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Venture firms are turning to creators to build trust with the next generation of founders before a check is ever written. It’s a trend that’s been building with a16z’s acquisition of Erik Torenberg’s Turpentine podcast and OpenAI’s acquisition of TBPN. Lightspeed Venture Partners just made its own notable hire in that vein, bringing on Claire Zau, a seed investor with a major following on Instagram and TikTok, to source deals and co-host the firm’s new show, Lightwork, alongside CMO Josh Machiz.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis is joined by Zau and Machiz to dive deep into whether the “creator-investor” is becoming a real function in venture or just something firms are still trying to figure out.
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
1:03 Getting hired…via Instagram DM
3:36 Creating for the tech-curious, not just tech Twitter
8:12 What Instagram taught Claire about Gen Z and AI
10:44 Does audience feedback shape investment decisions?
11:19 Do founders now expect investors to be creators?
13:13 Inside the editing grind: hours per video
15:42 Who’s actually doing creator VC well right now
18:52 The risk of being taken less seriously
21:41 Measuring ROI: brand awareness and founder conversion
25:09 The Neko Health and embryo-screening discovery stories
27:41 What’s next for Lightspeed’s media empire
29:22 Outro
