The creator economy is growing fast in Israel and globally. The creator economy refers to a market that supports and rewards people who create original content for the Internet or other platforms.
As a strong indicator of where this economy is headed, a report from Goldman Sachs predicted that “the total addressable market of the creator economy could roughly double in size over the next five years to $480 billion by 2027 from $250 billion today.”
Israel has a growing creator community, including three categories that intersect:
- Successful creators who have become CEOs of brands or startups;
- Startups creating tools for creators and organizations;
- Professionals (many of whom have a following as well) helping creators navigate this economy, which is a Wild West of business.
The creator as CEO
As creators become household names, their business operations grow. Instead of just relying on monetization from the platforms themselves, they partner with brands, launch products and services, and even start and invest in companies.
The most well-known Israeli creator is Nas Daily (Nuseir Yassin). There are many local popular influencers — including a new cadre of creators since October 7 — but Nas Daily is also a good example of the creator-as-CEO.
Nas rose to Internet fame with his viral videos and is now an entrepreneur and investor in startups such as Lychee (see below). His popular Nas Summits in locations across the globe have become the address for local creators to meet and network.
The inaugural Nas Summit in Tel Aviv in 2023 attracted a vibrant community of creators in Israel for the first time. Attendees and speakers from abroad included big names like YouTube sensation Casey Neistat, thus making the summit the destination for the creator economy.
Another popular Israel based creator and startup founder is Ruben Hassid. He has amassed over 400,000 followers on LinkedIn, and his posts have gained over 100 million views. He posts on the topic of AI, with practical insights and information to help his audience best utilize generative AI. He founded EasyGen, which helps people write effective LinkedIn posts.
Hassid began his career at 17 when he launched a music label, and realized that with the power of social media he was able to reach millions of people on SoundCloud. Eventually he transitioned to tech, becoming a ghostwriter in the fintech space until venturing off to become independent.
At the end of 2022, he started using OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool and realized generative AI’s potential. He shared a PDF on LinkedIn explaining his learnings and insights. That post alone received over 5 million views.
Leveraging that success, Hassid created EasyGen – at first just for his own use and then publicly. Today, along with being one of the most popular content creators on LinkedIn, he is a popular keynote speaker res on AI and content creation.
Does he consider himself a creator, a startup founder, or an entrepreneur?
“All three of them. A content creator is who I am… I’m a teacher, a mad scientist, meaning I just test stuff and I love teaching what I discover. This is what I think it means to be a content creator. I’m also a startup founder as I founded EasyGen, and I started my music label when I was 17. I’ve always been an entrepreneur, someone who likes to build stuff, and fail fast.”
The business of the creator economy
Israeli professionals working from the United States in this space include Gil Eyal, head of marketing and innovation at Silverstein Properties’ Inspire as well as an angel investor and social-media expert; and Regev Gur, CEO of Narrative Group, an agency that handles influencer marketing — from strategy to content creation — for large companies.
In Israel, Odem Alagem was a businesswoman before she became a popular and well-connected content creator. She is founder and CEO of Odemland, a social-media agency specializing in working with influencers as well as monetization strategies.
Experiential marketing at events is a space which is still developing in Israel, though many Israeli startups invest in this type of marketing at global events. Using her knowledge as a creator, Alagem assists clients with content creation at events and conferences, as well as managing their social media. She also connects influencers with brands.
“I believe that the future of the creator economy is with experiences such as music shows, fashion popups, sports and travel,” she said. “More events are taking place than ever, in fields such as tech, finance, and real estate. I see in-person events as the best place to leave an online and in-person mark, grow your network, and make new and meaningful connections.”
Another local professional, Jacob Shwirtz, has focused throughout his career on content marketing, partnerships and business development for celebrities, startups and investors. He worked with media and entertainment companies such as MTV, VH1 and Endemol, as well as tech companies WeWork and Lightricks. He has also worked on projects for Discovery, AMC and Nickelodeon.
Shwirtz is passionate about new forms of content storytelling. He believes strongly that we are more likely to be influenced by a person we can relate to than by an organization, especially as authenticity is becoming even more important in the marketplace.
“Brand has always resonated with me, and so whether it’s traditional celebrities, musicians, athletes, digital native talent, creators, and influencers, I’ve worked in and around that space, for over 20 years,” he said.
“I moved to Israel a little over three years ago, and now I’m independent and working with various startups, both in Israel and abroad, that are primarily trying to solve for creator pain points.”
He noted that Israeli startups have a unique workstyle that also applies to those working in the creator economy. Israelis are smart, savvy, and worldly, often have a background in the army, and have great ideas for engineering, product, and solving problems in creative ways. Shwirtz often coaches Israeli startups on thinking more globally, wordsmithing pitches to American or European partners and investors.
“One specific passion area of mine is helping creators grow and evolve what it means to be a creator, and that evolution as a career choice, as well as other projects related to the creator economy, such as brands that are trying to build creator networks, or evolve how they work with creators in more sophisticated ways.”
Startups in the creator economy
This new industry has many difficult challenges to solve, so Israeli startups are building tools and services to support creators and businesses creating content.
For example, Lightricks offers creativity tools enabling users to craft and share visual content on mobile devices. Riverside.fm offers an audio-video recording platform for media and podcasts. Fiverr is the world’s largest marketplace for creative and professional services, and overlaps with the gig economy.
New players in this space include Spikerz, a cybersecurity startup protecting content creators, businesses, and enterprises’ social media accounts; Queue, an AI-powered platform empowering experts to become recognized thought leaders on LinkedIn; and Munch, which solves challenges around content repurposing by using AI to turn lengthy videos into bite-sized, social media-optimized clips.
