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?

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

Cursor invited me to a private dinner in LA with 30 of the most influential Tech/AI Creators in the world. Here's what was said behind closed doors:

10) The most valuable creator in 2026 isn't a "creator" at all. It's a developer. If you can build AND you can post, you're the rarest thing in the market right now.

9) "Token-maxxing" is a real thing at companies - they are building internal leaderboards to push employees toward max AI usage.

8) Facebook is STILL king for creator monetization. Everyone's chasing the shiny new platform while the actual money keeps flowing where nobody's looking.

7) The flow quietly crushing it right now for creator growth: IG Reels → Manychat → lead magnet (such as on beehiiv)

6) "Forward deployed engineer" & "Field Engineer" got said at least 10 times in one night. AI companies are embedding technical people directly with customers, like consultants, just to drive adoption.

5) Brand deals are no longer the goal. Creators are adding new revenue streams, from hosting creator retreats around the world to building physical spaces like CatLabs.

4) Short-form creators are all quietly starting YouTube. The pendulum is swinging back to depth.

3) Exclusivity is the new leverage. The hottest conversation in tech and AI isn't reach anymore. It's who you say no to, and blocking out competitors.

2) Build a room worth sharing and creators will share it. Custom rugs, signage with a Cursor keyboard, influencer gifting, a 5-course Michelin tasting menu. The event WAS the content.

1) Every creator's email is basically public infor now, but it's still personal relationships that get the right people in the right room (which is why AI won't replace creator marketing).

Thank you to the Cursor team (Mike, Joshua, Ethan, Christian) Y'all absolutely crushed this night for an insanely memorable experience.

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

I slid in the DMs of the head of creator partnerships at Brick to send 10 gifts for some of our team.

This dude sent me 300 💀

Here's the thing about working in the creator economy: you're chronically online. I spend all day on social for work, so I try to spend as little time as possible on my phone outside of it. Touching grass is a real 2026 priority.

Screen time across my laptop and phone still hits 10 to 15 hours a day. My eyes are cooked lol.

Daniel Kang 🤳🧱 is leading the charge on all things partnerships, and he does not do things halfway. On top of being just a baller of a human being, he brought so many bricks to Cannes Lions he looked like Santa Claus in July, including gifting creators at an event with Adobe (Christine Göös 🎙️).

I'm a huge fan of anything that gives me time back. Brick has been one of the biggest unlocks (s/o Lana Ivory 🦋 for putting me on).

Massive thank you for all the gifts (and bday gifts). Now we need to throw more Creator Match 🧩 events with marketers and creators just to hand out 300 of them.

Who wants one?

My dog Cody has a new bed on all of these boxes lol.

I'm selling ad space on my virtual background (for Zoom calls, Google Meets, etc.)

→ 10 logo spots
→ Live auction
→ 9 days

I have about 10 calls p/ day, which is roughly 50 calls per week (if my math is correct). I talk to the most influential B2B creators in the world, as well as jump on calls with marketing leaders at the biggest Tech/B2B/AI companies.

Imagine i'm on a call with a CMO of [insert billion dollar tech company] and they have to stare at your logo for a full 30 mins.

Name one other SDR that could pull off the number of SQLs I am going to land you.

Just think about that precious real estate you couldn't buy anywhere else.

If you got this far, yes, this post is complete satire lol. Inspo from the viral Vincent S. of BrandMyLaptop where he started a marketplace to sell sticker spots on people's laptops. And yes you already know Creator Match 🧩 snagged a slot (more to come this week).

There's a growing trend of selling ad spots on your laptop, wedding suit, laptop, body (for Hyrox)... but no one has done virtual backgrounds yet ;)

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...

***
🔔 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 ® :)

2 years ago: my team was me, my dog, & an AI notetaker.

Today: 35+ people

And we just opened 4 more roles. We'll probably hit 40 by the end of the month🤯.

Everyone right now is flexing how small they can stay. Solo founder, AI agents, and "I built a billion dollar company as just 1 person".

But keep hiring humans. On purpose.

2 years ago people laughed at me for a different bet. I left a stable consulting job to go all in on creators when nobody thought B2B creators were a thing.

That bet turned into Creator Match 🧩.

And the whole way up, the thing that actually moved the needle was never the AI tool. It was people. Yes real humans.

