What is the significance of CRM companies such as HubSpot entering the creator economy, and how does Beacons view this trend?

Understanding your customers is pretty important for any business, and some version of a CRM should be valuable to creators too. A CRM can help creators truly own their audience independently of the big platforms, and it can help creators identify their most engaged fans and their preferences.

HubSpot has traditionally served SMBs, and while we do see creators as a new class of SMB, they’re pretty different in many ways. Creators are operating at the smallest end of the spectrum (often with a team of 1), and unlike a traditional business which usually has a product or service that they’re selling, creators are often just beginning to figure out how to monetize. Most creators today know that they should be doing things like collecting emails, but don’t really know what to do after that — I think there’s going to be a pretty big educational component needed here to help creators adopt more sophisticated tools.