How The European Kid Is Building a New Currency | Aris Yeager Storytime

Aris is a creator entrepreneur with over 3 million followers and 3 billion views, best known for his viral skits as a French rich kid on his account The European Kid. That platform became the foundation for Storytime, a hyper-local marketplace matching businesses with creators in their neighborhood, where creators pay with content and businesses pay with experiences, effectively creating a new currency for the creator economy. It started with a simple frustration. As a creator, Aris was spending hours in DMs with shops and bars trying to set up brand deals that should have taken minutes. He realized the entire partnership industry was broken. So he built the solution himself. Storytime now operates in over 1,000 locations across New York City, just expanded to Miami, and has onboarded some of the hottest food and beverage chains in America including Cava, Joe & The Juice, and Oakberry. Unlike traditional influencer marketing platforms that focus on macro creators and six-figure campaigns, Storytime redefines who qualifies as a creator. A college student with 4,000 followers in NYU's neighborhood is more valuable than someone with 100,000 followers in Brazil. Aris breaks down why being a creator gave him unfair advantages most tech founders don't have, how he closed deals with Oakberry and Sweetgreen by DMing their founders directly, and why nano and micro creators are the future of influencer marketing. He explains: Why his viral Parmesan cheese video was filmed in two minutes and how low production often outperforms polished content How one video outside a New York nightclub went so viral it made French news and people thought he was related to the founder of LVMH Why Storytime focuses on nano and micro creators with 3,000 to 10,000 followers instead of celebrities How being The European Kid opened doors to founders of Oakberry and Sweetgreen that traditional founders could never access His number one advice for creators: it's a quantity game, and posting relentlessly beats perfection Chapters: Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: From The European Kid to Building Storytime 00:00:42 The Origin Story: From TikTok Curiosity to Viral French Character 00:01:37 The Parmesan Video: When Low Production Meets Maximum Virality 00:04:32 Realizing the Value: How Content Creation Became a Real Business 00:05:32 What is Storytime: Building a Marketplace for Creator-Business Connections 00:07:24 How Storytime Works: The Mechanics of Paying with Content 00:07:59 Creating a New Currency: Content as Payment 00:08:45 The Competitive Edge: Quality Over Quantity in Marketplace Partners 00:10:34 The Target Creator: Redefining Influence from Nano to Micro 00:11:47 Authenticity in Influencer Marketing: Friends Over Celebrities 00:12:28 The Creator-Product Fit: Why Aris Is the Perfect Founder 00:17:51 The Hidden Superpowers: Beyond Social Media Followers 00:19:25 The Acquisition Strategy: Organic Growth Through Network Effects 00:21:56 Global Expansion Plans: From Miami to Istanbul 00:24:50 Why Creators Choose CPG Over Tech Companies 00:27:07 Balancing Creation and Building: The 90-10 Split HotStart VC Subscribe to the HotStart VC newsletter: https://hotstart.beehiiv.com/ Become a HotStart Angel and co-invest with us in celebrity-founded brands starting from $5,000: https://www.hotstart.vc/hotstart-angels/ Check out our fund: https://www.hotstart.vc/ Scott van den Berg LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-van-den-berg-22b534150/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scottvandenberg_/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scottvandenberg_ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@scottvandenbergvc Aris Yeager Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theeuropeankid/ Storytime: https://storytime.io/ HotStart VC is a fund that exclusively invests in brands founded by celebrities and creators. We're the go-to platform for celebrities and creators launching brands, providing capital, strategic support, and the infrastructure to scale.