xyz+ notes
This includes and expands upon the information already provided on xyz, creators, and the community.
Recap:
xyz is a group of well-known female content creators who explore the interests of modern women, produce meaningful projects, and build community in new and innovative ways.
Why:
Because the creator economy is broken.
Because being a content creator is hard.
Because every woman should have a group of women.
Who:
“Cool women who do cool things together.”
More formally, xyz members are:
women
content creators or influencers with large followings and cultural capital
niched—or not
storytellers who are motivated by the desire to create and share
currently based in New York
culturally-aligned (of the same spirit)
mission-aligned
driven and ambitious
smart and resourceful
doers—they get shit done
Even more specifically, xyz is for creators who:
have a lot of influence but don’t really know what to do with it
are super capable but aren’t exactly sure how they want the rest of their career to unfold
skew more generalist than niche and have a lot of different interests
have a knack for storytelling, content creation, and/or having a public personality
are natural community builders
want to get to better know their followers
want to work alongside other women instead of having to take on everything alone
are interested in building a company and making bank
Original xyz members will have partial ownership of xyz.
Click here for the xyz creators page.
Click here for a list of content creators in new york.
From the outside, xyz is:
A group of female content creators who explore interests and launch projects together.
A platform that curates subject matter experts, resources, and learnings.
A community that serves as a place for intellectual and social companionship.
From the inside, xyz is an experiment in:
- Organizing content creators to go to market differently—under one unified brand instead of independently—to alleviate current content creator pain points.
- Creating value through different revenue streams or business models while exploring interests and having fun.
- Leveraging the brand’s collective power for access or opportunity.
- Larger content creators (xyz) helping smaller creators (who contribute to projects) be discovered/monetize.
- Using already established individual social media channels as free marketing channels to drive attention to xyz.
- Building and incentivizing community in innovative ways.
- Producing different types of live content.
- Governance, cooperation, organizational design, and the future of work.
The xyz experiment
Mission: Do what we want and make money while doing it. Share learnings. Support other women.
💆♀️ Goal #1: Make the experience of being a content creator less painful. Going to market as a group hopefully alleviates or solves some of the current pain points felt by content creators.
💃 Goal #2: Have fun and work hard. This is an opportunity for generalists and storytellers alike to flourish.
💸 Goal #3: Make the xyz brand valuable. There are a ton of different ways to create value through xyz—see “value creation” below for potential revenue-generating opportunities.
🔦 Goal #4: Work on the issue of discoverability in the creator economy. We’ll spotlight “middle-class” female content creators to help them be discovered and hopefully make more money.
💞 Goal #5: Build an engaged xyz community. Effective community building is the next frontier in the creator economy. We’ll provide value to our community by sharing our learnings/resources and they’ll provide value back to us (loyalty, feedback, buy-in, etc.)
*xyz members should align on mission and goals together, but this is just a first pass.
xyz in action
🗂️ Projects
A “project” is the way we explore a subject and how we share that exploration and findings with the community.
A “project proposal” outlines the topic, the why, the size and scope, KPIs, responsibilities of members/community, and/or any revenue-generating opportunities/expectations.
Every xyz member votes to carry out a project based on the project proposal—sometimes we get community consensus as well.
Some projects may manifest as multiple components, or “project pieces,” whereas other projects will just have one final outcome or deliverable. Projects and their pieces can be whatever we conceive them to be—a pdf, a magazine, an irl or url event, a course, a panel, a podcast, merch, etc.
We curate meaningful people, products, places, experiences, or whatever else we encounter during a project onto the xyz platform.
Project channels are created in Geneva so that members and the community can engage with specific projects. Projects provide niche.
Project 1: We’ll create the first project proposal together and all vote to carry it out. Ideally, the first few projects excite everyone equally, require the same amount of responsibility, are vetted to some capacity with the community beforehand, require a low lift, and are broad enough to pertain to a lot of women but are specific enough to be interesting.
Click here for a list of project ideas.
💞 Community
We’ll combine our individual followings on social media into one combined xyz community using Geneva, and focus on creating projects that are entertaining, educational, or engaging enough to grow a strong community.
The community serves as a place for women to interact and exchange value with one another, this social element is key to the overall xyz experience. Our direct-to-community approach allows us to build more intimate relationships, better understand thinking and preferences, know that there is support for a project before it even begins, and distribute projects directly to our community as potential customers.
Any community member can step forward to contribute to a project, and we’ll distribute rewards and recognition for the success of a project, monetary or otherwise, to those who contributed. We’ll continue to experiment with innovative ways of building and incentivizing the community, and ultimately offer numerous ways with varying degrees of engagement for community members to participate.
Click here for community notes.
✨ Platform
We will create a platform that serves as a centralized home for all things xyz.
Share projects - videos, digital downloads, events, notes and whatever else comes out of producing projects will be stored and accessed here.
Community-sourced recommendations and resources - vertical-specific, upvoted, updated, etc.
