Guy Raz

Dude Perfect raised $100M for global biz expansion. The deal is getting lots of buzz, but our team’s math signals challenges ahead. Let’s break it down… DEAL DETAILS • $100 - 300M growth capital investment • Led by Highmount Capital • Unclear if 100% invested upfront OR draw down of commitment over time • No previous capital raised USE OF FUNDS • Hire mgmt team to expand biz • More live experiences incl int’l tour, consumer products • Grow content formats, frequency, channels, global localization e.g. animation, TV, movies, streaming • Extend brand beyond 5 founders by building talent network • New HQ in Frisco, TX as prod facility and “family-friendly entertainment destination”: – Retail store, podcasts / gaming / fan UGC spaces, trick shot tower, DP museum, mini golf, restaurants – Original plans for 3-story, 30 acre facility est to cost $100M+, 2 yrs to build COMPANY OVERVIEW: Dude Perfect • Digital-native comedy and sports media brand • Faith-based mission: “We’re about giving back, spreading joy and glorifying Jesus Christ”  • Other YouTube franchises: “Stereotypes,” “Overtime”, “Bucket List”  • Media brand also incl books, mobile games, board games and toys, and merch / retail / food and beverage partnerships • 25 current team members PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS • 60M YouTube Followers, 17B views • Est 2024 revenue: $50M per DP • Est 2023 and 2022 revenue: $25M and $20M per WSJ  • Consumer product partnerships incl Nerf toy line, Columbia Sportswear • Partnered with A Parent Media co to launch a streaming service • ESPN “30 for 30” doc premiering at Dallas Int’l film festival • TV series on CMT in 2016, later aired on Nickelodeon • Alternate broadcasts for Amazon’s Thursday Night Football • 4 live nationwide tours as of 2023 ORIGIN STORY • Founded 2009 by 5 friends at Texas A&M • Cofounders = twins Coby Cotton and Cory Cotton, Tyler Toney, Cody Jones, Garrett Hilbert • Started as YT channel featuring trick shot videos INVESTOR OVERVIEW: Highmount Capital • Growth stage and middle mkt PE fund for tech, media, healthcare • Founded in 2023 by jason illian and David Hawkins • 4 team members on website + advisor • 3 team members have faith-based ties per bios • No other investments listed on website other than DP My takeaway... I really like and support the trend of increased investment into YouTubers and digital-native media brands. But as I wrote about in my 2024 State of Creator x Media capital markets reports (will link them below), investment must match market and opportunity size. To ensure good ROI, and to set good precedent for future investment into our space. The DP bet is exciting, but could be overly optimistic based on our prelim math. My colleague Michael Booth's post breaks the math down (link below). More analysis to come in my Friday newsletter. —- I’m the founder of RockWater Industries. We do m&a and strategy advisory for media, agencies, and creator economy. My dm’s are open. #media #agency #creatoreconomy

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INTERVIEWS OF 2024 SXSW PITCH WINNERS: Dhavel Patel of Lotus Every March in Austin, 50 of the world's most impactful startups showcase their talents at SXSW Pitch. Today we begin a series of short interviews with some of the category winners from the 2024 event. Founder and CEO Dhaval Patel has been growing Lotus for three years. At this year's SXSW Pitch, his San Jose based startup emerged as the winner of the "Smart Cities, Transportation & Sustainability" category. Patel's short answers to our questions are below. SXSW: What is Lotus?  Patel: A wearable ring that controls objects at home by pointing. See https://www.getlotus.com/ SXSW: What community does Lotus serve? Patel: Folks with limited mobility -- older adults, veteran soldiers, people with disabilities.  SXSW: Who is your all-time favorite entrepreneur? Patel: Warren Buffett. SXSW: Best startup-related advice you have received? Patel: Don't start building first, find the need first. SXSW: Current entrepreneurial trend that excites you the most? Patel: Desire for tech that is intuitive and simple. SXSW: Fail fast or perseverance? Patel: Persevere in failing fast repeatedly. SXSW: Favorite VC? Patel: Andreessen Horowitz. SXSW: Favorite gadget or device? Patel: Apple AirPods. SXSW: Government can best support startups by Patel: Moving faster. SXSW: Most over-hyped technology at present? Patel: AI. SXSW: Most under-hyped technology at present? Patel: Consumer hardware. SXSW: What did you enjoy most about your experience at SXSW? Patel: The people -- each person wanting to make the world a better place. SXSW: What is your best trait as an entrepreneur? Patel: Simplifying complex problems. SXSW: What is your best advice for other startups? Patel: Focus (say "no" to more). Learn more about Dhaval Patel of Lotus plus other 2024 SXSW Pitch winners by listening to the audio of their session at this year's event. See https://lnkd.in/gHtwQB8n Applications for SXSW Pitch 2025 will open in late summer. See https://lnkd.in/gE2hcVPK #sxsw, #sxsw2024, #startups, #founders, Chris Valentine, Dhaval Patel, SXSW, #venturecapital, #entrepreneur, #entrepreneurs, #startup, #founderstories, #sxswpitch, Lotus (Techstars'23), #techstars, #Austin, #ATX, #creativity, #innovation, #hardware, #consumerhardware, #pitch, #accessibility,

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Just doing some market research. So, we can pretty much run PLAiR at next-to-no cost if TTS isn't a primary function. Realistic TTS is expensive, even with Amanda's super clever caching. Drops the overall cost at scale to a few $ a month vs $$, though still definately a factor! So to list the basics! Super accurate full control of your listening experience via voice, including intuitive search and discovery of music, podcasts and audiobooks. You can literally ask for five different things at once and its very YOU as the DJ gets to know your style super well. All the additional bells and whistles you'd expect like news, weather, events and all the other elements one would get from their local radio station, though obviously customised specifically for you. Down to your neighbourhood pretty much. Learnt a BUCKLOAD from STOCKGPT for scraping / summarising on the fly! It's crazy cool, basically like having a one-on-one conversation with the radios DJs.. Hope to have an early beta out soon, though got much more polish to do, mostly user-account security, management, server-side, asynchronous programming stuff and the rest. