Creator+, Founded By Crackle And YouTube Vets, Raises $12 Million To Turn Influencers Into Movie Stars
A startup founded by two digital video veterans called
Creator+ has raised $12 million from venture capitalists and top creators alike in its stated bid to spin influencers into full-fledged movie stars.
Creator+ was founded by former
Crackle general manager and serial entrepreneur
Jonathan Shambroom (pictured above, left) and
Benjamin Grubbs (right), the former global head of top creator partnerships at
YouTube (and the founder of the
Next 10 Ventures creator fund, for which he still serves as lead and partner).
Creator+ will finance, produce, market, and distribute feature films headlined by influencers, and also offer merch and community-building components surrounding these releases on its owned-and-operated platform.
The Creator+ leadership team
The media startup, co-founded by YouTube vet Benjamin Grubbs and tech veteran Jonathan Shambroom, will see digital media vet Adam Wescott running its content arm.
There s another player in the digital content race.
Targeting Gen Z creators and consumers, with a focus on longform content, former YouTube global head of creator partnerships Benjamin Grubbs and serial Bay Area entrepreneur Jonathan Shambroom recently announced studio and streaming platform Creator+. Now it s setting the roster for its Hollywood-facing wing, tapping leadership for the content studio.
The studio will be led by longtime digital media executive and producer Adam Wescott, who hails from Select Management Group. Wescott, who developed and produced content around digital creators like Eva Gutowski, Gigi Gorgeous and Lauren Riihimaki, departs Select two years after he and co-founder Scott Fisher merged operations with Lisa Filipelli s Flip Management.
Creator Plus Startup Will Spend Millions on Movies With Influencers businessinsider.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from businessinsider.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Creator+ raises $12M to build a film studio and streaming service focused on digital storytellers
In the words of co-founder and CEO Jonathan Shambroom, Creator+ is a new startup that will “finance, produce and distribute feature-length films from today’s top creators and emerging storytellers.”
The company is coming out of stealth today and also announcing that it has raised $12 million in funding led by Petra Group and Freestyle Capital, with participation from Jake Roper, Peter Hollens, Wendy Ayche (a.k.a. Wengie), Selina Tobaccowala, Jazwares CEO Judd Zebersky and others.
Shambroom (who’s been an executive at numerous startups and also served as general manager at Crackle) told me that one of the key aspects of the Creator+ strategy is that it controls “both sides of the equation” it’s both producing films and building its own streaming platform, where the movies will be available for individual purchase, with no subscriptions and no ads.
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