Alex Lieberman interviews Ahad Khan, CEO of Kajabi, about the future of the creator economy and how Ahad built Kajabi. They discuss the vision for the creator economy, different ways creators monetize their platforms, advantages of hybrid work, evangelizing and building partnerships, and the importance of culture, vision, and fundraising.
Kajabi prioritizes empowering knowledge creators in the creator economy by providing tools to monetize their valuable content.
Ahad Khan emphasizes the importance of communicating the company's vision, setting the right culture, and strategic fundraising for accelerated growth.
Deep dives
Kajabi: Becoming the Shopify for creators
Kajabi is a creator commerce platform that helps knowledge creators turn their expertise into sustainable income. It offers tools for building membership sites, courses, communities, and podcasts, as well as providing website creation, CRM, business analytics, and payments. Kajabi aims to be the go-to platform for creators, empowering them to build successful online businesses. The platform prioritizes putting the creator and their brand first, focusing on valuable content and allowing creators to monetize their knowledge. Kajabi has raised significant funding, including a recent round of $550 million, and it sees an opportunity for substantial growth in the digital commerce space within the creator economy.
Understanding the Creator Economy
The podcast episode explores the concept of the creator economy and the different segments within it. It distinguishes between lifestyle and entertainment creators, like those on platforms such as TikTok, and knowledge or utility creators who offer valuable information or skills to their audiences. Kajabi focuses primarily on supporting the latter category, where the business model revolves around providing valuable content, courses, and expertise. The episode highlights the importance of having the right audience and understanding their willingness to pay for valuable content. It also discusses how the creator economy has gone through significant growth due to factors like increased digital commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Running a Successful Creator Commerce Business
The CEO of Kajabi, Ahad Khan, shares insights on running the business successfully. He discusses the importance of reiterating and communicating the company's vision to align the team's efforts. Khan also emphasizes the significance of culture-setting within a remote work environment, especially in terms of communication and collaboration. He explains that Kajabi aims to provide a platform that empowers ambitious creators to build sustainable online businesses, focusing on those who create valuable content and enabling them to monetize their expertise. He emphasizes the deliberate choice to put the creator first and build a strong brand for Kajabi over the long term by showcasing successful customer stories and fostering strategic partnerships.
Raising Capital for Accelerated Growth
The episode touches upon the topic of fundraising and capital raising for accelerated growth. Khan advises founders to raise capital with a clear strategy and vision of how they will utilize the funds for a strong return on investment. He stresses the importance of demonstrating a deliberate plan for deploying the funds and executing on that plan. Khan recommends understanding what investors have funded in the past and building relationships to ensure alignment. He also advises avoiding raising more money than needed and being mindful of cap table management for long-term success.
Episode 54: Alex Lieberman (@businessbarista) sits down with Kajabi CEO Ahad Khan who runs an all-in-one commerce platform for knowledge content creators. In this conversation, they talk about the future of the creator economy, how Ahad built Kajabi, and why it’s most important in a post-pandemic economy.