Creator Economy NYC

Creator Economy NYC is the largest network for creators and the ecosystem supporting them. Through curated events, strategic partnerships, and education, we empower creators to grow their businesses and shape the future of entrepreneurship.

Founder & Organizer 

siftsy

Siftsy is a consumer intelligence platform built for the modern age, using AI to extract rich insights from social media comment sections. Our tool helps brands and agencies tap into audience sentiment, uncover emerging trends, and make smarter business decisions.

Co-Founder

Kickstarter

Developed and executed Kickstarter’s content creator strategy, guiding top creators in transforming their audiences into engaged backers. 

Partnered with some of the biggest names in digital media — including Hank Green, Solar Balls, Brent Underwood, Jake Carlini, Haminations and more — to launch high-impact crowdfunding campaigns.

Head of Content Creators

Healthcare Huddle

(Acquired) Built a creator-led media company delivering concise, engaging healthcare news and insights for industry professionals. 

Through our newsletter and social media content, Healthcare Huddle made complex healthcare topics accessible and actionable. Successfully scaled the brand before its acquisition.

Workweek

Led strategy and execution for Workweek’s Creator Success unit, building the systems and processes that enabled creators to grow and monetize their brands. Oversaw the launch of 20 creator-led newsletters from 0 to 1, while developing scalable infrastructure to expand Workweek’s newsletter division.

Creator Manager

Capital One

Project & Process Manager

Good Uncle

Strategy & Growth

Analyst

United States Senate

Legislative Associate for U.S. Senator Cory A. Booker

Sharing musings on the creator economy | Managing creators and helping them scale | Built and sold a newsletter

Brett Dashevsky is a leading voice in the creator economy and marketing world as the founder of Creator Economy NYC — a community born in New York and built for global impact. He’s building CENYC with a bold vision: to unlock professional opportunity for every creator and help redefine what a modern career can look like. Under his leadership, CENYC has become the leading community for creators to build businesses, grow their networks, and access resources that move their careers forward.

He is also the co-founder of Siftsy, a consumer intelligence platform built for the modern age, using AI to extract rich insights from social media comment sections. Siftsy enables world-leading brands and agencies tap into consumer sentiment, uncover emerging trends, and make smarter business decisions.

Previously, Brett served as Head of Content Creators at Kickstarter, where he played a pivotal role in bringing top creators onto the platform and guiding them through successful crowdfunding campaigns.

Before these ventures, he built and sold a creator-led healthcare media brand, later leading content and monetization efforts across several creator-driven properties at the acquiring company.

Brett regularly speaks at industry events, moderating panels and delivering keynotes at conferences including Cannes Lions, South by Southwest, Social Media Week, VidCon, and more.

Brett Dashevsky

If you want to succeed, one of my best things you can do is bring like-minded people with a diverse skillset together.  

It’s how you learn and create real connections in an industry that moves fast and changes daily.

So last night, I hosted a Marketing Innovators Dinner in NYC with Creator Economy NYC and Siftsy 💬  (my worlds collide).

We brought together social listeners, influencer marketers, brand leaders, agencies, creators and solo operators.

Different roles. Same ecosystem.

We kicked things off with a question we love asking: “What’s your favorite campaign right now?”

Standout responses were Ticketmaster’s accessibility campaign with the NBA and Liquid Death x YETI’s coffin cooler. 

And, somehow the 'Uncle Bob scandal' made it's way into the convo too. If ykyk.

From there, we got into the topics that marketing teams are actively thinking about:

1️⃣ Should brands jump into the comments?

Does it humanize the brand… or create unnecessary risk? Do creators like it? No consensus, but just really honest takes.

2️⃣ Comments shape perception more than content.

Several people said the same thing: viewers decide what they think after the comments, not after the post. Brands need to understand what's happening in the comments!

3️⃣ Algorithms are too personalized to show a shared reality.

Everyone’s feed is different, which means everyone’s “truth” about how content performs is different.

So teams want more objective tools to cut through that.

These dinners always remind me why I love this industry.

More to come and a lil photo dump below!

Brett Dashevsky 💬

Building where creators, brands & culture meet

The most important role in social over the next few years might not be what you expect.

