Karat Financial

Americans don't trust legacy institutions and brands anymore. Instead - more than ever - they trust online personalities & influencers. We're seeing this play out everywhere. It's why Trump & Kamala both turned down traditional news interviews for influencer podcasts - and partly why Trump won thanks to his stronger online reach. It's why we're seeing a new boom in livestream shopping - because when you don't trust brands, you're more willing to purchase when your parasocial friend tells you to. We see this in China already where "Lipstick Brother" sold over $1B in product in a couple days. It's why we're seeing OnlyFans succeed wildly- because even NSFW content feels more authentic & real when it comes from real people vs legacy brands like Playboy. It's why you see brands increasingly try to attach people & personalities to their work - whether it's in house as Duolingo has done or by doing extensive influencer marketing campaign work. It also means that if you're trying to do anything today and don't know how to create content online - you're going to fall behind. What do you think?

Why is everyone podcasting?? In the past month - we've seen Kamala Harris join Call Her Daddy- Mark Zuckerberg join both the Acquired podcast as well as Cleo Abram's - and we've seen Trump join several creator pods. Podcasting isn't just for creators now. It's for CEOs, politicians, journalists, founders- and even newly minted viral figures (looking at you, hawk tuah) Podcasting is big because the barrier to entry is so *easy* - the format is literally just a conversation that you record - and so millions of new creators are experimenting - some of those podcasts blow up - and then traditional figures who once had to share their messages through carefully controlled press junkets now can join and open up at length to a friendly audience. I've seen this myself - in running the Karat Financial podcast- I've already hosted CEOs of top companies like Twitch & Patreon - who probably would have just communicated through PR a few years ago. It's also longform focused - given we're seeing the fight for attention fall into two battlefields: you either win the 15 second TikTok clip war - or you go the other direction and produce hour-long deep dives for people to obsess over. We're even seeing traditional journalists themselves move to the format- eg Taylor Lorenz leaving The Washington Post & The New York Times to make content - including video podcasts on her YouTube channel. I'm excited. What do you think?

Star journalist Taylor Lorenz just resigned from The Washington Post. Her new title? - creator and founder of her own Substack newsletter: User Mag. Before The Washington Post, Taylor wrote for The New York Times. But before that - Taylor started as a Tumblr blogger. She's a great indicator of the new nature of the news: media is media, no matter where it's written and how it's broken. Gen Z watches political debates through Twitch livestreams and learns breaking news through TikTok - and Taylor herself for years has posted funny (but also informative) memes on her IG accounts. We've seen multiple video journalists leave Vox for YouTube (Cleo Abram, Johnny Harris) - as well as respected intellectual thinkers like Kyla Scanlon start from social media first. Taylor's always written about the latest happening in social media - and now she's example of those trends herself. Excited for her- and her new newsletter already has over 30K (!) subscribers!

We're hiring a chief of staff at Karat Financial. We're doing some big things and need help! Check out comments for link to the job posting - note needs to be based in LA. We're launching business banking services for creators & agencies very soon - balancing that along with our credit card + growing Discord + developing partnerships is a lot - and as you can tell from the photo below w Will Kim - too much for just us. Would love to bring on someone to join us If you have experience in management consulting or banking - that's a plus!

YouTube's new feature empowers fans to "boost" videos from their favorite creators. That's huge - and needed in a world that's becoming algorithmically dominated! It's called YouTube Hype. Here's how it works: * if a fan sees a video that's been out for <7 days from a creator with <500K subscribers, the fan can "hype" the video * depending how many "hypes" the video gets, it now appears on a leaderboard that shows the top 100 hyped videos - meaning that hypes will NOT affect recommendations and search * everyone can hype up to 3 times - after that you'll need to buy more hypes- where revenue goes back to the creator too I'm intrigued by this. I imagine that figuring out a way to let fans boost content without f*cking up the algorithm was very hard. Eg - right now, any discoverability boost is limited since the hyped video only gets increased visibility on the leaderboard - but if you allowed more discoverability - then people could game the system by buying hypes under puppet accounts and hyping up their own video. What do you think?

