Good morning. YouTube brought back DMs to US users for the first time since 2019. 

The good news: Syd can send Hannah as many music videos as she wants.

The bad news: Hannah has to figure out how to mute her notifications on yet another app.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Talent agency CAA has teamed up with IMC, the digital arm of private equity firm TPG, to create Compound Creative Holdings, a $250M holding company to acquire creator-led businesses.

“The creator economy is now a $250+ billion industry, but it remains highly fragmented, with a significant number of profitable assets that lack sophisticated operations, infrastructure, and capital,” Compound’s managing partner Tucker Brown told us via email.

What creators fit the bill? Right now, it’s a small group. 

What’s in it for creators: Brown said being a part of the portfolio means access to shared legal, finance, and distribution infrastructure that many creator businesses can’t afford to build alone. They also get access to CAA’s relationships across platforms, brands, and sponsors.

“We are looking for creators who see themselves not just as talent, but as entrepreneurs who are eager to think strategically and use capital to supercharge their brands and businesses,” Brown said.

Trend watch: Tech and entertainment companies are increasingly interested in owning creator businesses (see: OpenAI’s purchase of TBPN earlier this year). The difference here? It’s a talent agency that knows creators teaming up with a private equity firm that knows scale. These relationships could give creators access to business growth strategies in new ways we haven’t seen before.

Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson just reached 500M subscribers on his main YouTube channel—becoming the first YouTube creator to pull off the feat.

“They say it takes 10,000 hours to master something,” Donaldson said today on the milestone livestream. “10,000 hours is too little. I think it takes 100K hours to master something.”

Donaldson’s total following now sits at 720M across platforms, but for the first seven years of his channel, he had less than 1 million subscribers. Here’s his exponential growth over the years →

With a holding company valued at over $5B, a rumored IPO, and verticals in telecoms and banking, it’s hard to believe this all started from a kid in his bedroom. 

“It’s wild how much YouTube has changed my life [...] When I was a young kid my family filed for bankruptcy. So the fact that, in my 20’s, I’m able to have half a billion subscribers, I’m closing in on 1,000 employees, and have given away hundreds of millions of dollars to people in need—none of it would be possible without YouTube,” Donaldson said on the livestream.

So now the question is: Will Donaldson become the first YouTuber to hit 1B subscribers?

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This week, LinkedIn announced Creator Marketplace—a searchable directory where brands can find creators by topic, review content, and reach out about paid collabs. 

Context: Until now, LinkedIn had limited formal options for creator monetization. The platform offered tools like newsletters, LinkedIn Live, and sponsored personal posts called Thought Leader Ads, but there was no structured way for brands to discover and hire creators the way Instagram or TikTok's marketplaces allow.

With Creator Marketplace, creators can opt in and choose which content to showcase.

Film creator Wesley Wang’s short film, Violet and Marlowe, is officially out—and if you read our coverage on the project a few weeks back, you know what’s riding on this.

Wang built his new company, Wesley Wang Media, to prove IP on the internet before pitching it to studios. Violet and Marlowe—made for $20K, backed by Warner Music, and screened at Tribeca—is the first real test of that thesis.

"I want to let the internet decide rather than a room full of executives," he told us.

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