, as we see that, we see again and again, more of the buzzword, the catchphrase we’ve all heard in this market is, creators are that new startups.

And we hear that, and that’s definitely part of it, that creators themselves are so innovative, that they’re so creative in what they do. Just like startups in the business world, they are bringing innovation and creativity into the world for new products that we can use. Creators are doing much the same thing in this world.

But beyond that, we think that the analogy of creators being the new startups, it has a lot of crossovers in the business world. And that’s really the principle that underlies our business here. So Oversubscribe, what we do is we help creators grow as a business through investment funding from their own fans on our Kickstarter-like platform.

So the idea here is we have a platform that on the surface, looks something like a Patreon or a Kickstarter or a GoFundMe where fans or other members of the public can come and invest, in that, creator and support them and create new content or hiring an editor or, planning a new line of merch and they can support them through that.

But different from anything else out there. This wouldn’t just be a one-way flow of money. It’s not a donation, it’s not charity. It’s not just for perks. But if that creator succeeds, the fans and the audience can succeed with them financially as well. So the way this works is the creator chooses to share a certain percentage of their, revenue they make, the money they make from their content, and the rest of their business as a creator for a certain number of years.

So it might be 10% of revenue, and then for a certain number of time. So that might be for five years or 3% of revenue for seven years, whatever it might be. The creator can choose those terms and then share that back to the supporters, and to the investors as their investment return.

As we got to know creators and in building this product we spoke with probably more than a hundred people, a hundred creators and folks in the creator economy, including Jessy as we were building out this product and seeing what the needs of creators were we saw again and again, were, one way to think about creators is they are a one-person startup, a one-person business. And, we’re out actually speaking with, VCs right now for our own company and looking to raise money for ourselves as well.

And one of the slides we put together for our presentation there, we took a look at all the roles, a typical YouTuber might play, just as one example. And when we broke it down, we were able to identify 19 different roles that a single YouTuber might play. So that might be anything from, onscreen talent to the scriptwriter for their videos, to the editor, to a graphic designer to make the thumbnail and the transitions everything to negotiating brand deals with companies and reviewing agreements and then if they’re selling merch, they’re managing a Shopify store and being a merchandiser there. Everyone takes it for granted that, creators can do this and do this well, but if you step back, it’s pretty amazing. These are 19 different roles that at a production studio that was making content, it would probably n be 19 different people playing all these roles.

But creators are amazing folks in that they’re able to learn these things and do these all themselves. But the insight that we saw was just like startups as creators start to grow, their needs start to change. And things that they can handle when they were smaller and might not be things that work for them when they get bigger are on the flip side, as they grow bigger and increase in their audience or subscriber count, they might be presented with new opportunities where if they had some money and some capital upfront, they could really take advantage of those opportunities, for their audience, and with their audience and really get a high return on that investment if they have the capital upfront.

From what we’ve seen for most creators out there, the big thing is that the sources of funding right now that are available to creators are suboptimal in a lot of ways. Most creators, when they think about it, if we use the startup analogy, there are two ways for you to fund a business.

One would be through getting outside funding, whether that’s a loan or whether that’s, money from a venture capitalist or angels. The other way is to bootstrap yourself, as they say in the startup world. That’s to use the money you make and the money you earn and save that up and then spend that on your expenses when you’ve had enough saved.

And that’s a very viable way to do it. It’s the safest way to do it. But as we all know, that might mean you miss some opportunities that you see in front of you or that you might have needs that you aren’t able to cover right now. But if you were able to, for example, as a YouTuber, hire an editor to take that 15 to 28 hours a week, and free those up so you could do other things.

You might be able to grow more quickly if you had that capital upfront. So right now, there are more donation-based platforms like Patreon or Kickstarter or the tip-based solutions, and speaking with more than a hundred creators and folks in the creator economy.

We heard some level of discomfort with that system, and everybody kind of recognized the one-way flow of cash there. Most creators we spoke with were a little sheepish in terms of offering that up to their audience. Just recognizing that fact and then we saw the response, wasn’t always what people hoped for there, and then in terms of other alternatives, you can’t really still walk into a Chase Bank branch to get a small business loan as a creator, even though creators, as we’re saying, are really small businesses. It’s just one person, but it’s a really small business with revenue and expenses and, with different assets that you have as part of that business.

But bankers still haven’t learned that business and haven’t found a way to underwrite those loans yet. So we’ve even spoken with very successful creators with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and they actually tried to get a bank loan, a small business loan, to fund some things they were looking to do with their content and that didn’t work for them.

We’ve come in with this solution where, we know that there are creators who could benefit from and are looking for funding to help them to do all different kinds of things, which we can talk about in a second, Jessy. But what we can do is help them raise that money, and give the returns back to the people who care about them the most.

And that’s their own fans who are already invested in them with their time, already invested in them emotionally, and wanna support them in their growth cause that growth already benefits those fans and that audience because they’ll get new content, better content, maybe more content, maybe more ways to engage with their favorite creator.

So these are the folks who can and want to support their favorite creator. And we found a good way to balance that equation in terms of the flow of money where the fans can support their favorite creator. But if that creator goes and succeeds wildly through that investment, the fans and the investors can share in that success as well.

