Latin American creators represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the global creator economy — by follower counts, by content volume, and by engagement rates that consistently outperform North American benchmarks. The infrastructure gap between that growth and the monetization tools available to those creators is significant, and it's where we've been spending considerable time in 2024.
Three years after I first wrote about Latin American creator markets, the picture has changed in meaningful ways. The growth has continued and accelerated. Brazil and Mexico are now among the largest YouTube markets globally by watch time. TikTok's Latin American user base has grown substantially. The creator class in these markets has professionalized — the people we're meeting in São Paulo, Mexico City, and Bogotá in 2024 are running real businesses with real operational complexity, not hobby channels.
What hasn't changed: the infrastructure gap. The monetization tools available to Latin American creators remain significantly behind those available to North American creators. Payment processing is expensive and fragmented. Platform monetization rates are lower. The direct monetization tools built for the North American market have limited local payment method support, no localized pricing, and minimal operational support for creators operating in local languages. The creators who have figured out how to monetize effectively are doing so through creative workarounds, not through purpose-built infrastructure.
The expanding geography: I've spent significant time in Southeast Asia this year, particularly Indonesia and the Philippines, where similar patterns are emerging. Large creator classes, high engagement rates, growing consumer willingness to pay, and infrastructure that significantly lags the North American standard. The cross-border creator infrastructure opportunity is not limited to Latin America — it's a structural feature of every emerging market with a significant digital creator class.
What we want to see: founders building creator infrastructure that is designed for global deployment from inception, not North American infrastructure that gets localized later. The localization problem is not just translation — it's payment systems, currency management, local tax compliance, local content moderation requirements, and community dynamics that are market-specific. The company that builds cross-border creator infrastructure from the ground up will have a structural advantage over the company trying to adapt North American tools to international markets.
We've made one investment in this category from Fund III and are actively looking for more. The geographic expansion of creator infrastructure is one of our highest-conviction investment themes for the next several years.