Creator Fund Weekly — Oct 15, 2026
Sam Lessin, Eddie DeDomenico, Megan Lightcap, Caroline Singer
4:36
Steve Del Savio / Pack Leader Dogsdiscussedpermalink →
Caroline's pick, framed around her week's theme of 'people who've built three businesses under one platform.' Del Savio approaches dog training from a psychology angle (why dogs are anxious/aggressive, not just obedience) across ~2M followers. Three business lines: Pack Leader Dogs itself (his Jersey facility -- training, private sessions, virtual consultations, booked out ~6 months); Prestige Pet Partners, a partnership with Cesar Milan (who originally trained him) that is actively acquiring and rolling up independent dog-care businesses (grooming, training, daycare -- not breeders); and Understanding the Dog, a paid online community with weekly Q&A and personalized behavioral guidance. Eddie had separately used an overnight dog-psychology trainer and vouched for how legitimate and impressive the work looks in person.
4:27
Steve Sando / Rancho Gordodiscussedpermalink →
Eddie's pick (he and Caroline had floated it before; now has a warm intro). Sando started growing heirloom beans himself and selling at a farmer's market ~25 years ago before founding Rancho Gordo. Riding a real category tailwind -- Americans are eating noticeably more dry beans, up about 30% in a year -- he's now selling roughly 2.5 million pounds of beans annually, 5x his 2018 volume. The business has a 30,000-person paying bean club, plus a 30,000-person waitlist he keeps closed on purpose, creating real scarcity on top of real demand. Content (YouTube) is the most underdeveloped channel; everything else -- the brand, the retail/DTC business, press -- is strong and sales are still accelerating. He's 65; Eddie wants to talk succession as well as the business itself.
4:11
Jenny Komenda / Juniper Print Shopdiscussedpermalink →
Caroline's pick: an interior designer (Jenny Komenda, Little Green Notebook / @jennykomenda) with three business lines. Juniper Print Shop is her direct-to-consumer art brand -- downloadable and custom-framed prints sourced from ~40 independent artists plus vintage and museum-collection finds. Juniper Home is her original interior-design media business (renovations, DIY). The Rooted Home is a newer, faith-based line -- decor and wall art built around Christian themes, run with her husband. Caroline flagged this as a real personal pain point: she's struggled to find well-curated, reasonably priced framed art, trusts neither Etsy (downloads only) nor Wayfair (low quality), and Juniper fills that gap. Megan noted crossover appeal pulling people out of the LDS community into a more mainstream audience as an interesting signal.
3:17
Garrett Mitchell / Cleetus McFarlanddiscussedpermalink →
Eddie's pick: Garrett Mitchell, who built his YouTube audience (as 'Cleetus McFarland') over ~20+ years racing and wrecking his own cars on camera, following his father's background in resto-mods. Growth has kept accelerating -- 1.3M views on a video posted the day before the call. In 2023 he bought and renamed a Florida racetrack 'Freedom Factory,' where he now owns and runs real racing events and IP (including hosting an international race brought over from Australia) for real prize money. On top of that he's built Freedom Plus, a paid live-stream broadcast of the races (over 100,000 subscribers at $19.99/month or $120/year, roughly 25 events last year, seven figures of revenue), plus a ~30-person operation and a growing DTC car-products business. Eddie has an inside connection via Mitchell's manager but suspects the manager underrates how big the underlying business already is.
5:18
Leggari (Tim Krumland & Tylor Svangren)discussedpermalink →
Caroline's pick (transcript misheard the company name as 'Legory' -- it's Leggari, co-founded by Tim Krumland and Tylor Svangren after a countertop-coating video they posted went viral). Three business lines: direct-to-consumer epoxy/concrete-overlay kits for floors, countertops, and walls; Leggari Academy, a paid training and certification program for contractors that has graduated over 15,000 people since launch; and a looser 'pro' mentorship tier for people further along. Eddie connected it to an earlier pitch about Blacktail Studio's proprietary wood finisher -- a pattern of chemical/finish specialists building real IP at a high level. Sam gave a live first-person data point: he wanted to epoxy his garage floor at his Jackson Hole home and didn't, because it was surprisingly expensive -- direct validation of real consumer demand and price friction in exactly this category.
7:56
Gunnar Churchwell / Tom Jamesdiscussedpermalink →
Eddie's closing pick, which turned into the call's longest open debate. Churchwell sells custom suits out of Tom James's New York shop (a ~60-year-old clothier, not a storefront retailer) by walking up to strangers on the street with a camera -- no fear, and apparently very effective: he's won an internal award for the business he's driven, and a friend of Eddie's has tried to hire him away four times. He's built a real following (138,000 Instagram, Eddie estimates ~75% New York-based) among young finance guys who don't know how to dress. The group debated whether formal suit-buying is structurally compressing post-COVID (per Megan and Caroline, most finance guys now own exactly one suit for the one in-person meeting a year) or whether that just means the opportunity is narrower but still real, especially against existing 'easy'/convenience players (Mizzen+Main, State and Liberty, Collars & Co.) that already own the no-effort end of the market. Sam's own anecdote -- he personally owns many suits, including two tuxedos -- was offered as a data point that the high end of the category is alive, just concentrated.
