Owning Creator Monetization Infrastructure
Ross Fubini, Managing Partner at XYZ Capital, on the biggest opportunities in fintech today
The real opportunity is not pulling creators off Instagram or YouTube, it is giving them a new place to earn money that is valuable enough to become part of their stack. Cameo works because fans come there for a specific action, buying a personalized video, not for general social browsing. Substack did the same for paid writing, turning audience ownership and direct payment into a destination product that creators actively build around.
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Cameo is a marketplace, not just a tool. It gives creators built in demand from fans looking for shoutouts, and it monetizes through a much higher take rate than utility tools like Gumroad, roughly 25% versus about 6.5%. That is what makes a destination economically different from creator infrastructure.
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The pattern is that creators still use big social platforms for discovery, then send fans into specialized monetization surfaces. In practice that can mean TikTok for reach, Beacons or Linktree as the hub, Shopify for merch, and Cameo for paid interactions. The creator is not moving audiences wholesale, they are moving spending moments.
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Substack shows the strongest text based version of this. It attracted writers by owning billing, subscriber relationships, and cross creator recommendations, and by mid 2025 it was at an estimated $45M in revenue on roughly $450M GMV and 5M paid subscriptions. That is a creator destination with real scale.
The next wave of creator companies will keep winning by owning narrow, high intent transactions, memberships, shoutouts, paid newsletters, courses, or tips, then layering discovery and workflow on top. The platforms that matter most will be the ones creators treat as business infrastructure and fans treat as the natural place to buy.