Good morning. As The Odyssey comes off a $264M global opening weekend, we’re soaking in all of the BTS clips from the making of the film.

Our favorite clip? Film creator Reece Feldman (aka GuyWithAMovieCamera) on set with director Christopher Nolan in Iceland as they shoot an underworld scene on a black sand beach.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Six years ago, Darren “IShowSpeed” Watkins Jr. was backflipping around his childhood home in Ohio for a handful of viewers. This week, he became the first creator to ever perform at the World Cup—and may have just solidified his place as the world’s biggest livestreamer. 

In the span of a few days, Speed became the only American creator to stream over 20 of the 2026 FIFA World Cup matches, set the record for most-viewed Instagram Reel in 24 hours, and became YouTube’s most-followed streamer with 59M subscribers.

But Speed didn’t grow his empire overnight. Here’s how he got here:

Zoom out: At just 21-years-old, Speed has kept three core pillars of his brand: 1) prioritizing his global audience, 2) spotlighting underrepresented cultures, and 3) being an entertainer first and foremost. 

The industry has noticed too. "[The World Cup performance] is when I realized that [...] Speed is the biggest streamer in the world," pop culture creator DJ Akademiks said on stream—comparing him to Kai Cenat the way you'd compare Drake to Bad Bunny: one rules America, the other rules the globe.

The next AI battle on YouTube isn’t about whether creators use AI. It’s about whether viewers can tell the difference between a creator and a content farm.

Last week YouTube’s VP of Trust & Safety, Matt Halprin, explained which types of videos in YouTube’s Partner Program will lose monetization under its inauthentic content policy—offering a glimpse into how platforms are redefining quality in the AI content era.

What creators are saying: 

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The Lighthouse Campuses in Venice and Brooklyn are home to the creator generation. With more than 500 creators reaching a combined audience of over 3 billion, The Lighthouse is peeling back the internet curtain to share weekly stories from the creators in front of and behind the camera.

Watch the announcement of the new series here.

Find your place at The Campus for Creators. Connect with The Lighthouse membership team to learn more about joining the creator community.

This week on business creator Emma Grede's Aspire podcast, lifestyle creator Emma Chamberlain laid out her plan to get Chamberlain Coffee, her six-year old coffee and matcha brand, to profitability. The brand has raised an estimated $15M in funding since launching in 2019.

Here’s how she plans to get there:

1. Scaling back. From 2021-2023, Chamberlain Coffee expanded from DTC sales into thousands of grocery stores. Chamberlain said the strategy diluted the brand. The fix? Dropping underperforming products, downsizing the team, and shifting toward cafes (she opened two LA storefronts in the last two years) to get toward long-term profitability.

"I kind of wanted to keep things a bit smaller, a bit tighter," Chamberlain said.

2. Removing herself from the brand. As co-CEO, Chamberlain says she's intentionally hands-off—"involved in an umbrella sort of way”—and is now stepping back from starring in its marketing campaigns. 
"This brand has to exist outside of me,” Chamberlain said. A famous face gives a brand a head start with customers, she said, but "people aren't going to return if they don't like the product."

Zoom out: As the first generation of creator-founded brands mature, some creators are finding that growth isn’t always the goal. For Chamberlain, knowing when to scale back is what creates a stronger business in the long run. 

“For the first time in a long time, I feel like the brand is going in a direction I’m truly proud about,” Chamberlain said.