Influencers.Club

Helping brands help more creators turn their passion into a business. It's fun!

Co-Founder & CEO

Instana

Growth Marketing Lead

intermix.io

The first hire at intermix. We were acquired by Xenon Partners in a private equity transaction in March 2020.

I went from an intern to building our marketing and sales playbooks along with our co-founder. We also built the largest Amazon Redshift engineering community in the world.

Some of the fastest-growing companies like Plaid, Postmates and InVision used our software.
- ThredUp is the world's largest online consingment store (before e.g. Poshmark)
- Udemy is the world's largest online learning platform
- Remind is the #1 educational app in the US; in fact, they were even the overall #1 app in the appstore in late August
- WeWork is the world's #1 real estate operator and co-working space provider
- InVision has overtaken Adobe and is the #1 design and prototyping app
- Postmates is the #1 on-demand delivery company

Head of Growth

Buzz App

Buzz had over 200 000 active users in 4 different countries. This is by far the most widely spread app from this region. 

Our growth consisted of extreme guerilla marketing and a lot of content on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.

We managed to engage more than 500 000 people in all those channels combined with less than $100 spent on advertising.

We won 3rd place for app of the year in 2016.

CEO & Head of Growth

NewMan's Business Accelerator

Android Mentor

JavaScript Mentor

Software Design and Architecture Mentor

Red Cross Youth

President

Nikola Sokolov

Jim Louderback

Inside the Creator Economy

▪ Write "Inside the Creator Economy Newsletter" - read by 27,000 weekly.
▪ Develope curate and co-host events globally, including "Creator World" in Singapore, Creator Lab at NAB 
▪ Host the "Verified" stage at WebSummit focused on the creator economy
▪ Facilitate and moderate think-tanks, salons and masterclasses for social media execs and creator economy leaders globally
▪ Moderate fireside chats and panels at exclusive corporate events
▪ Strategy consulting with top clients on the future of the creator economy 
▪ Keynote speaking on creator economy, technology and AI, including at Social Media Marketing World, VidCon and more.
▪ Current Active Boards: Creator Authority, Motom, Virtualness, Atmosfy, Influencers.Club, SuperFans, AugX Labs, Creable, Open Sauce, Roll

Editor and CEO

KQED

Board of Directors

Potts Run Coal Company

Led the sale of this 100-year business to a new owner in just 5 months.  Delivered significant returns to all shareholders.

Board of Directors and Company Secretary

SOSV

SOSV-Orbit: https://orbitstartups.com/

Orbit Startups is part of SOSV, a global venture capital fund with US$1.5 billion in assets under management providing multi-stage investment to support founders’ big ideas.

Venture Capital Executive Mentor

Strategic News Service

The SNS Innovation Ambassador Program highlights outstanding individuals with unimpeachable expertise in their field to help facilitate cross-pollination of ideas across industries and subjects within the FiRe/SNS community. SNS Innovation Ambassadors are selected for their insightful and high-impact contribution, deep and specific subject matter knowledge, and dexterity and experience in solving complex problems at a systems level.

Innovation Ambassador

Paramount

After selling to Viacom in winter 2018, adopted the title of GM and Senior Vice President.  Manage all aspects of the division of at what is now called Paramount. Launched 4 new international events in 18 months, doubled revenue, increased attendance from 25,000 to over 100,000 globally.  Transitioned the org from face to face events to fully digital, then hybrid, and then back to in person during COVID.  Stepped away from full-time management of the group in April 2022 to focus on consulting, advising, speaking and content creation.

GM and SVP VidCon

VidCon

Built VidCon into a Global Events Business.  Led the sale to Viacom in 5 months from inception to close.  Transformed the industry track into a leading B2B event, growing it from under 1,500 to 5,000 attendees in  four years.

CEO and GM

Conceptualizing, curating, selecting and executing tracks, keynotes, conversations, classes and tech demos at the biggest online video conference in the world.

Editorial Director - Industry Track

QCatalyst - Products. Culture. Strategy.

Provide video and technology strategy and implementation for a variety of clients

Senior Strategy Consultant

Social Starts

Sourcing, evaluating and supporting startups at leading seed and A round venture firm, with a focus on media, virtual reality, augmented reality, mobile technologies and internet of things.

Venture Partner

Discovery Communications

Sold Revision3 to Discovery Communications in 2012, and then built a leading web-original video network business inside Discovery.  Launched 8 new networks, 50 new shows and increased views 300% in the first 18 months after acquisition. Led the integration of the team into Discovery.

GM and SVP Discovery Digital Networks

Jim Louderback is among the most respected figures in digital media with a 25-year history of leadership at the intersection of media, video, content and technology.  He successfully built and sold two startups to top media companies, built and hosted hundreds of sessions and events and has a proven track record of building innovative companies to capitalize on what's "around the corner".

He recently ended an 8-year run with VidCon, starting in 2014 as editorial director of the industry track, taking over as CEO in 2017 and building it from one event to 8 physical events globally with over a million physical and virtual attendees in 2020.  In early 2018 he led the sale of VidCon to Viacom (now Paramount).  He previously built and sold online video network Revision3 to Discovery, was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine and founding content lead for cable network TechTV.

