Jay Clouse

I spent the past two days at @ColinandSamir’s @thepublishpress with 500+ creators. It’s hard to express what these couple days felt like. As someone who has spent the past decade building platforms for creators and entrepreneurs, there is truly no better reward than getting to talk to smart and creative folks about what Circle can do for their future. A few years ago, I immigrated from NZ to NYC with the dream of building a tech company that scales and has a meaningful impact on the world. After starting my career at Teachable, I got hooked on building software for creators. I realized that building deeply consumer or enterprise tech is not what excited me; I was most motivated by the reward of building platforms for people who influence others with their creativity and spirit. I loved the idea that a platform I helped build could help them make a living, and impact the lives of their audience. When we started Circle, we chose to focus on community as a result of our belief in an added dimension: Creators who build true community transform people, and those transformations in turn help them build durable businesses. We watched as creators who built true community made both money and impact, and got off the content hamster wheel (at least, partially) Being able to share this aspect of my journey on stage at the event felt like one of those unique moments my life has been leading up to. For the rest of the day, I floated into a series of conversations that warmed me to no end. This involved meaningful chats with tens of Circle customers - so many of whom approached me or the team to say thanks and to tell us about their future plans. Behind this very special day were two creators I’ve been greatly influenced by for quite some time: @ColinandSamir. These fellas have helped define an entire industry, including aspects of Circle’s own vision. In the process, they've built a true community of their own: a community of creators. A part of this community got to experience Circle by joining the Press Publish community, and many seemed to already have communities on Circle of their own. Super grateful to them for choosing Circle as their platform of choice!