Cuz everybody has a story of, a donation-based kind of campaign, whether that’s a Kickstarter or kind of a membership-based campaign or, something for perks where they put money in, and then the creator or that product business went on to make millions of dollars. But because, it wasn’t a true investment maybe the only thing that the supporter got was this T-shirt, right?

We wanna balance that equation a little better for everybody and in a way that really excites everyone, where everyone feels good about it. And that’s really what we’re looking to do here at Oversubscribe.

Jessy: I just think it’s the coolest concept because I have been on both ends of it. Cuz also just like a fan, as a subscriber to someone’s channel, I wanna be able to support them in a more meaningful way and also feel more connected to them. Also, be a part of their journey. That would be the coolest thing ever for some of the people that I like really fangirl over.

And so I think it’s important to just take off our industry hat sometimes and put on the hat if I’m just another follower. I’m a consumer of this content too. And what would that experience be like for me? So I can rattle off a few people just quickly off the top of my head that I’m like, if they offered something like this like I would totally sign up because it checks a few boxes for me.

I think as a 36-year-old woman I’m also looking for like, how do I more wisely invest my money. And I believe in the creator economy, and if I follow certain people that I like, am obsessed with their content, like I believe in them. And it’s twofold, right? Because I think of it as Here’s my support.

So that’s like the GoFundMe part, right? Here’s my money in support, but also I fancy myself like somewhat financially savvy and I would like to invest in you as well. So then there’s that potential for return because I’ve identified someone that I think is really maybe gonna pop off or could really change their business if I had the opportunity to support maybe this one aspect of it, and I see that a lot with certain creators where all creators started zero followers, all creators start without management. All creators start. Basically from the same place. And, not all creators have the resources to be able to grow quickly as some others ones.

And so I think that also fundamentally, it’s a really great tool that I really, truly believe will improve the creator economy because it’s giving them faster and like really powerful access to be able to like, amplify their own businesses in ways that I don’t necessarily know that they thought were possible before. I am such a believer in it. Yeah. Did you wanna chime in? I wanna hear what you have to say about that part.

Peter: Yeah. We appreciate that Jessy and it’s always great to hear that from you and the folks. We’ve met through you and, this isn’t just an idea Jay and I sat down and thought up here in our office, but this really resonates with creators for sure. 

And in particular, we think, the folks you’ve brought together in WIIM in this community, we’ve built, these are some of our favorite people to talk to, which is why I’m so excited to be here and that they in some ways even more fully understand the problem we’re solving. And the unique way we’re solving it even more so than an individual creator because, managers or influencer marketing folks, they see a broad spectrum of folks and they have a broad view of the industry and they see, creators and influencers in all different kinds of situations, and they understand the needs because they have a much larger sample size.

So we found that speaking with managers and working with managers in some ways, is a great way for us to work with creators in that, part of the reason we’ve built this product. But also part of the reason, we’re looking to meet creators in different ways is we recognize creators, aren’t necessarily natural business people on their own, even though it’s so impressive that so many of them build, significant revenue just through AdSense and just through brand incoming brand deals or maybe in selling merch, that they don’t know necessarily every aspect of business or every aspect of finance, and they shouldn’t need to necessarily, because that’s not really what’s gonna differentiate them in the market. In the end.

It’s really their content and what they’re bringing to their fans and what they’re bringing, to the world in terms of their content here. But in terms of what we can do, we love speaking with the managers cause they’ve built a trusted relationship with the creators they work with and the creators trust them on the business front to understand these concepts that we’re, bringing to them.

And then to help them make a decision. So we found, had very productive conversations with managers. We love speaking with them cuz we can oftentimes go a level deeper in our conversations with them than, the conversations we have with certain types of creators as well. So that’s part of the reason I’m excited to be here.

But in terms of what we’re doing and how we can help creators, there are so many ways that creators can use the money, that we’re helping them to raise. And it’s just really just limited by your creativity. In some ways, creators don’t think of these options because they think of themselves still more as, an individual and more as a consumer, when in fact, they can be thinking about themselves as a business that they’re looking to build.

And the great thing now these days in the creator economy here is they have great examples to look to about what that looks like. When you look at, for example, Mr. Beast or The Try Guys, they aren’t doing it on their own.

They’re getting outside help to do that. They aren’t just using, just playing through the algorithm, but they’re really thinking about how they’re putting the content out and doing some analysis there. They’re upgrading their equipment, for example, or they’re hiring freelancers and they’re hiring a team.

They’re building out products to build out additional revenue streams or a course or merch or, there are all different ways. So really what you’re just limited by there is your creativity, but if you can think of ways that are gonna increase your own productivity as a creator or if there are ways to think where you might be able to stand up new revenue streams, some outside funding might make sense.

And again, if your fans are gonna benefit from that. For example, even hiring an editor, most people think, oh, that’s just money that’s going out the door. But in the end, if the purpose here is to free up that 15 to 20 hours for you, so then the editor can help you actually get shorts up on TikTok, which has been so hard for you to do, just cuz you’re so limited with your own time.

But also might mean you could post your long-form videos more frequently up your frequency of posting from once a week or once every 10 days to maybe twice a week. And then you could actually start speaking with brands on an outreach basis rather than, just waiting for incoming deals.