Jim writes the popular weekly newsletter "Inside the Creator Economy" on LinkedIn.  Follow him and sign up for the newsletter today.  And if you're looking for help curating, moderating, hosting or leading your event in the creator economy, web3, metaverse or exec space, reach out!  I'd love to help.

Editor and Publisher 

Hot Take: Creators don’t need to become CEOs. And CEOs don’t need to become creators.

Andreesen Horowitz rolled out its new “New Media” team last week, complete with an eight-week fellowship to help creators, founders and designers learn together. 

YouTube followed with its own “Creator MBA” event in New York, bringing top creators and their business leads together for sessions on scaling, fundraising and market research.

Both moves signal the same thing: everyone now agrees creators aren’t fringe talent.  They’re foundational to modern business.

But there’s a bigger misunderstanding lurking underneath.

Turning a creator into a CEO isn’t as easy as an accelerator, a bootcamp or a three-day intensive event makes it seem. 

And turning a founder into a creator is even harder. 

I’ve lived both worlds.

You can read every business book on the shelf, but nothing prepares you for hiring and firing 200 people (been there). And you can sit through every “on-camera” workshop available, but it won’t shave off the years most creators spent grinding in obscurity before anything took off.

That’s why the real future of creator-led companies won’t come from hybridizing the roles. It will come from pairing them.

The strongest creator businesses today, from Lunar-X to CrunchLabs to Aphmau’s growing empire, are built on collaboration between creative vision and operational muscle. Not forced fusion. Not the “creator as CEO” fantasy we keep trying to revive.

Creators shouldn’t have to run board meetings. CEOs shouldn’t have to master retention editing.

Great companies happen when both do what they do best — together.

Full breakdown in this week’s Inside the Creator Economy, plus a GenA study you have to read, the cool stuff that came out of Web Summit and much more!

What's your take?  Creator+CEO or one person, two roles?

Editor & CEO, Inside the Creator Economy | Media Strategist & Event Curator | Award-Winning Storyteller & Thought Leader

View newsletter: Inside the Creator Economy

This Week: Can we really mint a generation of creator CEOs with just a few days of instruction? Plus a fascinating study of 20,000 GenA and the return

Open article: Bigfoot, Unicorns, and the Creator-CEO by Jim Louderback • 7 min read

MrBeast just admitted something almost no big creator says out loud:
His recent videos “weren’t as good as I wanted.”

And instead of shrugging it off or spinning it into a brand-friendly narrative, he announced he’s entering “ultra grind mode”, and promising the best content of his life in 2026.

That’s a bold statement for anyone.

For MrBeast… it’s... EPIC...

A few things jumped out at me:

• Self-diagnosis at the top is rare. Most creators can’t publicly say “I slipped.” The higher you climb, the harder honesty gets.

• He might be setting up a strategic reset. Fewer global appearances, fewer side quests, more pure content focus.

• This could reshape creator expectations. When the biggest creator on the planet talks openly about quality lapses and reinvention, the world listens.

And selfishly… I’m curious how this plays out during his appearance at the 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai in January (yes, the one I'm helping to produce).

If this is the start of the reboot, we may see a big boost from the stage.

If 2026 is the year MrBeast gets even more dialed in, anyone competing for attention on YouTube should be on notice...  and ready to learn from the master.

There's more inside this week's issue, including at least one YouTube wrongful-ban that finally has a happy ending (after a year), my take on Doug Shapiro’s brilliant “Math Breaks Media” essay, and why B2B buyers trust creators more than brands (and why you should consider supporting this newsletter, along with others here on LinkedIn).

Hi, I’m Jim Louderback and this is my weekly creator economy newsletter. If you’ve received it, you’re either subscribed or someone forwarded it to yo

Open article: MrBeast Plans a Major 2026 Reboot by Jim Louderback • 9 min read

So much hype around Google's new Gemini model.
I've been comparing it to ChatGPT, now have a pro account on each.

Some of it is just not that good, ChatGPT has a better interface (GPTs and Projects beat Gems hands down) and the results for me are not as good on a lot of the event and writing stuff I throw at it.

BUT.  But.  Image generation via Nano Banana (just a funny name for their image generation engine in Gemini) is way better.

Check out my Visual LinkedIn Profile summary below!

Inspired by Richard van der Blom's latest newsletter, where he showed off his own visual profile, I put the following prompt into Nano Banana:

"Hi, visualize my LinkedIn profile - make personalized, beautifully designed infographic with surprising depth and creativity for me - here is my linkedin https://lnkd.in/gYg_s4Ds"

And this is where I ended up.  You should do it too!

taplio

The Battle

Nikola Sokolov

Jim Louderback

Followers

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Performance ScoreJim Louderback's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Nikola Sokolov

Jim Louderback

Followers

Posts

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);}Jim Louderback's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreJim Louderback's LinkedIn Performance