The creator economy is evolving fast, and ad revenue alone isn’t cutting it anymore. YouTubers are launching product lines, acquiring startups, and building actual business empires. Even MrBeast’s company bought fintech startup Step, and his chocolate business is outearning his media arm. This isn’t just one creator’s strategy. It’s the new playbook.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan unpack how creators are diversifying beyond ads, whether their model can scale beyond the top 1%, everything happing at India’s AI Impact Summit, and more of the week’s headlines.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:48 Upcoming TechCrunch events: Startup Battlefield 200 and Founders Summit Boston
03:06 Date Drop raises millions to fix college dating
09:25 Heron Power raises $140M for solid-state transformers
14:13 Inside India’s AI Impact Summit
19:44 India’s first AI IPO flops on public markets
22:19 MrBeast buys fintech startup Step and the evolving creator economy
27:14 ByteDance’s Seadance 2.0
30:59 Outro
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