|
If you’re finding value in our Creator Economy newsletter, I encourage you to consider subscribing to The Information. It contains exclusive reporting on the most important stories in tech. Save up to $250 on your first year of access. Hello! Snap’s stock plunged this week after reporting lackluster second-quarter results. But some investors still see reasons to be bullish about the company. Sasha Kaletsky, managing partner of early-stage venture firm Creator Ventures, said the Snapchat parent company has invested “incredibly aggressively” in Spotlight, its TikTok competitor, which now makes up 40% of content watch time on the app. He also pointed to surging usage of its paid subscription offering, Snapchat+, which gives users access to additional features. “There’s actually a lot to like about what they’ve been doing on the product,” Kaletsky told my colleague Akash Pasricha during an interview with TITV, The Information’s new daily streaming show. But Snapchat’s business model and usage is “not quite catching up yet” and it lost 2 million users in North America, its most important market. Kaletsky, whose firm in May raised a $45 million second fund and has invested in startups like newsletter publisher Beehiiv and voice AI startup ElevenLabs, said Snap is struggling with a perennial problem: new users tend to join when they’re in high school and college, and then they age out of the app over time. (He does not own Snap stock.) “That’s been Snap’s long-term issue,” he said. “They are trying to retain those older cohorts, but they have been struggling of late.” So what can Snap do? Keep improving Spotlight, which is “doing well and it is working,” Kaletsky said. But the “biggest upside case” for Snap is out of the company’s hands, he noted, saying Snapchat would be a major beneficiary if TikTok ends up getting banned in the U.S. President Trump continues to punt the deadline to enforce a law banning the app if it doesn’t find a U.S. buyer. Kaletsky also seemed optimistic Snap’s third-quarter report results will be in line with its current guidance, which is what executives indicated on its investor call on Tuesday. Total revenue is projected to grow between roughly 7% and 10% during the third quarter. Snap is “tracking towards it already,” Kaletsky said. “Maybe they need a little bit of a boost to get there, but they seem relatively confident on making it.” Here’s what else is going on… See The Information’s Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors. SWNS Media Group, a U.K. media company that owns news agency SWNS and creative agency 72Point, acquired Creatorville, a digital content consultancy. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Truth Social, President Trump’s social media network, is testing an AI-powered search feature using startup Perplexity’s technology. Duolingo, the TikTok-famous language learning app, acquired NextBeat, a London-based music gaming startup. Creators, podcasters and authors sold almost six times more tickets in 2025 compared to last year, according to data from StubHub first published by Axios. The most popular creator-run tours on StubHub were Alex Cooper's “Unwell” tour, Crime Junkie’s podcast tour and motivational speaker Mel Robbins’ “Let Them” tour. Ticket prices for creators’ events on average were about 40% less than traditional live events. RJ Larese is now the U.S. president of Sixteenth, a creator talent management agency that is part of Whalar Group. Most recently, Larese was vice president of talent and influencer marketing at Paramount Global, including its streaming service Paramount+. Larese also is on VC firm Curate Capital’s advisory board as a venture partner and leads what it calls “influential investing.” Read Wednesday's newsletter for our full interview. Sixteenth also promoted senior talent managers Brendan Nahmias, Megan Frantz, Phil Battiato and Rick Bhatia to partners in the U.S. 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
| 
