Good morning. LA creators—we’re hosting our next Coffee with Creators in Venice Beach.

Come hang out, grab some coffee, meet other creators, and join a live Q&A with Colin and Samir on Saturday, June 7. Big thanks to Spotter Studio for making it happen. Reserve your spot here.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Animation YouTubers Sign Amazon Deal

Glitch, the indie animation studio behind The Amazing Digital Circus (ADC), just signed a non-exclusive deal with Amazon to stream select shows on Prime Video and YouTube at the same time.

Prime Video will now show several Glitch titles, including Murder Drones, a series that ran on YouTube from 2021–2024 and will remain on the platform in addition to Prime.

Important context: This deal echoes Glitch’s 2024 tie-in with Netflix—the studio released new episodes of ADC on the streaming platform the same day as YouTube.

So how did Glitch get here?

• In 2023, five years after the studio was founded, Glitch teamed up with animation creator Gooseworx to release the pilot for ADC—it exploded, racking up 73 million views in two weeks. It now has 373 million views.

• Fan-made content around the series has generated 25 billion views on YouTube and 925 million on TikTok using #TheAmazingDigitalCircus.

• Only 21% of ADC viewers come from English-speaking countries.

Zoom out: Despite more creators signing on with streamers (like MrBeast’s recent Beast Games renewal or Vivziepop’s first-look deal with Prime Video), non-exclusive deals are still fairly rare. Prime is building a slate of creator-led shows—keeping YouTube-native audiences in their ecosystem longer. And for creators, it means access to a new audience—and likely a sizable check.

The Next Gen of Rom-Coms Starts on Instagram

“​​Instagram short-form has changed my life.”

Filmmaker and creator Jonah Feingold started his film and media company Romantical in January of this year with the goal of reviving the rom-com for a new generation. 

Last week, Feingold announced Romantical’s first fundraise, which will bankroll three original indie rom-coms. He has so far raised about half of his $5 million goal.

How he got here: Feingold made his directorial debut with Dating & New York in 2021 and has since directed three other films. Feingold also posts short-form rom-coms on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to expand the universe of his existing body of work.

Romantical’s short-form content is also a tool to drive investor interest. “When there's a massive body of three-minute videos or one-minute vignettes, then it's very easy to digest,” Feingold told us. Investors could ask themselves, “‘Okay, this is what this person's doing with no time and no money. What if they had a little bit of money and a little bit of time?’” Feingold said.

Big picture: Studio rom-coms are expensive to make—Anyone But You reportedly had a $25 million budget. But with short-form, Feingold can test rom-com concepts for a fraction of the cost, build out his IP, and prove audience interest.

“There's a lot of people who would be deserving of lead opportunities in movies in the ’80s and ’90s, but because these comedies at a certain budget level don't get made anymore, they don't have those opportunities,” Feingold said. “So by making stuff longer form for the web, there's lower risk because budgets are smaller and you can put really talented people in the leading parts.”

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Hawk Tuah Girl on the $HAWK Crypto Fallout

Last December, Haliey Welch, aka Hawk Tuah Girl, released a $HAWK meme coin that quickly plummeted in price, costing many buyers money and earning a reputation as a pump and dump scheme.

Yesterday, Welch shared her side of the story on her podcast →

• Welch said she was only paid to market and put her name on the project and didn’t receive any money from the coin sale. 

• Welch claimed that everything she said in promotion of the coin was read from a script.

• She was visited by the FBI and cleared of involvement. She quit Twitter on the advice of a crisis PR team.

• Welch is now working with a class-action company to reimburse those who lost money from the coin.

“I led [fans] to something I didn’t have enough knowledge about. I knew that, but I got talked into it and trusted the wrong people,” Welch said.

Zoom out: Creators’ names and reputations are their businesses, and crypto has proven to be risky, from the FTX scandal to Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo fallout. As Tim Ferriss said on The Colin and Samir Show, trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Musical gaming creator CG5 announces a US tour.

• MKBHD experiments with Google’s new AI Try On feature.

• Instagram is offering creators up to $20K for a limited time when they refer people to the app.

• Creator takeaways from Spotter Studio's first-ever Idea Summit.*

• Virtual world platform VRChat launches an avatar marketplace where creators can buy and sell custom-made avatars.

• Messenger app Telegram will give $50K to the creator who makes the best video asserting that Telegram is superior to WhatsApp.

_{*This is sponsored advertising content.}