(IN) FOCUS: Can You Afford This? The Financial Realities of Building a Creator Business

Being a creator increasingly means being a business owner—but making money and understanding your money are two very different things. For this Tech Week edition of IN Focus, we bring together Zora Feraji, founder of Sunday, Jesse Draper, Founding Partner at Halogen Ventures, and a creator for a candid conversation about the financial decisions behind building a sustainable creative career. Using “Can you afford this?” as the framework, we’ll look at those decisions from three sides: the infrastructure behind the business, the capital perspective, and the creator actually living it. The conversation gets practical: Can you afford to go full-time? Can you afford to hire? Can you afford to turn down the $40K brand deal? Can you afford to invest $25K into your own idea? Can you afford to wait 90 days to get paid? When should you bootstrap—and when does outside capital make sense? You made $250K this year. How much did you actually make? Through those scenarios, we can unpack cash flow, taxes, savings, inconsistent income, hiring, investment, ownership, risk, and scaling in a way that feels relevant rather than like a financial-literacy seminar. Run of Show: -4:30pm: Doors -5:00pm: Conversation begins in Theater -6:30pm: Mingling -7:00pm: Event Ends Zora Feraji is the founder and CEO of Sunday, the AI operating system for creator entrepreneurs, connecting the commercial backend of their businesses from pitch to payment.