“Content creators get taken advantage of so f***ing much”: Pokimane reveals her motivation behind joining RTS as co-founder

During a recent live stream, Imane “Pokimane” Anys revealed that her motivation behind joining the RTS talent management firm as a co-founder was to seize control of her career as an independent creator. Her goal is to have maximum autonomy over her work.

She claimed that content creators are being mistreated, misguided, and coerced into contracts with low compensation.

Pokimane recently announced via Twitter that she was launching talent management and brand consulting firm RTS. It is backed by a California-based holding company, Endeavor, Stuart Law, former head of strategy at Twitch.

The founding team also consists of COO Kim Phan (previously with Blizzard and Endeavor), VP of talent management Sue Lee (previously with Twitch), and VP of sales and partnerships, Jason Scorrano (former PAX and Turner Sports executive).

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Pokimane is taking steps to secure her future in the industry

Initially, Pokimane claimed that some of her prior experiences made her feel undervalued and underpaid. Unlike other agencies where agents are incentivized to maximize the deal flow, RTS will not take a percentage of transactional deals. The streamer said that she wants RTS to place creators with managers who care about their long-term careers:

“Content creators get taken advantage of so fucking much. The amount of income that get 20% of their income taken from them when they should be getting 5 or 10% cuts out of this fucking world. And oftentimes someone will only behave as your agent, when I say agent I mean they bring new deals. But they will take the cut of an agent and a manager and just call themselves your manager. So they will take 20%, but not actually manage you in anyway, they only bring you deals. And it’s so bad that most content creators don’t even realize that that’s not a normal deal.”

Pokimane did not reveal the overall structure that RTS plans to follow concerning its clients. Having been in the gaming industry for several years, she has first-hand experience of agents manipulating their clients for larger shares of their incomes. The streamer claimed that content creators tend to think more about the short term, leading them to make decisions that they might regret in the longer term:

“Unfortunately, because of how fast-paced livestreaming and internet culture is, people tend to make decisions for the short term versus the long term. The whole reason I wanted to help create RTS was that I wanted infrastructure in place with managers who care about creators’ long-term careers. I wanted to create an environment where we care about every aspect of the creator’s brand and wellbeing.”

In a nutshell, Pokimane claimed that she joined RTS to change the overall industry. The streamer said that creators had been made to pay their managers an unfairly large part of their income for many years.