Insights from NYTW 2025: What I Expected, and What Surprised Me
FM (Friday Morning) Reflection #36
New York Tech Week 2024 left a lasting impression on me, full of creative energy and optimistic conversations about the positive impact AI could have across industries. As NYTW 2025 approached, I was curious—would the same energy return? Would we see progress or simply more hype? As often happens, things didn’t unfold exactly as expected, and that divergence became the real source of insight.
NYTW 2025 Recap
New York Tech Week, presented by a16z (Andreessen Horowitz) and other key players in the startup ecosystem, transforms the city into a decentralized hub of innovation. It’s a clever format—less a formal conference and more a community-driven series of panels, workshops, and gatherings that allows attendees to curate their own experience. For me, it’s a chance to forge new connections, spark collaborations, and stay current with the city's burgeoning tech scene.
From hundreds of offerings, I filtered my schedule down to a handful of sessions. A panel titled "East to West" showcased entrepreneurs whose lived experiences between Eastern and Western cultures became the bedrock of their new companies. Two masterclasses on AI explored multicultural vulnerability testing and responsible prompting—practical approaches to mitigating bias in AI systems. These sessions demonstrated that it is possible to measure and design for fairness in ways that are both meaningful and actionable. A corporate innovation forum reinforced a timeless lesson: success in technology is fundamentally about people—how we communicate, relate, and work together. Finally, a fireside chat on "The Science of Attention" delved into the neuroscience of engagement, reminding me that true connection goes far beyond metrics like ratings and impressions.
Collectively, these sessions painted a picture of a creator and innovation ecosystem that is becoming more nuanced, more intentional, and more aware of the real-world impacts of what we build and how we work.
One thing I noticed was a shift from showcasing raw creative energy toward professionalizing the craft—working out the kinks in workflow, production, and business operations needed to run creator-led brands.
A recurring theme was the growing need to establish the authenticity of authorship as AI-generated content proliferates—a topic I’ve explored before here in Authenticity > Approach and On Reflection... Finding Authenticity in a Changing World.
The real surprise this year, the biggest a-ha, came not from NYTW itself, but from the combination of experiences before, during, and after the main event.
The Bookends
The weekend before NYTW, I attended PolaCon, a conference for instant film photography. Organized by the Instant Film Society, it was a three-day gathering of artists, photographers, and engineers united by a passion for the tangible craft of instant film photography. As a longtime photog I couldn't pass it up. The energy there was infectious—hundreds of people, many from across the country and beyond, all deeply engaged in capturing moments and telling stories through a physical medium.
One morning, I took a solo photowalk before the day's events, wandering through Brooklyn with my Polaroid in hand. Another day, I joined a group photowalk that ended along the East River. I'll be posting images from PolaCon and photowalks on my Instagram photo feed @seen.city.project, if you'd like to follow along.
What I felt at PolaCon wasn't just about individual art; it was about creating in the context of a shared human experience. That feeling, in combination with the sessions at NYTW and a conversation afterward, led to the real breakthrough that I took away from the week's events.
From Creator to Co-Creator
The global creator economy is projected to grow from $156 billion to over $528 billion by 2030, a 22.5% CAGR. This isn’t a niche segment; it's a major economic force—but it has some key limitations. The week after NYTW, I was chatting about these limitations with a friend who is an artist and small business owner.
It got me thinking about how current models—legal structures, payment systems, publishing platforms—often force creators into silos. They become solopreneurs in a refactored gig economy, competing individually for scraps of attention. The current system, with its focus on dividing up "what's yours" and "what's mine," encourages a scarcity mindset over the greater value we could create by coming together for a purpose—the same reason we engage in trade.
This is where the “a-ha” happened. I realized the next evolutionary step isn’t just building better tools to power the creator economy; it’s about bringing to life the co-creator economy.
