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Rachel Kim

Creator Economy at Signal · Los Angeles, CA

I fell into the creator economy before it had a name. In 2015, I was running social media for a talent agency in LA that represented YouTubers. My job was to help creators with 500K-5M subscribers figure out their "business strategy," which mostly meant negotiating brand deals and trying to diversify revenue beyond AdSense. I was 23 and giving business advice to people who made more money than my entire family. The imposter syndrome was legendary.

But I learned something crucial in that role: creators are businesses with one employee and zero infrastructure. They face the same strategic challenges as any company (revenue diversification, audience retention, platform risk, pricing strategy) but they face them alone, usually without any business education, and usually while the market shifts under their feet every six months.

I joined Patreon in 2018 as a creator partnerships manager and eventually became Head of Creator Partnerships. At Patreon, I worked directly with thousands of creators across every category: podcasters, visual artists, musicians, writers, educators, adult content creators. I saw what worked and what didn't at a scale that no individual creator could see. The biggest insight: the creators who succeeded on Patreon weren't the ones with the largest audiences. They were the ones who understood that subscription is a relationship, not a transaction. The metric that mattered wasn't subscriber count; it was subscriber retention, and the creators with 95%+ retention were the ones who treated their patrons like community members, not customers.

In 2022, I left Patreon to do product advising. I spent a year consulting for YouTube on their membership and Super Chat features, and I advised several creator economy startups. The pattern I kept seeing was the same: tools built by people who didn't understand creators, for problems that weren't the actual problems. Most creator tools solve distribution or monetization. The real problem is operational: creators need help with scheduling, finances, collaboration, and the mental health toll of being a one-person media company.

I joined Signal because the creator economy is a $250B market that's covered almost entirely by people who've never been creators or worked directly with them at scale. I want to bring the operator's perspective.

I live in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. I have a rescue greyhound named Algorithm, I'm a mediocre but enthusiastic surfer, and I've watched more YouTube videos than any human should admit to.

Experience

• Head of Creator Partnerships, Patreon
• Product Advisor, YouTube

Articles by Rachel Kim (14)