Whalar Group wants to take the creator economy into its “next chapter” with The Lighthouse

In 2023, creator and social agency Whalar Group announced an ambitious plan to create physical campuses for content creators to learn, make, and collaborate with their peers. Now the company is opening the doors to its first campus in Venice, Calif. this month with an additional location in Brooklyn launching this spring and a London location slated for 2026.

Part production studio, part co-working space, part university, The Lighthouse is membership-based community designed to help creators and their teams level-up both their content and the businesses they’re building around it.

“If you look at [20th century German art school] Bauhaus, Andy Warhol’s Factory, Silicon Valley, all those moments where you had a gathering space for smart, curious, multi-hyphenate[s] created a generational shift for creative industries,” says Jon Goss, president of The Lighthouse. “That’s our goal: to be a place where people can find connection, find opportunities to collaborate, learn from experts and thought leaders, and learn from each other. And I think that enables the creator economy to go into its next chapter.”

The Lighthouse’s founding cohort in Venice includes 150 creators and creative professionals who will use the facilities for filming, editing, podcasting, screening, performing, and more on top of having access to educational classes and sessions covering topics including business management, how to staff a team, production workshops, wellbeing and personal growth, and more. Memberships will typically run for up to four years and those who have contributed to The Lighthouse by way of education, community building, and programming will have the option to remain members who can mentor the next generation of creators and creatives.

For as long as the creator economy has been around (since 1997, by some suggestions) and for all the money pouring into it (estimates place its total addressable market reaching half-a-trillion by 2027), it’s still somewhat of the Wild West. Various platforms and agencies have sprouted up in droves to help creators monetize their content, sell products, and score brand deals. But what’s often missing is a cohesive path toward professionalizing a creator business, particularly for the middle class of the creator economy.

According to Influencer Marketing Hub, more than 50 million people worldwide consider themselves to be creators—but only 2 million would say they’re “professionals,” i.e. earning enough for it to be their full-time career. Granted, some creators will always keep what they do as a side hustle. But for those looking for a more solid foundation to scale up their businesses—or even establish one in the first place—Goss sees The Lighthouse as a viable resource.

“The creator economy is being taken more seriously every year,” Goss says. “It just feels like centers of gravities going towards creators and the creator economy.  I think more and more brands and media platforms and entertainment organizations are recognizing that every single day. It’s just inevitable.”

“So our mission is to be an ecosystem for all those constituents,” he adds, “having those people all in the room together, actually having those conversations in real-time versus them happening in their echo chambers.”

Part of bringing the gap among those constituents are The Lighthouse’s founding brand partners Shopify, iHeartMedia, and Samsung providing programming and activations throughout the campus. Shopify will have a pop-up for creator brands to showcase their products. iHeartMedia will host a monthly live podcast onsite featuring emerging talent. And Samsung is outfitting the space with TVs and products. Whalar Group also struck a broader partnership with Tribeca Festival to have a vertical within Tribeca dedicated to the intersection of Hollywood and creators. That vertical will also translate into a year-round talk series at the Lighthouse Venice and Brooklyn.

The Lighthouse’s cohorts are selected by a council of their peers. And Goss says they took a similar approach of careful curation with which brands and organizations they chose to partner with.

“They’re directly relevant to creators, to the creator economy, to the ability for creators to up-level and have a connection to them,” Goss says. “Brands are still a massive part of creators both in terms of the content they can create and the ability to generate revenue.”

To be sure, The Lighthouse isn’t necessarily a novel concept. In 2012, YouTube launched Spaces which eventually shifted to a virtual and pop-up event model after the the company shuttered its physical locations post-pandemic. Popular content creator Casey Neistat launched his own attempt with Studio 368 in 2018 but a post on its Instagram last year stated it was “time to pack it all up.”

Goss says they’ve studied predecessors to The Lighthouse and he sees the difference being that what they’ve built is a design-driven space for creators to do more than produce content.

“We’ve taken elements of hospitality and membership clubs and shared workspaces where cultural programming happens on a regular basis to keep driving community and conversations,” Goss says.

He also sees The Lighthouse succeeding by remaining as dynamic as the creator economy itself.

“This has to be a place of constant evolution,” Goss says. “When we talk about what will this place become, what will it mean for creators, not knowing the endless possibilities that can come is the exciting bit. We’ve doubled down on providing this environment for all sorts of possibilities to happen.”