Empowering Artists: Midnight Oil Collective’s Vision in Cultural Investing

Discover Midnight Oil Collective’s pioneering role in cultural venture investing, emphasizing artist-centric approaches and disruptive strategies to catalyze innovation and reshape the landscape of media and entertainment.

What motivated you personally to get started in private investing?

Cultural production is largely a top down system. I was interested in investing directly into creative IP as a mechanism of shifting the industry from an intermediary run system to a leaner and scrappier artist run industry.

How does Midnight Oil Collective stand out in the competitive realm of the art industry, and how do you plan to leverage these advantages in pursuit of your investment objectives?

We aim to invest in the artist executive first and foremost. We believe in doing so, we will create a shift in media and entertainment that creates significantly leaner business models and more exciting creative projects.

What makes an investment opportunity irresistible for MOC? Can you share some key insights on your investment thesis?

We invest in projects at the pre-seed stage. What makes creative projects irresistible is the same thing that make tech companies irresistible at this stage–team and TAM. We are looking for highly scalable creative projects that are artist led and that will eventually turn into transmedia franchises with multiple revenue streams. This is a different way of looking at the potential of creative IP but one that we believe is more efficient and ultimately sustainable for the creators on the project.

How would you define portfolio success beyond economic return?

Our goal is to support the artist executive first and foremost. If we can shift the industry away from the artist feeling like their only option is to sell or license their IP to a producer or intermediary, we have achieved our double bottom line.

When it comes to private investing, what would you say is the most significant challenge or pain point that you encounter?

Our model definitely exists in the white space of cultural production. Artists are just now learning how to be executives on their work. On the one hand, it is exciting to watch Gen-Z embrace this new creative startup model. On the other, it is a lot of creator education that has to happen before we start to cut checks.

What primary challenges must a venture studio dedicated to the art industry navigate, and how does MOC strategically address and mitigate these challenges?

There are many but they all point back to this model being new. We spend a lot of time educating our artists and our investors about how we scale creative IP.

What has been the primary factor(s) influencing your investment decisions in the past years? How do you think these will evolve over the upcoming years?

We’ve had to be fairly conservative about the number of deals we’ve done over the last couple of years, primarily because of the economy. I am hoping that as this model takes shape and hopefully the economy turns around, we will not have to be so conservative.

What is the best investment lesson you’ve learned during your career?

Be patient. Leaders will emerge from the most unlikely places.

Please leave us a book recommendation.

I read “Trust” by Hernan Diaz. It absolutely changed the way I thought about storytelling.

What’s your favorite non-business interest or hobby?

I love running and cooking.

What’s your take on the private market overall?

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