One major barrier many aspiring creators face is a lack of funds.
Whether you’re a YouTuber, Twitch streamer or TikTok creator: To take your content to the next level, or launch a new monetization strategy, you often need capital up front.
Finding creator funding can be tricky, though: Many traditional investment and credit models aren’t open to the creator economy.
Fortunately, there’s an alternative. We talked to Peter Yang, CEO of OverSubscribe, a company that specializes in helping creators turn their fans into investors.
Quick Facts
- OverSubscribe helps YouTubers and other creators raise money directly from their audience.
- Creators first poll their audience to gauge the level of interest.
- Then, they give fans the opportunity to invest, either in the whole channel or in a specific project. In return, they will get a percentage of the future revenues.
- This is similar to how a startup fundraising round works.
Keep reading for the full scoop!
Contents
Why Do You Need Funding as a Creator?
To make exceptional content and scale up your channel, you often have to invest money first. Getting all the props you need, buying a better camera, hiring a video editor or a graphic designer – almost everything that helps you elevate your videos has a price tag.
The same is true for exploring different monetization options. Do you want to launch your own product line? Release an app? Create an online learning platform for your followers? For all these ventures, you need some significant capital to start with – before they actually earn you money.
For many creators, lack of capital is a serious barrier. Even if you’re already monetizing your content, that often isn’t enough to cover your current expenses and invest in future growth at the same time.
However, getting outside funding can be tough.
Finding Funding as a Creator Is Tough
While the creator economy has grown massively over the past few years, many traditional institutions still don’t offer models adapted to the needs of content creators.
This is true for a number of the usual options for businesses: Funding agencies, banks, investment funds, and others. A creator with an amazing business idea can have serious trouble finding a loan or an investor from an established institution.
In many cases, the only legitimate option open to them is crowdfunding. However, asking fans for donations on a larger scale without a clear return can seriously strain the relationship with your audience.
Now, one company offers an alternative: Turning fans not into donors, but investors.
Meet OverSubscribe: The Company on a Mission to Turn Your Fans into Investors
Based in New York City, OverSubscribe is firmly established in the creator economy.
The company’s mission? Helping creators raise funds for their next big project – by turning their fans into investors, and sharing their revenues when they succeed.
We’ve talked to Peter Yang, CEO of OverSubscribe, to get you all the details.
“Startups have a lot of different options in terms of financing and outside funding. Creators don’t.”
— Peter Yang, CEO @OverSubscribe
What first gave you the idea for OverSubscribe?
Peter: There’s a strong parallel between creators and startups. In fact, we like to think of creators as one-person startups. You work in a high-risk, high-reward field where it’s hard to stand out, you’re responsible for all your own finances, and there’s a cash burn phase – you might actually spend more to grow your career than you make in the beginning.
The one big difference? Startups have a lot of different options in terms of financing and outside funding. Creators don’t.
Most creators bootstrap their business, but some have more ambitious plans, which they know their audience would love. The only thing holding them back is just not having that capital yet.
We’re here to fill that need and help them reach those ambitions sooner than they could otherwise. Our mission is to help every person we work with reach their full potential, regardless of where they start.
“Your fans have already invested a lot of time in you, they’re emotionally invested in you – and they’re interested in seeing you succeed.”
— Peter Yang, CEO @OverSubscribe
Can you tell me what OverSubscribe does to help creators get funding?
Peter: I think the huge advantage that creators have is that they’ve already built an engaged audience – which is a fantastic potential investor base.
Your fans have already invested a lot of time in you, they’re emotionally invested in you – and they’re interested in seeing you succeed.
We offer two different options, depending on where you are in your career as a creator: OverSubscribe Accelerate and OverSubscribe Amplify.
OverSubscribe Accelerate is designed for aspiring creators who typically have fewer than 1 million followers across different platforms. They’re still building their brand and establishing their presence – and that’s what they need funds for. The fans who invest in them will eventually get a percentage of their overall income when they scale up their channel and succeed, for a certain number of years. The funding helps them grow faster than they would otherwise.
OverSubscribe Amplify is geared towards already established creators who want to launch a new project, say their own app or a product line. The funding from the fans goes directly into that project, and those investors are going to receive a percentage of the revenues from that particular project.
What we also offer for creators are professional mentors to help them succeed. We’ve set up a network of Creator Mentors – experts in the industry, some top-tier folks. They’ll help you level up their content, or their brand deals, or their overall long-term strategy for how to build their careers. Wherever creators feel they need some help.
“The only people who see those [poll] results are you and our team. We’ll sit down together and go through the numbers.”
— Peter Yang, CEO @OverSubscribe
How do creators know if their audience would be open to investing in them?
Peter: As a first step, we launch an audience interest poll to gauge if your audience would be on board with investing in your growth. There’s no dollar figure, no specific financial terms – no revenue percentage or number of years.
All you say to your fans is: “Hey, I’m looking to do these new things that I think you guys are going to love. I just don’t have the resources. But I found this platform called OverSubscribe and I think you guys are the best folks to do this with. And if I succeed, I could actually share that financial success with you. We can do this as a team. Are you with me?”
All that’s asked is that they show their interest – they just give their email address.
The great thing here is that those results are private. So the only people who see those results are you and our team.
We’ll sit down together and go through the numbers.
