Is “Creator” a Dirty Word?

I have a complicated relationship with the word “creator.”

For me, it conjures a specific image: someone with a ring light and a content calendar, posting Reels and optimizing for the algorithm. Someone trying to sell me something. It feels like a job title that arrived with the internet and will disappear with the next thing. It certainly doesn’t feel like who I am, or what I do here with my writing.

And yet….

Every time I sit down to write one of these essays, I am making something from nothing. I am taking the scattered observations from my week — a conversation with a founder, something Izzy said at the dinner table, a quote from a book or podcast I can’t stop thinking about — and turning it into a hypothesis, a point of view.

That is creation. Isn’t it?

I’d propose there are three modes we all could move between, but most of us are stuck in only one of them (largely because we’ve been drowning in content for the past 15 years since the advent of mobile / social media).

Consumer. We scroll. We read. We watch. We absorb enormous quantities of other people’s thinking and almost none of our own. Consumption is not bad — it is how we learn, how we fill the well, how we stay connected to the world. But consumption without creation is all input and no output. It is a diet of other people’s musings, with no practice or outlet for forming your own.

Curator. This is the underrated middle. A curator doesn’t make from scratch; they select, arrange, contextualize. They look at a chaotic landscape and say: this matters, this doesn’t, here’s why. In venture, curation is most of the job — thousands of ideas, and the work is knowing which ones deserve your attention. A great curator has a point of view even when they’re not making anything original. The simple act of choosing is the act of expression. The act of creating.

Creator. I truly believe: everyone creates. Not everyone makes art or builds companies or writes essays — but every human being creates, every single day, just by moving through the world with intention. If you want to get philosophical about it: we were made to create. It is the most distinctly human thing we do. And yet so few of us give ourselves permission to feel it: the inspiration, the satisfaction, the particular aliveness of making something that didn’t exist before you imagined it. Most people stop before they start. Creation feels like it requires permission — a credential, a platform, an audience. I spent years thinking someone else would be the one to say the things I was thinking. Some more experienced, qualified, impressive voice. Then I looked around and realized: that voice wasn’t coming. If I had something to say, I would have to be the one to say it.

That matters more now, not less. As AI makes the task of creating easier, the writing, the designing, the building, it is becoming urgent to protect the purpose of creating. The task is what gets done. The purpose is why it needed to exist. No model can supply that. Only you can.

And here's what I've learned from doing this for a little over a year now:

The simple act of creating can change you more than whatever you make.

Writing forces clarity. It turns vague impressions into actual positions. It reveals what you actually believe versus what you thought you believed.

I don’t write because I have fully formed ideas. I write to figure out what I think deeply enough to share with others.

You don’t need a ring light. You don’t need the title. You don’t even need fully formed thoughts.

You just need something to say — and the courage to say it.