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Wow, so a little bit color. We've been speaking about
creator hub like for us to have your Co founder on board to talk
about the journey of this solution that you've created.
So ladies and gentlemen, please make welcome.
I call him different titles, but I'm just going to call him
Prince. The Prince will the Prince of
Ireland. Everyone, Sir, I'm good.
I'm good, I'm good. Lovely to be here.
Thank you for having me. Wow, wow.
So Olumka has actually said a lot of great stuff about me, but
why did you decide to jump on board the Creator Hub journey?
Interesting question. I have answered this question
loads of times and I think I give different variations to to
it right? But I think for the sake of this
interaction I might try and go a little bit in depth.
I think I'll talk about myself before jumping into creator as
well. I think I don't like seeing
people in pain in general. I try to want to solve.
If I can't solve minds of theirs, if there is a lack, I
want to insert myself to see how I can help.
Might not be able to help you 100% but is searching the right
direction to go. So Olukala obviously is a
creator and has been having the pinpoint of trying to find
businesses to work with. Spear in Ireland for a pinpoint
of you take a lot of time to find the business to work with,
then it's that is a free collaboration, not the paid 1.
So that's another pinpoint as well.
Second thing is it collaboration but the cost, the money is too
small. The top thing could be is a put
collaboration and the percentage of fees being taken from PayPal
or whatever platform the brands or businesses are using is a lot
as well. So, so many problems as well.
Also it disjointed probably when it comes to centralized system
for user jointed content creators in Europe, A disjointed
system for getting the jobs, a decentralized system for working
with agencies. So many issues going on with
with that with which we disadjointed content community.
I have a background, I have a technical background.
I have been in my net to five. Typically, I would be probably
looking for ways to bring data together in a centralized
system, given a holistic view of how to see things and how to get
metrics to leadership if needed to make business decision.
Again, back to my bargain of trying to solve everybody's
problem. I like, you know what, why don't
you beat something and let's see how it goes.
So we talked about that for it was 2024.
We talked about that first half of 2024.
Even before December, we wanted to work on Creator Hub where I
started looking at the name. I started looking at all the
wrong things, right? Looking at the name, it is quite
exciting. But when we never got to it, I
spoke to a couple of friends that I wanted to do this because
again, maybe I was, I didn't like working 95 at the time,
maybe due to burnout, and I wanted something exciting and I
found it. So I spoke to a few of my
friends, someone who was a who knew Python but was a pattern
developer to understand what's going on.
But it seems like most of the people around me were still on
their 95 rat race and maybe we're not thinking in that
direction. So that was a pain then where we
live as well. We had a a a couple who were,
and I hope maybe they see this as well, a couple who one was a
mobile developer and the wife was a software tester.
So I like tell you a little bit about good.
Let's go pitch to them and see what they can do for us.
Again, I don't think I understood the scale of what
crater could be nowadays in the process of building.
I'm telling that where you start from is nowhere.
You finish and there's loads of of yes and iterations.
I have the day and loads of because I had to in this process
get a new Instagram that just for business completely just to
understand how business works. My wife wants me to read books,
but I don't like reading books. I'm a visual person, so I like
watching videos and stuff. I had a new Instagram that was
just clearly on all things entrepreneurs things have
products, businesses and all of that.
So I started learning, understanding and the most
common thing they'll talk about is just start.
And from there, eventually it will open models of iteration.
So the couple we pitch to them. But again, everybody is at
different stages in life when you want to do stuff or do
things. So that didn't fly.
So this was around probably March, April 2024 up until again
towards the end of 2024 around November.
Then I'll have it's time to pick this up again.
I reached out to a friend of mine.
So I, I tend to know people, so I tend to ask people how to
proceed. So one of my friends, younger
brother who is a junior developer, I said, OK, this is
what I want to do. How do we do this?
And what a domain from GoDaddy and oh, maybe you can use
another situation, use another platform, that kind of thing.
So this is really going wrong for the very beginning.