In some cases, we may decide the support to make this work well isn’t there quite yet. So then we can give you some steps to help you build that relationship and circle back in six months.
But in most cases we’ve seen the support is there! And then the great thing here is it actually gives us additional data to set the right range for you to fundraise. So by the time we go to the full fundraise, whether that’s Accelerate or Amplify, we know that the support is there. We’re pretty much setting you up for success. So there’s no surprises.
“62% of all YouTube viewers are very interested in supporting their favorite creator with a system like ours.”
— Peter Yang, CEO @OverSubscribe
So in your experience audiences are prepared to invest in their favorite creators?
Peter: Absolutely. We ran a proprietary survey together with a consumer insights research firm called Arch Insights. They put together a panel of 800 regular YouTube viewers.
What we found is that 62% of all YouTube viewers are very interested in supporting their favorite creator with a system like ours. That goes up to 80% among the highly engaged viewers.
People are especially interested in supporting their favorite creators with our system of a one time upfront investment with potential financial returns. We put it side by side with more traditional creator crowdfunding platforms, and two thirds said they prefer our solution to donations, or monthly contributions just for perks.
How big does a creator have to be to work with OverSubscribe?
Peter: The size of your audience doesn’t matter so much as how engaged they are. If you’ve got a good two-way relationship with your viewers, that’s a fantastic basis for an OverSubscribe fundraise.
Going by our experience, especially creators on platforms that allow for deeper relationships with their followers do well.
The very deep engagement comes from places like YouTube, where there’s both more time but also more tools for them to show more of themselves and to interact with their community. Beyond the videos, there’s Community Posts and YouTube memberships, for example. These are all ways to let your viewers know how to take the next steps in terms of connecting with you.
The shallower type of engagement is TikTok, for example. It’s algorithmically driven and more about the content rather than about the person. If the algorithm moves away from you as a creator, there’s very little you can do to bring your audience back.
In contrast, we’ve seen that creators who have their homebase on Twitch – but also run YouTube or TikTok accounts – have the deepest sense of community. Even if they don’t have huge numbers in terms of followers, they have the most engaged folks and do well on OverSubscribe.
Is OverSubscribe available to creators everywhere?
Peter: Yes. We’re based in the US and fully approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but we work with creators and investors globally.
We’re also open to creators across platforms – no matter if you’re on YouTube or TikTok, Instagram or Pinterest, Twitch or SubStack.
Can you give me a few examples of creators who have raised funds through OverSubscribe?
Peter: Sure! I’ll give you three.
Case 1: David Tomen | NootropicsExpert
Peter: First, there’s David Tomen.
He’s a creator who focuses on nootropics, different types of supplements for your brain. He really became an expert after he had a stroke himself and started doing a lot of research during his recovery. Now he has a website with several tens of thousands of visitors, as well as a YouTube channel with 143,000 subs.
David Tomen on L-Theanine.
Peter: He’s using OverSubscribe to fundraise the resources to take his YouTube channel to the next level. First, hiring an editor and channel manager, so he can focus on creating more amazing content. Second, his audience is incredibly engaged, with some great discussions going on in the comment sections of his videos. So he’s building a membership community platform to create a dedicated space for these conversations.
Case 2: Aidan Ouckama | Ouckah
Peter: Second, we have Ouckah, a 19-year-old creator who’s also a computer science major. His content focuses on his major, as well as things like how to find internships.
This summer he had a software engineering internship at DoorDash and he knew it would be fantastic content, but that he wouldn’t have the time to edit it himself. So he created an OverSubscribe fundraise to hire an editor. As a result, he now has a great set of evergreen content for his YouTube channel and other social media.
Aidan Ouckama at his latest software engineering internship.
Case 3: Haven Lough
Peter: And third, there’s Haven Lough, a creator based in Florida, who has almost two million followers on TikTok, over 500K on YouTube, and who is also very big on Instagram and Snapchat. A lot of his content is focused on lifestyle and the outdoors.
@havenlough ain’t no way i just jumped out of a plane
♬ Monster University Theme Song - JYDNSY
Find more social profiles on Haven’s hoo.be.
Peter: He’s looking to launch a skincare line, and we just ran an audience interest poll for him with great results, and he is currently deciding on his next steps with the product and the OverSubscribe fundraise with this additional data in hand.
I think it’s a fantastic example of the value of just seeing if your support is out there, and getting that kind of information from your audience. If you’re a creator who wants to raise funds, my advice is to go ahead and reach out to us. We’ll take a closer look, launch and audience interest poll, and take it from there.
Thank you for having this interview with us, Peter!
FAQs
Yes! OverSubscribe, a company based in New York City, can help you turn your audience into investors.
Traditional funding avenues are often closed to content creators. While you can use crowdfunding, many creators prefer to use a solution like that offered by OverSubscribe, which lets you turn your fans into investors.
OverSubscribe is a company that specializes in helping creators raise funds to take their channel to the next level. It allows you to turn your audience into investors.
OverSubscribe offers two options. In OverSubscribe Accelerate, aspiring creators raise funds from fans and then share a percentage of their overall revenue with them in return. In OverSubscribe Amplify, established creators raise funds for a particular project or product and then share the revenue from that project/product with their investors.
The size of your audience does not matter so much as their level of engagement. With a highly engaged audience, you have a great basis for this kind of fundraise. If not, there are ways to encourage engagement.
