(IN) FOCUS: Can You Afford This? The Financial Realities of Building a Creator Business
Being a creator increasingly means being a business owner—but making money and understanding your money are two very different things.
For this Tech Week edition of IN Focus, we bring together Zora Feraji, founder of Sunday, Jesse Draper, Founding Partner at Halogen Ventures, and Lighthouse creator and Founder of Design Buddies, Grace Ling, for a candid conversation about the financial decisions behind building a sustainable creative career.
Using “Can you afford this?” as the framework, we’ll look at those decisions from three sides: the infrastructure behind the business, the capital perspective, and the creator actually living it.
The conversation gets practical:
Can you afford to go full-time?
Can you afford to hire?
Can you afford to turn down the $40K brand deal?
Can you afford to invest $25K into your own idea?
Can you afford to wait 90 days to get paid?
When should you bootstrap—and when does outside capital make sense?
You made $250K this year. How much did you actually make?
Through those scenarios, we can unpack cash flow, taxes, savings, inconsistent income, hiring, investment, ownership, risk, and scaling in a way that feels relevant rather than like a financial-literacy seminar.
Run of Show:
-4:30pm: Doors
-5:00pm: Conversation begins in Theater
-6:30pm: Mingling
-7:00pm: Event Ends
Zora Feraji is the founder and CEO of Sunday, the AI operating system for creator entrepreneurs, connecting the commercial backend of their businesses from pitch to payment. She has spent nearly a decade working in the creator economy and is also the founder of creator talent agency Hauz Global. She was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in Media & Marketing in 2026.
Grace Ling is the Founder of Design Buddies (world's largest design community), tech/design/fitness creator (300K+ total followers), and semi-professional runner based in Los Angeles & San Francisco. She co-hosts the podcast, How Creators Make Money and hosts parties. She was formerly a UX Designer at Electronic Arts & quit her job to become a tech founder & creator!
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