Chloe Shih & I just won the Best Podcast award at Jerry Won's inaugural Asian Creator Awards. What surprised me most - amongst all the honorees (including stars like Vivian Tu & John Hu) - was that none of us expected to be here. Not in the sense of winning an award - but that we have careers where we even get to be creative and make content. On stage, while accepting awards, Emily Pitcher described going into content as a mistake initially. John Hu & I both were investment bankers. Chloe Shih was laid off from Discord before doing content fulltime. As Asian American creators, many of us grew up with expectations of a different life - where we'd get a corporate job, put aside childish creative aspirations, and focus on stability & income. But the world is changing. And now more and more of us are trying something new. That's the future that Karat Financial is trying to build financial support for. I'm so grateful to Jerry Won for putting together an event that honors this future - and to Kajabi for sponsoring.

Nikocado Avocado faked it all as a social experiment. 2 days ago he revealed that he had acted out his overweight childish personality as a "social experiment" - that everyone fell for. He's already lost 250 lbs of weight and had been releasing older pre-recorded videos to maintain the facade. A few thoughts here: 1. When creators become popular, many of them become influencers - aka famous for being famous. But unlike traditional celebrities, influencers often built their fame online organically - so we feel like we know them better and that they're being truthful. But events like this remind us that influencers are just as capable of manufacturing situations as the older generation of celebrities and reality TV stars. 2. Was it worth it? Nikocado Avocado released his new video titled "Two Steps Ahead" - revealing his secret plan all along. But it doesn't change the fact that he was dangerously overweight for a very long time - and in exchange, presumably made good AdSense revenue and built notoriety - at the cost of presenting himself and his life as entertainment. 3. We're likely going to see this more and more. I previously interviewed on the Karat Financial podcast another creator who'd faked a girlfriend launch on IG to sell his new apparel. And now - we're going to see AI take this to the next level. What do you think?

3 years ago, MrBeast held a contest for new creators where he’d crown a star and send that person millions of his followers. IsaiahPhoto competed- and while he didn’t win the contest, he won overall. Today, he has over 10M followers and regularly gets millions of views per longform video. This Thursday at 1pm PST- he’s sharing his secrets live in the Karat Financial discord- join to listen in or receive notes afterwards via link in comments! His main edge? He started with shortform focused around exploring one off ideas like seeing trading sand for a Tesla- but found ways to build a deeper narrative and connection with fans that translates over to longform. Excited to share more soon!

Two comedy TikTokers just shot a critically reviewed horror film - on a budget of $800 dollars - it's already covered by Variety. They turned down a film distributor to release it directly on YouTube. This is the future: the next generation of Hollywood filmmakers will come from social media creators - because that's the easiest way to practice your craft. Co-creators Curry Baker & Cooper Tomilson have posted hundreds of shortform comedy videos on TikTok & YouTube. I've seen these shorts - and they stood out because cleverly scripted and professionally shot - signs of two filmmakers developing their technique. It's because of that practice that they could be scrappy and film their own 62 minute horror shoot themselves. True to that spirit- they chose to release it on YouTube instead of going through distributors - because they wanted as many people to see it as possible & maintain creative control & the final cut. It worked. The video has hundreds of thousands of views and glowing industry coverage- and they're already working on their next film. What do you think?

Olympics athletes are starting OnlyFans accounts- and making millions of dollars. What's going on? 1. Most athletes just don't make much. Even Olympic gold medallists are turning to OnlyFans for financial stability - because they may have worked their entire lives to reach peak physical perfection - for one moment of shortlived glory. Bronze medallist Jack Laugher described OnlyFans as an "absolute lifeline". 2. The International Olympics Committee doesn't seem to mind- and OnlyFans loves it. When the AP asked a IOC spokesperson about it - he simply replied that athletes are also normal citizens that are allowed to do what they can. In the meantime, OnlyFans has highlighted the Olympic athletes on its platform - which makes sense - because - 3. We're seeing more and more - that no matter what you do and what kind of job - you can start to make income on the side through your content. We first saw this during COVID when nurses, teachers, and plumbers began making content and blowing up in ways that either allowed them to boost their 9-5 income or even go do content fulltime. This Olympics/ OnlyFans trend is just another manifestation of this trend. What do you think?