Social listeners.

I spent the week at Observe Summit in LA in a room full of the people shaping social insights, culture understanding, and data storytelling.

First off, it was great to finally meet so many folks I’ve been DMing with for months. 

There’s something about turning LinkedIn names into real conversations that never gets old.

Second, understanding the comment section is in great demand.

Every conversation I had circled back to the same element that the real signals, the rawest insights, are living in the comments. 

The appetite to understand them is bigger than ever, and it's exactly what we're building for at Siftsy 💬.

Third, people love hats that speak to them! 

We got unique and brought hats that said “social listener" on them.

I now know to bring double next time!

But my biggest takeaway overall:

As AI transforms how we work, it’s actually making the human layer of this industry more valuable. 

The role of the social listener - the people capturing what’s being said, felt, and shared online - is only growing in importance.

And the work of making sense of this social data has never been more essential.

Shoutout to The Social Intelligence Lab team for building such an inspiring space and community.

Building where creators, brands & culture meet | Founder of Siftsy & Creator Economy NYC

Being a creator can feel weirdly lonely sometimes, especially during the holidays.

There’s no office party, no team dinner, no end-of-year toast… just you, your work, and whatever you’ve got left in the tank.

So, for our last Creator Economy NYC event of 2025 (which is wild to even type), we wanted to flip that feeling on its head.

We’re teaming up with our friends at Shopify (with support from Adobe, Epidemic Sound, Teachable, and Siftsy 💬) to basically throw the creator holiday party we all wish existed when we were starting out.

Good people. Good drinks. Good bites. A DJ. And a room full of folks who get it.

And we’ve got a fun panel lined up on creator commerce and what to keep an eye on heading into 2026 featuring:

- Bryan Reisberg (and Maxine 🐶)
- Jess Goldsmith 
- David Roa
- Jacob McCourt

The promo image has two of the panelists with dogs on it… but unfort, I believe only one actual dog will be on stage. (and she's earned her spot.)

If you’re in NYC, would love to see you there. 

December 3, 6pm!

RSVP here: https://luma.com/9zqdr03v

Me explaining to my family what I do for work today:


Happy Thanksgiving, y'all. Grateful for this community.

NYC is the capital of the creator economy.

And I’ll tell you why:

If you asked me where to build a social-focused company today, where to get into marketing, where to be a creator...

I’d say NYC without hesitation.

New York has the thing that actually moves this industry forward:

Creativity, capital, and tech living on top of each other.

That mix is rare. 

And it’s why Creator Economy NYC was born here.

It’s why Siftsy 💬 was born here.

And it’s why NYC is becoming the real center of gravity for where the creator economy is headed.

Case in point - I host events every month where we able to bring together a diverse mix of creators, marketers, analytics, founders all in the same room together. 

Different people, same ecosystem. All here.

And the talent density is incredible.

I talked about this more on the Always Peaking podcast with Neal Jean - clip below.

Do things that don’t scale.

I didn’t fully understand that line the first time I read it a few years ago.

But the longer I build, the more real it feels.

It’s the reminder that growth doesn’t start with dashboards or funnels or polished systems. 

It really does start with scrappy, unscalable effort. 

The kind that takes actual sweat and time and awkward conversations and lugging things around you probably shouldn’t be lugging.

When we first started building Siftsy 💬, we didn’t wait around for our customers to stumble onto us. We met them where they already were.

Every Creator Economy NYC event I hosted became a chance to show what we were building. 

I’d put Siftsy on the sponsor board, give it a shoutout when I had a mic in my hand, follow up with people afterward. 

I wasn’t “pitching” though, I was just putting the idea in the room and seeing who leaned in.

And then there are the moments that really define the phrase.

Like a conference in LA this past month. We weren’t sponsors. We didn’t have a booth. We weren't on the signage anywhere.

So we made our own presence!

We designed hats for the exact people we serve - social listeners, insights folks, analysts - and overnighted them to the hotel. 

We stuffed each hat with a card and a sticker. 

And then I spent two days walking the conference with a backpack full of merch like some kind of hat-carrying nomad.

Every time I ran into someone I’d been trying to build a relationship with, I’d hand them one.

And every new convo the same thing.

