TURNING OUR ATTENTION TO THE FUTURE, A BREAKFAST CHAT WITH HIS WORSHIP THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF FRANCISTOWN
1. Turning our attention to the future can not happen without community leaders and champions of innovation. What gives is that a leadership that listens is key to adapt to the new economy. What’s in store in city like Francistown ahead for the creator economy?
2. Creator economy is alive and thriving. It so happens in one Blue Jacket Street you’d easily have 100+ creators per daily. Creator economy 4.0 is the ownership economy. What’s next for the creator economy & its intersection with web3 (virtual internet)?
3. Creators will build together with their communities, blurring the line between creator and audience. We’re starting to see this today.
Examples: 100+ photographers in our streets and mostly youth. Pertinent is to ask ‘Who’s the ‘creator’ vs. ‘audience’? That distinction fades in relevance. Thinking broadly about this new emerged sector is key insightful example of the future. Tap into this energy to build something disruptive and exponential.
4. At a high level, we’re moving from a world in which creators made income on their own, to one in which they build wealth together with their communities.
5. The future as predicted for a city like Francistown is to embrace innovation with it’s “Creator economy 4.0: Ownership”. Lines between fans & creators blur into community ownership, and the nature of what being a creator is changes and reflects new incentives.
6. Let’s share some investment data with where the creator economy is today (era 3.0) globally.
- In the past 3 years, YouTube has paid out $30B to 2M+ creators
- Creators’ cultural impact is eclipsing that of traditional media. Top YT videos have 5–9B views each; by contrast, NBC primetime gets 4M viewers
-Creators like William KRM, Noko Mashaba are local examples of thriving creators. There is an investment case to be explored.
7. $3.7B has been invested into creator startups so far this year, many offering new monetization tools
i.e Patreon, Cameo, Kajabi, Clubhouse, etc. In simplest form — serious money is going towards retaining and attracting creators: TikTok is paying creators $2B in the next 3 years. Facebook, YouTube, Snap, and Pinterest also rolled out their own creator funds. This opportunity is something that can be built locally by Francistown ecosystem and attract investors.
8. Let’s take a moment to also appreciate that these numbers that are UNHEARD OF in the Botswana world for a creator’s work. This is becoming the opportunity. Here is why the problem can be seen as an opportunity ;Most partner channels on Youtube earn between $0.30 to $2.50 per 1,000 views. Imagine what is possible in a market like Botswana. A creator selling 1 NFT Digital Art for $100M = 400 million views on a Youtube video. This is the thinking that’s needed with such a sector.
9. This is a shift from independence by — creators as their own islands — to inter-dependence amongst a decentralized community. We can imagine that some new lucrative roles/jobs will emerge when there’s shared ownership. Most of these were historically unseen/unrewarded: curators, evangelists, fan club leaders, meme page admins, etc. This is the future of work. This is how the world is changing.
10. If politics for the last 50 years was defined by “capital vs. labor,” we are now entering an era of “platform vs. participant.” Rather than being passive platform participants/renters, creators & users should become owners.The opportunity for next decade is to progress creators into becoming creator-owners.
Keep building! NGWANA AFRICA
