Hey! Welcome back to the Creator Economy NYC newsletter, your weekly hit of insights and strategies to help you build, monetize, and scale as a creator.

Natalie Fratto worked at Goldman Sachs and Silicon Valley Bank. Now, she draws explanations of complicated tech companies.

In a matter of months, she’s built an audience of 400,000+ followers, landed partnerships with Databricks, Bloomberg Tech and even NASA, and, she told us, already almost doubled her banking salary from the previous year.

Clearly, she’s hit a nerve.

We sat down with Natalie to understand her secret sauce, and what you can learn from it to find your own.

Let’s get into it. PLUS, our upcoming Halloween event below.

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P.S. The Webby Awards are bringing Creator, Inc.: The Business of Influence to The Ned in NYC on October 28! Join Ramit Sethi, Haley Sacks, and Brian Kelly (The Points Guy) for a conversation on the business of influence, building a personal brand, and turning audiences into thriving businesses. RSVP Here.

What can comment sections tell us about the future of marketing? 👀

I’m sitting down with Live Nation’s social listening lead, Ariel Leavitt, for a conversation about where social intelligence is headed in 2027, and what it means for brands, creators, and marketers.

We’ll dive into how brands are turning online conversations into actionable insights, what audience sentiment can reveal about campaigns and creator partnerships, and why listening to your audience is becoming just as important as reaching them.

If you work in marketing, content, or the creator economy, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.

📅 Thursday, October 29 at 1 PM ET

RSVP Here

From banking to brand deals, one drawing at a time

Natalie first started making videos because her husband’s company was hard to explain. Figuring out how to tell that story brought together two parts of her life: years working in finance and tech, and a childhood love of drawing.

That became Charts & Crafts, where she makes hand-drawn, 2-to-3-minute explainers about companies and technologies people keep hearing about but don’t quite understand.

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“My mom will tell you this is the most me job I’ve had so far. And it’s just taken me a decade and a half to get to this kind of job.”

The business took off in months. The combination behind it took years to develop.

She answers the question people are embarrassed to ask

You’ve heard of Databricks. Could you explain what it does?

That gap in understanding technical companies became the sweet spot for Natalie’s content.

Her finance background helps her understand how these companies work and why they matter. Drawing helps her make the explanation approachable.

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“I think it struck a nerve of people needing to understand tech and not wanting to admit that we don’t quite understand these things that we all need to,” she said. “I love a misunderstood, but super important tech story.”

She thinks of Charts & Crafts as a bite-sized, visual version of the Acquired podcast. The company is the subject, but the her style storytelling is what gets people interested.

Her Databricks explainer had reached roughly 7–7.5 million views by the time we spoke, she said.

Yes, millions of views on data infrastructure.

How one original video opened the door to a major brand deal

Natalie wasn’t paid to make that first Databricks video. She wanted to understand the company and thought her audience would, too.

Here’s what happened next:

Employees started sharing it. Natalie thinks she tagged Databricks on Instagram, though she isn’t sure that drove the response. People inside the company saw it and passed it around.
Databricks reached out. A few weeks later, the company wanted to work with her on a more specific product-launch story.
The CEO circulated the original video internally. According to Natalie, he encouraged employees to share it and use it as marketing collateral.

That last part was what she was proudest of: she’d explained the company in a way its own leadership wanted people to use.

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“I think that was really nice because we mutually knew the other was valuable. I knew my audience wanted to learn about those companies and they knew people like the way I told the story and they could trust me with a story.”

The video had already demonstrated audience interest, creative fit, and execution. Neither side had to imagine whether a partnership could work.

She said a similar sequence happened with Anduril: an organic video, followed by outreach.

(P.S. We’ve seen versions of this with Nadia Rykova’s skits and Piper Phillips’ Starbucks pitch. Proven content gives brands something concrete to buy into.)

For Natalie, covering the company was already valuable to her audience. The partnership came afterward.

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🔒 Don’t fuhgeddaboudit: Make something that shows a brand what you can do, and that your audience would want even if the brand never replied.

