Scalable

YouTube is 20 years old, yet many brands and big creators still haven’t figured it out. This week, Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg look at why YouTube is so hard to crack and focus on one of the platform’s most debated topics: packaging, including thumbnails and titles.

You’ll hear from Portal A’s Zach Blume on why thumbnails should be treated like movie posters, and Don Lemon on why he embraced clickbait on YouTube. The Chicago Bulls’ Luka Dukich shares how YouTube became one of the team’s top content priorities, and YouTube’s Kim Larson explains why the platform’s biggest creators are true students of the business. Kaya and Jasmine also share what they’ve learned in their first year on YouTube.

Plus, YouTube strategist Hudson Matter unpacks why his consultancy, Next Wave Media, takes equity instead of retainers, and why he doesn't think exclusive streaming deals are worth it for most YouTubers. He also reveals the one change that tripled daily views on his dad Jordan Matter’s channel, which now has 38 million subscribers.

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Scalable just hit 50 episodes. To celebrate, Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg went through the archives to pull the biggest lessons from a year of conversations with founders, creators and CMOs, along with what they've learned (often the hard way) building Scalable themselves.

Founders warn that everything takes longer than you think, creators share why your followers aren’t really yours and CMOs make the case that creators can reinvent brands even though the fundamentals of marketing haven’t really changed. Plus, the funniest and most surprising moments of the year, from Don Lemon’s F-bomb to an uncooperative camel in Doha, Qatar.

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More brands are giving creators a stake in their companies instead of just a paycheck, often trading equity for endorsements, advisory roles or long-term partnerships. It’s the latest sign of a bigger push toward ownership in the creator economy. Alix Earle’s lucrative Poppi deal showed how big the payoff could be, and increasingly, startups like Driptail and Vibes are also offering equity to smaller creators.

This week, Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg look at why creator equity deals are taking off, what the deals usually look like and the risks for both sides. Plus, Kaya sits down with Cat Goetze, the creator better known as CatGPT, and Josh Kaplan, CEO of management firm Smooth Media, which represents her. They discuss Cat’s recent equity stake in Smooth and their advice for brands and creators weighing similar equity arrangements.

The episode is brought to you by Pop.Store. Visit https://get.pop.store/ to learn more and get 50% off your first month.

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Do creators actually need an agent or a manager? This week, Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg dig into the world of creator representation, starting with how big Hollywood talent agencies like CAA and UTA are battling it out for top name creators, including Alex Cooper.

They break down the difference between agents and managers, when it makes sense to bring someone on and share a bit about their own experience signing with CAA. We hear from Corporate Natalie on why she, in turn, decided to do it all in-house and Reza Izad, co-founder of Underscore Talent, on how the talent management landscape has changed.

Kaya and Jasmine also sit down with Jack Goldburg of Jack’s Dining Room, who just landed a $25 million deal with 101 Studios, the company behind “Yellowstone” and projects from George Clooney. Goldburg discusses how the deal came together, the long-form shows he’s planning and whether he’d ever open his own restaurant.

This episode was brought to you by Nomono.

Visit nomono.co/scalable to learn more and get 15% off any product with code SCALABLE.

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Two decades-old internet brands are getting back into culture through creators. In this episode, Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg sit down with Yahoo’s CMO Josh Line and Expedia’s Chief Communications Officer Laurie Metrose to talk about what it actually takes to be top of mind again.

Metrose walks us through Expedia’s biggest creator bet yet: a year-long partnership with livestreamer iShowSpeed, built around three phases that combine livestreaming and shoppable storytelling. 

Yahoo’s Line discusses the company’s comeback strategies, such as a Cardi B campaign for Yahoo Mail that turned inbox anxiety into a viral moment, Kyle Cook becoming Yahoo Weather’s official “weather boy”, and the reply-guy moment that landed Yahoo millions of likes after the company had wiped its social feeds for a fresh start.

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Netflix isn’t the only platform YouTube needs to worry about. From Disney to Tubi, more players are encroaching on YouTube’s turf as it tries to become the new “TV.” Some of them, like Twitch and Spotify, are even joining forces to take on the streaming giant.

In this week’s episode, Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg discuss whether this is a sign of a larger shift in strategy for premium streamers and how worried YouTube should be.

They also sit down with Twitch’s new CMO, Christine Cassis, to talk about how the platform is repositioning itself beyond gaming, chasing new revenue streams, and where livestreaming goes from here.

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Monoculture isn’t dead. Neither is Hollywood. 

This week, Kaya and Jasmine explain why shared cultural moments like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding or the Knicks winning the NBA championship are more important than ever—and why we might not be as different as we like to think.

They also debunk some of the big headlines around the success of Backrooms and Obsession as the summer’s best box office since the pandemic comes to an end. Hint: No, creators aren’t saving Hollywood. These YouTuber-led movies were both horror films—and there were plenty of hit movies this summer that weren’t made by creators.

Finally, Kaya and Jasmine share their conversation from the Cannes Film Festival about the convergence of the movie industry and the creator economy. They discuss why the future of the film industry may be less about Hollywood versus creators and more about a deeper collaboration between the two.

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Back-to-school season has become a summer-long social media spectacle and brands are racing to keep up. This week on Scalable, Jasmine and Kaya unpack the rise of RushTok, $10,000 dorm makeovers and the creator content reshaping how families shop for back-to-school supplies during a time when many households are struggling financially. Plus, they debate how much TikTok could lose from a nationwide school cell phone ban.

They also dive into why more big brands like Starbucks and Gap are now paying their staff to post TikToks and Instagram reels on the job, after once firing employees for creating content about their work. Lastly, Kaya and Jasmine give their take on what recent affiliate marketing scandals could mean for the creator commerce boom.

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More than 60% of full-time creators in the US now have some kind of exit plan, and increasingly creators take on investment to expand their businesses, which helps set them up for an exit.

Jasmine Enberg and Kaya Yurieff sit down with Stephanie Patrick, co-founder and former owner of Theorist Media, which runs popular YouTube channels like Game Theory and Food Theory to talk about how she and her husband and co-founder Matthew Patrick, a.k.a. MatPat sold their company to LunarX back in 2022. 

They were among the first creators to sell their company and helped develop a roadmap for creators looking to retire or exit their businesses. Stephanie Patrick discusses how she knew it was time to step away and how they structured their deal with LunarX. She also reflects on how, back in 2019, few people understood why she was talking about exits – and now that she’s on the other side of one, shares her advice for creators looking to grow.

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Will YouTube ever start funding creator content again? And is the YouTube-Peacock deal actually a response to Netflix going after YouTubers?

Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg discuss the latest in the YouTube-Netflix rivalry, including why Netflix’s latest deals with creators like Mythical and Nick DiGiovanni aren’t exclusive. They also unpack why the Olympics might be the real reason behind YouTube’s subscription deal with Peacock and what’s behind some creators’ decision to launch FAST channels as their content moves into living rooms.

Later in the episode, they’re joined by Kim Larson, global head of creators at YouTube, and Kayla Nicole, a sports creator and journalist with 1 million Instagram followers. In a live interview filmed at Cannes Lions, they discuss everything from YouTube’s exclusive shows with creators to what it actually takes to make it as a creator today. Kayla’s advice: Don’t do it.

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