It got to the point where he now said, OK, I need AI, need you to
get me a designer who will build and design the prototype that I
can develop. Cool, that makes sense.
So that moves to my wife's cousin Toby, excellent guy as
well, helped us put structure on what kind of is Creator right
now. I spoke to him, he said he gave
us I think a designer, He gave us a product, a product person
as well and he gave us a project manager and he gave us the
developers. So we started that.
So why are you trying to build Creator Hub without
understanding what's going on? He provided a lot of insight
into you want to keep people in the community.
So did the definition of report type of critical is have a way
of catering to the UTC committee in Europe in general wanted the
words, but we know there's a market for everybody, but we
knew the American macro very saturated, which was the issue.
Reason why I wanted to do this for Europe, because from Europe
couldn't get businesses or brands to work with her from the
states, maybe due to shipping the product.
It was a software product. It made sense you could go to
the App Store and you couldn't get it done, but it was a
physical product that didn't ship to you that was a problem
and they probably didn't want to work with logistic issues
outside the United States. So it made sense that they, they
had their own committee who are trying to have one committee.
Then before that there was buzz about TikTok shop, right?
But TikTok shop was in the UK, which angered us more because
Ireland seemed to be the one to get lost of everything.
And I was like, no, that doesn't make sense to me, right?
The Irish economy is growing. We could tap into that as well.
And from there tap into Europe. Yes, Ireland, they do care about
businesses as well. So we try to go through that,
that, that route. Obviously we're bootstrapping.
There was no money on board, so we had to find a way to make
things work without designer. So holistically, the aim of
Creator was to get a, a, an application that caters to a
community for UGC creators. I kind of want to mirror
everything LinkedIn does because you can connect to
professionals, you can find jobs, you can get business
opportunities, you can get referrals and everything else.
So what better way to mirror than mirror something that
already works and try and put that in a niche that's UGC.
So from there had a design I wanted to mirror the entire life
cycle of UGC, right. We all know the minimum of our
products need maybe 1 features to get it done.
But this was not just as an industry that is starting.
So the industry that's already there, we've seen other products
that are not finding exactly what Yeah and creator could be.
So it wasn't a situation where the MVP was going to be small,
which way I didn't want to call it an MVP, but it's still your
first, your first situation, your version 1.
So it is what it is, regardless of how many features we had.
Now, the features we had, those people were telling me that they
were too much. Yeah, but the features were very
important to the entire user life cycle.
They couldn't be disconnected. They couldn't be a situation
where you wanted a contract part and not have an invoice part.
Now an invoice part comes later. That couldn't work The the
project was quite interesting because the entire life cycle
had to be built in one which was the MVP.
So because of that it was loads of features and loads of people
telling me including this is too much.
If I understand your problem correctly, which is the entire
UGC life cycle, then all of this needs to be there not in the
most the greatest way. It is of time, maternal
functionality at the very core. That is what creator can be and
which way from there. So I sat down with Ubukala and
told me she she create. She explained the UGC life cycle
from beginning to the end. End.
What step do you need to take? What Who does this?
When does the creator do something?
When does the business do something?
When are the the content exchange As a creator they are
trying to solve things for the creator point of view.
You don't you want the fact that we can put that one in escrow
and you want creators to see that money in their wallet even
if you can't access it, at least to know that they will get paid
and you want a situation where they can get paid quickly.
You don't want a situation where the fees are too much.
You want businesses to be happy way, instead of providing up and
down, finding agencies and finding different people to get
them talent, you can just walk into creator hub.
You can put a job out there and let people know they can apply.
We try to make that better because you don't want it to be
a proper job interview, right? So put a video resume, talk
about yourself and why you think you're the best person for the
job and put your portfolio out there.
And again, you try to convince people why you think you're a
best fit because it's both ways, right?
So situations like that, we're trying to look out, look out for
how to solve the problem for both businesses and for both
creators. So I think that is the main
point of what I jumped into Creator Hub.
Well, interesting. So what I love very much about
Creator Hub and of course the expose that you've given us is
the position and you're different from the competitors.
