Hello Bay Area Creator Economy!

Can you believe it's the end of January already? It's been quite a month for the Creator Economy, the Bay Area, and our home state of California. Between the aftermath of the LA fires, TikTok's temporary outage and relaunch, the public reaction that followed, and major AI advancement announcements—not to mention new Creator funds from Meta, Substack, and others—there's been plenty to process.

Meanwhile, giving us joy is the quintessential Bay Area creator vibe of San Francisco's new Mayor Daniel Lurie's social media presence, which you can check out here.

Our co-founders Jim Louderback and Rachel Masters have just returned from Dubai's 1 Billion Followers Summit, where the Bay Area made a strong showing. Attendees were captivated by our local tech innovations—particularly Marina Mogilko's insights on AI implementation and Jeremiah Owyang's perspectives on AI Agents.

Don't forget to check out the exciting new events and job opportunities popping up in 2025!

Cheers,
Cassandra Bankson, Jim Louderback, France Tantiado, Monica Khan & Rachel Masters
The Bay Area Creator Economy Co-Founders 

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[Event Recap] 1 Billion Followers Summit

Jim Louderback, Contributor

Early January saw a small contingent of the Bay Area Creator Economy team head to Dubai to help produce the 1 Billion Followers Summit. 

BACE co-founder Rachel Masters produced the tech track, while I produced the economy track for the third edition of this global creators summit (the third Content track was produced by friend of BACE Leslie Morgan). New Bay Area resident Megan Lightcap was generous enough to come out and speak on both the Economy and Tech tracks.

The “Billion” in the title refers to the cumulative number of followers among the 450+ speakers – including top global creators, business execs, experts, investors, entrepreneurs and more.  The event itself spread out around the Jumeriah Emirates Tower hotel and office building, cascading into the iconic Museum of the Future and the Dubai International Finance Center across the street.  15,000 attendees discovered breakthrough new creator technology, learned content and packaging secrets from top creators and explored business strategies focused on growing the global creator economy.

It was all part of the United Arab Emirates efforts to solidify Dubai as a global creator hub, on par with Los Angeles, London, Sydney, Mumbai and other global hubs, and was put on in conjunction with CreatorsHQ.

By all accounts they succeeded. Many speakers and attendees said that it was the best creator event they’d ever been at, with a unique mélange of speakers, creators and attendees from all around the world.

If your perception of Dubai is of a hot and arid desert, you’d be half right.  I visited for the first time in August 2019, to start planning for VidCon’s appearance in Abu Dhabi, and it was so hot my camera strap melted during one of our site visits.  But January is an entirely different proposition.  60s at night, mid 70s during the day, the weather is just about perfect.

And much of the event was outside.  Three of the four main stages were built outside, with sunshades and amazing views from the stage – looking out of the Museum of the Future and Dubai’s iconic skyline.   And the epic outdoor creator and speaker lounge, nestled on a deck spanning the two Emirates towers, surpassed even WebSummit’s iconic speaker forum.

The Economy stage featured CEOs including Chris Harrington from CreatorIQ, Oscar Hogland from Epidemic Sound and Ahad Khan from Kajabi.  Top MENA execs from IMI, TikTok, Viewture, Visa and Brands For Less joined execs from CAA, Whalar, Skyscanner and creators including Tyler Chou, Chris Do, Jay Clouse, Slogo and Ehab Hamarneh – among others - to share insight and lessons learned building iconic channels, companies and communities.

The Tech stage was also rocking with visionaries including Ken Hertz, Jeremiah Owyang, YC Sun, Paul Robert Cary, Rox Codes, Taylor Lorenz, Paul Bakaus and an interview with virtual Reid Hoffman.

Based on this year’s edition, the event has become one of a handful of must-attend creator confabs.  Next year will be even better, and I hope to see you there!

Check out this video of a portion of the 1 Billion Followers Summit, including where TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, X, Snap and Roster had their activations.