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Quote/Unquote
Tyler Chou is a former entertainment attorney who, after spending two decades at firms including Disney, Skydance, Loeb & Loeb, and BuzzFeed, launched a law firm in 2024 that specializes in helping creators mature and exit their businesses.
I met Chou at South by Southwest, where she was representing Max Reisinger, the founder of Creator Camp and a panelist on one of my sessions. As creators have grown more integral to the media ecosystem, Chou and her work have helped illuminate the unique challenges facing creators as they work to transform from solo operations into multichannel businesses.
This interview has been edited.
Mark Stenberg: What is the No. 1 piece of advice you give to creators looking to grow their business?
Tyler Chou: You need to have three to five solid revenue streams. I tell my clients that they are startup founders and that YouTube is the distribution arm for their marketing marketing, but what is their business? One of the smartest products a creator can build is a SAAS business that caters to the creator economy.
Mark: What do buyers want to see from creators?
Tyler: First they want to see a differentiated business. I know two creators who sold to private equity firms for around $50 million each, but the exits were not successful because once the face of the channel exited, the business stalled. Creators need to build businesses that do not have such stark key-man risks. After that, they look at legal elements, like potential lawsuits, IP, trademark, employment agreements. Most of these creators have never had a corporate job, so they have no idea how to structure a company.
Mark: How far away are we from a media company formed from a massive roll-up of creators?
Tyler: I think we are at least two years away from that, just because the industry is not mature enough yet. I met a woman recently who leads a $1 billion media fund who wanted to buy a $100 million client of mine. She said she loved him but that she needed ten more like him in order to deploy her capital, and that just doesn’t exist yet.
Mark: If a media company bought a handful of creator businesses, what should it do with them?