You actually incorporate the whole life cycle of fugacy into
your platform, right? But you would agree with me that
it is very difficult when I say balancing trust and efficiency
in business, right? Because in order to achieve
trust, sometimes you need to have certain bureaucratic
processes, right? So like how are you guys going
to balance efficiency and trust, building trust with this
platform? And that's a very good question.
It's very, I'm happy you use word trust.
I have six years of background in Amazon and the first
leadership principle that you learn is customer trust.
For example, when I have to work as a customer support and cloud
engineer, when the customer comes to you with their problem,
it's maybe it's a issue of their production servers are down and
they're losing money. That kind of situation you your
your your aim of being efficient can lead to trust.
For example, you can calm them down.
You can get on it if it was a chat, you can get on the call
quickly to more efficient and get on the screen share.
You can do things within how you work your ways of working to
make sure that your efficient and solve their issues, which
brings trust. For example, you could say, hey,
I'm going to take a look at this.
Give me a SEC. I'll come back to you and not
just run and not come back. Or you can say you're going to
follow up and you do follow up, you don't just discard.
So you're aware of working, which brings efficiency.
We lead to trust to mirror that to Creator Hub.
The aim is to make sure that I'm a soccer for details, very
detailed oriented. I want this to work a certain
way. Obviously, I'm always ready to
pivot when I think it's time to pivot.
The aim for efficiency and trust for Creator Hub is 2 things,
right? Or two ways from both the
creators and both the businesses.
Once you have the escrow payment for me, which one?
The biggest way of trust is to say, hey, we are going to
mediators between both, bridge the gap between both creators
and both businesses. Hey business, you can pay us the
money then to pay the creator the money, right?
Once you can agree there's quality of work both ways, you
can release that money and goes to them.
And if there's an issue, we can arbitrate on your behalf.
And arbitration can be a situation where the brands,
maybe the creator didn't meet the deadlines on time and the
brand pushed the deadlines forward and they give the
creator time to create the content or asking for too many
iterations and taking advantage. So solving that problem brings
of it in an efficient way can lead to trust on that situation
of balancing efficiency and trusting greater.
Obviously situation where we've introduced collaboration at
every point in the in the UGC life cycle, there is a place
where a chat system that for example, is when you've been
offered a job by business, you can say, hey, this doesn't work
for me, how can we do that? Instead of having to find ways
of reaching out to them, emailing, you can use that chat
system and send it to them. That brings collaboration, that
being efficiency that leads to trust.
You can have that aspect in the offer page and have that aspect
also in the contract page, which are very important, right?
You also we have the ability to have a calendar management
system that can probably be available through the entire
life cycle of that job in Creator Hub where you can
schedule a meeting with the business as well to get clarity.
All of these simple features that lead to efficiency of
getting the job done between both parties definitely can lead
to trust. It's not even the situation of
the aim of trust. And Creator Hub is not for us as
founders, but for the system itself.
People trust in the system to do the work efficiently for both
between the brands and the creators without us having to
interfere. So the system of Creator Hub is
built on trust and hopefully, hopefully the features that are
efficient enough can lead to the trust that we're.
Talking about but interesting stuff, you know, there was a
millionaire on this podcast that told me something He says the
defense between successful people and not so successful
people is the the time between idea and execution.
And when I look into my screen, I see Hollywood color as the
idea. I see you as the executor.
So how are you guys able to balance that time span between
idea and execution And yeah, definitely there I want.
To take this one. There will be clashes between
idea and execution. You got that right.
I think I want to take this one because it's something to today
we're currently struggling with. I'm a passionate, very creative
person. So I see things from the
creative side and it sees things from the, you know, business
logical side. So when I'm like, oh babe, OK,
for example, the landing page or let's change this.
Let's change that. You'll be like, did the landing
page for now, functionality, functionality.
Let's focus on the web app. OK, what are the bugs?
What do we need to fix? It's true because I'm so good
shot. I'm not saying so I take
information from so many places, right?