This could free up to do a lot. So even in thinking of something like that, like an editor where you think mostly of the cost, that could really help you to grow as a creator and grow as a business. We have all different kinds of use cases for folks, we speak with. And a lot of the time the easiest way to think about it is if you just think, oh, if I had the money I would do this. And I know it’d have a huge effect on me.

And if you’re waiting to save up for it, this might be a way to accelerate that process for you, just like with a startup. And then also help you to take advantage of the opportunities you see right now, which might not always be there. Because this is a fast-moving world, as we said about what we love about. It’s so innovative. 

But the flip side of that is in an innovation kind of world, things move quickly and they change quickly and you gotta strike while you’re hot as well. So we wanna help people to do that and help them as businesses to grow in that way.

And even when we take a step back, we are a mission-driven business here as a company. So even broader than just this platform that we’ve built are the ways we try to help creators. we wanna help everybody we work with reach their full potential regardless of what they’re starting off from, regardless of their socioeconomic situation. And that’s really the mission here at Oversubscribe.

We definitely try to do that, obviously with the creators we work with and even with their audience who’s helping to invest in them. That’s also how we think about things with our team or folks we partner with. Or, people we’re working with in other ways. But that’s definitely what we’re trying to do for creators.

And we know creators are coming from all different kinds of backgrounds, all different levels of experience. So one thing that helps to level that playing field is this funding. If somebody’s coming from a life situation or a background where they might not have a lot of money in the bank, or they might not have family money, who can help them to pay some of these expenses, that would really help them to accelerate their career.

They have another group of people out there who wanna support them, and that’s this audience that they’ve worked so hard to build. So working together with their audience, they can raise that funding to help them to grow in a way that might not be available otherwise. But the other thing we’ve built I do wanna get to here, Jessy, is the second part of our solution is not just the fundraising platform.

So in speaking to that, more than a hundred creators spoke in building the product. Another big need we heard was people saying, this is fantastic. I can think of so many ways I could use money that I raise and I think it’s really gonna help me. But I still have a lot of questions about, that growth you’re talking about growing as a business and reaching the next level as a creator and reaching my full potential.

There are still holes in my knowledge here and I would really love some guidance here, some advice some mentorship on how to get to that X level. I might have 10,000 subscribers right now. I could see from the outside what, the people with a hundred thousand subscribers or a million subscribers are doing.

From the outside, but I don’t necessarily know what steps they’re taking behind the scenes to get there. Can you help me with that? So we heard that loud and clear. What we’ve done is actually built out something for after you raise the money, and that’s what we call our network of creator mentors.

And these are really top-tier folks from the creator economy who are some of the best at what they do. And they’re helping our folks in all different kinds of areas. And it’s really here to, kind of compliment and augment if they’re working with the manager already. It really augments the role of the manager, and really helps to fill in some of the blanks.

Really helps the manager to really focus on what they do best. While we help the creator to fill in some of that baseline knowledge that’s gonna help them reach the next level. For example, we have some folks who, are some of the best at producing YouTube content out there.

They’re actually two, OG YouTube creators, and they’ve set up a content studio called BMP Creative, which those YouTube content for all kinds of folks. But just to give you a sense of how good they are. They’re the folks who do all of Netflix’s YouTube content. So anything on the Netflix channel, on YouTube, that’s not like a trailer from the studio, but that’s like a reaction video or an interview with a celebrity or any of the fun creative videos they do.

That’s all coming from our friends at BMP who are now on board and our creator mentors for the creators who work with us and really giving them tips and tricks about how to build great content on YouTube and how to reach that next level as a creator. 

We also have, folks who can help with brand deals, not in a way that really conflicts with anything a manager would do but we have somebody named Keeley who, was at an agency before and has done deals with both large creators and small creators.

The micro-influencers, the smallest 10,000 subscribers, but also the macro influencer. She’s done deals for Charli D’Amelio and Bella Porch, so two of the top three on TikTok. So she’s just really helping those folks that come in with, wanting to sharpen their brand strategy or maybe for somebody without representation, just trying to get a better sense for how to navigate the brand world and really helping them to figure out what kind of brands to focus on and how to speak with those brands.

And we’ve had her meet with managers as well, and that’s always been a super productive conversation cuz they could put their heads together, and maybe think of new ideas, that just the creator and the manager can’t think of on their own.

So those are just two of our sets of, creator mentors. We also have folks helping with longer-term strategy for a channel or an account. We have very experienced creators, who have millions of subscribers who are helping our creators get to where they are out of their own experience. We’re really excited about being able to help creators in this way.

We’re not just here to help creators, raise that money. And then, we would walk away having made our money and leaving creators on their own. We’re here to see creators succeed long-term. We wanna do everything we can to set them up to do that. That includes putting a lot of work into building out this top-tier network of creator mentors to really put creators on a path to success, to really change the trajectory of their careers and the time they work with us.

Jessy: I love the mentorship piece so much because like you said, it could be easy for you guys to just say, up, we built this product, we’re helping you guys fund, and like Bon voyage. Enjoy, good luck to you. So I think it really speaks to like the, I don’t know, the character of you guys and like your company that you’re also thinking more holistically and, so influencers are coming to you guys for more than one thing.

