Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha brought on Alexis Gay, a former operator at Patreon who now makes her living as comedian and podcast host, to talk about the creator economy - including our disdain for that horrid phrasing. You may know her from her cheeky, on point shorts about tech culture (and tech Twitter).

https://twitter.com/yayalexisgay/status/1369346460911734784

Gay gave us an honest look into the life of creator helper turned creator actual, admitting that her current job path wasn't possible in 2018. Somewhere, somehow, a VC in the distance heard that admittance as an opportunity to back a creator economy startup.

Here's what we got into:

• Gay's experience at Patreon, and why she left. Alex had some thoughts on the theme. It appears that growing list of creator-focused tools could increase the vapor pressure of folks who write, talk, art, and otherwise create, regarding their present-day employment.
• Why one size doesn't fit all when it comes to the diverse world of folks engaged in creative work. We also dipped our toes into the issue of indie creators needing to be CEOs as well as artists.
• We chatted on Vibely, a startup that wants to make interactions with creators ~ multi-directional~ and what it says about scaling time.
• We also got into what an average day looks like for a full-time creator-comedian-podcaster, why she's annoyed with how creators are discussed by founders and investors, and the tooling she hopes to see in the future.
• And, well, we had to ask her if she's starting a rolling fund too.

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.