By: Segun Oyebode

On May 23rd, Techstars-backed creator commerce platform Mainstack will host its first product day, Mainstack V4: The Unveiling, marking the launch of the fourth version of its creator commerce platform. Among several others, two of the announcements address problems that have remained largely unsolved for creators across Africa and beyond.

The State of the Creator Economy

Running a creator business in Africa and beyond is, in many ways, easier than it has ever been. You can build a storefront, sell a course, collect payments across borders, and reach an audience of thousands without leaving your bedroom.

The tools exist. The market is real. The opportunity is documented. And yet, for most creators, the actual experience of running that business tells a more complicated story.

The storefront lives on one platform. The community, if it exists in any structured form, lives somewhere else, often on a tool that was never really designed with the realities of your creator business in mind. Brand partnership conversations happen over DMs, email threads, and WhatsApp exchanges that rarely lead anywhere fast. Audience data is fragmented. Revenue streams are disconnected.

And the creator, who is in reality operating a small business with multiple moving parts, spends a disproportionate amount of time managing the infrastructure instead of building the thing.

This is the part of the creator economy that doesn’t make it into the success stories. The operational weight. The tool fatigue. The deals that never closed because the follow-up fell through the cracks.

The appetite is clearly there. Earlier this year, Mainstack’s Moment conference drew 4,000 people to Lagos in what stands as Africa’s largest gathering of creators, a signal of just how large and active the community has become, and how much remains to be built for it.

The Problems That Have Gone Unsolved

Mainstack was built from the conviction that this shouldn’t be the baseline experience for creators.

On May 23rd, the company will host its first-ever product day, Mainstack V4: The Unveiling, where it will introduce the next version of its platform, designed around a single premise: that a creator should be able to run their entire business from one place.

Two of the announcements speak directly to the problems that have remained stubbornly unsolved for creators at every level.

The first is about community. For a significant number of creators, community is at the core of what they are building. Yet the infrastructure for building and monetising a genuine creator community has remained fragmented, often requiring integrations that are cumbersome to set up and difficult to manage.

What Mainstack is bringing to the table changes that in a way that is both practical and, for creators who have dealt with this problem firsthand, long overdue.

The second is about brand deals. Specifically, the gap between the opportunity and the process. Brand partnerships are one of the most significant and underpenetrated revenue streams for creators across Africa and beyond.

The challenge has never really been the willingness of brands to work with creators. It has been the process: identifying the right brands, crafting a compelling pitch, managing the pipeline, knowing when to follow up, and when to move on. Most creators navigate this without any real system.

Mainstack is building one, and it will use AI to do the heavy lifting without removing the creator from the equation entirely.

“Creators are building real businesses, but the infrastructure available to them has never fully reflected that. V4 is our most deliberate attempt to close that gap, not just with tools strung together but with a complete system thoughtfully planned and built for creators and digital entrepreneurs,” said Ayobami Oyaleke, CEO of Mainstack.

What Comes Next

These are two of several announcements coming on May 23rd.

Together, they point toward something larger than a product update, a more complete picture of what creator infrastructure can look like when it is designed around the actual complexity of a creator’s working life.

The full picture will be revealed at theunveiling.mainstack.com.

About Mainstack

Mainstack is a creator commerce platform that gives creators, entrepreneurs, and digital businesses the tools to sell products, manage communities, and collect payments all in one place. From ticketing and digital products to storefronts and analytics, Mainstack is built for the scale and complexity of modern commerce across Africa and beyond.

This year, they launched the 4th version of their product, a complete reimagining of how creator-centric infrastructure should work. Learn more at theunveiling.mainstack.com.