Building from scratch: why we started Circus.
Existing platforms were built to extract value from creators, not to empower them. This is the problem Circus is trying to fix, and why starting from scratch was the only honest option.
The problem with existing platforms
Every major social platform was built around the same core mechanic: aggregate as many people as possible, then sell their attention to advertisers. Creators were the fuel for that engine — they produced the content that kept users scrolling, and in exchange they got reach. Sometimes a lot of reach. But reach isn’t the same as a relationship, and attention isn’t the same as community.
I watched creator after creator build enormous audiences and still feel like they didn’t really own anything. Their followers were spread across a feed, mixed in with everyone else. There was no place their fans could actually gather — no home base, no named community, no sense of belonging. Just a number on a profile that the algorithm could halve overnight.
Platforms built to extract, not empower
When you look at how existing platforms actually make money, the incentive structure becomes clear. Revenue comes from advertising, and advertising revenue scales with time-on-platform. The platform’s job is to keep you scrolling. The creator’s job, from the platform’s perspective, is to produce content that helps with that. The creator’s actual relationship with their audience — the trust they’ve built, the community they’ve formed — is a resource the platform benefits from without compensating them for.
Some platforms introduced monetization tools as the creator economy matured, but they were mostly retrofitted. Tips, subscriptions, virtual gifts — added on top of infrastructure that was never designed with creator economics in mind. The fundamental dynamic didn’t change: the platform captured the majority of the value, and creators got a share that was decided for them.
Why start from scratch
There’s a version of Circus that could have been built as a layer on top of existing platforms — a community tool that integrates with your existing followers and redirects them somewhere better. We considered it. The problem is that you can’t fundamentally change the relationship between creators and their communities if you’re still dependent on the infrastructure of platforms that benefit from keeping that relationship shallow.
Starting from scratch means we get to make different decisions at the foundation. Every community on Circus is a named, dedicated space owned by the creator who built it. Members join intentionally — they’re not swept in by an algorithm. The creator controls the culture. And the revenue model, which we’re still developing, starts from the premise that creators should earn from the communities they build, not just from their individual posts reaching a large anonymous audience.
What Circus is trying to do differently
The honest version of what we’re building is this: a place where fans can actually belong to something. Not just follow someone, but be part of a community with a name, a character, and a creator who cares enough to build it properly. That’s it. We think that’s worth doing.
We’re pre-launch. The app isn’t in the App Store or Google Play yet. We’re being deliberate about this — we’d rather take the time to get the foundation right than ship something that recreates the problems we set out to solve. If you want to follow along as we build, this blog is where we’ll share what we’re thinking and what we’re learning. We won’t always have clean answers, but we’ll be honest about where we are.