| We hope you'll join us for our annual 2025 creator economy event on June 3 at Neuehouse Hollywood! This year's event, The Future of Influence: What's Next for Creators, Entertainment and AI, will feature speakers including Substack CEO and co-founder Chris Best, executives from Meta Platforms, Spotify and creators including Dhar Mann, Adam W and Corporate Natalie. We're also excited to announce new speakers: Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff and Valeria Herzer, Coca-Cola's senior director of global entertainment and influence. Space is limited and you can buy tickets here. If you're interested in sponsoring the event, please reach out to sponsorships@theinformation.com. Hello! It's Rocket. Four years ago, Lukas Ziegler was programming robots at a Polish distributor for Universal Robots, which makes industrial robots that work alongside humans. At night, he started to post about the robotics industry on LinkedIn, eventually traveling around the world to visit robotics companies and give speeches at robotics trade shows. Ziegler's online following was already taking off by 2023 when he started working in sales at German startup Energy Robotics, which equips robots, such as Boston Dynamics' robo-dog Spot, with software to work in industrial settings. By late 2023, the 28-year old, who is based in Warsaw, had accumulated 100,000 followers on LinkedIn. Last November he left Energy to pursue a full-time career as an influencer, including writing the Substack newsletter "We Are All Robots." "Travel around the world, talk about robots, talk to great founders—it's like the best job of your life, even if it doesn't pay that well," he said. Ziegler is one of a growing number of so-called B2B influencers, or creators who make content about businesses for business audiences. These creators, such as Corporate Natalie, Corporate Bro and Miss Excel have found fans and established their own businesses to sell content—from technical guides to industry satire—to professionals in one field. Business-to-business influencers need to be subject matter experts and "also carry great passion," said Ziegler. Reflecting that focus, Ziegler's biggest followings are on LinkedIn, X and Substack, which he joined in late 2022. He does not use Instagram and TikTok, but is starting a YouTube channel. On his Substack, Ziegler highlights the biggest robotics stories of the week, such as Hugging Face's recent acquisition of Pollen Robotics. On LinkedIn, the self-described robotics evangelist shows off the latest creations captivating roboticists, from boxing humanoids to flying drones, as well as industrial robots. This year, he expects his revenue to reach between $150,000 and $180,000, but his costs are higher than when he was working at Energy: he has to pay for flights, rental cars, camera operators and video editing services. But the job also provides expertise, recognition and connections in the industry—"something that you can't buy with money," he said. Just under one-third of his income comes from delivering keynote speeches for trade shows and corporations, he said. For example, he will be speaking at the UN's AI for Good event in Geneva in July, though he won't earn a fee. Another third comes from his Substack newsletter, for which some readers pay $5 per month. Ziegler makes around 25% of his income from selling his service as a consultant for companies' sales strategies. Ziegler said income from sponsored LinkedIn posts has fallen to 15% of the total from about 50% two years ago as he turns down offers from companies that dictate what he would post, which could lead to over-promising on an early technology. He has also declined offers to hold online courses because he's skeptical they would reach the professionals he is targeting. Ziegler sees the next step in his career as venture capital, a natural extension of the work he already does to vet the companies he chooses to promote. Ziegler said he currently spends 5-10 hours a week as an unpaid scout for ff Venture Capital, a venture firm with offices in New York, Japan and Warsaw. Now over to Kaya for what else is going on... See The Information's Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors. TikTok announced a feature called "Footnotes," similar to community notes on X and now Meta Platforms. Contributors who apply to be part of the program will be able to "add relevant information to content on our platform," TikTok said in a blog post. Patreon announced that it's introducing the ability to livestream. It will test the feature over the next few months and expects it to be more widely available this summer. Beehiiv, a newsletter publishing platform, announced it's adding podcasts to its service. Google announced that its Gemini Advanced subscribers will be able to try out its video-generating AI, Veo 2, to create eight-second long videos. Loti AI, an AI deepfake detection startup, raised $16.2 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures. Acast, an independent podcast company, announced a deal with The New York Times-owned sports publication The Athletic. Acast will be The Athletic's exclusive external sales partner and work with its team to sell audio ads, podcast sponsorships and branded content. Shein and Temu separately told U.S. shoppers this week that they plan to raise prices starting April 25, blaming "recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs." Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand on Wednesday in a closely watched antitrust trial in Washington to acknowledge the company in 2018 was slow to recognize the competition for creators with rival apps. He said by 2020 and 2021, the company was "fully in swing, ramping up our own efforts." Since then, it's been much more of "a very heated competition as we are working to improve our AI and our creator ecosystem." "People spend more time on YouTube than Facebook and Instagram combined, certainly more than either of them independently," he added. "YouTube is probably the most competitive in terms of creators ... YouTube has a really well built out creator system and monetization and things like that. They're just a really serious competitor." Read more from Kalley's coverage of the trial. Alix Earle spoke at Harvard Business School, according to a post on her Instagram account. Kim Kardashian and MrBeast's former manager Reid Duchscher, the CEO of talent management firm Night, has also spoken at HBS. Amanda Bynes joined OnlyFans, but the former child star said she won't post "sleazy" content. She plans to use the subscription service to chat with fans through direct messages. Thank you for reading the Creator Economy Newsletter! I'd love your feedback, ideas and tips: kaya@theinformation.com. If you think someone else might enjoy this newsletter, please pass it forward or they can sign up here: https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/creator-economy | 
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