They’re coming to you guys really just for an elevation of their business and for business support. And I think that I don’t know, I can speak personally too, like when I first got into business, didn’t really think about the team as much, and I don’t think influencers necessarily think like that.

If anything, they think I don’t know, I get a manager and that’s my team. And I think that’s, a common misconception because everybody ideally should be specialized in their area of expertise and come to the table as a team member. 

And so for you guys, I think of you as the team member for growth, the team member for, financial growth very specifically, but also, with this mentorship program, it’s really incredible that they’re also able to learn from others who have paved the way for them.

And a lot of it just sounds like they’re being given access to so many things through you guys, which I just think is a very powerful thing. 

So let’s talk about this though like assume that I know nothing about Oversubscribe and I’m a creator, I’m like, all right, this sounds great.

Like I’ll press the I believe button, like this sounds awesome. Let’s do it. So what can creators expect when they opt-in to Oversubscribe? 

And, there are a lot of managers listening to this as well. So what can they expect when they opt-in? What are the first steps? What do they see?

Peter: Yeah. So right now, we are very much focused on the creator and we look to provide a really kind of white glove experience for them. We would get on a Zoom call with them actually and just find out where they are as a creator, look to get to know them, what their goals are and what their needs are, and what steps they’re looking to take.

And they might not necessarily have in mind, how they wanna spend money, but most creators we talk to have a sense of what’s holding them back or what they, would do, if they had more resources, or what the hardest part about being a creator is for them right now.

For example, I would say in terms of, the earliest creators we’re working with a lot of them, it really is that they’re YouTubers who are saying editing just takes so much of my time. And, people who aren’t in the YouTube world, don’t realize how detailed and how painstaking this editing process is. They think it’s like, doing a collage in PowerPoint that just animates things, but it’s a very detailed process.

So the numbers we heard are like 15 to 20 hours a week for 15 to 20-minute videos that I’m posting weekly. So that takes on most of your free time outside your normal job if you’re an up-and-coming creator.

So these folks will tell us what they’re struggling with and what their needs are, and then we’ll figure out then what they may be, might be able to raise money for and where they may be able to use that money together.

If it’s for an editor, we can help them to raise whether it’s $10,000 to do it for a few months or $20,000 or even more to do that.

And then we’ll also, if they need help getting connected to one we have resources there to help connect them as well to do something like that.

So the first part is just to get on a call with us and get to know one another. We like to answer any questions that the creator or their manager has about us and about what we’re doing and why we’re doing and how we’re doing it. But also we just love getting to know creators cuz every creator’s so unique and their stories are so unique.

And we love just getting to know them even regardless of whether we work together or not. Cuz we learn a lot from every one of those conversations. So we would love to speak with anybody who’s interested, even if they’re trying to figure out if this is something that fits their needs or not.

But one thing we have found in all those conversations we’ve had with creators is a lot of them would say this to me. They would say, Peter, this sounds amazing. We think you’re gonna be a huge success. And I think a lot of creators are gonna work with you and they’ll see a lot of success with their audiences.

But I’m not sure if my own audience is gonna go for this, cuz we have a very. Good relationship. They trust me a lot. We have a very special relationship, so I have to be very careful about the financial, kind of things that I bring to them. I’m not sure how they’re gonna respond I wanna be a little cautious here.

Now, the funny thing is that we hear that from all kinds of creators, even the most successful creators. And one of our, creator mentors, and one of our advisors actually, he spoke to us and he said it’s a paradox actually. A lot of creators are actually very conservative in their business decisions, even though they’ve taken this high-risk career path or undertaking this high-risk undertaking.

Now, the reason being, they know they’re one of one and, what they’re doing very much depends on their relationship with their audience and on the brand they’ve built. And they don’t wanna put that at risk, which is exactly the right way to think about that.

So rather than trying to convince people otherwise, what we said is okay, let’s, try to address that question. And the way we’ve done that is through something we call our audience interest poll. So this is a website we help put up together with the creator where the creator themselves says in their own voice, both in text and in a, maybe in a video if they want to, they would just say, hey, I’m looking to, do a new type of content.

Maybe I wanna do some travel content and I need some money for that. Or, hey, I’m looking to hire an editor so you guys can get more TikTok and more shorts and I could put out more content by freeing up some time for you guys. Or, Hey, I’m looking to do more live meetups with you. Or, hey, I’m looking to launch this new line of merch and I’m looking to see if you guys would wanna support that.

But the great thing now is I, got to know this company called Oversubscribe, and different from anything else out there if you actually support me on Oversubscribe, it won’t just be a one-way flow of money like it is on platforms we know, and have tried to use before. If you support me through Oversubscribe, if I succeed, you can succeed financially as well because I will share some of the money I make back to you as your investment return.

And then they just ask the question, are you interested in supporting me in this way? Yes or no? And then they get a sense then for if their audience is willing to support them. And the audience can also give, their best guess at the dollar amount. They would invest if they want to, but they can also say they’re not comfortable sharing that right now.

And all of this is additional data then for the creator to figure out whether to move forward with this, investment offering that we call a creator public offering a CPO, like an IPO for a creator. And the idea then would be, the creator might say, ah, I’m actually not sure if the support’s there right now to raise the money I’m looking to raise.

