Good morning. Today, the foldable iPhone officially launches—and personal feelings about the oddly-shaped phone aside, I do look forward to trying it out.

But in my heart of hearts, I’m still holding onto the days where my parents would give me their old Motorola Razr to play with.

— Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Hi everyone, Syd here. Wednesday night, I joined Colin and Samir at The Hollywood Reporter’s Creator A-List party, spotlighting Hollywood’s top 25 creators. As I scarfed down the biggest slider I’ve ever had in my life while the honorees (including my bosses) posed on the red carpet, I pondered what it actually means to be an A-List creator in Hollywood.

Let’s break down the list: The Hollywood Reporter’s top 25 creators were not ranked by the most subscribers, ad revenue, or impact on society.

As the name implies, the guest list featured the top 25 creators relevant to the traditional entertainment ecosystem:

Why this matters for creators: We know this list isn’t defining who matters most in the creator economy (see: the lack of livestreamers featured in the article). But for creators looking to operate within the traditional studio model—whether you want to be a stop on a press tour like Hot Ones’ Sean Evans or star in a TV series like Veronika Slowikowska—this list serves as a guide for what Hollywood is looking for from creators.

As far as our personal creator A-list, we might be feeling inclined to make a list of our own…

Last week, YouTube and X launched invite-only programs for short-form creators that promise bonuses for more consistent uploads.

Behind the launches:

We spoke to F1 creator Jared Borislow about his acceptance into YouTube’s new program. 

“The bonus would not shift my mix [of short- and long-form content], but would help improve the value of something that will always be a part of my brand,” Borislow told us.

Despite posting 5-10 videos per week that have generated around 11M views, Borislow shared that he's only made $1,500 in short-form ad revenue this year. 

The YouTube bonus program could pay him $100-$1,000 per month for uploading just 12 videos, making short-form content a meaningful revenue stream for his channel.

Zooming out: These bonus programs are a step in the right direction for X and YouTube to help creators earn more from short-form content. But they still lag far behind what long-form ad revenue typically pays creators like Borislow for their work. 

Would an invitation to these programs motivate you to create more short-form videos? Reply and let us know.

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When Grace Miller joined the team at Diary of a CEO and FlightStory four and a half years ago, she told Steven Bartlett, “The only time I will ever leave this company is to start my own business.”

98 days ago, that’s exactly what she did.

We caught up with Miller in the middle of her Failure World Tour to learn how creators can make failure and experimentation part of their culture. 

Here are her three recommendations:

1) Define what failure looks like. Creators who want to build failure into their culture must give their teams clarity around what failures are acceptable, and what failures are not.

“If I was to miss a deadline or drop my laptop, that’s not the failure we want to be having,” Miller told us.

2) Kill the guesswork. Every experiment should be built on a hypothesis with data to back it up. 

“We used to pre-test a lot of things [at Diary of a CEO] — topics, show formats,” Miller said. “There are a lot of shows that didn’t ever get released because we tested them and it wasn’t worthwhile. We called it ‘killing the guesswork’: how much data can we have before we go into it?”

3) Create “psychological safety.” Encouraging teams to take risks requires more than telling them it's okay to fail. Miller suggests setting aside dedicated resources to test ideas that might not work.

“Leave 10% of the budget for people to go and take the risk on a moonshot idea,” Miller recommended. “If it doesn’t work, okay, we’ve lost 10% of the budget. But if it does, incredible.”

According to Miller, the creators who build a culture of failure will win. 

“If you can do your job with your eyes shut, that is when it's scary, because you're just too comfortable,” Miller said. 

She believes the greater risk for creators is not failing at all.

“You have to try new things. Otherwise, the bigger risk is that you’re going to be on a downward curve without realizing,” Miller said. “If you’re doing different things every week, it’s going to grow. Even though there’ll be little downwards as well, it will grow over time. And I think that’s so important for companies, especially from leadership, to encourage their teams to try new things to learn.”

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