I'm taking information from Y Combinator, from YC, from NYC
founders, my I call you my school of Instagram with my
Instagram page of just loads of businesses and general page.
And at the very beginning it's about getting your product added
to solve the issue, right. But at the very beginning, I
will, I will admit to Bukola that I was very let's let's get
the court in which is important as well.
But because this is a creative space as well, want to be
careful. I understand, understand that
that now that you you need to do certain things in in this in the
landing page, for example, to each to show your story, because
you are a creative space. You don't want your landing page
to be so serious that it doesn't reflect exactly who you are.
So I I understand that. Yeah, go ahead.
So, so back to idea, but let's give it back to the idea.
So like what are the clashes between idea and execution?
I think there's so many, I would say because I'm always thinking
about the customers. I'm very, I'm very customer
oriented, very I'm thinking about the problem and the
solution we're doing to solve the specific problem, right.
Most of the times I try to avoid distractions where we need to do
that. I'm like, how does it help the
customer? Have the customer actually asked
for that? You do not want to build
something or keep a feature that doesn't help them and becomes
useless. Time, money and resources.
I would say bookie, the core obviously issue and problem that
Kritov is trying to solve for some bookies problem, But I
would kind of say I'm the ideal person because at a random time
at night, I ask random questions around 2:00 AM, three AM, Hey,
what do you think about this? What I think about that?
This will help this. Is constantly thinking of new
ideas there's new ways we can solve the problem and I keep
telling him you know well so husband and wife like so this
time frame, you know, I want to set boundaries let's not talk
business let's just be husband and wife.
But then he'll be like no no, no, we're building our face
baby. It has to be like this, you
know, we have to talk about it all the time.
And I'm like. OK, no, I agree because I still
maintain that now because it's a startup again, like I said, I've
been certain myself in that startup consumer information to
understand what what this entails and I tried to put
myself, I tried to leave it. I can't remember his name.
The former CEO of White Combinator that created Twitch,
that sold it. He will always say a startup is
a situation where you quit a job for one year, You, you eat ramen
for one year and you stay in one.
You, you kill yourself basically, right?
You deny yourself. And if you are really serious by
your startup, you have to do that because you have to devote
your all into that to make that happen.
That's kind of what I'm thinking.
Of course, I'm thinking of the problem, right?
And and because like I said, the problem, one of the problem
we're trying to solve is the decentralization of UGC in
general. Yes, we still agree that we
platform like Twitter and or X where a lot of creators will go
to find jobs or people take advantage to find people, which
is disjointed. And it asks me, because I'm
like, how can we find a way to get these people to create a hub
where this way they're communicating, they can
communicate on our feeds page, they can meet people who are
clearly UGC creators from different parts of the world,
right? That can solve their problems,
get the businesses there as well.
Have a pick with, based on the advanced features and filters we
have to pick creators from different countries and
different skill sets and different experiences and
different niches, right, to get your job done.
So I'm always constantly thinking about that.
I'm thinking about next step or how can we introduce our tenures
to help maybe businesses get more, get their jobs or get more
talent for their jobs quickly or in a quick, quick and efficient
manner. How can we make sure that we
give creators the best chance of being able to pitch to
businesses and get jobs? Because most of these creators,
they do this full time and which means they live on this.
So we need to put our best foot forward to make sure the
platform is good enough to give them the ability to be creative.
Because Bucola does TikTok shop as well and I've seen her do
video and it's actually quite cool, right?
It's not maybe sometimes into voice something I understand
right And I'm based on that I can understand which is coming
from in terms of when she has different ideas on how to take
those ideas and use them from creator.
Hope I don't know if that helps as a big struggle we still have
today. Let me also add this.
That that I totally understand. In terms of ideas, a very good
example is when we're building Creator, I wanted it to be 4 and
I wanted it to be you know and have and everything you know,
something you can just pick your phone like.
Maybe an Instagram or something. It was like, no, this is a SAS
product, this has to be structured.
I was like, babe, you're creating a boring product.
I remember that like, it's boring, it needs to be fun.
