Next 10 Ventures creates $50 million fund for content creator economy

YouTube helped build the “creator economy,” or people who get paid for a living to entertain us with their videos. Now a former YouTube executive, Benjamin Grubbs, has created Next 10 Ventures, a $50 million operating fund to invest in content creators.

The idea is to accelerate the growth of creator-based content, commerce, and community. It’s a fund to find the next YouTube, or the next great YouTubers, or the livestreaming masters on Twitch. Yes, it’s the kind of fund that you wouldn’t have created just five years ago, because only recently has content creation become a hugely lucrative field, as authentic video creators are supplanting traditional media in communicating directly with fans. We focused on this idea, which we referred to in part as the Leisure Economy, at our recent GamesBeat Summit event.