Coworking for creators? The Lighthouse wants to make it happen

There were lots of houses built in the last few years—TikTok houses, we mean.

From Hype House and Sway House to Clubhouse, influencer mansions have served as content-filming playgrounds as well as the backdrops of plenty of drama. But a new place for influencers to work, called The Lighthouse, is aiming to stand out—for not being like those other houses.

“There were challenges in that model, as with anything, if you have a group of people living together,” Neil Waller, co-founder of creator company Whalar, which operates The Lighthouse, told Marketing Brew. “It’s not that we’ve created some brand-new thing…It’s more in response to the reality of where the creator economy is and what creators need.”

The Lighthouse, which is planning to open coworking “campuses” in creator-heavy cities including Brooklyn, London, and Venice, California, is a division of Whalar, which pitches The Lighthouse as being less like a house and more like a college campus, Waller said. The facilities, which are projected to open in Venice and Brooklyn in 2024 and London in 2025, are billed as a place where creators can come and create content while working—and networking—with others, seven days a week.

“In the professional environment of the gig economy, people are becoming freelancers and masters of their own domain. We really view creators as entrepreneurs and small-business owners,” Waller told us. “With that trend, where do [creators] go to meet their peers? Where do they go to get education and support?”

House plans

The layout for each location will be similar, according to Jon Goss, The Lighthouse’s president. Goss walked Marketing Brew through the plans for the Venice campus: The ground floor will house a coffee shop, designed for fostering community within the facility, as well as an open-plan workspace, where creators can work with other members of their team on content creation. (There will also be private offices for creators to use.) Another part of the ground floor will contain what Goss called the “theater”—a venue for events like performances, lectures, seminars, and workshops.

Downstairs will be The Lighthouse’s “Batcave,” Goss said, a production studio-like space that will contain podcast studios, test kitchens for food creators, a gaming studio, and a music studio, among other offerings.

The various functions of the space are designed to help attract creators of all kinds to the workspace, Waller said.

“We just don’t want an echo chamber,” Waller said. “We want to have a broad segment of creators that are representative of the whole industry.”

Invite list

Creators will need to shell out roughly $5,750 annually to use the facility, but first they must apply and be accepted, Waller said. The Lighthouse plans to release applications to around 150–200 creators initially, according to Goss, and each location is projected to accept 850–1000 creators total.

Three councils, made of up 12 to 14 members and specific to each campus, will vet the creators who have applied. Those involved with the councils include YouTubers Colin and Samir, who run a channel that covers the creator economy and who will oversee the council. (They are also shareholders in the endeavor.) The councils will also help shape the future of The Lighthouse, acting as a “constant advisory group,” Waller said.

“We want those councils to reflect that local culture of Venice and Brooklyn and then London, when we open up that location,” Goss said.

POV

Since the campuses aren’t open yet, it remains to be seen how successful they could be. Creator facilities predating The Lighthouse had their own challenges, but the influencer environment was very different when many of them cropped up, according to Anjali Bal, an associate professor of marketing at Babson College.

While Bal noted that it seems The Lighthouse has tailored its services to creators by offering specific skills, she said that it will have to work to stand out as part of a constantly changing creator economy.

“The biggest question with The Lighthouse and other companies like that is not whether or not there’s a need for them, because there’s a gigantic economy that is being run within these influencers and creators, but how are you going to distinguish yourself so that you’re lean enough to stay relevant to the market that you’re in?” she said.