Her secret sauce is oddly specific

Other people can draw. Other people understand finance. Natalie wants to spend her days combining those skills to explain technology.

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“It’s hard for somebody to be as interested as I am in the exact intersection.”

Research is the biggest part of her process. She gets excited about spending two full days learning how AI memory works. As she learns, she starts figuring out how to draw the story.

Her advice to other creators is to bring more of your specific interests into the work, especially the ones that don’t seem to fit together.

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“Layer on the intricacies of your personality as much as you can, whatever those spikes may be, especially if they’re divergent ones.”

She describes this chapter as “a shedding of personalities that I’ve had on in corporate jobs.” She still uses what those jobs taught her. Now she gets to combine it with something she loved long before her career started.

Try this:

What you know + what you’re curious about + how you like to create.

For Natalie: finance and business + complicated technology + drawing.

Then add the audience question:

“People come to my content because it helps them finally ______.”

That last answer connects your personal combination to something people actually want.

You can see the person doing the work

Natalie also thinks her videos benefit from people being tired of AI slop.

Her hand is in the frame. There are little imperfections. You’re watching someone draw an explanation into existence.

She uses AI to help gather primary-source research, but she still reads the material and works through the story herself.

The appeal is bigger than the drawings. It’s the curiosity she brings to each story, the examples she chooses, and the way she makes sense of something complicated.

Your version might be a character, a strong point of view, or an analogy that could only come from your experience. Those choices give people a reason to come to you.

Steal this: “Give away the legs. Preserve the hearts.”

Once you find the thing people want from you, growth brings another question: How do you keep doing it when the business starts eating your week?

Natalie initially resisted management. With her business background, she knew she could handle partnerships herself.

But every contract and invoice took time away from researching, writing, and drawing.

She credits Cleo Abram with this octopus analogy (and we’re obsessed!): think of your creative business as an octopus. Give away the legs. Preserve the hearts.

The hearts are the parts that make the work yours and make you want to keep doing it.

The legs are the supporting tasks someone else can help carry.

Preserve the hearts ❤️	Give away the legs 🐙
The work that creates your distinctive value and brings you joy	The work that supports the business and can be handed off
For Natalie: research, scriptwriting, drawing	For Natalie: editing support, contracts, invoicing, partnership logistics

Natalie now works with management on the business logistics while staying directly involved with partners on the stories.

She’s making room for the work she wants more of.

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“I do not have board members. I do not have investors. And my aspiration is to continue to learn at a rate that is interesting and to build my skills and to continue to access really interesting stories.”

Run the octopus exercise on your own week:

Mark your hearts: Which tasks create the value people come to you for? Which make this a business you actually want to run?
Find one leg to hand off: What supporting task keeps taking time away from those?
Decide where the time goes: What will you create, learn, or improve with the hours you get back?

You can be good at a task and still decide someone else should do it.

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🔒 Don’t fuhgeddaboudit: Find your secret sauce, then protect the time it takes to make it.

Thanks Natalie for sharing your story! Follow Charts & Crafts here.

NEXT EVENT: No tricks, just treats (and content) 👻🎃

Our highly requested Creator Content Walk is BACK, and this time we’re getting spooky in Central Park!

Join us on Halloween morning, October 31st, for a fall stroll filled with content creation, new connections, and some scary good vibes alongside fellow NYC creators.

Costumes encouraged. Content captured.

RSVP Here

Two minutes. A chance to win $150. 🎁

Earning money from your creator work? We want to hear how you manage it.

We’re teaming up with Relay on State of Creator Money 2026 to understand what the money side of being a creator actually looks like. The late payments. The slow months. The systems that help you stay on top of it all.

Complete our 2-minute survey for a chance to win one of three $150 B&H gift cards. Three winners will be selected at random.

Whether you’re just starting out, creating alongside a day job or doing it full-time, your experience belongs in this report. Individual responses stay anonymous in everything we publish.

Take the survey