A new freelance network is enticing creatives to become investors in the businesses they then build.

Selected Works, founded by Jonathan Vingiano, a former creative director at R/GA and Barton F. Graf, is a hybrid investment company and ad agency composed mainly of 100 freelancers that it taps to invest in startups. For a minimum of $1,000, Selected Works members can get a stake in startups and then apply their expertise to help those businesses grow.

Vingiano said he got the idea for the company after he started investing and helping his friends with startups. “I realized I was useful to people in the way that other typical investors weren’t useful because of my background in advertising and marketing, and creative capital is just as important, if not more important than financial capital,” Vingiano said.

How it works

The network operates as a syndicate, essentially gathering a pool of potential investors who can decide whether to invest their money in opportunities brought to them at a given time. This is different from a venture capital fund, which often goes through rounds of fundraising seeking capital deployed at a later date.

The agency can either invest on a pure equity basis or arrange a deal where Selected Works members get some equity and are also paid by the “client” company. 

Outside of Vingiano and a few partners, Selected Works does not have full-time employees. He estimated that about 70% of creatives in the network are pure freelancers; the remaining 30% are employed at traditional ad agencies and participate in Selected Works on the side. One doesn’t have to be a traditional ad creative to join. Members range from authors and film directors to costume designers.

Vingiano has different ways of vetting deals. He’ll often vet opportunities with the help of legal counsel and other partners. He also has a team of advisors including Carter Adamson, partner at VC firm Atomico; Justine Armour, partner and chief creative officer at Fig; Jacob Bijani, co-founder of Synthetic Traffic; and Hassan Rahim, founder of creative studio 12:01 AM.

Once the due diligence is done, Vingiano writes a deal memo on why a company is a good investment and creates a video in which he explains the opportunity, which he emails to his network. Then he hosts a webinar with the founder so interested network members can ask questions.

A traditional VC fund typically operates in a 2 and 20 model, which means it will enact a 2% management fee and take 20% of the profit after investors make their money back. Currently, Selected Works does not employ a management fee and the 20% carry fee is waived for Vingiano’s investment advisers.

“Part of the reason is I want it to be super accessible to anybody and everybody, because I’ve been freelancing for such a long time and I believe in the power of freelance talent. I believe in the power of creativity,” Vingiano said.

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Plant-based earplugs

Selected Works’ first investment is in GOB, a sustainable, plant-based earplugs company launching in October. Vingiano brought the opportunity to his network and 11 people collectively invested $50,000. While that’s a small slice of the more than $1 million GOB initially raised, most of the Selected Works financial investors are also investing their time to build the business.

One of those investors is Alex Kaplan, an Emmy-winning creative director who has been a group creative director at Translation and associate creative director at Anomaly, who will be helping with GOB’s marketing, according to Lauryn Menard, CEO and co-founder of GOB. Menard is also working with another Selected Works member, Leia Jospé, who was a videographer for the HBO docuseries “How To With John Wilson.”

“I told [Vingiano] that I was looking for someone who we can produce content for us on the streets and on tour with someone and he happened to know Leia,” Menard said. 

GOB will also have partnerships with top-tier music artists facilitated in part by members of Selected Works. The company is focused on selling B2B by working with hotels, music venues and hospitals, as well as selling its products directly to consumers. Some of the artists who will promote the brand include Shawn Mendes, The Lumineers and a large pop star that Menard declined to name.

Mostly everyone Vingiano introduced Menard to ended up investing in GOB, she said. “I feel as though this is a group of people that I’ll work with throughout the entirety of our business, not just in these early phases. I feel like we’ve only scratched the surface.”

Selected Works has also done brand strategy and development for Rodeo, a consumer tech app founded by former Hinge employees that operates as a combination of a calendar and a group chat designed to help friends connect better.

Advertising’s history of investments

Agencies launching companies and investing in original IP isn’t new.

For example, Anomaly has helped launch several companies and products such as skincare brand eos, reproductive health coach app Obie and cannabis supplement company Dosist. Mother Ventures has helped launch companies such as non-alcoholic beverage maker Ceria and software company ProQuo AI. In 2022, Red Antler created a VC fund called Habitat Partners. And Alex Bogusky, a former ad exec who co-founded Crispin Porter + Bogusky, launched a VC firm called Bat Shit Crazy Ventures.

Still, there aren’t too many agencies that have adopted an investment and marketing agency hybrid model as their main way of working. Bullish, founded in 2016, has done so. It provides marketing services and has its own VC fund, which currently has $50 million in its coffers.

“The great thing about having the fund is some of the great opportunities move quick … and we can write checks in a more agile way,” said Michael Duda, managing partner at Bullish, which has invested in brands such as Harry’s, Bubble Beauty, Cake, Bandit, DaisyCo, Hally Hair and HumanCo. The agency has also worked with companies such as Walmart, JP Morgan and TaylorMade.

Duda said he commends what Vingiano is doing because it shows the power of marketing and brand thinking beyond campaigns.

“So many finance people, Wall Street people, or C-suite people look at marketing as an expense, and don’t understand creativity and are scared by it,” Duda said.

While Selected Works joins an ongoing trend of unique agency models that have been popping up as of late, Duda is skeptical that there will be significantly more agencies that launch with a similar model.

“Some companies will do it as either eye candy, or wishful thinking, or as a reason to do a great creative campaign, but I don’t know if there’ll be that many that will go all in on it,” he said.