A little moment of delight. A tangible reminder of the brand we’re building.

None of that scales.

Neither do the dinners we host, or the individual messages we send, or the 1:1 convos that lead to a customer months later.

Sometimes the most powerful growth comes from doing the things future-you won’t have to do anymore.

But right now you do them with intention.

Because they’re the reason you get to scale later.

There’s no shortage of differing opinions in the creator economy.

And that’s exactly what makes it so fun to explore.

At Creator Economy NYC, we’re always bringing together leading creators, marketers, and platforms to talk about the real questions shaping the industry.

This time, we asked a few pressing ones:

> Who’s your pick: NYC creators or LA creators?
> What’s stronger: building an IRL community or an online audience?
> What’s the better way to monetize: brand partnerships or digital products?

Curious what you think... drop your takes in the comments 👇

----
ft. Mariana Antaya, Jack Appleby, Dara Denney, Brandon Smithwrick 🧠, Jahbari Taylor 📘,

And a big s/o to Domunique Lashay for hosting and producing this segment.

“Comments are the new focus group.”

I’ve said that for a while, but Vogue Business just unintentionally dropped proof of it.

Their latest piece on Gen Z’s broken marketing funnel makes one thing very clear: research is happening in the comment section.

Before Gen Z buys anything, they scroll straight to:

- “Has anyone actually tried this?”
- “Is the quality real?”
- “Does this actually fit?”
- “Is this brand trustworthy?”
- “What’s everyone else saying that I should know?”
- "What's my take?"

That’s the modern equivalent of your focus group, review panel, or consumer survey... all in one messy, chaotic, honest thread under a TikTok or IG post.

And here’s the part most brands still miss:

This isn’t about just engaging in the comments. It’s about understanding them.

Because the comment section has quietly become:

- a product feedback loop
- a campaign barometer
- a cultural signal detector
- and the earliest warning system a brand has

The smartest companies already know this.

Think of e.l.f. Beauty literally shaping product innovation from TikTok comments.

Or operators at Red Lobster spotting menu ideas from the comments because customers were saying it out loud.

It's what we see at Siftsy 💬 every day.

So if Gen Z is treating the comments as a research phase, brands should be doing it too.

Ideally even more.

If you’re a brand and you’re not treating the comment section as a strategic asset… you’re flying blind.

MKBHD is shutting down his wallpaper app.

My thoughts on creator-led businesses: 

A big audience doesn’t guarantee a successful product.

Marques shutting down Panels is a perfect example. 

Not because he isn’t influential.

But because the content-product value prop never really aligned.

Marques creates some of the most popular tech reviews, storytelling, and product breakdowns. 

His value prop is trust, clarity, and helping people decide what tech to buy and how to approach it.

Panels was a wallpaper app.

Even if he genuinely loves wallpapers, or has cool wallpapers in videos, that passion isn’t fully the same narrative his audience knows him for. 

The throughline wasn’t obvious. 

The problem it solved wasn’t connected to the problem his content solves. 

There wasn’t an emotional or functional bridge between “I watch MKBHD to learn about tech products” and “I should download a wallpaper app he made.”

So even with millions of followers and a massive brand, Panels struggled with product-market fit because the audience expectations, the content value prop, and the product value prop were never tightly aligned.

And I believe that's what led to the product being a bit iffy + team dynamics falling apart.

So overall, my take is that creators don’t need to make products about their niche, but the most successful creator-led products tend to reinforce the creator’s core promise, not sit adjacent to it.

They feel like a natural continuation of why people follow them in the first place.

Born21 Media

Founder & CEO

Raffiti Media

Senior YouTube Strategist

Creator Mail

YouTube Growth Strategist

Stories about Creators, Social Media and everything in between

We help you build 'Digital Real Estate' with YouTube. 

At Born21 Media, we help brands and businesses, including creator businesses, turn YouTube into a scalable, organic acquisition engine and the main foundational pillar of their business.

Over the past six years, we’ve worked with over 50 clients across 15 industries. From Fortune 500 companies to fast-growing DTC brands, building systems that lower customer acquisition costs (CAC), grow inbound leads, and drive tangible business outcomes.

