Good morning. 20 years ago today, a little dating site called YouTube.com activated its domain name. The idea was for people to upload videos of themselves to meet potential dates, but it quickly broadened to videos of all kinds. Nearly 3 million monthly active users, 500 hours of video uploaded every minute, and trillions of views later…YouTube has come a long way.

— Hannah Doyle 

Inside the Fund Investing $60 Million in Creators

Slow Ventures, the early-stage VC known for backing brands and niche creators like literary creator John Fish and linguistics expert Marina Mogilko, recently launched the $60 million Slow Creator Fund.

Slow’s offer: They’re writing $1–3 million checks in exchange for 10% equity in a creator’s company.

Slow wants to provide a hands-free and holistic approach—offering connections, ideas, and guidance as needed—that enables creators to succeed over time.

• “Creator businesses are unique in that all brand equity sits with the creator themselves—they have all the leverage,” Slow investor Megan Lightcap told us.

• “So the way we thought about [the fund] was to be dead simple—let’s enable the creator to focus on the thing that means the most and is most valuable to them and their community. They can use the capital however they think is most strategic and as the investor we just want to be aligned with them.”

Slow’s target creator to back with the new fund:

1. Creators primarily focused on YouTube

2. Creators building something new with an audience willing to spend

3. Creators looking for capital to scale what they’ve already built 

“As long as they have a good passion, audience, and niche category—those are our bullseyes,” Billy Parks, who previously worked on creator investments at The Chernin Group and is leading Slow’s fund, said.

Zoom out: While individual creators like Doug Demuro and Kevin Espiritu of Epic Gardening have secured VC funding in recent years, they’re not the norm. Funds like Slow’s open up VC backing to more creator-led startups. 

“We have a thesis that there’s going to be a subset of creators that are very capable business builders who start to build interesting companies tailor-made for their audience,” Lightcap said. “And they’re going to do so with better cost of acquisition, higher lifetime value, and greater attachment [than the average founder].”

Overheard at the Lighthouse Opening

This week, creator agency Whalar held an opening festival for its first creator campus and workplace in LA, the Lighthouse. Here’s what we heard from a mix of creators and Hollywood pros in conversation →

Why YouTube is the leading streaming platform: “Creators are more in tune with their audience and get instant feedback so they’re able to adapt more quickly to what the audience wants,” Curtis Nicotra, co-creator of Sticks, said. 

A lesson creators can take from Hollywood? Setting the tone: “We interviewed lots of chefs. It was an amazing experience that I’ll do in every show that I’ll ever run again. It’s not only the vernacular, it’s how you use it, and understanding the rhythm of how and why they talk like that,” The Bear showrunner Joanna Calo said. “Then pulling in the specifics. If you have something a [character] is going through, you find a way to bring those specifics in. You can cut happily or cut sadly.”

On creators’ advantages in Hollywood: “Hollywood doesn’t think about creators as much as creators think about Hollywood,” our own Colin Rosenblum said (Colin & Samir are co-chairs of Lighthouse’s Creator Council). “But [Hollywood] sees ‘you understand audience’ because they’re spending money on projects and struggling to find an audience.”

Sponsored by Teachable

Your Expertise Is Also Your Best Business Model

Dara Denney mastered the art of Facebook & TikTok ads—but consulting trapped her in the hour-for-dollars grind. Instead of continuing to scale clients, she decided to use Teachable and scale her expertise by:

✅ Creating YouTube content to build her target audience

✅ Turning her consulting playbook into a digital product business

✅ Growing a six-figure revenue stream on Teachable

Your niche expertise isn’t a limit, it’s your biggest asset.

Subscribe to Teachable’s 9-5 Quitter’s Club newsletter to see how thousands of creators are turning that expertise into self-sustaining revenue.

Spotify: Creator Revenue 📈 

It’s been just over a month since Spotify rolled out its creator monetization program, allowing video podcast creators to earn revenue from 1) ads played on Spotify’s free tier and 2) audience engagement from Premium subscribers. 

Spotify shared some top stats from the program:

• Video podcast consumption is up more than 20% since the program’s launch.

• January creator payouts increased by 300% annually.

• Mental health podcast We’re All Insane reported earning more than $17,000 in its first month of the Partner Program while wellness podcast Modern Wisdom reported a 36% increase in Spotify listens.

Big picture: The video podcast wars are heating up—YouTube is now the most-used listening platform for podcasts, while Netflix is reportedly exploring deals with podcast creators.

🔥 Press Worthy

• The Tribeca Film Festival is accepting creator submissions for its Tribeca X awards, featuring brand-backed storytelling.

• Amelia Dimoldenberg is hosting the red carpet livestream for SNL’s 50th Anniversary special tomorrow.

• Spotify is giving $50,000 in grants to writers with unpublished, novel-length manuscripts depicting mental health in fiction.

• Beast Games releases its final episode.

• Adobe opens its AI video generator to the public for beta testing.

📚️ Thank You For Pressing Publish

The content we’re looking forward to reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.

• Read: College students who have rejected social media since high school wonder whether they’ll be able to live the unplugged life as they enter the workforce.

• Watch: Jenna Phipps, who went viral for buying a rundown home, shares a one-year renovation update.

• Listen: In the The Telepathy Tapes, filmmaker Ky Dickens follows parents and educators communicating with nonverbal children with autism and the “shared consciousness” they experience.