creator-monetization
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Justin Sacks
Justin Sacks is the co-founder and CEO of Nexus, an Austin-based platform that helps live service video games build and run 'Support-a-Creator' programs at scale. After 15 years in gaming as a competitive player, content creator, and business development lead, he now builds the infrastructure that pays creators for driving discovery, engagement, and in-game sales for titles like Sonic Rumble, Bloons TD, and Town of Salem.
Justin Smith
Justin Smith is the CEO of SamCart, an Austin, Texas based e-commerce and checkout platform that has helped more than 75,000 creators and entrepreneurs sell over $3.5 billion in products and services online. He rose through the company from Head of Product to Chief Operating Officer before stepping into the CEO role, and he has become a frequent voice on the future of the creator economy, the shift from awareness to conversion in online selling, and how AI is reshaping how small businesses sell. Before SamCart he worked in marketing and business development at high-growth SaaS companies including Curalate and LivePerson.
Steven Schwartz
Steven Schwartz is the co-founder and CEO of Whop, a New York-based digital marketplace where people buy and sell software, courses, communities, and other digital products. He started building and selling iOS sneaker bots from his bedroom at 13 with future co-founder Cameron Zoub, ran through roughly two dozen side hustles, and launched Whop in 2021. The company reached a reported $1.6 billion valuation, processes billions in annual commerce, and Schwartz says it has minted over 650 millionaires. Backed by Peter Thiel, Insight Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, and Tether, he pitches a future where work is fun and money worries are obsolete.
Misbah Uraizee
Misbah Uraizee is the co-founder and CEO of Nectar Social, the Palo Alto agentic operating system that runs brand conversations in DMs, comments and group chats at machine scale. A Yale biotech grad who spent a decade building product at Microsoft, Meta and Twitter - leading News Feed and creator monetization for billions of users - she left Meta in 2023 with her sister Farah to build Nectar. The company exited stealth in 2025 and raised a $30M Series A led by Menlo Ventures' Anthropic-backed Anthology Fund in May 2026, powering more than 10 million conversations a week for brands like e.l.f. Beauty, Figma and Liquid Death.
Hovhannes Kuloghlyan
Hovhannes Kuloghlyan is a co-founder and Head of Operations at Wirestock, a San Francisco-based platform that sits at the intersection of the creator economy and AI data infrastructure. With a PhD in Cosmology from Yerevan Physics Institute and early career stints in blockchain development with Ripple, he transitioned into building one of the world's leading platforms for ethically sourced multimodal AI training data. Wirestock now serves over 700,000 creators globally and surpassed a $40M annual revenue run rate, closing a $23M Series A in May 2026. Kuloghlyan also chairs Grōksmith, a software design and development company with clients including PwC, the Ethereum Foundation, and UEFA.
Li Jin
Li Jin is a venture capitalist, writer, and creator who coined the term 'passion economy' and spent years investing in platforms that help individuals turn their passions into livelihoods. She served as a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), then founded Atelier Ventures, and later co-founded Variant Fund - raising over $450M to back web3 and ownership-driven platforms. An active creator herself, she writes 'Li's Newsletter' on Substack with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and co-hosted the Means of Creation podcast. In August 2024, she transitioned from General Partner to Advisor at Variant to pursue interests in education, innovation, and creative projects.