What We Do:

→ YouTube Advising: Strategy & Implementation Planning for in-house execution

→ YouTube Management: End-to-end post-production & Full Channel Management 

If you're a Creator, CMO or founder ready to take YouTube seriously, DM me & let's build together.

Aniket Mishra

Why “Just Be Consistent” Is the Worst YouTube Advice

It’s the most repeated and b.s advice in creator circles.

But here’s the truth 

Consistency without clarity/direction/strategy is just a waste of content.

You can upload every week, even every day, and still see zero traction if you’re consistently executing the wrong strategy.

Most creators don’t have a content problem. They have a positioning problem.

They’re talking to everyone, but reaching no one.

Watching footage from ‘Diary of a CEO’ and trying to replicate their editing style won't make your podcast successful. 

Similarly, merely posting frequently without targeting the core audience, identifying the right angles, and prioritizing satisfaction will not yield the desired outcome. 

This also applies when people try to grow their business with YouTube. 

They’re pushing out content that doesn’t build trust, doesn’t compound, and doesn’t tie back to any business goal. In short, they’re consistent but not strategic.

If you’re a founder or brand trying to grow on YouTube, you need more than volume. You need a system that ensures every video moves the business forward.

Here’s what does work [copy this]

A clear content system: topics, formats, and a defined cadence
Strong packaging: titles and thumbnails that earn the click
Sharp positioning: why your content matters, and who it’s truly for
A visible outcome: content that earns trust, attention, and eventually, customers

Don’t fall for the myth that 'effort equals outcome'.

On YouTube, calculated consistency beats blind consistency every single time.

If you’re showing up but not seeing results, it’s time to rework the engine, not push harder on the pedal. Know the difference and you will win.

And with the principles I mentioned above, you can achieve results like this (the image below), where videos perform 10 times better than usual. 

Want to work with us to similar results, book a call with us and let's take your business to the next level without you spending more than 2 hrs/week!

Everyone should visit Nepal once in their lifetime.

One of the most beautiful countries in Southeast Asia. 

And it's not the scenic beauty, but the people here who will make you feel like a family. 

I am an Indian by birth and have travelled the world, staying at different places, but the people of Nepal are far better than anywhere else.

Best decision of my life. 

I came here to heal, and it really helped.  

Take a chance this winter and travel across the world to this tiny country with a rich heritage and people who can make you fall in love with humanity all over again. 

Pokhara, Nepal 📍

No alternative text description for this image

How to add Podcasts to your content mix on YouTube - 'without forcing it' [Full Breakdown]


This applies to Brands too, who want to make it count.

Disclaimer: If the content is the same (in terms of context of content), add the podcast episode on the same channel; if it is different, put it on a different/new channel

Side note: While uploading, add the episodes to the podcast feature to segregate. (It's different from a playlist but pops out when you add it to a playlist) 

This helps with extra discovery through RSS and the Podcast tab feature.

The simple content mix would be (pod+solo)

• One podcast (full ep) +

• 1 best-performing clip (which would appeal to a broader audience and act as top-of-funnel content for the channel) +

• 1 talking head (Top-of-the-funnel content once a week, and the following (next) can be middle-of-the-funnel content to balance things up)

3 long-form pieces of Content a week

For shorts, post them seven days a week if you can.

If not, consider doing five days or three, depending on your capacity. 

Use the shorts that are high intent plus niche down in content and link them with the full EP or related video that can give more Info (more context in the same info for a better session time)

In some cases, you can link the shorts to a taking head, even though the shorts are from a podcast episode! (Make sure it has a similar context)

Go narrow with shorts and not wide, even though broad brings more discovery, because in the long term, the broad audience might not return and hurt the overall channel growth

If this sounds like too much content on a single channel, you can segregate clips and shorts into a separate channel and create a new asset gradually.

Now that we have the collab option, you can send in early traffic (subscribers) to the clips channel by posting a high-intent clip and driving people to the clips channel. 

Just follow this simple content framework, and you should be good.

And yeah, it's that simple, but still nobody does it right.

If you need help navigating this process and want an expert to assist you, DM me, and let's build your channel the right way!

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The Battle

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Brett Dashevsky's LinkedIn Performance

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