It's like, and now I actually love products because it does
solve the problem and it kind of bridges the gap and kind of
centralizes the old UGC cycle and it makes it so fun because
at the end of the day, my branding came into play.
So that is like the fun bit of it.
And then kind of we kind of, you know, complement each other in
the processes as well. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that.
It used to new processes. It was successful.
It's just this stuff, but sometimes I find myself
conflicted, like feeling like, oh, maybe I'm like a hybrid of
the tool of you because I'm a content creator.
However, like I have a corporate background.
I have a technical background, finance tech and like meeting a
person like Olu book color, like she she had to start pushing the
creative side of me more like, for example, like this
geographic is rubbish. What makes it interesting is you
know, somebody telling you very calmly, but in my head I'm like,
oh, do you think about the structure of the content?
Do you think about the best? I'm more concerned about the
message than the the cover, right, because you know, for a
person who would I say ease more premium to structure the feel
like, OK, ensure that the core is actually functional.
Get it, Because when you actually place premium on
function, you can actually change the aesthetics later.
But if the core function is actually compromised, it's just
like what the Bible says. If the foundation to destroy
what kind of righteous do over time these actually discovered
that you need to balance actually need to balance both
both worlds, right. But I'll put the two of you on
the spot right now. And of course I know that you
guys are very busy. I will need to go pretty soon,
right. So we have business and creators
that is brands and creators and that is what you guys do right.
So I'll let Buki take the part of convincing the creators and
I'll let Prince will take the part of convincing the brand.
So if you had just 120 seconds to give a teach right now to the
people listening to this podcast today, right, Bookie, what are
you going to tell the creators, right, To convince them to use
Creator Hub? Why Creator Hub?
Why are you different from the others?
All right. So talking from a creator
perspective, because I myself, I'm a creator to this date, I
didn't, you know, give up on being a creator.
I would say this, it really helps you streamline the
process. It makes it easy for
negotiations because we have a negotiation chat box and it
makes it easy for you to live your life.
Creator Hub is an only one marketplace platforms that
caters to the entire life cycle of AEGC project.
So we're talking from discovery, the brands discovering you.
We're talking delivering the content, negotiation tracks,
voicing literally everything. You don't need like 7 apps to
use Create Hub. All you need to start one app,
Create Hub, that one web app, that one page that was software
and your life is easier. And think of when all those
admin is gone, all that time that is left, how you can use it
to get more jobs, make more videos and even go ahead and
technics your income well. Thank you very much.
And now, now I feel, I feel convinced as a creator, but as a
business. Time starts now.
Why should I? You use Creator Hub and probably
there might be investors, you know, watching these.
So, so why, why should why should, why should you know the
investors invest in Creator Hub as well.
Maybe you chip that in? Yeah, big, big question though.
Hopefully I can talk about, Bucola said.
If you have, if you don't have the skill sets right and you
want to advertise right, distribution is very important.
We are actually trying to distribute for Creator Hub
distribution and marketing. If you do not have the skill set
and you have social media pages and you want to get your brand
out there to millions of people, you need the best people who can
embody your brand and put your message out there.
That's what creator will do for you as a bra, as a business.
If you want a situation where you don't have to deal with
agencies, I'll deal with so many people.
I'm not comfort agencies. But you want just a 11 shop
place, right? You can find creators for
different countries, different situations.
You can negotiate where you your rates, what you want and you can
pay them off and you can get your content and you can put
that on your platforms. From an investor point of view,
creator market is I think the last I check is more than 10
billion markets and still growing and way different aspect
of of being a creator is coming up.
We want AI ads as well coming up as well.
Regardless of technology used to be a creator, you need a place
to source for these creators and that is one of the values that's
creator room for you when you do invest in creator.
Fantastic. I think at this point I'm
actually convinced already. So before I let you guys go, I'm
going to put you through the Pacific Ring of Fire.
That is the quick fire round section.
So very, very big thank you to both of you.
I always say this, that when a person shares their time with
you, they share their life with you.
