Stephanie and Matt Patrick figured a YouTube channel had about a five-year lifespan.
That’s why the couple decided to launch a second channel just as their first one was hitting the four-year mark in 2015.
“Our expectation is that YouTube channels don’t last forever,” Stephanie Patrick told us on Thursday’s episode of Scalable. “You have to have some sort of sunsetting plan or a transition plan.”
This kind of forward-thinking eventually led the Patricks to become one of the first creators to pull off a real exit. They sold their company Theorist Media, which includes YouTube channels like Game Theory, Food Theory and Style Theory, to Lunar X in 2022. Stephanie led the M&A process.
Four years later, 42% of creators in the US have a clear exit plan, according to data from the Consumer Technology Association. Among full-time creators, that figure rises to 60%. At the same time, more top creators are raising outside funding to expand their businesses, which could help set them up for an exit in the future.
Still, there’s no single playbook for a creator exit. The terms, buyers and how long a creator stays visible on-camera can all vary.
Brothers and long-time YouTubers Hank and John Green, for example, relinquished their shares in educational content company Complexly and turned it into a nonprofit earlier this year. While the Greens are still making content, they brought on new hosts and named Julie Walsh Smith as CEO to help the company stand on its own before they stepped away.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is TBPN, the live tech podcast hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, which was acquired by OpenAI in April for “low hundreds of millions.” Coogan and Hays have continued to host the show every day, in addition to helping the AI giant with marketing and communications. (They’re taking a short break now, though. See Creator Moves below.)
Buyers have a lot to consider, too. While topline metrics, such as viewership and watch duration trends, are important, they also need to look at factors like whether a creator has been able to successfully expand into other revenue streams and what their unique value proposition is.
“A lot of channels that seem great at the outset actually have no moat. They have no buffer between them and just the next cute set of 20-year-olds who come along and do the same thing,” Stephanie said.
The creator economy is also relatively new territory for investors and acquirers, many of whom are coming from more traditional backgrounds, including venture capital, family offices and private equity. That’s on top of studios and companies like LunarX and Electrify Video Partners, which focus on buying YouTube channels or taking majority stakes.
That means it can be helpful for creators to stay on behind-the-scenes to ease the transition. When the Patricks sold Theorist Media, for example, they remained with the company for two years before retiring from YouTube altogether. It also means there is a need for specialists, including lawyers, to help negotiate these deals.
“You can’t get someone who’s worked with movie studios or movie stars or something like that. It doesn’t translate,” Stephanie said. “There’s a lot of identity that’s tied up in these YouTube channels.”
Zooming out, personal circumstances tend to be the biggest reasons why creators decide to sell. Those include getting tired or losing interest, big changes in their personal life and reaching a certain age, according to the CTA data. Interestingly, “when I make enough money” was fifth on the list, while changes to social media platforms was third. That comes as more creators recognize that they are often building businesses on platforms they don’t control.
For the Patricks, the exit trigger was also personal. When they had a baby in 2018, they started thinking about how to potentially transition their YouTube channels to new hosts, before exploring a sale.
“When you have a business that is you and your partner, it feels very personal. There’s a lot of interweaving of your personal and your professional life,” Stephanie said.
At the same time, the couple didn’t feel like they could scale themselves beyond the five YouTube channels they already had.
Looking ahead, some creators are now rethinking the exit.
This past spring, The Home Edit co-founders Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin decided to buy back their media company, which they sold to Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine in 2022. Smosh co-founders Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox also bought their YouTube business back in June 2023.
Naturally, we had to ask Stephanie Patrick if she’d ever buy Theorist back. Tune in to the full episode, embedded below, for her answer.
She also told us how Theorist structured its deal with LunarX, gave her advice to creators who are looking to grow rather than exit and shares what she and Matt have been up to since retirement. Watch on YouTube or tune in anywhere you get your podcasts.
YouTube (Finally) Fights Back
This was bound to happen eventually.
