4 Lessons from Katie Perry, VP of Marketing at Public
Disclaimer: I am part of Public's Creator Program. My affiliation with them played no role in writing this article or recording this podcast.
On this week's podcast I spoke with Katie Perry. Katie is the VP of Marketing at Public:
Here are some of my takeaways from the episode:
Humans Gather Around Communities
We all want to feel like we belong in a community. People join clubs or play on sports teams to be part of something bigger than themselves. It's a proxy for feeling like they belong.
The internet brought about a new way to connect with people. Social networks like Reddit fostered these communities. There is nearly a subreddit for anything. Lately, we've seen a handful of companies attempt to unbundle Reddit. As Greg Isenberg writes:
“The broad networks are everything to everyone, the niche ones are something special to a certain group. If you add up the value creation of the vertical companies (ie: Airbnb, Zillow, Stubhub, Etsy etc) it is greater than the sum of its parts (i.e: Craigslist). It turns out going vertical, is pretty profitable.”
That's where Public comes in.
The Community of Investing
There are a plethora of investment communities both offline and online. Public's approach is different. Their goal is to democratize investing. A lot of the communities out there are either for professionals or have a high barrier for entry. For example, r/wallstreetbets, a community on Reddit for investors, is composed of amateur traders. However, they use a lot of lingo that might intimidate a newbie trader.
Public would like anyone speaking about investing not to feel dumb. If you are a doctor, a postal worker, or engineer you would have a community to talk with about the market. Their belief is that everyone has a unique POV and that knowledge has value.
The Creators Niche
As communities develop, we see influencers, or as Public calls them, creators begin to emerge. Obviously, people have heard of Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton. You probably haven't heard of Caitlin Doughty, a leading influencer in the mortician community. Her YouTube channel has 1.24M subscribers and more than 148M views.
In the case of Public, they are hoping to create the next generation of financial creators on their platform.
What I find interesting is they don't necessarily have to have domain expertise. One example is Scott Galloway. Mr. Galloway is a well-known thought leader in the field of brand marketing. He is a professor at NYU and a serial entrepreneur. He is also a creator on the Public app. Yes, Scott has a well-known following but serves as the ideal model for what Public is trying to achieve with its creators.
Scott is taking his experience in branding and applying it to the stock market. Why can't someone who is an expert on CPGs, take their knowledge and became a well-known creator through Public.
The Future of Niche Workers and Niche Creators
If you follow me on Twitter, one of my recurring comments is around niches. I believe, like many, that the riches are in the niches. It's a cyclical trend. We see a platform evolve and then people try to unbundle it. Then it rebundles. As Jim Barksdale says:
“There are only two ways to make money in business: one is to bundle; the other is to unbundle.”
We are in the unbundling period of media and content. Consumers don't want a creator that knows everything or a platform for everything. They value specificity and expertise. Public's goal is to be that platform for the investor community and build the next generation of creators.