Slow Ventures Backs Three More Niche Creators From $64 Million Fund

Slow Ventures has taken equity stakes in three creators—Erin McGoff, Will Lasry, and Kyle Lee—in deals ranging from $1 million to $3 million, drawing from its $64 million Creator Fund debuted in February 2025. The firm disclosed the investments on Wednesday, though the deals themselves are not all new: Lee raised in 2025, while McGoff and Lasry closed this spring and summer.

McGoff, who built her following on pragmatic career advice for Gen Z professionals, received $1.5 million. Lasry, whose channel covers textile manufacturing, raised $2.5 million. The firm declined to specify Kyle Lee's figure, saying only that it fell within the typical $1 million-to-$3 million range. Lee applies the creator lens to commercial fishing.

The three bring Slow's creator portfolio to seven completed investments, with two more in progress. Megan Lightcap, a partner at the firm, said Slow expects to back roughly 20 creators in total. The fund stands alongside the $250 million vehicle raised by CAA and IMC in June as one of the most prominent institutional commitments to the creator economy to date.

A new structure for a new asset class

Slow's approach departs from traditional venture practice. Rather than investing in a specific product, the firm buys equity in a holding company launched by the creator, typically taking a stake below 15% to 20%. Lightcap compared the structure to investing in Beast Industries rather than Feastables—the bet is on the entrepreneur and the ecosystem of businesses they might build.

The firm takes no revenue share and does not hold an identical ownership percentage in every underlying company. If a creator forms a 50-50 joint venture with an outside firm, Slow's stake applies only to the 50% the creator owns.

Due diligence includes standard founder vetting plus research into community strength. Lightcap said the process can involve contacting followers directly to ask why they follow and trust a creator, alongside analysis of audience engagement, commercial traction, and category size. Once the money is in, Slow goes deliberately hands-off: no board seats, no imposed performance KPIs.

The 'cult' thesis

Slow Ventures cofounder Sam Lessin sorts creators into two camps: mass-market entertainers like MrBeast and Alex Cooper, and niche creators regarded as authorities in specific spaces. The firm is backing the latter, betting that depth of audience relationship outweighs raw reach when launching businesses.

"I think we're past the moment of mass-market creators, like Beast Industries," Lessin said. "What we invest in are cults. The most valuable cults are not the ones that you can talk about on CNBC."

Morning Brew, Caliber, Smooth Media, and Workweek have advanced similar arguments about niche authority. None of Slow's three newest investments, notably, is building a media business as the priority. Each monetizes through advertising or sponsorship, but they treat audiences as a means to a broader commercial end—including a direct-to-consumer CPG flash-frozen fish business—with plans to expand into further revenue streams.

Lessin argued that AI has strengthened the thesis. As products become cheaper and easier to build, the product itself grows less defensible and trusted distribution becomes more valuable. "The premium on trust has never been higher," he said. "It is so easy to make a product that having a better product is no longer investable. Trust and community are what is investable."

Measured expectations

The investments are unlikely to produce the outsized returns of seed funding in technology startups, Lessin acknowledged. But the diminished reward reflects a higher likelihood of success: unlike founders pitching napkin sketches, these creators already command loyal audiences, revenue, and commercial traction, making total loss less probable.

The creator economy has seen capital cycles before. Pandemic-era backers poured hundreds of millions into platforms like Jellysmack, only to retrench when the market cooled. Whether Slow's holding-company model fares better remains an open question. The firm anticipates deploying the full $64 million over a two-to-three-year horizon, and the results will likely take years to bear out. The strategy nonetheless offers institutional investors a concrete template—one more signal that the next wave of influential businesses may begin as a single creator with a devoted following.