Or actually, we might say, hey, we’re not sure if that level of support is really gonna help you raise enough money to hire that editor right now. Why don’t you try these two or three things for the next few months and then we can circle back and see if that’s the time that’s right for you? But more likely where we end up is, we would say, hey, both us and the creator would say, Hey, these numbers are great.

Actually, the creators we work with, they’ve been very encouraged by this process. Cuz you don’t get a lot of this kind of feedback from, your audience or your subscribers, in terms of the depth of their engagement, how much they might, will be willing to invest in you to support you like this?

So creator’s been very encouraged by that process, but the most likely outcome is we sit down together afterward and we say, hey, this looks like it could work. And then we can also then set the amount of money the creator will try to raise and what the different purposes for that are, and then we can move forward with that extra data.

So that’s called our audience interest poll that we run, as a very low-risk low commitment way for a creator to see if this might work with their audience. And the great thing is because they don’t talk about dollar amounts, they don’t talk about a percentage of revenue or anything, they don’t even have to mention it to their fans.

Again, if they don’t, they’re not seeing the support they wanna see or they can just say, Hey we talked with Oversubscribe, it didn’t seem like it was the right time, so we’ll see if it’s the right time later for this and just move on from it. So we give, kind of creators and their managers a really low-risk way to really see if we’re the right solution for them through this audience interest poll.

So, anyone who’s interested, we’d encourage you just to get in touch with us and have that conversation on Zoom and see if it makes sense to run this poll just to see what the level of interest is out there. And in some ways, it’s just a great way to engage with the fans cuz we ask for email addresses.

A lot of times folks don’t even get that information through other channels, but people are very willing to share it. Through something like this. And it might build a foundation for creators to engage with their folks in other ways as well. So the audience interest poll is a key part of our process for the creator to really address some of those questions, maybe some of those fears they have about whether would this work in a very low-risk way.

So we always do that first. Even the agreement you, sign with the creator, and their team would just be for that audience interest poll first. If it doesn’t work out the way people hope, then that’s it. No more commitment.

But then if the results are great there, then we would sign another agreement to move ahead with the creator public offering.

And the important thing to note here is, we hold the creator and their team’s hand all the way through the process. So before the CPO and during the CPO, during that investment fundraise and after the C P O, we are working intimately with the creator, managing that process and guiding them through the process.

So all the documents you need before. The CPO, we have those documents on hand ready for the creators to use. You don’t have to hire a lawyer separately from this. You can use those documents and review those and use those to raise the funding. We help the creators to set up an LLC. That’s the vehicle for fundraising.

And the important thing to note here is, the way we do it, we’re not using crypto. We’re not, just throwing up a solution to do this. We went through a very long process with the SEC to make this a regulated investment platform.

So because of that, you can have some security in knowing this is fully regulated. This is not an unregulated Web3 kind of solution, but we’re a fully regulated solution where we happily set up a company if you don’t have that already. If you have an LLC already, we can work with that as well.

And these investments happen, just like you would invest in any other company and the returns come outta that company in the way it would too, for any other business.

And then after the CPO, after you’ve raised the money and after you’ve invested them the things you’re hoping to invest in your career and starting to see those returns that revenue share that goes back to your investors, we can manage that for you as well on the backend. So you’re not sitting at your kitchen table writing checks to your fans in Malaysia.

We can handle all that for you through kind of the flow of funds through the company. So to your question, Jessy, It’s a very, guided process. Again creators shouldn’t be worried about the complexity here. We try to make it about as easy for them as a Patreon in the end because we do allow the work for them so we can help them to raise the money.

We can give them a way to find out whether it’s right for them through our audience interest poll in a very low-risk way. And then after the fundraiser, they’ll have the funding to invest in their career, and then they’ll also get access to our whole network of creator mentors who, in addition to the money, can help them to change the trajectory of their careers.

Jessy: I’m so into it. I was actually gonna ask you, that, about what you mentioned last. I’m happy that you touched on it. Cause I was like, okay, so after you raise all this money, how do you track all the payments back and that sounded like a nightmare.

So the fact that you guys handle that as well, okay, that makes me, that puts me more at ease. So the process itself, I’m curious about, because I can imagine that, you have this finite period of time. I’m curious how long it is, but then once you are like raising these funds, It’s like a really exciting time in a very pivotal time. 

So I can imagine that if you’re halfway through and maybe you’re not seeing the results that you wanted, for example, as a creator, I would be like, maybe I need to, put a reel out or some stories to explain it better or put it out there even more.

You can adjust as you’re raising funds. So I’d love to hear how the period of time that you’re raising looks how much visibility I have into it and how long it is also.

Peter: Sure. These are all fantastic questions that they’re the right questions to ask from a practical perspective. So in terms of, raising your funding, because we are fully regulated, there is some process around that. And it has to be at least 21 days. And we could work with the creator and their team on how many days within that 21 days, things are available to the public, and what that looks like.

But we have to keep it open for 21 days at least, and that’s usually the right amount of time. Because what we found is a big thing here is the creator is the one promoting this to their own audience. Because again, if I came on and, if you showed some ads with our team on it the audience would be like, who are these guys?

Why should I do this? But the creator’s the one promoting it and encouraging their folks to support them, because, the fans, not only will they get an investment return, they’ll also get more and new, better content or merch or whatever it might be. And another part of it is also for the fans, we also encourage the creators to also offer perks as well.