YouTube is paying popular creators millions of dollars to upload their videos to the platform exclusively for a certain period of time and telling creators who sign deals with Netflix that they will be less likely to promote that content, according to a Bloomberg report. Payment could come in the form of a share of brand deals or financing for shows.
Publicly, YouTube has said that it won’t start funding creator content. The report said no deals have been signed yet.
But, as we discussed in last week’s podcast, responses from executives on the matter have been suspiciously similar—and don’t totally close the door to the possibility. Privately, CEO Neal Mohan has also reportedly been weighing whether to fight back as Netflix has continued on its deal spree with YouTubers.
YouTube needs its top stars to help it sell ads. As YouTube’s global head of creators Kim Larson recently put it to us: “This is the most sellable slate we’ve put out at the Upfronts ever,” referring to the exclusive creator shows it launched at its annual Brandcast event in May.
While most of Netflix’s recent deals allow creators to upload videos simultaneously to YouTube and Netflix, that could still hurt YouTube’s viewership and its ability to bring in revenue. YouTube made roughly $40 billion in ad revenue in 2025 and over $60 billion when including subscriptions.
The Round Up
Meta AI announced a new app for Mac, which helps creators and small businesses with tasks like planning new content, reviewing ad performance and identifying emerging creators and brands that are gaining traction on social media in their industry.
Reddit’s citation rate has plunged on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to new data from PromptWatch. Reddit has long been one of the most-cited sources by chatbots. If this continues, brands and creators may need to start rethinking their LLM visibility strategies!
Neutrogena is facing social media backlash and calls for a boycott following Hayden Panettiere’s death at age 36. Earlier this year, the actress said the brand had attempted to end its decade-long partnership after she spoke publicly about post-partum depression.
Odyssey Entertainment Group, a Nashville-based management and brand partnership firm, launched a new division which will develop and produce original content with creators. Creators will own the underlying IP.
By The Numbers: 563,000
That’s how many subscribers LeBron James’ golf-focused YouTube channel hit within less than a week.
Yes, you read that right: Golf. And the NBA star reached that milestone with one 96-minute long video, which has racked up more than 2 million views, plus a few Shorts. It’s impressive, even for someone as well known as James.
For context, top golf YouTubers like PGA tour champion Bryson DeChambeau and Rick Shiels have around 3 million YouTube subscribers each. Shiels first started uploading golf videos to YouTube in 2012.
Creator Moves
Kim Kardashian will produce a new reality TV show about baseball moms called “Team Moms: Baseball” for Paramount+.
TBPN announced that its live show will be off air until August 31, the longest break hosts Coogan and Hays have taken since launching in 2024. Turns out that a vacation is one of the things that “low hundreds of millions” will get you!
Court Docket
The woman behind a viral TikTok video can’t testify in front of a jury in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of murdering her three kids, a Massachusetts judge ruled.
Emily Thorndike, a former McLean Hospital social worker, was called to court this week after her video about conditions at the facility drew widespread attention. But the judge said her testimony carried limited value since she had worked at the hospital well before Clancy was admitted. Still, it’s a striking reminder of how far social media content can travel and how big of an impact it can have.
Talent Tracker
Justin Breton was hired as vice president of development at Gap, focused on original content. Most recently, he was head of partnerships, content and emerging experiences at Walmart.
Mary Murcko joined creator management firm Fixated as chief revenue officer. Her previous roles include CRO at TheSkimm and content licensing firm Catch+Release.
David White is now head of creators at DMG New Media, the parent company of the Daily Mail and other publications. Most recently, he was a senior manager of creator partnerships at Whalar.
Jonah Minton is the new chief marketing and growth officer of TrueTake, a startup which helps brands get authorization to use AI versions of talent in advertising. Previously, he was a senior vice president at UTA-owned MediaLink.
Sean Yoo joined Vox Media Podcast Network as director of sports and culture podcasts. Previously, he was an executive producer for video series at Substack.
