IN THE FUTURE, EVERY COMPANY WILL BE CREATOR-ALIGNED.

This isn’t because everyone will magically discover values, but because companies that aren’t creator-aligned will lose out to those that are.

Why is this transition happening now?

Creators have discovered their leverage*;
They’re exercising that leverage in their choice of partners;
Creator-aligned companies are eating away at the margins of legacy businesses;
Creator-aligned companies are collaborating to neutralize the distribution advantages of legacy businesses;
Legacy businesses are transforming their models to become creator-aligned; if they don’t, they will disappear.

This is an inevitability. And the faster any company gets on the right side of history, the better it is for them.

CREATOR ALIGNED PROJECTS EXISTS TO HELP EVERY COMPANY UNLOCK THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF CREATOR-ALIGNED BUSINESS MODELS.

You can call it enlightened self-interest. We call it the world conspiring to make sure the next Bob Dylan doesn’t have to keep driving an Uber.

We help companies with things like:

Business model design
Positioning, go-to-market, & growth
Content & commercial strategy
Business development & partnerships
Creator acquisition & engagement

What makes us different from the other folks you might go to?

We practice what we preach: We build teams like a producer staffs a film. Team members are all indie operators who come together for a purpose, then move onto the next project.
We’ve done the work: The people who work on your projects have been in your shoes and have deep, direct relationships with the people you want to connect with.
We opt in to each project: No one gets assigned; anyone that works on a project chooses to do so. Why would you have it any other way?
We don’t come to an office: There’s zero reason to pay for unnecessary overhead. A lower cost structure on our end means lower prices and better ROI for you.
We want to solve problems asap: The sooner a project is over, the sooner you can focus on generating value from the work. With rare exception, retainer relationships misalign incentives.

Who is the team behind Creator Aligned Projects?

Sterling Proffer

Sterling grew up in a recording studio, thought he wanted to run a film studio, then spent his career in newsrooms. He spent a decade—the right decade—at VICE, helping launch things like Motherboard, Noisey, VICE.com, VICE News, and the VICE YouTube channels. He looked after relationships with platforms, set up a business analytics group, and wrote hundreds of decks that VICE pitched to brands & investors. His first job was watering the plants.
Since leaving in 2018, he has consulted, advised, contributed to, or volunteered for a number of organizations working on building a better future for creative people, including nonprofits like: NEW INC, Columbia Journalism School, The Entertainment Community Fund, and The American Journalism Project.
He started this business in 2021 as an outgrowth of three things: (1) the natural evolution of an indie consulting practice; (2) realizing that—like creators—more great business talent was abandoning traditional institutions; and (3) starting a series of public conversations around the future of the creative industries, then growing the list to 250,000 people.

Danielle Bennison-Brown

Danielle is a strategic advisor, renowned for her expertise in crafting culturally relevant brand and content strategies for both global brands and startups.
Her portfolio includes iconic titles such as i-D and luxury brands like Farfetch, where she played a pivotal role in steering these brands towards their most successful periods by developing content that deeply resonated with Gen Z audiences.
As the landscape evolved towards embracing creators, Danielle has been instrumental in assisting major brands like Tory Burch in formulating meticulously curated creator strategies. Simultaneously, she has been closely advising a creator engagement platform, exploring the ways technology can scale curation.

Our Network

Our partners have worked in operational roles at platforms, publishers, agencies, and more.
Select Platforms: Meta, YouTube, TikTok, Snap, X, Spotify, Apple Music
Select Publishers: VICE, i-D, Condé Nast, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vox, COMPLEX
Select Agencies: CAA, WME, UTA, WPP, IPG, Havas, Dentsu

If you’d like to chat, reach out anytime at sterling [at] creatoraligned [dot] com.

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*This is a much longer discussion, and if you’re reading this, you’re probably the type of person I want to have that discussion with. The short version goes something like this: (1) the internet forced every creator to become an entrepreneur; why? (2) increase in output = increased competition for attention; meanwhile, (3) cost pressures on creative companies unprepared for internet economics; (4) algos arrive and steal attention from everyone else; so, logically, (5) creative companies (under those same cost pressures) save money and decrease risk by outsourcing their A&R to algos; accepting the consequences, (6) creative companies become willing to overpay for creators that break through on their own (i.e. massive bidding wars); meanwhile, (7) whether feeling abandoned or inspired by case studies of indie creators that broke through, creators decide to take matters into their own hands; at around the same time, (8) the explosion in educational resources, low-code/no-code tools, community platforms, the “creator economy” and web3 all lower the bar for creators to actually get it done; (9) once they got over the fear & stress and learned to run their own career, creators discovered their leverage.