Curated people, places, things - an ongoing curation of the best things we encounter.
Member bios/profiles - specific to the xyz member and her preferences, interests, thinking.
Featured content creators - a way to highlight subject matter experts as well as their products/services.
Check out the current xyz g-drive.
✍️ Contributors
We will approach subject matter experts, brands, events, restaurants, or anything else needed to explore an interest or launch a project, offering exposure or attention in exchange for a discounted rate, time with an expert, access to an event/space, etc.
Contributors are anyone the group works with to carry out projects. Contributors are often sourced or surfaced by the community. Types of contributors:
Contributors - talent needed and used to carry out a project (restaurant, videographer, illustrator, etc.)
Creators - smaller content creators that serve as subject matter experts and get featured on the platform
Donors - anyone who supports projects financially
Executive producers - any non-xyz member who is heavily involved in the project creation (e.g. funding the project but also plays a role in decision making)
💸 Value Creation
There are a lot of different ways to experiment with generating revenue. The underpinning hypothesis is that having a combined community as well as a much larger collective reach will result in many opportunities.
Projects. We can pick and choose when projects or their outputs cost money to consume. Read more about projects above.
Events. Cost of entry for irl and/or url events.
Community Fees. We segment the community and offer tailored products and services at varying price points.
Membership fees. Does xyz continue to become a more formal members-only social network? A SoHo House for digital creators?
Paid opportunities. Instead of being approached by brands as individuals, we’ll be able to approach brands with partnership opportunities that not only make us money but also fit authentically into our xyz roadmap.
Affiliate marketing. If we build a platform that curates all of the people, places, and things we encounter during a project, we could make money through an affiliate marketing model.
Consulting services. If we wanted to charge brands for access to us or our community.
Gated platform. If we build a platform that we launch projects on and share resources/learnings through, we could have it sit behind a paywall.
Fintech play. If we build a platform that not only curates subject matter experts but also serves as a marketplace to book a service with them, we could handle payments and approach Stripe as a group.
Brick and mortar. We could invest in space for members to hang out, to host events, to showcase project outputs, etc.
Build our own app. Do we realize that we could make a better community app and decide to build one?
MISC. Tipping, donations, microtransactions, selling NFTs, merch, individual member services, etc.
👩💻 Tech Stack
Open to any of this changing based on feedback:
For community: We’ll use Geneva from the onset but then we can explore using more sophisticated community platforms like Circle, Mighty Networks, or Beam—or build our own.
For events: Partiful
For payments: Stripe’s Payment Links
For texting: Simple Texting.
For community to have additional access to xyz members: Locket. BeReal. IG groups. Groups in Geneva.
For live-streaming: Social media platforms for now (TikTok, IG, YouTube, etc.,) but will look into more advanced offerings as we grow.
For marketing: Individual social media channels (TikTok, YouTube, Snap, etc.)
For distribution: xyz’s platform
For curating: We’ll use Airtable at first, but this will most likely change as we develop our platform.
xyz’s platform: It will be something very thin at first, like a website, notion, or g-drive, but then we can develop it as we see fit.
☑️ xyz Operations
The goal is to build an equitable economy and organization where governance, rewards, and capital are distributed between xyz, its community, and its contributors.
Governance. TBD by founding xyz members.
Ownership. TBD by founding xyz members.
Leadership. TBD by founding xyz members.
Next steps
October 2022
A dinner will be hosted at the end of October in New York to bring together a pool of potential xyz members as well as thought leaders in the creator economy space.
Do you qualify and are interested in joining? Use the survey below to apply.
Q4 2022
- Formalize the founding xyz members and align on values, goals, mission, ownership, etc.
- Align on project roadmap
- Go to market by leveraging individual social media accounts as free marketing channels to introduce xyz and our mission
CTA: Stay updated through text (Simple Texting)
CTA: Join our community (Geneva)
- Build excitement around the first project and communicate the “why” using individual social media channels and Geneva
- Engage community members and extended followers in executing first project
- Build out V1 of “platform” to serve as home for learnings/resources/membership directory/etc.
- Launch first xyz project
- Test how many followers/community members convert into paying customers
- Understand community analytics
The near future
- Further develop the xyz platform so that we can own the social graph
- Experiment with raising funds for a project from the community in exchange for some reward or incentive
- Introduce community subscriptions that entitle certain privileges, access, or ownership
- Build and finance a physical space that is conducive to live-streaming, hanging out, hosting experiences, etc.
- Evolve into vertical-specific pods based on interests (beauty, fashion, health, wealth, etc) with their own project roadmaps
- Community members begin projects of their own which creates the ability to share control, spark collaboration, and chart new - paths forward
- Convert free community members into paying customers by introducing higher-value purchases or tailored offerings priced at tiered subscription levels
- Continue to evolve xyz governance and operational structure (potentially transition into a dao)
Potential Risks
Lack of alignment between founding members.
Time/responsibility commitments from founding members.
Lack of brand/community fit.