Putting $21.5 Million To Work for a More Creative World

Wanted to take a break for a hot second this morning — away from studios and airplanes and shooting photos in far away places — to make a special announcement and say a huge, ginormous thank you.

If you’ve been a part of this community for some time, then you already know that a few years back, myself and my good pal Craig Swanson, scratched out some ideas on a whiteboard, rallied a bunch of friends, and kicked off a dream to unleash the creative potential of millions of people worldwide — the creative potential that we all have inside us– by delivering the world’s highest quality creative education to a global community for free. That project was called creativeLIVE.

Now more than 3 years into that journey…that scrappy little company born from a gritty warehouse in South Seattle and based on the fundamental principle that we should ALL have access to world-class creative education regardless of age, gender, socio-economic status or experience level — has hit a handful of super-exciting milestones. We have now delivered more than 1 BILLION minutes of free creative education to more that 2 MILLION people in 200 COUNTRIES worldwide. We have 85 employees, more than 500 online courses and are producing more live educational content than anyone in the world.

And let’s be clear – these milestones and others we will continue to share in the near future are based entirely on YOUR belief, YOUR support and the support of our entire amazing, collective community. THANK YOU. Seriously. Getting teary-eyed thinking of how much you have helped my wildest dreams come true. It’s because of you that Pulitzer Prize winners, New York Times Best Selling Authors, Emmy nominated directors, cutting edge artists and the world’s top entrepreneurs have decided to hang their hat on creativeLIVE’s platform to share their knowledge. They have discovered through YOUR participation in cL that this community more than any other in online education wants to learn and grow together, have meaningful on and offline relationships and work to transform passions, careers, and lives….to make knowledge accessible, to enable skill-based learning, and -dare I say it- help make big and small dreams alike come true.

It’s with all this in stride that I’m proud to share with you today that creativeLIVE have raised $21.5 million dollars in a new round of venture capital financing from The Social+Capital partnership + Greylock Partners. Whoa! Holy crap that is a lot of money. What does this mean? What will cL do with this money? Put simply, we raised this money to better serve you, our community, to help us reach a new set of goals, and to take this platform to an entirely new level.

More specifically…. We have listened to you and have heard that you want more access to top experts in creative fields beyond photography. As a result, we have over the past year expanded into video production, art & design, audio & music, and business / entrepreneurship to help you pursue the skills and passions that you want to learn. We will continue to deliver this – and grow it Among other things, this expansion requires capital — money to bring in more of the world’s best instructors in these channels, money for new studios, new infrastructure, new technology and salaries for a kickass staff who wants to change the world. We want to build a category defining, long-standing company that serves its community in a way that no other education company ever has or will.

Here is the announcement in TechCrunch, AllThingsD, GeekWire, etc

In the last 15 months we have opened up new studios in Seattle and San Francisco and have hired world class people like Mika Salmi, Brent Ayrey and Rick Silvestrini. Mika was the frickin President of Viacom where he ran all 35 TV channels there including MTV and Comedy Central and other division including Universal Pictures! Brent came from Netflix where he built from scratch their game-changing streaming service that today makes up 20% of all internet traffic on any given day. In turn, we landed Rick from YouTube where he ran the curation and business around the YT homepage – which is one of the hottest pages on the entire internet. These are people who have “made it” elsewhere in life and have now turned their lives and careers toward creativeLIVE to be a part of a movement focused on growing a community and a product that democratizes creative education. We know that creativity is the new literacy. These people and others like them are the kinds of people that are building this company WITH YOU and FOR YOU.

What does this mean for me personally? Not much is different – other than an even more intense desire to pursue creativity for myself and others, to deliver value to you, to push boundaries and challenge less effective “old” ways of thinking, doing, and making. I will continue shooting photos like mad, directing films & shows & commercials all over the damn place, shooting chasejarvisLIVE and sharing all that stuff here on my blog and within my social feeds and wherever else is I can find a way.

I will also be going deeper into creativeLIVE, looking for new ways to synergize my life as an artist with helping drive the kind of innovation that you want to see…ensuring cL is built by creatives for creatives. I feel like I’ve learned enough for 100 lifetimes throughout this process already — getting to find out what makes me tick as well as rubbing elbows with all kinds of characters, from dirtbags (like me) to brilliant bad-asses to legendary billionaires and everything in between. And I have this distinct feeling that it’s just getting rolling. As I continue to learn, and stumble and succeed and fail, I’ll continue to share.

If you have questions or comments – please do share them below. I’ll respond below or wherever possible.

Huge thank you for making all of this possible. For deeming that yours truly and/or the creativeLIVE movement are worthy of your support. #gratitude

Everyone is creative.