The big thing here is, we don’t want the fans who are supporting their creator here to just think about this as a financial transaction for them to see, the creator just as this financial person on the other side of the table. That they’re trying to work with here.

But we want this to be everybody rowing in the same direction, a way for the fans to support their favorite creator. So we encourage the creator to also offer exclusive perks through the CPO as well. And why don’t I just show you this, Jesse, actually, I think we can do a screen share here of one of the CPOs we actually did here.

So this is a creator who’s one of our early CPOs, who actually, as you can see here on the page, it says he successfully was able to raise the money he was looking to raise. So this is Mike Zacharin. His, channel is called Team Hold on, YouTube. And he’s a live streamer and a daily streamer.

But unlike most streamers, he’s not a gaming streamer. What Mike streams about every day is the NBA in basketball. He’s really built a really loyal and really engaged, community of folks around his daily stream. Sometimes he’ll stream two or three times a day.

And we first spoke with Mike. He had about 6,500 subscribers, on his YouTube channel, which is actually probably a little smaller than generally what we look to target. We look to target and help people who are already making some money both on AdSense and through some brand deals. And Mike did have that already, and we found later on as we worked with him, streaming numbers are different than regular YouTube channel numbers because the folks are much more engaged.

But Mike had about 6,500 subscribers when we first met him. And what he was looking to do was, hire an editor. So Mike has tons of footage, because he is streaming every day, sometimes two or three times a day. He was up and coming in the time when TikTok really took off and YouTube shorts now are really taken off.

And he had all this footage that would make for fantastic shorts cuz Mike himself is actually, a standup comedian and has trained in improv. So he’s really great on camera and he has a lot of funny stuff, but he just didn’t have necessarily the skills himself or the time, to really go through all the footage and pull out the clips that would make for great shorts.

And he’s also looking to do new types of content as well. He could do longer form stuff as well and hasn’t had the time or the resources to do that, or the editor, so an editor and, some other resources will help with that as well. And then he’s also looking to do some meetups, with his folks as well.

So all that together came to about $25,000 he was looking to raise. So we’re very transparent about how we make money and how we’re trying to help creators here. So our fee is a little less than 9%, 8.9%. So for Mike’s fundraise of $25,000, that came out to about 2,442 here.

So the big thing to note there with our fee is, the creator doesn’t pay that out of pocket upfront. That actually gets added to the amount of the fundraiser. So that’s why it’s this weird number here, and not just a flat 25,000. It’s $27,442 the mic was raising. And we only receive that if the creator succeeds.

So everyone’s, incentives are aligned here. We’re all working together to make sure this is a successful fundraiser. So Mike had it open for about 21 days, as we talked about, and he was able to raise the full amount. In the end, he had over 70 investors from his own, audience who invested. And when you look at those numbers, He had about 6,500 when he started.

As we got into the fundraiser, it was about 7,500 or so. So it was about 1% of his folks ended up investing to raise that $25,000. That is 27,000, including our fees. So if you think about somebody who has a larger audience it might be looking to raise that same amount. It’s a very small percentage of, the folks who invest in your offering.

For example, if you’re raising $50,000 and people invest, a hundred dollars a piece, you would only need 500 members of your audience to invest. And if you’re somebody who has a YouTube channel with 50,000 subscribers or 500,000 subscribers, it’s a very small percentage of your total folks who need to invest even with those small amounts.

So Mike had this open for 21 days. And we saw, kind of his progress for the progress bar here. So obviously we just have the end result here. we were able to track it and there’s data on the backend that the creator saw as well, even in terms of, the amounts came in coming in from different investors and what that looked like.

And what we saw there is that the more the creator actually encouraged their folks to do this that’s really when the investments came in. So, Mike, he’d mentioned it on a stream, not every single time, but many times on a stream. He’d mention it and remind folks he’d pin the link to this, team hold. oversubscribe.co, page for people to take a look at.

He actually made a longer form video that people could refer back to that gave all the information and we noticed every time. He mentioned it, or when he put up the video, we’d see people come in every time. So just like anything else in life, every time you mention and remind people are busy.

So they might not do it the first time, but every time you remind them and mention more and more people come in, that’s really the power here and the power of the relationship that the creator has with the audience. Mike was able to raise the full amount here.

To your question, Jessy was open for 21 days. He was able to track it as it went in terms of what the terms looked like. Something that’s unique to our platform, which makes it more like Patreon, versus kind of some of the other, alternatives out there is that the creator can actually choose their own terms. So we work with them and give them financial projections, and different choices about terms that they would wanna choose.

But then the creator knows their audience best. They know what kind of numbers will work for them. And again, we’re not trying to make this a purely financial investment for the audience.

As you can see here, Mike also offered some exclusive perks. He had an investor-only badge. He had an exclusive Discord channel.

Mike has Discord for his whole community, even when we met him. Of the 6,500 subscribers, there were 2,500 people, in his discord. So he made another smaller exclusive Discord channel just for the investors here. He has a monthly happy hour, I think, he’s doing it on Zoom, where he gives them updates on the business and where he answers their questions.

