Catching Up With Lauren Schnipper, VP of Corporate Development

When it comes to shaping and trailblazing within the relatively nascent creator economy, Lauren Schnipper is about as seasoned as they come. A veteran of the startup world, Schnipper’s dynamic and progressive experience has crafted her 360-degree view on the evolution of the creator economy. Lauren isn’t just experienced––in many ways, she has been a seminal influence in shaping the creator economy.

Prior to joining Jellysmack, Schnipper served as an executive at Facebook. While there, Schnipper led Facebook’s creator partnerships for four and a half years. As part of her responsibilities, she oversaw strategic partnerships with comedians and top-tier digital talent on Facebook and Instagram. 

Schnipper also spearheaded Facebook’s VidCon experiential marketing efforts. Schnipper continues to serve as an advisor at VidCon to this day. She produced live events at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, in collaboration with comedians including Jerry Seinfeld and Amy Schumer. 

In addition to her time at Facebook, Lauren has also spent tenures at creator economy venture capital firm Next 10 Ventures, creator product and merchandising company Teespring, and startups like Stir. The common denominator in this diverse background is Schnipper, who leverages her knowledge to identify challenges and develop solutions for creators to scale their brands. That could mean anything from optimizing workflows and operations, to growing audiences, or diversifying their revenue streams with new business opportunities.

Today, Lauren Schnipper leads Jellysmack’s efforts in detecting and assessing business development, investment, and acquisition opportunities that will allow Jellysmack to offer even more solutions for creators. 

“I’m the relationship person on the team. I work on acquisitions. What we do is evaluate startups in the ecosystem for potential acquisitions, investments, or partnerships to help Jellysmack do what we do better and add new tech and tools to our already robust stack.

It’s all about assessing the best opportunities that will allow us to help creators Go Bigger.

Lauren Schnipper, Jellysmack VP, Corporate Development

Networking is at the heart of what Lauren does every day. That includes nurturing the relationships she has established over her decade of experience, as well as creating and developing new relationships with up-and-coming companies in the industry.

“I joke that it’s kind of like dating, because I just have a lot of relationships that I’m maintaining with the various founders in various stages,” she adds.

Since joining Jellysmack, Schnipper has already made power moves. She led Jellysmack’s first acquisition of AI video editing software, Kamua. The enhanced capabilities from the merger are projected to reduce Jellysmack’s video editing time––one of the company’s most time-intensive operations––by upwards of 70%. 

In addition to her work with big-name celebrities and creators, part of what makes Schnipper so keen on where things are moving in the industry is that she herself is a multi-faceted creator.

For one, she produced the Cartoon Network television pilot for the Annoying Orange series. 

And more recently, Schnipper co-founded the weekly podcast Creator Upload which she co-hosts with Joshua Cohen, co-founder of creator economy publication Tubefilter. 

“When I left Facebook, I had in my head that I wanted to do a podcast about the creator economy,” Lauren reflects. “I was chatting with Josh about it, and he said, ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about doing that too.’ That was early 2019. But by late 2019, neither of us had done anything. He called me up and asked if we should do it together, and I said yes. So we launched in February 2020.”

In case you missed it, Creator Upload is a podcast that recaps significant news and events from the creator economy. It is chock full of rich and breaking news information, the type of coverage that could only be achieved through the joint efforts of an industry journalist and Schnipper, who says keeping current on the industry is a fundamental aspect of her job.

“What’s amazing about it for me is that it really forces me to stay current,” Schinpper says of her work on the show. “It’s like homework every Wednesday night. It’s really great for me to keep up to date on our industry.”

Between the podcast and Schnipper’s other creative projects, Lauren has first-hand experience with the struggles of creators when it comes to editing, producing, and publishing content.

“The first year we were doing [the podcast], I was doing all the editing. We didn’t have a producer,” she says with a laugh. “I’m not really an editor.”

Now empowered with an editor and producer, Lauren has more time to focus on new content formats that have longer development lead times. “We have a ton of interviews coming up, and that’s really exciting,” she notes. 

Between running due diligence on multiple prospective business acquisitions, keeping up with the latest trends and news in the industry, and maintaining open lines of communication with a myriad of industry players, Lauren says that the freedom to work from Jellywhere does help her maintain a healthy work-life balance.

“I think this company from the start has been incredibly friendly to parents. You know, our founders all have young families, so I feel very supported and it’s a really great thing for me as a working mother to be able to work from home and have that option.” 

As much as she enjoys the flexibility, Schnipper says she has been making a point to go to the office “once or twice a week, just to get out of the house.”

As for the future, Lauren Schnipper will certainly play a pivotal role in Jellysmack’s overall direction and success. Her collaborative disposition and open minded nature keeps her focused on finding opportunities that are a win for everyone involved.

“It could be a partnership, could be an investment, could be an acquisition,” she says of forming new relationships within the industry. “I like to start the conversation with ‘how can we work together?’”