Good morning. Just reflecting on how Jason Derulo has been able to extend the lifespan of his mid-2010s music career solely through TikTok. In support, I’m bumping his Jiggle Jiggle remix this Friday.

–Hannah Doyle

Jake Paul Launches a Barstool Sports Competitor

There’s a new El Pres in town. This one’s a little blonder, a little younger and—for better or worse—a lot like his predecessor.

This week, Jake Paul and cofounder/sports entrepreneur Joey Levy announced their forthcoming sports media and micro-betting platform, Betr, which appears to be at least partially made in Barstool Sports’ image.

What is Betr? Half media, half sports betting. For the media quotient, Betr is planning for multiple franchises. That starts with a weekly Paul-hosted talk show called BS w/ Jake Paul on which he’ll interview professional athletes and celebrities about sports.

And on sports betting, Betr will launch a platform for direct-to-consumer micro-betting for users to bet on sports games, including the plays, scores, actions, and players in each game.

“I single-handedly revived boxing,” Paul said in the Betr announcement. “Now it’s time to reinvent the sports landscape with my new company Betr.”

So far, Paul has raised $50 million for the company. Early investors include major venture firms, Travis Scott, and plenty of active and retired NFL players like Richard Sherman, Dez Bryant, Ezekiel Elliott, and DeSean Jackson.

Paul enters a crowded field, going toe-to-toe against well-funded incumbents like Barstool, Draft Kings, and ESPN. Even Twitch does a combo of media and betting. These existing brands range in value from $450 million to $8 billion.

Our Take

Paul is in prime position (pun intended) to be this generation’s Skip Bayless, but significant challenges lie ahead. Will Betr face a similar problem as Twitch, encouraging people to start gambling at a young age? Can his audience change their behavior from watching sports on ESPN RedZone to watching on YouTube? Betr has a high bar to reach and we’ll be keeping tabs on whether Paul’s own distribution as a mega-popular creator is enough of a differentiator.

What Does a Creator Owe Their Community?

This week Gamer CoryxKenshin uploaded his first video in three months—and it got 6 million views in three days.

In the video, Cory shared his reason for taking a break—and his followers’ response during that absence.

“Over time, your reach outpaces your core audience. Now there’s a culture behind my disappearances. It's become so commonplace that people are doing skits and TikToks about me leaving. There’s a whole show where a guy acts like he kidnapped me and I'm in his basement,” Cory shared.

Explanation videos like this represent the complicated relationship between creators and their audiences. Creators need an audience to make a living but they also need a life beyond their channel. “I have a life outside of YouTube—and sometimes I'm going to choose my life outside of YouTube rather than making videos,” Cory said.

Our Take

Suggesting that all creators want to optimize for scale and growth alone is reductive—some are striving for a more manageable content cadence that works with their life (instead of their life working for their content). But for that to work, creators have to establish expectations with their audience early and often. As Cory’s experience shows, you can do big numbers on your own terms.

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Launching a Simple Store Has Literally Never Been Easier

Our friends at Shopify are at it again.

They’re here with another launch designed to help creators build and scale their businesses—the Starter Plan.

For the cost of a cold brew ($5) per month, this Starter Plan allows you to:

• Create a simple store in minutes, without any code

• Sell your products to communities across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and more

• Connect to Shopify’s new link in bio tool, Linkpop, which allows your social following to shop your store without leaving the app

• Manage orders, analyze sales, and talk to customers

Start building your store on Shopify—try out the Starter plan.

Hollywood Still Has Creator Cognitive Dissonance

Just when you think Bo Burnham’s done enough to convince Hollywood power players of the creator space’s legitimacy, you hear an interview like this one.

Long-time entertainment industry reporter Matt Belloni recently had Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz on his podcast to talk about Hollywood and the creator economy. Some questions Belloni leveled:

“If you’re a teenager with your shirt off, how much can you make, $100k a year?”

“Could someone from the social world legitimately become a movie star?”

Our Take

The interview suggests a major disconnect still exists between the traditional entertainment media world and the creators bringing their talents to Hollywood. If the music industry is any indication, Hollywood should prepare itself for an influx of next-gen talent, whether industry folk are ready or not.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Cleo Abram is hiring a producer for her show Huge If True.

• Want a free trip to FinCon 2022 from MoneyLion? Type ‘Publish Press’ in the ‘Referred By’ section of the form on this page to be entered.*

• TikTok opens applications for its creator accelerator program for Black entrepreneurs.

• Spotify starts selling live music tickets.

• The Collab Crew opens a new studio space in Atlanta.

• How Ludwig lost $100,000.

*This is sponsored advertising content.