And this is actually what a lot of people are excited about as well, this additional time they get with their friend Mike in all these different ways. Again, this badge is unique. So forever going forward, there’ll be a foundational investor for Mike, and people will know that as well. And even when they get together, they’ll have their own event.

So in addition to the 13.5% of revenue that Mike chose to share for three years across all his revenue as a creator, he also offered these perks, which his fans loved as well. So Mike is one of our up-and-coming creators that we’re working with. That’s our product called CPO Accelerate, really for that emerging creator who might have, let’s say, 10,000 to 300,000 subscribers on YouTube, depending on the type of content.

And depending on, what their level of engagement and community is with their own fans. but then we also have another, product called CPO platinum. So that’s really for your more established creator. So with our Accelerate product, you know that revenue shares across all your revenue as a creator because the money that goes in as this investment really helps you to build up your brand across all your different monetization streams.

And we don’t know really where the bumps gonna come in. So the investors who are contributing to that and really helping to make that happen should see a return across those efforts. So that’s revenue that’s shared across all, the creator revenue, but also these are the folks who really benefit Most from and are most excited about our network of mentors, that they can work with. on the flip side, the CPO Platinum product, that’s really for a more established creator. So let’s call that 300,000 and up again, depending, on the amount of money they’re making, how long they’ve been doing it, the amount of their amount of, engagement with their folks.

And really it was, for somebody like this, it doesn’t make sense for them to share all the revenue that they’re making because they’ve done all the work, for these big monetization streams that they’ve already built up. That doesn’t make a ton of sense to share all that revenue with an investor who just came into it now.

But what this is for is really more for project-based financing. So if a creator’s looking to do an entirely new form of, content, maybe a long-form video or a long-form movie that they’re looking to do, or if they’re looking to stand up a product, maybe like a sports drink, they’re looking to stand up and they need some capital for that.

Or if they’re locked looking to start a new business, this is a way for them to finance that project from the support of their own fans in a way that might be, a little better for them financially, but also, builds more engagement with their own fans. So for example if this sports drink had I’m holding up a bottle of Prime for the audio listeners.

So if KSI and Logan Paul had instead of using money they had saved in the bank or bank loans, I’m not sure exactly how they financed it, but if instead, they’d done a CPO Platinum offering for their own fans to really invest in Prime, those fans would be even more invested in the success of Prime, which early was crazy.

I think we heard they were selling for $300 on eBay when it first launched. But not only would they support it with their own consumption, but the folks who are invested might be even bigger evangelists of that product. Would wanna see it succeed even more because they’re actual investors as well.

There are ways for creators to finance new projects, new ways they’re looking to grow not just as a creator but as a business person or in their career, through the CPO Platinum project-based financing. And only the revenues from that project would be shared back with the investors in that project.

We have products here that can help all kinds of creators both the emerging creator Up and coming creator, but also the very established creator. This is the page on the CPO. Again, you can take a look at it yourself. If you wanna take a look closer, look at the details. The URL.

Here’s it pulled up a longer one, but it’s Teamhold.oversubscribe.co. And then here, I just wanted to show you again that AIP, that audience interest poll I mentioned before. This is a creator we’re working on right now named Imani Bell. Her name is Lil Chaos on her channel, she is a gaming streamer and she actually streams on Facebook, and Amani’s fantastic on camera.

She does Fortnite and some other games here. And she’s also looking to raise money for some similar things. Like Mike. She wants to hire an editor to improve the quality of her videos and do more short-form stuff. Again, tons of footage as a streamer. She’s looking to do more long-form stuff on YouTube and do some more meetups with her folks as well.

So on this AIP, she doesn’t say how much she’s raising. Or what the revenue share terms are for how many million years. She just says I’m looking to do these things with you guys, and for you guys, do you wanna support me in that? And hey, I’m working with these people at Oversubscribe where, you know, instead of, money flowing one way it’s a real financial investment and if I succeed, you succeed as well, and you’ll receive a share of the revenues that I make from these things that you’re supporting.

Are you interested? They just click on this. You can just say who you are as a yes, and it’s not even required, but if you wanna share with Amani how much you might invest, that helps her to plan for her CPO down the road. So just wanted to show you that as well, because we mentioned that as well.

So yeah, this is the really low-risk way for a creator to see if their folks are interested in supporting them in this way. And then things move forward. It goes back to that CPO page where it’s a fundraiser. 

Jessy: I love the explanation. I appreciate it. It’s also like really great to see. So if any of you guys are only listening on audio, just check out our YouTube and if you’re listening on Spotify, this is such a cool thing that Spotify actually just launched this year, which is that you can watch the video on Spotify, which is really cool.

And I’ve been enjoying seeing you click through all this to just like really get a sense, like a feel for what the actual process is. This is a serious thing. Like we’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars if not more than that.

And, I wanna see what the process is and it looks really great. I also think it’s important to think from the consumer, like the fan, the follower, subscriber, or whatever you wanna call it, from their perspective. What do they see and how does it feel to them because you wanna make sure that they feel comfortable with it and not just even comfortable.

I think the value prop of this is getting them excited because they’re not just supporting you. I think that that’s the thing that keeps sticking in my head. Its support is amplified because you’re also getting something in exchange for it. 