Because the SI unit for measuring life is time and of
course, brutal to you guys for creating an amazing, amazing
product. I can very much relate to it.
Being a content creator, you are making life easier for millions
of people across the world. So those to you.
So Are you ready to rumble? So I'm number one question,
who's going to take this? OK anybody can take it #1 What
is 1 mistake you would avoid E founding creator hub again.
I will try and get my customers very early, get that wait list,
that waiting list, we did that as well, but we didn't do it
that efficiently. So get that waiting list from
both businesses and both both creators.
Start shouting to the rooftop about your project and the
problem itself is very important, but does.
Bookie have something to say to that question because I thought,
I thought principal would say the mistake you'd avoid is
arguing with Bookie too much on the creative process.
No, it's. Good.
You know, it's, it's yes, frustrating, right?
But if you don't have someone who can bring you down to earth,
I'm a big dreamer, I can dream. If you don't have someone who
can bring you down to earth and challenge you, then you will not
improve. Actually, let me just quickly
add to that. The thing is the way Prince and
I argue, it kind of helps because we find out, OK?
It's kind of like proof testing. Creator hope you challenge me
and give me this question and giving this issue and I'll
challenge you back. And then, you know, we rub off
and learn from our experiences. In that moment.
It might be like, why in the heat of the argument?
But later we go back and we think it true.
And then you come to me and I'm like, oh, you were right too.
I shouldn't have done this. And I'll be like, I hardly do
though. But in my mind I'll be like, oh,
freezes, right? But I hardly do it physically.
Oh yeah. I know I'm right too.
Working on that. Whoa #2 question is what is 1
metric that you now obsessed over?
I think Princeville is the best person for this question.
This song is actually better then.
So, okay, let me see. Okay, So what is 1 metric that
you obsess? Over that's a good question
because when you process of distribution and marketing after
it, you said one bar, can I give you 2?
I think the first one is obviously trying to get people
to use Creator Hub. That's so getting users which
are both businesses and both creators to use Creator Hub.
That's my #1 metrics to get their feedback to see, hey, does
this actually proper solve your problem and what what is not
working? I love that word what isn't
working? Wouldn't you like I don't want
you to feel my good and telling this is good.
I want you to tell me what's not working.
First metric is obviously getting people in to test it.
Sub of that metric is what you like what you don't like to
validate to move forward. And I think the third part sub
of that metric is are the features breaking?
Are they helpful to you? Are the the aim of how we've
done things right? Does that work for you all?
Would you like to see things in a different way and for us to
implement? That So what is 1 task that you
would say you delegated too late in terms of operations?
That's a good question. I'll say hiring the right person
to do the job, yes, you might have the skill set to do it for
this, only somebody better than you.
So if you feel you need to go hire the person to do that skill
set right, do that for you, I would say go delegate quickly
and do that because it frees your time down struggling to
implement it. Get an expert to do it for you.
You can get a UGC creator to do it for you to create a hub,
right? So you're struggling to do the
content yourself, and you can have time to focus on other
things as well. I think the next question will
be for bookie What is 1 belief about the creator economy that
you consider to be untrue? The popular belief about the
Creator I. Think the point but still the
popular belief is a lot of people think what we're doing is
a joke. A lot of people don't think this
is a source of living. I have creators that you know
they've told me you know not directly what three life
platform that someone called them out.
I was like, go get a job. But then what she did was
screenshot that Annie's. I sent it to the person.
So that's literally the belief. They think it's not a job.
And it was a huge number. It wasn't a small number.
Creators are making more than us, I.
Think my final question is in one word, one word and that's
what both of you, what do you describe the future of Creator
Hub as in one word? Mind blowing good.
Queens will always be the Oliver Twist.
He he chose a compound word, mind and blowing.
But it's fine. It's fine.
Thank you very much, love and respect to you guys.
And of course, I'll catch you guys.
We'll catch you guys soon. And of course, to the audience,
always go for something in your lives and see if the leaves try
to thrive. And of course, go achieve.
God bless guys.