The increasing scale of creator businesses will be a prominent theme at next month’s VidCon gathering, and a new company is positioning itself in the middle of that pipeline. Volt Factor is a new creator IP company that boasts a pair of experienced co-founders and a strong roster of well-known partners.
Volt Factor plans to scale creator businesses into global brands by providing the operational infrastructure needed to pursue ambitious commercial ventures. The new company will represent its clients’ global licensing rights, pursuing projects that will maximize revenue from underdeveloped IP.
At launch, Volt Factor is working with creators who have built some of the most popular channels on platforms like YouTube and Twitch. Its partners include Alan Chikin Chow, who has parlayed his chart-topping success into a sprawling production empire; That’s Amazing, a Wisconsin fraternal duo with nearly two billion lifetime views on its primary YouTube hub; and TheBurntPeanut, a Twitch sensation who is ready for bigger things after breaking out earlier this year.
Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories
Volt Factor is hardly the first company built around the idea of scaling creator IP. Billions of dollars of venture capital have supported entities like Candle Media, which have in turn unlocked retail opportunities for internet-famous brands like CoComelon.
In a crowded field, Volt Factor’s co-founders can give it a competitive edge. Elan Freedman, one half of that duo, previously co-founded Electric Monster, a company that supercharges creator brands through IP development and other initiatives. Freedman’s partner at the top of the Volt Factor org chart is Lindsay Hampton, who spent 14 years at YouTube. Most recently, she served as the platform’s Global Head of Creator Engagement.
“Creators have built highly engaged global audiences and widely recognized IP, yet most lack the resources to fully capture the long-term value of what they’ve created,” Hampton said in a statement. “We started Volt Factor to change that. We work alongside creators and their teams, leading product strategy and execution, and managing the business backend so the brand can scale while creators focus on what they do best.”
Freedman and Hampton will get a helping hand from an advisory team filled with retail experts. That group includes former Hasbro and Nike execs, as well as Jim Lee, the President of one of the most successful creator-led retail brands: Mark Rober’s CrunchLabs.
With such a versatile brain trust in tow, Volt Factor is ready to embark on its brand-building mission. It has already picked out partners who have thrived on social media, and its next steps figure to be more lucrative than a BurntPeanut face reveal.
