When I began talking about the creator economy last summer, there were a few fundamental aspects I believed would be true for a company in this space to be especially attractive to us:

• Enables equitable access for any and all creators to make a living doing what they love. Most “first generation” creator platforms have been built upon top-heavy revenue models (e.g., ad-based), where it’s only the whales who win. In this world, emerging creators are forced to cobble together multiple streams of revenue to realize any meaningful amount – often unsuccessfully given the difficulty in managing such fragmentation.
• Prioritizes depth of engagement over volume. With an ever-increasing desire from consumers to engage with creators in more active ways, solutions that “break the fourth wall” via unique consumer experiences are exciting.
• Caters to different personas of creators. Creators are individual by definition, and therefore each have unique needs based on parameters like the type of content they produce or a vertical they identify with. Therefore, they need solutions that are both flexible and curated enough to address their distinct needs.
• Approaches discovery in a smart way. In acknowledging that the existing platform giants in the space are not only here to stay for the foreseeable future, but also great at content discovery, I believed a successful company would find a way to leverage this power for their own benefit.

Bearing these points in mind, when we came across Koji we were instantly impressed. While at first glance, Koji may appear to just be building a more robust Link in Bio, its functionality is actually much more powerful when you pull back the curtain. The true magic behind Koji is their app store, where they’ve built an ecosystem that allows any developer to build any app for any creator to embed into their Link in Bio profile.

This composability, where a creator can construct their own “app stack”, opens a new realm of possibility and creativity in how they can portray their unique online presence. In the non-Koji version of the world, creators are limited to the constructs of what a single platform can provide, and for additional capabilities they’re forced to rely on multiple solutions. Koji solves for this, allowing creators to very easily build any combination of their many offerings in one place, from simply collecting tips to providing exclusive content that can only be unlocked with specific NFTs. The best part: for the apps that don’t already exist, anyone is free to create it.

By design, this approach supports a dramatically better experience for not only the creators, but also their followers: all interactions can happen in one space, compared to the alternative of having to navigate to multiple sites or create multiple accounts.

While this infrastructure itself was beyond exciting, ultimately, it’s the team and their vision that makes Koji a true diamond in the rough. In our first meeting with Founders Dmitry and Sean, it was clear to us that they were a team of true visionaries. They not only see the creator space for what it is today, but the universe of opportunity that lies ahead. From their early developments in supporting creators in web3 to their robust developer infrastructure, the Koji team is building something much bigger than a single creator platform. They are building a true, authentic ecosystem where creators, and anyone else building for creators, can participate, monetize, and eventually own.

We couldn’t be more thrilled to be leading Koji’s Series B, partnering with an incredible team as they build towards a remarkable ambition.