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Eric Wei
Co-founder & Co-CEO of Karat Financial, Former Product Manager at Instagram
Eric Wei, Cofounder & Co-CEO at Karat Financial
Eric Wei is the Cofounder and Co-CEO of Karat Financial, a fintech startup that provides financial services to creators and influencers. He co-founded the company in 2019 with Will Kim, and they have raised over $100 million from leading VCs, creators, and celebrities.1235
Key facts about Eric Wei::
- He is the Cofounder and Co-CEO of Karat Financial, where he has equal equity and decision-making power with his co-CEO Will Kim6
- Previously, he worked as a Product Manager at Instagram and Facebook, a Consultant at McKinsey & Company, and in Restructuring & Reorganization at The Blackstone Group24
- He studied economics and psychology at Harvard University24
- He has been featured as a speaker at VidCon, discussing topics like the convergence of content creation and entrepreneurship1
- His LinkedIn username is eric-wei-430780684
Karat Financial's mission is to help creators establish themselves as businesses by improving their financial access.5 The company provides services like business credit cards, taxes, and bookkeeping to creators who are often underserved by traditional financial institutions.35
Highlights
Susan Wojcicki - previous CEO of YouTube - advocate for creators - and early supporter of Google from the very beginning - has just passed away from cancer.
Few individuals have ever done as much as she did for the creator ecosystem. My own life would be completely different and lacking without what she helped build.
May she rest in peace.
As Amanda Perelli writes- the new secret player winning the creator economy is... Vimeo.
Vimeo currently powers the video apps for the Sidemen, The Try Guys, Watcher, Dropout - all your favorite creators who decided to build a home for video content outside the YouTube algorithm.
It's a fascinating comeback story. Once upon a time - Vimeo was competing directly with YouTube.
Relative to YouTube, Vimeo focused more on high definition video + curation + better creator uploading tools - but was quickly dwarfed by YouTube's onslaught of algorithmic user generated content.
But as we've hit an era of peak content, we're also seeing content fatigue - where people care less about being able to theoretically see everything and more just want to focus on the few creators they care about.
And now Vimeo's built a video offering that creators can use for their own video apps. It's not cheap (Vimeo charges well over $10K) - but many creators are prioritizing moving off of the algorithmic platforms to own their own content.
Perhaps we'll see more creators go this direction - what do you think?
