Even a Bluetooth landline phone can become a business. Cat Goetze, an Instagram and TikTok creator famous for her approachable explanations of the artificial intelligence industry, posted about a prototype on a whim and made $118,000 in sales within 72 hours on organic traffic alone. Goetze, who operates under the handle CatGPT, is now bringing in more than $1 million in annual revenue from that single product.
Other times, as they expand, creators prefer to do more of what they know: launch media offerings.
Beast Industries’ Watch Time Studios, which Housenbold announced at Cannes Lions in June, is building out new channels across genres like gaming, finance, and fitness that intentionally do not feature Donaldson. Rea launched a podcast with Vox Media in May, and Goetze is building Cat Labs, a 2,200-square-foot studio where she plans to film founders building businesses in real time. The concept is part hacker house, part reality show, part incubator.
Likewise, creators have increasingly parlayed their knack for creating compelling narratives into lucrative branded content businesses. Dhar Mann Studios created a brand campaign for Microsoft Surface, called The Digital Scrapbook, that delivered a two-week goal of 16 million impressions in a single day, while Donaldson directed a Super Bowl commercial for Salesforce with less than six weeks’ notice.
With lower overheads and larger built-in audiences, creators can make for an attractive partner in brands’ marketing efforts.
While a number of forces are pushing creators toward this holding conglomerate structure, the most apparent motivation is the strategic logic of diversification. Launching multiple businesses mitigates the downside of any one of them failing, while simultaneously giving the company more opportunities to produce a hit.
No single business line at Dhar Mann Studios, the production house started by the inspirational YouTuber, accounts for more than 40% of revenue, according to CEO Sean Atkins. The Beast Industries portfolio works the same way, according to Housenbold, who describes it as a hedge modeled on the vertical integration of old Hollywood studios.
This tactic also reduces the key-man risk of these ventures, a notable concern given how integral individual creators are to the success of their brands. These vulnerabilities fall along a spectrum, of course: Mann, who is often behind the camera nowadays, has less to worry about on this front than Rea, whose face is synonymous with the Binging with Babish empire. The Babish brand would likely not survive if Rea stepped away tomorrow, according to Jacobs.
Eliminating these single points of failure is also vital for securing investment or attracting a buyout, according to Tyler Chou, a longtime entertainment attorney who now works with creators.
Unlike Silicon Valley startups, creator businesses often arrive with existing revenue and customers already attached, making them appealing targets for private equity firms—at least in theory. But in nearly every instance, a functioning team is the single biggest factor in whether a creator business can be sold.
“A buyer will not buy you if you don’t have a team that can run without you,” Chou said.
