Creator marketing agency Influencer has appointed Ryan Fitzpatrick as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in response to a broader shift underway inside creator marketing. As creator-led campaigns move from experimentation to infrastructure, bringing real scale, real money, and real operational expectations, financial leadership has become a core layer of how creator-first businesses operate.

Ryan joins Influencer after more than a decade in global agency finance, most recently at VaynerMedia and VaynerX, where he helped build the financial systems behind a scaling, social-first organization. His background spans international expansion, commercial strategy, governance, and long-term planning.

“I’ve been in the industry since 2012,” Ryan says. “I came up through the holdco world, but joining Vayner felt like going into a startup that was scaling. You had to roll your sleeves up and do everything, but it was a real crash course in learning agency finance properly.”

By the time Influencer approached him, Ryan was no longer seeking incremental progress. He was looking for a business where finance played a direct role in shaping growth, particularly one operating at the intersection of brands, platforms, and creators.

“I felt like I was ready for the next challenge,” he says. “This opportunity felt like a chance to apply what I’d learned, but in a business that’s building something new for the creator economy.”

Influencer’s decision to bring in Ryan at this stage signals where the company believes its next phase of growth will be won. As it expands across regions, invests in its proprietary Waves platform, and builds systems capable of supporting creator payments at a global scale, financial leadership becomes part of the product.

For Ryan, the role is not about imposing structure for its own sake. It is about building systems that allow a creator-first business to scale without losing the agility and independence that fueled its growth in the first place.

What Attracted Him to Influencer

Ryan’s decision to join Influencer crystallized during an informal conversation that quickly became something more. “A 30-minute coffee turned into an hour-and-a-half meeting,” he says, describing his first discussion with co-founder Ben Jeffries.

What stood out was not just Influencer’s recent growth, but how deliberately the company was approaching its next phase.

“They were very keen to grow and scale the business at a higher pace than what they’d even done in the last couple of years,” Ryan explains. “There was such positive momentum around the organization and what they were trying to achieve. They had a nice blend of long-term and short-term thinking.”

For Ryan, that clarity matters in a sector where many creator-led businesses have scaled faster than their underlying infrastructure.

Photo: Ben Jeffries & Ryan Fitzpatrick
Source: Influencer

What a CFO Actually Builds in the Creator Era

At Influencer, Ryan’s mandate extends well beyond traditional finance leadership. While the fundamentals—such as discipline, governance, and liquidity—remain, the role is designed to enable growth rather than constrain it.

“There are some fundamentals within the world of CFO that probably don’t change,” he says. “But it’s more about looking at our commercials; how do we price, how do we create value for both our clients and for us – and also then from the creators as well.”

That shift reflects broader pressure across agency models. As AI reshapes resourcing and brands push toward shorter, project-based engagements, legacy pricing structures are under strain, according to Ryan.

“The old rate card model approach is probably going to evolve into something else,” Ryan notes. “Trying to unpick that with Ben and Casper [Lee] is definitely something that I want to make sure that we’re front and center of.”

In practice, this means the finance function acting as a strategic partner, embedded in commercial decisions, technology investments, and operational design, rather than operating solely as a downstream reporting layer.

Solving the Creator Economy’s Working Capital Problem

One of the most persistent challenges in creator marketing sits at the intersection of cash flow, trust, and scale. As Ryan notes, agencies are often expected to pay creators quickly while waiting longer for brand payments. He believes this dynamic strains working capital as volumes increase.

“There is a challenge with regards to paying creators on time, paying creators when they expect to be paid,” Ryan says. “But there’s a working capital challenge for the agencies as well.”

Historically, finance teams have responded defensively, prioritizing control over flexibility. Ryan argues that approach no longer works in a creator-first ecosystem. “I think the modern finance approach is to try to create a more solutions-orientated department,” he explains. “Rather than just being a black box.”

At Influencer, that mindset connects directly to Waves, which underpins how campaigns, data, and payments move through the business. For Ryan, payment automation and visibility are not just operational improvements, but trust-building mechanisms for creators operating across campaigns and markets.

“I want to make sure that we support our creators in the way that we say that we do,” he says. “Giving them an efficient creator payment solution is key.”

Building Financial Systems for Scale

Influencer’s expansion across regions, platforms, and partnerships introduces another layer of complexity: systems must scale as fast as the business itself.

Ryan sees opportunity in moving beyond traditional, off-the-shelf enterprise finance software toward more tailored solutions, particularly as AI becomes more deeply embedded in operations. “Historically, it’s always been led by the likes of Oracle and SAP,” he says. “With AI now coming in, there is an ability for us to create more bespoke solutions.”

While the CFO role does not replace technical leadership, Ryan believes finance should play an active role in deploying AI internally. “We are an overhead,” he says plainly. “We want to make sure that we are as efficient as possible and increase our productivity and automation.”

The goal, he adds, is not experimentation for its own sake, but building systems that reflect how creator-first businesses actually operate: dynamic, multi-market, and closely tied to platform economics.

Managing Risk Through Planning, Not Reaction

Quick growth inevitably introduces risk, but Ryan’s approach centers on anticipation rather than firefighting.

“A lot of it comes down to planning,” he says. “Making sure that we build our forecasts, our budgets, we make investment decisions against those plans – that they don’t just exist on paper.”

Influencer operates on one, three, and ten-year horizons, and Ryan’s role is to ensure financial decisions align with that ambition in practice. 

“We just need to make sure that we’re making the right decisions and investing at the right time,” he explains. “Visibility, liquidity, and a healthy balance sheet. Those things go without saying.”

First-Year Priorities

In his first months, Ryan is focused less on imposing structure and more on listening.

“I really want to just understand what everybody does, how they do it, and what challenges they face day to day,” he says. “There’s no good me coming up with financial solutions that aren’t applicable to the business.”

Looking ahead to his first year, three priorities stand out: advancing technology investment around creator payments and automation; deepening Waves as a scalable operational foundation; and embedding commercial finance partners directly within client services and new business teams.

“I’m really keen to unlock a commercial finance function,” Ryan says, describing a model where finance supports forecasting, pricing, and decision-making in real time.

The aim is an enterprise-level finance function that matches the scale Influencer has already reached, and the scale it expects to achieve next.

What Success (and the Next Decade) Looks Like

For Ryan, success is not measured solely by systems delivered or processes improved.

“I want to make sure that I’ve helped Ben and Casper and the rest of the team deliver against the goals that we set,” he says. “My role is not just that of the head of finance.”

On a personal level, he hopes Influencer offers something harder to quantify. “The opportunity to be part of something tangible,” he says. “To be a significant part of that process is incredibly rewarding.”

As platforms expand their direct-to-brand capabilities and AI reshapes production economics, independent agencies face structural challenges. Ryan does not see that as a threat, but as a forcing function. “There is always going to be a role for independent agencies or specialist agencies,” he says. “I think it will just evolve.”

For finance leaders, that requires new thinking around pricing, platform relationships, and sustainable growth. “It’s about how do you support those agencies in making sure that they have the right commercial structures,” Ryan explains, “so that they can scale in a healthy, profitable, efficient way.”

For Influencer, that philosophy underpins why the CFO role now sits at the center of its creator-first strategy, not as a gatekeeper, but as a builder of systems that enable the next decade of growth.

“I’m excited by the challenge of it,” Ryan says. “Whenever there’s a challenge like that, there’s always a positive byproduct off the back of it.”

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