Influencers Are Not Out. But Foundership Is Rising.
- Esra Talu
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
I recently came across a striking line on Instagram: “Influencers are OUT. Founders are IN. And that’s very good news for your business.”
It is clever. It is timely. And it is only half the story.
Because influencers are not disappearing. They are still selling products, shaping demand, and contributing meaningfully to the economy. In fact, U.S. creator ad spend was projected to reach $37 billion in 2025, up 26% year over year, and nearly half of creator ad buyers now describe creators as a “must buy.” This is not a collapsing category. It is a growing one.
But something deeper is changing.
What is losing value is not influence itself. It is influence without ownership, without accountability, and without product truth.
That is why the more interesting shift today is not “influencers out, founders in.” It is the move from endorsement to ownership. From renting attention to building an asset. From being the face of someone else’s business to carrying the risk, discipline, and responsibility of building your own.
“What is losing value is not influence itself. It is influence without ownership, without accountability, and without product truth.”
As an entrepreneur, this distinction matters to me.
“Selling attention and building a company are not the same profession.”
I have always believed in founder-ship more than filtered relevance. I understand the commercial role of influencers. They help brands sell. They move demand. They generate jobs and income across the digital economy. But selling attention and building a company are not the same profession. One can create visibility. The other creates an enterprise.
And that is exactly why this shift is good news for business.
It is good news because serious businesses benefit when the market becomes less impressed by surface and more demanding about substance. McKinsey’s latest beauty research found that public-facing founders are now among the lowest consumer consideration factors, while product quality has become the top purchase driver. Numerator found something equally revealing: only 18% of buyers of celebrity- or influencer-started brands could correctly identify the founder, and those brands trailed category leaders on recommendation and repeat purchase. In other words, fame may help trigger trial, but it no longer guarantees loyalty.
That is a healthy correction.
“Visibility can be rented. Defensibility has to be built.”
For years, many brands treated social visibility as if it were defensibility. It is not. Visibility can be rented. Defensibility has to be built.
And consumers are getting smarter about the difference.
Why do people buy celebrity-founded brands in the first place? Not simply because they admire the celebrity. They buy because a known face can act as a shortcut — to trust, taste, aspiration, and discovery. In the U.S. and Great Britain, among people who had bought a celebrity-promoted or celebrity-owned alcohol brand, positive feelings toward the celebrity were a major reason for purchase consideration: 59% in the U.S. and 53% in Britain. In urban India, 62% said they had tried a celebrity-owned beauty brand, and people were more likely to trust a celebrity advocating for a brand they owned than one they merely endorsed.
This tells us something important.
Consumers are not only buying products. They are buying a world. A founder-led brand can offer identity, belonging, aesthetic direction, even emotional shorthand. Corporate messaging often feels polished, distant, and over-processed. Founder-led brands can feel more personal, more human, and more accountable — at least in the beginning.
But only in the beginning.
Because the first purchase may come from fascination. The second purchase comes from product truth.
“The first purchase may come from fascination. The second purchase comes from product truth.”
That is where the market is becoming more mature — and more interesting. Consumers may still be drawn in by celebrity, but they stay for performance, quality, value, and trust. McKinsey’s findings on product quality, along with Numerator’s weaker repeat and recommendation scores for influencer-started brands, both point in the same direction: the market is becoming less forgiving of empty hype. That is very good news for businesses that are actually built to last.
This is also why I would slightly correct a common assumption about where this trend began.
If we are asking who helped mainstream the modern celebrity-founder model, then yes, Gwyneth Paltrow belongs in that conversation. But she was not the first. Jessica Simpson’s collection launched in 2005 and was already generating about $1 billion in annual retail sales before Goop, founded in 2008, became the more culturally influential template for the lifestyle-founder era. Gwyneth helped make the model feel editorial, curated, and aspirational. She did not invent the business logic behind it.
And now we are seeing a new generation professionalize it even further.
Hailey Bieber’s Rhode is the obvious example. e.l.f. agreed to acquire Rhode in a deal worth up to $1 billion, with the purchase price representing roughly 3.8x trailing net sales of $212 million as of March 31, 2025. But the more interesting signal is not the headline valuation. It is what happened beneath it. CreatorIQ found that only about 15% of Rhode’s earned media value over the prior 12 months came from posts that mentioned Hailey Bieber by name. That suggests the brand was beginning to stand on its own — beyond the founder’s fame.
That, to me, is the dividing line between a celebrity project and a founder business.
“A celebrity project depends on the person. A founder business builds systems strong enough to outgrow the novelty of that person.”
A celebrity project depends on the person.
A founder business may be ignited by the person, but it builds product, operations, retention, distribution, and community strong enough to outgrow the novelty of that person.
And that is exactly why the shift is good news for business: it rewards brands that can become companies, not just campaigns.
There is also a bigger economic point here that should not be ignored. The digital economy in the U.S. reached $4.9 trillion in 2025 research, supporting 28.4 million jobs, including more than 1.5 million full-time equivalent digital creators. So yes, the influencer and creator economy is real, large, and economically meaningful. But when public figures move from endorsement fees into actual company-building, value creation extends beyond content into product development, operations, hiring, logistics, retail partnerships, customer service, and intellectual property. The economic footprint becomes broader and more durable.
That said, we should not romanticize celebrity founder-ship either.
"This is not a simple morality tale in which founders are noble and influencers are frivolous. The real issue is seriousness.”
There are real downsides.
First, fame can still overwhelm scrutiny. Markets get flooded with aesthetically polished, strategically hollow brands. Second, the founder’s image can distract from whether the business has real defensibility. Third, the people doing the hard operational work behind the scenes often remain invisible while the famous face gets all the credit. And fourth, ownership can blur marketing boundaries in ways that deserve more scrutiny, not less. A 2026 peer-reviewed study of celebrity-owned alcohol brands on Instagram found that among sampled brand-related posts, only 1.7% included clear disclosure in the caption, while 98% were visible to a simulated 15-year-old account. That is a reminder that founder-owned promotion can sometimes bypass the norms people expect from conventional advertising.
So no, this is not a simple morality tale in which founders are noble, and influencers are frivolous.
The real issue is seriousness.
Are we looking at someone using visibility to build a product-led, accountable business? Or are we looking at someone using business language to elevate a personal brand?
That is the question.
And it is not only an American question. The U.S. may still be the most mature arena for turning fame into founder-led commerce, but the pattern is broader. McKinsey’s 2025 beauty work surveyed more than 15,000 consumers across 13 markets, including Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, South Korea, the UK, and the U.S. Earlier global YouGov data across 17 markets also showed that consumers in places such as the UAE, India, Indonesia, and China are often more receptive than Western consumers to public figures promoting consumer products. This is not just a U.S. trend. It is global — although the intensity, trust dynamics, and category fit vary by market.
That global point matters.
Because in emerging and fast-evolving markets especially, the line between media power and market power is getting thinner. Attention can move faster than institutions. Community can move faster than retail. Identity can move faster than trust. Which means founder-led brands can scale with astonishing speed — but they can also disappoint at astonishing speed if the product is weak.
My own conclusion is straightforward:
"Influencers are not out. Empty influence is."
And that is indeed very good news for business.
It is good news for founders who build real products. Good news for companies that care about repeat purchase more than momentary hype. Good news for consumers who are becoming more demanding. And good news for markets that should reward accountability over aesthetics.
Fame may still open the door.
But only product, trust, and execution keep it open.