Creators Are Storming Past Influencers & Investment Money Backs It Up

Creators Are Storming Past Influencers — And the Investment Money Backs It Up

Creators are storming past influencers when it comes to building genuine trust between a brand and its customers — and if anyone’s still hoping that’s a passing trend, the investment world says otherwise. A fintech startup called Cherub just raised $4.5m to give creators the same access to early-stage deals that angel investors get, and Steven Bartlett’s just launched a venture with brand giant Authentic to pour up to $400m into creator-led businesses. Serious money doesn’t chase fads, it chases trajectory. The direction of travel is clear: creators aren’t just renting out their audience for a post anymore, they’re being pulled into ownership, advisory and long-term stakes. Brands that get ahead of that shift will build far stickier creator relationships than the ones still buying single Instagram Reels.

What Cherub actually is (and why it matters beyond fintech)

Cherub is a platform that matches founders raising money with angel investors — think of it as a “dating app” for startup funding. Its new raise extends that model to bring creators into the same pool, giving them access to early-stage investing and advisory opportunities that used to be reserved for traditional VCs and angels.

That’s not, on the surface, a marketing story. But it’s a useful signal for anyone working with creators in FMCG:

• The label “creator” is expanding — it no longer just means “makes content for an audience.” It increasingly means “has enough trust and reach to be worth including as a stakeholder,” whether that’s equity, advisory input, or early access.

• Money is following trust, not reach — investors backing Cherub aren’t betting on follower counts, they’re betting that a creator’s judgement and audience relationship is itself valuable enough to build a business model around.

• This is happening outside marketing first — which usually means marketing catches up a year or two later, once the model’s been proven somewhere less risk-averse.

Even the biggest creators are moving past brand deals

It’s not just early-stage platforms proving this point. Steven Bartlett — host of The Diary of a CEO, one of the biggest podcasts in the world — has just launched OBSN with brand giant Authentic, planning to deploy up to $400m into creator-led media companies and consumer brands. This isn’t Bartlett booking another sponsored read; it’s building the infrastructure to turn creator audiences into fully-fledged businesses, with equity, licensing and product lines attached.

• Even mega creators are outgrowing the “post for a fee” model — Bartlett’s own words on the launch were that a global audience of millions “should not be the ceiling of a creator’s potential.” If someone with 20+ million followers is looking past one-off deals, smaller creators will follow the same logic.

• It confirms the niche-audience thesis, not the reach one — Bartlett’s business is built on a specific, deeply trusted audience in business and entrepreneurship, not mass-market virality. That focus is exactly why Authentic is willing to back him with serious capital.

• The lesson for brands is about who you back, not just how much — the creators worth building long-term relationships with are the ones with a genuinely familiar, loyal audience in a defined niche, not the biggest raw numbers.

The pattern: from renting attention to holding a stake

This lines up with something I’ve been banging on about for a while now: the brands doing well with creators have already moved away from one-off influencer posts and into proper, ongoing creator relationships. Cherub and Bartlett’s OBSN venture are just the next logical steps of that same idea, playing out in different corners of the creator economy.

• Influencer deals were transactional — book the post, pay the invoice, move on. No lasting relationship, no shared upside.

• Creator partnerships are relational — ongoing content, built over months, with a creator who’s actually invested in how it lands.

• Stakeholder creators are the next tier — equity, affiliate structures, or advisory input where the creator has genuine skin in the game, not just a brief and a deadline.

Each step along that line makes the content feel less like an ad and more like a genuine recommendation — because, increasingly, it is one.

What this means for FMCG brand-creator relationships

You don’t need to start handing out equity to your creator roster tomorrow (please don’t, without talking to a lawyer first). But there’s a real, practical takeaway here for how you structure creator work going forward.

• Move from single posts to retainers — if you’re only paying for one-off content, you’re the brand equivalent of the passive angel investor everyone in that Cherub article is trying to get away from. Ongoing relationships build the trust that actually converts.

• Give creators a real stake in performance — that could be affiliate commission, a longer-term ambassador fee tied to results, or first access to new product drops before the wider public. The point is skin in the game, not just a flat fee.

• Prioritise niche and familiarity over raw follower count — the through-line in both Cherub and Bartlett’s OBSN launch is that trust in a defined audience is what’s attracting serious money, not sheer scale. The same logic applies to picking creator partners for your brand.

• Treat top creators as advisors, not just talent — the creators who genuinely understand your audience are a free focus group. Bring them into product or campaign development conversations, not just the content shoot.

• Watch adjacent industries for signals like this — fintech, gaming and edtech tend to experiment with creator economics before FMCG does. Cherub’s raise and Bartlett’s venture are two data points; they won’t be the last.

Getting ahead of it, not reacting to it

This is a clear direction, not a blip — the money moving into the creator economy right now is too serious, and too consistent, to write off as a passing trend. The brands who’ll do well out of this next phase are the ones building creator relationships that could survive a shift like this — ones based on genuine trust and shared upside, not a media plan and an invoice. If your current creator strategy is still one-and-done posts, give me a call! Now’s a good moment to rethink the structure & budget allocation to stay ahead of your competitors. Utilise this content across your live channels - don’t think this content is just for social media.