The co-creator economy would enable multiple creators—artists, writers, designers, producers—to collaborate on creating, producing, and monetizing their work in a more integrated and mutually beneficial way. It represents a shift from individual income diversification to collective economic empowerment. The most valuable conversations at NYTW weren't monologues but dialogues. The vibrant energy at PolaCon came from a community sharing a passion. People are creating more than ever, but the act of creation as well as the content produced is often siloed. What if it wasn’t?
Building the Framework for Co-Creation
While we already have partnerships and LLCs as vehicles for collaboration, these are heavy, long-term legal constructs, and inviting others in after they are created is very cumbersome and fraught with challenges. They aren't agile enough for the fluid, project-based work that characterizes creative endeavors. Imagine trying to co-author a single article with someone from your extended network; the administrative friction of formalizing IP rights and revenue sharing—let alone operationalizing it—would kill the creative spark.
This is a problem that needs solving, and some are already trying.
Metalabel is an organization tackling this head-on. Positioning itself as a "release platform for creative work," its stated goal is to help creative people cooperate rather than compete. It provides the infrastructure for groups to release work and automatically splits revenue among collaborators, handling the administrative burdens that stifle partnership. Since its public launch in 2024, Metalabel reports it has attracted over 750 creators who have generated upwards of $500,000 in shared earnings.
Metalabel champions the concept of the "A-Corp" or "Artist Corporation"—a proposed new legal structure designed for shared IP ownership, pooled resources, and better access to capital. This kind of structure could especially benefit multi-disciplinary creative collectives, podcast and video production teams, independent game studios, and collaborative publishing ventures. It’s an ambitious, long-term play that will require legislative action, state by state.
While Metalabel appears to be a first mover, its product and messaging strategy isn't yet fully coherent. Its website feels like walking into a brainstorming session with a thousand multicolored Post-It notes—the message changes depending on where you look. This isn’t a criticism; they are courageously building in public, following an organic, creative process. Hopefully, they get it right. We need more thinking like this.
How to Up Your Impact
My conversations around NYTW and the collaborative spirit of PolaCon reflected the universal desire to build connections and share in the fruits of collective work, which aligns directly with the philosophy of Do Good by Doing Better.
Here’s how we can start building this future:
Seek Out Collaboration: This week, identify one person in your network with complementary skills. Have a conversation not about what you can do for each other, but what you could create together. The goal isn't to start a business, but to plant a collaborative seed.
Explore New Models: Look into platforms like Metalabel and other co-creation tools. Understand the models they are proposing. Even if you don't use them, learning about them expands your perspective on what's possible.
Help Shape What's Next: In preparing this, I debated converting it into a more in-depth piece with a companion podcast. That would take a few more weeks, and I wanted to share these ideas with you quickly. Now, I’d like your input: what parts of this topic interest you most? Let me know in the comments so I can cover them in more detailed subsequent posts.
And not to put too fine a point on it—this very invitation for feedback is a simple example of potential co-creation. If this Substack were a big money-maker and your comments helped shape the final product, wouldn’t it be nice to share something back with you?
These aren’t just thought exercises; they touch on something deeper. We all want to feel seen, heard, and valued. Imagine how many voices and perspectives could rise to the surface if we had the tools—and the incentives—to invite them in. Removing these micro-frictions would make space for more of us to show up and for our ideas to matter.
What’s Next
My big takeaway from NYTW 2025 is that people across all fields are striving to build new structures that enable communities to learn from each other and share in the benefits of their collective work.
Whether it’s developing safer AI or championing new corporate forms, this work is being driven by individuals, companies, and interest groups—often through in-person collaboration. And if the projected economic growth of the creator economy can be enhanced by the co-creator economy, there is truly a large amount of value and benefit that we can create together.
This work is just beginning, and progress will come as we push forward—one step, one conversation, and one collaboration at a time.
Photo Bonus
From a photowalk through Brooklyn while attending PolaCon NYC - a scene of the Brooklyn Bridge with a helicopter passing through the frame. If you’d like to see more from my photowalks, I’ll be posting photos on my Instagram photo feed @seen.city.project. I’d love to have you along for the journey there too!