So no, I'm not trying to build the leanest company on the internet. I'm trying to build the best team I've ever worked with.

If you've ever worked in creator marketing, you know that this is not something that you can just automate via a marketplace or an AI agent.

4 roles just went live:
→ Chief of Staff
→ Head of Operations
→ Account Manager
→ Campaign Manager

Warning: This is not a cushy 9-5. A-team only. Must be a builder that's want autonomy, runs to chaos, and believes fences are meant to be hopped.

With everything going on right now, all the layoffs, I don't say this lightly. I get to hire actual humans. That still feels like a privilege.

Head to my LinkedIn profile for the application link. Tag someone that you think would be a great fit 👀 ...

💬 Are companies today making the mistake of trying to slash headcount when you still need humans in the loop?

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

What would you do if you received a text at 12:30 AM to MC the largest creator economy conference in 6 hours?

That was the position Jerrica Long 🧩 was in yesterday.

I was supposed to be there. Instead, I had a NIGHTMARE travel day. Legit took 36 hours to fly from SF to NYC thanks to crazy storms.

I found myself stranded in the Raleigh, NC airport (sadly no Mr. Beast in sight). I watched my phone blow up asking "AJ WHERE TF ARE YOU?? CONFERENCE IS IN A FEW HOURS!"... thinking about how many months I'd spent preparing for this invite.

These don't just happen. Creator Economy Live is the biggest conference on the East Coast, and getting asked to MC it is a big deal, especially for a startup like mine.

Now I was going to miss half of it.

Worse, I felt terrible for the speakers. Thousands of people were counting on an MC who was stuck 200 miles away running on fumes.

I called in a hail merry: Jerrica, our Community Partnerships Lead at Creator Match 🧩. One shot.

She answered: "Yes, I'm here to support, and I'd love to take on this opportunity."

No hesitation. No panic. Just go go go.

Here's what most people don't understand about luck: you don't get lucky. You put yourself in a position to get lucky.

Jerrica wasn't new to this. She had years of speaking experience at global. But she needed the opportunity. Zero time to prep, just a few hours of sleep, zero warning, and she said yes anyway. It wasn't perfect. But she made it happen.

I landed the next day on 3 hours of sleep and 4 coffees. Grabbed my luggage, ran to the green room, and hit the stage. Jerrica emceed the first half of the day, and I closed us out for the second.

That's what having the right team looks like. Bonus points for a team that has skills outside their core role, such as speaking and community building. And it was crazy that CM was everywhere at the conference.

That's the team I want to keep building. Ppl that run TO chaos, not FROM it. The ppl that THRIVE in the unknown.

And a big thanks to friends in our space that were there to support like Sharon J., Colin Duethorn, & Justin Johnson.

What a wild 2 days haha. See you at CEL Vegas in January!!

💬 Now in NYC - who else is around?

Now I need about 48 hours of sleep lol.

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

what started as a 24 hour nightmare travel day ended up being a yacht dinner party in France with a bucket of rose...

Welcome to Day 1 of Cannes Lions.

Last night I had dinner with marketing leaders and the team at Conveo, and on top of the heaps of spritz and steak they served, I can't stop thinking about their founding story.

It started at a kitchen table in Brussels. They applied to Y Combinator and got rejected. But a YC partner told them to keep going. That was enough. They rebuilt, reapplied, and got into the S24 batch, then packed up and moved to San Francisco.

Talking to their founder Hendrik Van Hove felt like looking in a mirror. He's 28, ex-consultant, now signing mega brands and feeling the weight of scaling a company fast. Around the same age as me, same consulting background, both building something we never saw coming.

What they do is genuinely cool. Real qualitative research takes a relay team of specialists and six weeks to deliver. Conveo does it with one AI platform that runs and analyzes voice and video interviews at scale.

Creator Match 🧩 is barely 2 years old. And we're already getting invited to some of the most exclusive rooms at the biggest conferences in the world. Today I get the privilege to speak on the Cannes stage about B2B creators, alongside marketing leaders from OpenAI, Lovable, and Gamma, plus some of the top creators on the planet.

Huge thank you to Meagan Loyst for the intro that started it all. S/o Avni Barman, Steve, & Bill for the fun content collabs. And to more of the Conveo team like Florian & Rómulo!

More from Cannes soon...

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

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

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