KwaKwa (previously called Piggy) offers generative AI for mobile content creation. Led by serial entrepreneur Shaul Olmert, KwaKwa knows that Gen Z consumers do everything on their mobile device. But when it comes to content creation, the phone is limited. The company’s microlearning solution turns expertise into income with a social media-like experience, simplifying the creation and distribution of educational content on mobile.
Minute Media, the largest media company to come out of Israel, is a platform for media products that allow fans to create, publish, share and distribute sports content around the world.
AI is also taking a central role in the creator economy with startups like Hour One, which enables businesses to centralize workflows in one AI-powered platform and create lifelike avatars. Hour One became well known as a result of a viral video by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman interviewing a lookalike avatar of himself. This helped put the Startup Nation on the map in regard to the future of how AI will play a part in the creator economy.
ThoughtLeaders is helping creators monetize their content and grow their businesses via YouTube sponsorships. Cofounders David Tintner and Dan Conn built a platform where brands, creators, talent managers and media agencies can find each other.
“I’m really bullish on the Israeli creator economy. Israelis are great at making technology, and they have definitely started to get better at networking and developing those kinds of relationships, which I think go hand in hand, because it’s difficult to build a consumer technology if you don’t actually speak to the consumers,” said Tintner.
When they started in 2017, there was nothing happening in Israel related to the creator economy. Anyone who wanted to network would fly to conferences like VidCon in the US. In the heart of Tel Aviv, Tintner and Conn opened a hub for events and where Israeli creators can gather and create content for free. It includes a fully equipped podcasting studio that any creator can use.
ThoughtLeaders shares an office with Linguana, an AI global monetization solution for content creators.
Tools for creators
While there are many creator tools available, Israeli startups have focused on selling B2B, as companies are embracing content creation in their marketing efforts.
Lychee, an AI-driven video editing platform helping brands grow, was founded by Tomer Dean, Ran Alter and Pereg Aran. It began through a chance encounter in the popular pandemic era app Clubhouse.
They were in a chat room with Ryan Hoover, founder of the wildly popular site Product Hunt, where he proposed the question along the lines of: “Why doesn’t anyone do a monetization play for Clubhouse, a marketplace where you can sponsor creators that are doing live shows?”
The Israeli threesome had just rolled up a previous startup, so they decided to give that challenge a shot. Within the week, they put up a landing page and domain, and had emailed reporters about their nascent company.
Hoover shared the news on Twitter, and the budding startup got great press coverage… even though there was no company yet. In the first week alone, more than 1,000 brands signed up, several million dollars in advertising were committed, and thousands of creators wanted to be part of it.
But as they tried to validate their business in the next few months, they understood that the idea was not as strong as they thought. For example, it’s hard for sponsors to justify a spend without having analytics.
One of the biggest challenges of the creator economy is that creators need tools to succeed, as well as businesses which want to create content in-house as well. So instead of just helping creators, Lychee is creating tools for businesses that want to become creators themselves, as well as the agencies that support creators.
“When I hear the term ‘creator economy,’ the first thing I think of is the technology,” said Dean.
“A lot of the technologies in the last year and a half around generative AI correlate with the creator economy, because you’re generating some kind of photo, video, audio, text. There’s a lot of technology of early-stage tech players that are around content creation. So that naturally goes together.”
Another Israeli startup using AI for generative video content is Peech. Founder and CEO Danielle Dafni served in the IDF Spokesman’s Office Video Unit, where she created video content for media and social media.
Peech’s solution automates post-production processes such as video editing, graphic design, and motion graphics. The platform enables creators to produce high-quality, branded videos at scale (over 1,000 videos monthly), while significantly reducing editing time from hours to minutes.
Additionally, Peech offers the capability to translate video content into 60 languages and crop it to all frame sizes, ensuring that creators can effectively reach global audiences across various platforms.
“Israeli tech is uniquely positioned to make a significant impact in the creator economy due to our culture of innovation and resilience,” Dafni said.
“The startup ecosystem in Israel thrives on problem-solving and creativity, which are essential for developing advanced tools for content creators. Our deep expertise in AI and computer vision allows us to create cutting-edge solutions that meet the evolving needs of the market. Moreover, the renowned Israeli resilience enables us to adapt quickly to challenges, ensuring that we remain at the forefront of this dynamic landscape.”
An investor’s perspective
Eze Vidra is managing partner of Remagine Ventures, a thought leader in the creator space and a LinkedIn Top Voice. An active content creator, Vidra produces the weekly “Firgun” LinkedIn newsletter, along with his long-standing blog, VC Café (started in 2004 and ranked as one of the top VC blogs).
He describes 2023 as a creator economy “winter.” The first half of 2024 has seen more investment in creator economy startups in the first half than in the whole previous year.
This is part of a long-term trend of consumers spending more time online, as social media has become the source for most of their information. Part of the reason that the number of creators is growing is that people are spending more time and money online, and how we consume news, recommendations and commerce has become much more social- and video-driven.
As a result, creators from every profession and background can leverage those channels to build and engage an audience — and to make a living.
That’s where the “economy” part of the creator economy comes in.
“Israel, in many ways, is really well positioned to create meaningful companies in this space, particularly as a result of the AI talent that you will see coming out of the country,” said Vidra.
“A lot of it is focusing on the application layer and the use of technology to create new business models which address new market problems. There are also a number of foundational models and infrastructure, but this is where these startups shine, like integrating multiple kinds of technology and packaging it in a product that solves a big problem for creators.”
He believes that the creator economy needs to be successful, because AI will leave a lot of people jobless. Israel is leading the way in using technology to help people monetize their passion and their knowledge.
Jonathan “Yoni” Frenkel is a LinkedIn ghostwriter, content marketing strategist, creator and founder of YKC Media.