02:24:09 · Jordi Hays, Tucker Brown
[02:24:09] S0: And so you came out of that feeling like you had a greater sort of understanding of these businesses as well as like an appreciation for their potential and their quirks, and so you decided to become the buyer. Is that the right way to think [02:24:23] S6: about I I There were many times during that process, and there were a couple of those I did after where I was yeah, I just wish I was the buyer in that situation. I feel like I was doing the work to structure the deals that made sense. I understood, you know, the talent behind the deals in a way that maybe others buyers couldn't, and I came from the world of the agency at CAA where we had a whole suite of services and things we could provide for these creators in a way that, you know, a typical buyer wouldn't be able to do. Mhmm. So we pretty quickly started to think about what we could put together to basically be that unique buyer that we didn't see in the marketplace. Or we didn't see many of, didn't see really at scale, didn't see sophistication from, and started to iterate, you know, what that would look like and how it would come together, and do we do it through the agency proper, do we set up something independently, which is what we did, because I think it's important to be independent in the way that it's structured. And raised, you know, a good amount of money, and, you know, looking to do, you know, a lot of deals in the category and really become the the first of its kind, you know, kind of preeminent buyer in in this category. So, yeah, excited. For
02:25:31 · John Coogan
[02:25:31] S1: creators or media businesses that wind up with the Disney style business, the flywheel of multiple properties, multiple revenue streams, do you find that those businesses are sort of organically grown by garden, like a garden, or built brick by brick? Like, how often do creators have the idea Yeah. Of where they wanna go, and they execute one step at a time. Because I always think of that Disney flywheel, and, it's a beautiful napkin sketch. Yeah. And it's so cool, and you understand how the business works. But when he drew that, it was like two years before he died. Like, was very much a reflection on a life's work.
02:26:12 · Tucker Brown
[02:26:12] S6: Yeah. Listen. The best creators really are creative geniuses, but there's not always cohesion with how they think about the future and what they're doing. So oftentimes, I may see the whiteboard over there in the studio. You walk into their offices the same way, you know, I walked into Dude Perfect's office in Texas, and you see a whiteboard scattered with ideas. And it's all brilliant. It's not necessarily put together and structured in a way that provides, again, a lot of cohesion, but there's a lot of opportunity that they see. And I think first and foremost, what they've all done successfully is they focus on building a pretty rapid audience and building engagement with that audience. And then once you have that, and you have that captive audience, it really expands and opens up the world of opportunity beyond whatever that core product or offering might be. So for them, it was trick shots on YouTube, and then, you know, you build an audience there, kids, family comedy, and you can extend that into live events, into products, into things they probably, you know, certainly in 2009 when they started, didn't think they'd have a line of products in Walmart Yeah. Necessarily. Right? But then you start to dream bigger once you realize that what you're doing is actually working and resonating with the audience.
02:27:18 · John Coogan, Rodrigo Liang, Tucker Brown, Jordi Hays
[02:27:18] S1: Yeah. So the fund that you've built, how permanent is the capital? Are you thinking about a certain fund life cycle? Is there a world where maybe not today, but in ten years, we are talking about capital markets, public markets, creators going public. There's been rumors about MrBeast. [02:27:36] S4: Yes. [02:27:36] S1: And I could see that happening, but that might be, like, a exception that proves the rule. But is there a world where in a decade we're looking at, like, yeah, like, the top 20 YouTubers and podcasts are public? [02:27:46] S6: Yeah. Certainly possible. I mean, it's the, you know, it's the fastest growing segment of entertainment. People want exposure to that. Yeah. It's going to start with private capital. I think it will probably move into the public markets. [02:27:56] S4: Mhmm. [02:27:58] S6: So, yeah, I think we're moving in that direction. For us, I think permanent capital is an important part of our strategy. We want to we don't want to be forced into an unnatural life cycle where we're forced to sell quickly. Creators don't and, you know, feedback is Yeah, [02:28:10] S0: they're like, hey, you're doing your life's work, but also we're going to try to just change up who you're partnered with in a decade. Whereas, like, a CPG business or a software company, like, the management team might be fully turned over over the fun life cycle. We try to again, in structuring this, we try to solve for what we [02:28:27] S6: heard was important to creators in the transactions I've been around. [02:28:32] S0: Yeah.
02:28:32 · Jordi Hays, Tucker Brown
[02:28:32] S0: Yeah. [02:28:33] S6: And some permanence of the partnership or permanent capital is part of it. You know, letting creativity sit and remain with the creators even in a controlled transaction, so there's no interference in the creativity of That's what they've really important even if you're selling equity control. [02:28:48] S0: Yeah. Yeah, to me, I look at it and I can see over time this just being a more and more and more important part of CAA strategy because the challenge right now is you have creators. Historically, there was maybe I don't I don't you know, you you you'll know much more about the history, but my feeling is that historically, there was like maybe 500 stars that matter. Yeah. And then now in media, there's like 50,000 stars that matter across every single vertical. It's you you it was it was maybe easier to run a business when you had, you know, you could just focus on like a smaller number of like really really big stars who were running their own, you know, basically, they they had their own individual businesses. But when you have 50,000 creators and all these sub niches, you can't like, it seems like there's probably a limit. Like, you can't scale the CAA team ten, twenty x and expect to be running the same You agents. Need to Yeah, exactly. [02:29:45] S6: Cover it all.
02:29:45 · Tucker Brown, Jordi Hays
[02:29:45] S6: Cover it all. [02:29:45] S0: And so as a as a sort of new strategy saying like, hey, we're gonna try to service as much of that market as we can, but we're also gonna try to find the best talent and businesses across all these different categories, and then be a long term partner to those Mhmm. And actually participate in their overall business. [02:30:04] S6: Yeah. You go deep with the ones you believe matter most and are positioned to scale the most. Yeah. Right? So we're not, you know, trying to transact with hundreds or thousands of creators. It really is to pick the businesses we believe in and categories that we think are exciting and scalable and go deep with them across the board. On the capital side of things, then, you know, we're working with the agents. [02:30:26] S0: How do you think about stages in a creator's life cycle? There's people that are gonna be incredibly talented from a just pure talent standpoint. Right? There's people out there that are like, not even good at making videos, but have incredibly engaging content because they're so good. And then usually they graduate into having, you know, better and better teams and eventually maybe they get into products. But like, how do you look at the different stages? What's what's too early? Yeah. When are you seeing a an individual who's, like, showing all the potential but is too early for maybe a transaction?