I’ve worked on, like the PTA of my kids’ school, right? And so I’ve been at the forefront of fundraising. And it feels to me so difficult to do. Why? Because it feels like I’m begging for money, and I think that this sounds so appealing and attractive because it’s not just begging for money.

If you succeed, they will get a cut of that. So it’s very mutually beneficial, more equally weighted. And I think that’s really new. And then I appreciate also that you brought up before how it’s not crypto-based, it’s not Web3 based because this concept isn’t necessarily new.

I’m most familiar with it. I think I’m exclusively familiar with it from the Web3 lens. And I feel like that just adds a whole other level of complexity to it, that people might feel uncomfortable. If they wanna invest in your business but they’re not comfortable with crypto. That shouldn’t be the barrier to entry because you’ll lose a ton of people simply cuz they’re like, Ooh, crypto.

That to me immediately equals a scam, which I don’t think it does, but that’s a conversation for a whole other time. But the point is that like you don’t have that level in this. And which I think is again, like you want the bear to entry to be low. You want people to feel comfortable with it.

And not just comfortable, but like actually excited to invest to understand it. One of my final questions too, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you this. I wanna know if you can give us an exclusive preview of what’s on your roadmap and what’s upcoming.

Peter: Sure. Two exciting things I could talk about. One, we’ve actually brought on a couple more mentors just recently who we think are really exciting folks. I can’t really share their names right now quite yet. But I will say they’re very well-known in the YouTube world. One of them actually, ran an account for YouTube that was very creator-facing and is very well-known to a certain generation of creators.

We’re excited to be working with him to help our creators to succeed. Another one of them, just recently was featured by YouTube and worked together with one of YouTube’s creator-facing accounts, to really help creators do certain things.

These are folks who are deeply embedded in both short and long-form videos who can really help our creators who are on YouTube or who are doing other forms of content on Instagram or TikTok or wherever they might be made that transition to YouTube, which in the end we’re finding is where everybody wants to be long term, just because the monetization is so good on YouTube because it’s a stable platform because there are not concerns in other fronts beyond the content there.

So we’ve really beefed up our YouTube side of things. We’ve brought on these folks who can really help our, creators to really succeed there and really give them a boost as they look to grow there. The second thing I can really share with you here is we are, standing up a program now we’ve had it, but we’re really boosting it more now, even that.

And it’s perfect timing in terms of our conversation with you. We have something where we have a very exclusive program for managers because as I was saying here earlier, as we’ve worked with creators, we found that for the creators who have managers, both the manager and the creator and us, we find it to be a deeper conversation that we’re able to have with them, but also much more efficient.

Because with many of the creators we work with, we spend time walking them through all the concepts, the financial-related concepts, the business-related concepts, and we’re always happy to do that. We have materials prepared for them where we can walk them through all that.

What we found in speaking with a manager they get what we’re doing much more quickly. They understand the needs because they see it across more people, and then they can bring that to their client, to their creator. And because they have that trusted relationship, the creator, will buy into it, based on that recommendation in many cases. So we love working with managers.

We love speaking with them, just getting their input even on what we’re doing. So we wanted to make a special program for managers to feel excited about working with us. So we started something we called our early agency program, our EAP where managers who come to us, particularly through this year, today we have a special offer where, we would give them a percentage, of our fee, just to get them more excited about working with us and make it worth their while to speak with us when, we go through that CPO.

But also any of their clients that they bring to us, would get kicked up to the top of our waiting list here. So we’re very excited to be able to talk about that here. Just given the community you’ve built here, Jessy, that both with, managers in particular, and the agencies they work with, we can offer a special program for them where we can really, accelerate their clients through this process and also make it there are incentives for the agencies as well.

Very excited to talk about that here. I’m sure we can share more details with the full community when we get the chance here. But anybody who reaches out to us, you can email me. personally. My email address is p@oversubscribe.co or you can also just email info@oversubscribe.co.

If you just mentioned that you’re with an agency or you’re a manager, and you heard about this new program we’re rolling out, through WIIM we’re happy to get you into that program and move your client to the top list.

Jessy: I love a good sort of exclusive offer for our community and I know our members do too, so we appreciate that very much. And I’m excited for them to reach out. So you guys, I’m gonna list all of their social, their website, the whole nine, in our show notes. So take a peek there. I’ll reiterate Peter’s email address and all that.

It’ll be there so you won’t miss it. I highly encourage you guys to check out Oversubscribe. It is in my opinion, the answer that a lot of people have been looking for. 

Brand partnerships aren’t always gonna be there. Brand partnerships al always aren’t going to increase year over year.

And I just think it’s also so smart to diversify your eggs, put them in multiple baskets, and also it’s like such a powerful give back to your community. Your community might be really stoked to do something like this, so give them what they’re looking for. Peter, thank you so so so much for joining today.

It’s been such a pleasure, getting to know you a little bit better. And also, of course, like seeing all the cool stuff that you’re doing over and Oversubscribe. We will be keeping a close eye on all of your success, and thank you so much for being here.

Peter: Yeah. Thank you so much, Jessy. It was fantastic to be on here. We’re also so excited to see, what you’ve built and what you’re doing with WIIM and the community you’ve built there. So excited to be here and excited to get to know that community better, and thanks for having us on.

Jessy: All right, and thank you, guys, so much for listening, and we will see you next time. Bye, guys.