How Creator Media Businesses Stack Up

Creators are often described as small businesses. When it comes to the top creator media companies in the US, the comparison is largely accurate—with one major exception.

Beast Industries, the holding company founded by YouTuber MrBeast, now has about 750 employees. That’s well above the employee headcount of most small businesses. It also makes Beast Industries part of the less than 1% of companies in the US that have over 500 employees, according to the US Census Bureau. 

For context, a small business is generally defined as a company with 500 employees or fewer, according to the US Small Business Administration. (The SBA also uses other criteria like average annual receipts to classify small businesses and the exact definition may vary by industry.)

As you can see from our map, most of the biggest creator media companies fall within the headcount threshold, employing between 60 to 200 employees. Similarly to other small businesses, these companies are also spread out across the US. 

Still, the largest concentration of creator media companies, including Smosh, Alex Cooper’s Unwell, Dhar Mann Studios and Rhett & Link’s Mythical Entertainment, are headquartered in Los Angeles. That makes sense: California is the epicenter of the entertainment industry and home to major companies from Netflix to Disney, which some creator media companies are trying to emulate.

But many creators have chosen to set up shop in cities with more affordable real estate, as well as lower taxes and operating costs. Plus, the flexibility of being a creator means they can work from anywhere—including from their hometowns.

Those are all reasons why Texas has become somewhat of a hot spot for creators. Dude Perfect, for example, is based out of Frisco and now has more than 60 employees. The five members of the YouTube group met as college students in the state. Then there’s Dear Media, the podcast network and media firm founded by creators Lauryn and Michael Bosstick, who relocated to Austin from Los Angeles.

That also explains why we had a harder time finding creator-founded media companies in New York, which is extremely expensive, both in terms of cost of living and office space. There are still plenty of individual creators and other creator economy-related companies in New York, including ad agencies and other types of media firms. But it would be much harder for a group like Dude Perfect, which has an 80,000 square foot headquarters in Texas, to find a similar amount of space in Manhattan. 

Zooming out, the headcount of these top creator media companies reflects a broader trend of creators operationalizing their work. Close to two-thirds of creators worldwide either have staff or outsource some work, like video editing or writing copy, according to a January report from CreatorIQ.

Even so, only 12% of those creators had at least one full-time employee. That means the top creator media companies are part of only a handful that have big teams. 

Plus, while hundreds of employees is massive for a creator company, it pales in comparison to other media and tech companies, where a single division can employ hundreds of staffers. Disney, for example, has roughly 160,000 employees in the US. As of the end of 2025, Meta had close to 79,000 employees worldwide.

But many of those big media and tech companies are undergoing layoffs, while the top creator media firms are growing. Disney recently announced it’s laying off roughly 1,000 employees. Meta will lay off about 10% of its workforce next month. Meanwhile, Beast Industries is hiring for various roles, including a CMO.

Then there’s Audiochuck, the media company founded by true crime podcaster Ashley Flowers. The Indianapolis-based company now has nearly 100 employees, which is about double what it had roughly eighteen months ago, CEO Matt Starker told us in a recent interview. 

This is all happening as these creator businesses are expanding beyond the original creator and content. For Audiochuck, that means hiring more people, from showrunners and executive producers to senior staffers to lead the business, as the company expands into video and genres other than true crime.

For our full conversation with Starker, as well as more on the pros and cons of growth for creator media companies, tune into our full podcast, embedded below.

The creator map above is part of our new proprietary research database. We know that business leaders need reliable data in order to make sharper decisions. In the creator economy, data is often biased, expensive or hard to find.

Scalable’s database features a curated collection of ready-to-use charts—including the one above—from trusted sources and for free. The data covers everything from AI and M&A to influencer marketing spending trends and executive hiring. You can dig in here.

We’ll be regularly updating this database, so please send us your feedback and data requests by replying directly to this email!

Divine, a reboot of the six-second video app Vine, launched on app stores on Wednesday. The project is backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Twitter shut down Vine in 2017. Divine now offers access to an archive of about 500,000 Vine videos and also allows creators to post new clips. 

TikTok expanded features for college students, including college-specific group chats and feeds with posts from verified students at that university.

Instagram said that accounts that primarily aggregate and re-upload other creators’ work, including photos and carousels, will no longer be eligible for recommendations across the app. This guideline previously only applied to Reels. It’s an effort to reward creators who are posting original content.

YouTube TV launched a customizable multi-view feature for subscribers that lets people view up to four channels on one screen at once.

Amazon introduced AI “hosts,” which allow customers to ask questions about products and receive audio responses generated in real time. We want to know who asked for this!  

ICYMI: iHeartMedia is in preliminary discussions to sell to SiriusXM, Bloomberg reported. A deal would combine iHeartMedia’s more than 860 ​broadcast radio stations with SiriusXM’s podcast network and other audio offerings. 

That’s the revenue run rate for Meta Platforms’ partnership ads, which is more than double what it was in the first quarter last year, the company revealed in its latest earnings call on Wednesday. Partnership ads allow advertisers to run creator content as paid media on Meta’s platforms.

This gives us a sense of how much creators are directly contributing to Meta’s ad business. As we’ve covered previously, brands are spending more of their budget boosting creator content as paid ads than they are paying creators directly: In 2025, US advertisers spent an estimated $9.6 billion on direct creator partnerships, compared with $11.2 billion for paid media amplification of creator content, according to the IAB.

Meta Platforms has failed to keep children under 13 off of Instagram and Facebook, European Union regulators found in a preliminary ruling. The EU has been ramping up its crackdown on social media companies over child safety issues. Meta told the New York Times it disagreed with the ruling, calling the issue an "industrywide challenge.” 

A virtual Substack book tour? That’s what actress Lena Dunham did ahead of the release of her new memoir “Famesick.” Her strategy included writing a column for a fashion newsletter and participating in Q&As about body image and rehab, as well as her experience going to the movies. The latter newsletter, called “11am Saturday,” conducts weekly interviews with people who like to see movies in movie theaters. Her memoir has made it on the The New York Times Best Sellers list. 

The Ankler, a publication about the business of entertainment, is moving from Substack to a new publishing platform called Passport created by Ben Thompson, the author of the popular “Stratechery” newsletter. He’s building Passport in partnership with WordPress parent company Automattic.

A Message from Agentio

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🌍Expedia announced a partnership with top streamer iShowSpeed, which includes a custom website called Exspeedia.com, where his fans can see behind-the-scenes moments from his travels and book hotel stays and flights. They can also vote on where the creator should travel to next. 

Victoria Garrick Browne is ending her mental health podcast “RealPod” after seven years. “A podcast is a lot of work, time, energy and money. I want to give myself the opportunity to try something new,” she said in a video. Browne is the latest long-time host to throw in the towel. Read more about podcasting’s reckoning here. 

Matt Friend, a creator who recently hosted a comedy special for CNN, met King Charles at the British embassy and did an impression of him. The King’s response? “Keep trying!” (The exchange was all in good fun!)

We go deeper on the power struggle between old and new media, which was on display at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend, in Thursday’s podcast.

Jon Parkinson joined Netflix to work on podcasting and creator content partnerships. Before that, he spent 12 years at YouTube in content partnerships.

Charlie Dale joined Patreon as a senior strategic partner manager. Previously, he worked in TV and film partnerships at TikTok.

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