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Nov 19, 2021
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3
min read

We’re on a Mission to Make Creators’ Lives Easier

Fourthwall raises $17M to build the all-in-one business platform for creators; announces Phil Defranco has joined as Chief Creator Officer.
17m defranco announcement

Fourthwall’s mission is simple. We’re here to make the business side of being a creator easy. We do this by making it easier for creators to make money from their content and by giving them back time in their day to focus on what matters: their content and their communities.

Today we’re excited to announce we’ve taken two big steps towards achieving that mission.

First, we’ve raised $17M from a group of amazing investors that includes Lightspeed, Initialized, Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, Defy, Shrug Capital, Worklife, Todd & Rahul, Ian Borthwick, and many other amazing supporters. We’re using this money to double the size of our engineering team and invest in building more tools and services for creators.

The second announcement is that Phil DeFranco, one of YouTube’s true OGs, has joined our team as our Chief Creator Officer. He’ll help guide our product development and ensure we’re building things creators actually want and need. Here’s what he has to say about joining the team:

The creator space has grown exponentially these past few years. YouTube viewers watch over 1 billion hours of content1. Every. Single. Day. That’s a 4x increase in just 18 months. Twitch viewership doubled in the same period2. TikTok grew by a factor of 3x. That explosive growth is being powered by hundreds of thousands of full-time creators, a number that is growing just as quickly as viewership. Becoming a creator is now the top aspirational career for American kids3. This is just the beginning of the creator-led world.

But being a creator is anything but easy. Not only do you have to keep creating amazing content and engaging with your community, but you're also responsible for figuring out how you'll make money. Most platforms don't pay you by default and even the ones that do don't pay much4. It can be a struggle to keep up with everything, even for folks with big teams behind them. And that's where Fourthwall comes in: we make it easier for creators to earn money from their content.

Fourthwall lets creators set up everything they need for their off-platform presence. You can launch a beautiful homepage and link to all of your content, open a shop, sell products, offer memberships, accept donations, engage superfans, and much more. And you can set it all up on your own fully-branded website that's 100% owned by you, from the domain name to the data.

Sound too good to be true? You can try it for yourself at fourthwall.com (it’s free for creators!). If you have thoughts, feedback, or questions, I’d love to hear from you. I’m always available at will@fourthwall.com, Will.FW#6723, or @dubbaumann.

  1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-tops-1-billion-hours-of-video-a-day-on-pace-to-eclipse-tv-1488220851
  2. https://www.engadget.com/streamlabs-twitch-viewership-doubled-in-one-year-150003530.html
  3. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lego-group-kicks-off-global-program-to-inspire-the-next-generation-of-space-explorers-as-nasa-celebrates-50-years-of-moon-landing-300885423.html
  4. https://influencermarketinghub.com/how-much-do-youtubers-make

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