AJ Eckstein 🧩

LinkedIn just made its biggest creator move EVER. 30 top B2B creators were invited to their NYC office for a private announcement. Today, the embargo broke...

The news: LinkedIn officially launched its Creator Marketplace.

Being in that room at the Empire State Building, press release in hand before the news broke to the public, was surreal.

And this is coming right after Digiday including me among the 13 B2B creators brands are betting on in 2026. Wild to think this all started with posting consistently and betting on this platform early.

This announcement hits close to home: Creator Match 🧩 was an early tester for this marketplace. We've been bullish on LinkedIn creators for 2+ years, back when most brands didn't know B2B creators existed. We were one of the first agencies to pay out over $1,000,000 to LinkedIn creators.

So why is this a big deal?

Creator discovery has always been the bottleneck on LinkedIn. No API. No infrastructure. Just manual, relationship-driven sourcing. Other platforms like YouTube have their own marketplaces but LinkedIn was behind.

Now brands can search creators by topic, view audience demographics by industry, job title, and location, and dig into real engagement data. Creators opt in and stay in control.

Because here's the truth about B2B creators:
It's not about size of reach. It's about relevance of audience.

A creator with 20K followers who speaks directly to CISOs can outperform one with 500K generalist followers every single time. More tools and more data to surface the right creators will only supercharge this part of the creator economy.

And this isn't a one-off launch. LinkedIn is getting serious about creator monetization, building out a full suite:
→ LinkedIn Learning (I'm an instructor with 3 courses totaling 250,000 learners)
→ BrandLink (trusted brand partnerships)
→ TopVoice360 (thought leadership at scale)
→ Advice Sessions (direct engagement)
→ And so much more I can't share just yet

The B2B creator economy isn't coming. It's here. And the infrastructure is finally catching up.

💬 Will you opt in to this marketplace when they release it to the public?

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🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, creator marketing strategies for tech brands, and tips for creators

They called me crazy for betting on B2B creators. Ad Age just named me one of 13 to watch in 2026.

Before you think this was just another "overnight success story" - here's the full BTS:

Early days looked like this: LinkedIn wasn't a dropdown option on creator forms. Nobody talked about it at conferences. I was laughed at in creator communities. B2B was a joke.

But I kept betting.

Creator Match 🧩 was one of the first agencies to pay over $1,000,000 to LinkedIn creators. In the early days, we were fighting for $2,000 total budgets. That's agency fee AND multiple creators combined.

Now it's 6 to 7 figure campaigns. We're paying millions to tech creators. And we're working with close to 20% of the brands featured on the Forbes 50 AI Company List.

The whole game is about seeing where the hockey puck is going before everyone else does.

They'll call you crazy. Then they'll call you early. Then they'll pretend they always believed.

Still not sure if LinkedIn/B2B creators are "cool." Honestly doesn't matter. The B2B creator economy is real. The money is real. The impact is real.

This community deserves this moment.

It's an absolute honor to be featured alongside 12 of the most impressive voices in the B2B creator space. And none of this happens without our amazing CM team — you built this with me.

Huge thank you to Gillian Follett and Ad Age for the feature.

The best is still ahead...

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🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, creator marketing strategies for tech brands, and tips for creators

Pic below with the one and only Gigi Robinson ® :)

I hit 50,000+ followers, and my COO said, “you're a fool for not reintroducing yourself.” So here’s the quick rundown...

My first internship was at Disneyland. No joke, lived in Disney housing and worked on everything from finance to marketing.

Then I graduated from USC during the pandemic (shout out my fellow 2020 grads who also graduated via Zoom lol).

And kickstarted my career in the crazy world of Management Consulting. Absolutely loved my time at Accenture (s/o goated managers like Christopher & Zain), having consulted within innovation and marketing for the world's largest tech and media companies.

After 3 years, I decided it was time to make the leap and quit my comfortable $130,000+ "dream" consulting job.

I was starting to make content on the side through my media company, The Final Round, which helped job seekers advance past "the final round interview".

Job seekers live on LinkedIn, so I started to create content on this platform. Then I received an invite to join the Creators Program (s/o Michael & Zander), and launched 3 LinkedIn Learning Courses (s/o Almeera & Amanda) that now total 200,000+ Learners!!

I quickly realized that B2B creators were the next big thing, and LinkedIn was the biggest untapped opportunity.

Launched Creator Match 🧩, which funny enough started out as a LinkedIn talent agency. Realized that I enjoyed the brand side much more so I flipped sides of the table and landed our first ever paid campaign. In the early days, the campaigns were crumbs compared to the b2c world. I'm talking $1k campaigns entirely. Now we have several year long $1,000,000+ partnerships.

We started growing the team (s/o our fab COO Tara Knight 🧩), rebranded from "Final Round Agency" to "Creator Match", doubled down on branding (including the notorious puzzle piece emoji & logo), and we were off to the races! We went from just a linkedin agency to now building and scaling full creator programs for b2b/saas/ai brands (ie. all channels, brand trips, gifting, ads +).

We were the first agency to pay out $1,000,000 to Linkedin creators (which took us 12 months), and now we hit that milestone in just one month in November. 😆

Our team is now 21 people strong (fever dream?). We are a small but mighty agency, competing against the agency giants in our space.

Outside of being a busy Founder, I also:
📰 Write for Fast Company
🎤 Speak at events/conferences around the world
🌎 Travel and explore: surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking
🥇 Compete in endurance sports (Marathons, Ultramarathons, Triathlons)

This may look like a solo story but I can guarantee you that none of this would be possible without our amazing brands, creators, and wonderful team that powers everything behind the scenes. I'm incredibly grateful. 💚

The next chapter is going to be wild.

Cheers,
AJ

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🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, B2B Creator Marketing, and Brand strategies