Business With Babish 🧑‍🍳

Made In Network invests in Andrew Rea

Good morning. Did Logan Paul, KSI, and MrBeast just reinvent Lunchables for Gen Alpha? The trio announced a new collaborative product line called Lunchly today, with each kids’ lunch box including a bottle of PRIME, a Feastables chocolate bar, and food such as turkey-and-cheese cracker sandwiches. All that’s missing is a pack of Skibidi Toilet gummies.

Babish Lands Multimillion-Dollar Investment to Expand Culinary Universe

Andrew Rea of the Babish Culinary Universe earns an investment to hire more team members, launch new video series, and develop retail products / Babish

Andrew Rea, the creator behind the Babish Culinary Universe, recently received a multimillion-dollar investment from creator production studio Made In Network.

The backstory: In 2006, Rea launched the Binging With Babish cooking YouTube channel, which has since grown into a food media brand—the Babish Culinary Universe. It includes cookware, a recipe site, cookbook, and YouTube channel with 10 million subscribers and over 20 million views a month.

  • Rea previously partnered with Made In Network in 2017 to launch a video series, Basics with Babish, and introduce other projects including cookware and the Instagram account Meming with Babish. Now, they’re taking the relationship to the next level with capital investment.

  • “This is definitely a deeper investment than has been typical for us,” Made In Network founder and CEO Kevin Grosch told us. “What I respect about Andrew as a business leader is his ability to balance what is important for him to stay involved in versus the things that aren’t worth staying involved with. It’s a trait that’s rare and not for every creator, but it allows a creator business to scale and grow.”

Following the investment, Rea and Made In Network will hire more team members, launch four new video series, and bring Babish products into retail storefronts.

“I’m excited to see how Andrew and the BCU team can change what food content looks like,” Grosch said. “I think there’s going to be experimentation on formats and around what people are consuming—whether purely entertainment, a resource for recipes, or a combination of both.”

Why Josh Johnson Uploaded 22 Hours of Stand-Up Comedy to YouTube

Josh Johnson of “The Daily Show” is showing the gains of becoming a comedy creator / Josh Johnson

Comedy creator and Daily Show correspondent Josh Johnson has uploaded more than 22 hours of new stand-up material to his YouTube channel since mid-2023.

“The perception of me has definitely changed [since doubling down on YouTube],” Johnson told The Los Angeles Times.

Where Johnson zagged: Typically, stand-up comedians hone their jokes by performing at clubs with the hopes of selling a special to distributors like Netflix or Peacock.

  • This means that most stand-up comedians might aspire to put out one hour of new material every year.

  • But comedians like Andrew Schulz paved a new path by uploading short clips to YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok—building fanbases eager to attend future tours.

Johnson is taking a creator-forward path, putting out his new jokes on YouTube every week…and it’s working.

  • According to analytics tool Social Blade, Johnson grew his channel to 674,000 subscribers this month from 28,000 in May 2023.

  • His explosion in popularity also led The Daily Show to promote him from writer to on-air correspondent in February.

Big picture: “There’s never enough content, so I think we’ll see more comedians following what Josh is doing and being less precious about their material, but they may not be as good as Josh at it,” longtime Daily Show correspondent Michael Kosta told The Los Angeles Times.

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Spotify Shells Out Seven-Figure Deals for Video Creators

Spotify invests in deals with video creators for up to seven figures / Illustration by Moy Zhong

Spotify is striking significant deals with creators in an effort to increase the amount of video content on its platform. The deals—which vary in size and aren’t platform exclusive—have reached up to seven figures, according to a report from Bloomberg last week.

Context: In recent months, Spotify has heavily invested in both building tools for video creators and pitching advertisers on video content. Spotify told Bloomberg that more than 170 million users have now watched a video podcast on the platform.

Worth noting: In recent years, the podcasting industry has taken off in part due to dynamic advertising (tech that allows creators to sell new audio ads and swap them into existing episodes after a prior brand partnership ends).

Spotify and YouTube—the two biggest podcast platforms—don’t support dynamic ads for video, meaning podcast creators will have to rely more heavily on the platforms’ revenue-sharing programs to monetize video content long-term.

đź‘€ Creator Moves

  • TBNR is hiring a junior creative strategist to research and write outlines for their react videos.

  • National Park Diaries is hiring a thumbnail designer to use the educational channel’s branding to package new videos.

  • Enjoy Basketball is hiring a junior producer to coordinate and shoot content with its talent.

Looking to bring on new team members? You can post opportunities on our (free) job board here.

🔥 Press Worthy