Big creators are great marketers. Sure, it's not their only trait, but to succeed in the algorithmic age, you must be a marketer. And when you have a big following, you have tons of data, a brand to care for, and many content bets to place.
If a successful creator wants to start a new business, they don't have to grind for the first 10k or 100k clients (the grind was done years ago to build the following):
YouTube entertainer MrBeast grew the revenue of his burger business to $100m+ (5% of Wendy's) in 18 months;
Game reviewer Videogamedunkey launched an indie game publisher Big Mode seven months ago. Animal Well, its first game, is on the #110 spot of most wishlisted games on Steam after a 75 seconds mention in one of Dunkey's videos (AAA Suicide Squad game published by Warner Bros. is in 90th place);
We won't get into details about cosmetics lines by Michelle Phan or Jeffree Star. The main point: these are giant businesses;
And it's safe to assume that tech reviewer MKBHD will sell a ton of his new M251 sneakers.
Most creators are not technical, though. AI changes this by generating websites from sketches and games from several prompts. Great marketers now have an army of mid-level developers, which will transform into decent technical co-founders in the coming years.
Kurzgesagt can make 12 apps in a year
With 20m subscribers, Kurzgesagt is one of the biggest science channels on YouTube. It has 60 employees and many freelancers worldwide, paying millions of dollars in salaries each year. About 40% of its revenue in the last few years came from the shop (which is fantastic).
Kurzgesagt's team acknowledges that the shop started small in 2016 and took time to scale properly. We don't know how many team members work on the shop side of the business, but let's assume there are 15 full-time employees focused on producing dozens of new units of exceptional physical merch.
Every Kurzgesagt video explores a complex concept. Kurzgesagt’s viewers are interested in learning — and they’ll happily explore these concepts hands-on. Any Kurzgesagt video is an invitation to create a small app:
So what if Kurzgesagt's digital release schedule was almost as packed as its shop's at a fraction of the cost? What if Kurzgesagt could release all these products in just one year?
Protein folding game
Strategy game about fighting climate change
Ant colony simulator
Science news aggregator
Dinosaur Tamagotchi
Digital Calendar of life
Bacteria survival game
Solar system weather app
Travel app with the best science museums
Homeopathy debunking app
App to quit meat eating
Mobile guide to plastic in daily life
Apps are a new revenue stream for creators
We've seen prominent creators like PewDiePie or H3H3 getting their own games before. But the reception was not great every time the audience faced a predatory mobile monetization strategy. Creators had to worsen the UX through loot boxes and microtransactions because they had to cover the costs of building the app.
The AI revolution will enable successful creators to build small digital products of love. They won’t have to look for the right business model because the AI-aided development will be so cheap.
Creating apps with AI will turn creators into startup studios. For example:
Let's assume that five of Kurzgesagt’s app would flop completely: bad reviews, virtually no user base after three months;
Four more would get modest traction: good reviews and retention in the "not great, not terrible" zone, but the TAM is still tiny;
Science news aggregator and Calendar of Life would become niche hits: excellent reviews, great retention, but no virality or a big TAM;
And the Ant Colony Simulator becomes a hit: reviews, retention, virality, demand for new content, and the willingness to pay for it are off the charts.
Just like a startup studio, Kurzgesagt spins off the Ant Colony Simulator, which raises outside investments. It becomes a revenue stream with great margins or a lucrative exit down the road. Rinse and repeat.
Questions that we’re thinking about
There are 2m+ creators with 1m+ subscribers on Earth. How many of them will systematically practice building products with AI?
What happens to the global time spent if more niche products have significant reach? Will it hurt the Netflixes of the world?
Will the increased competition become unbearable for indie hackers without a following?
Share your thoughts!
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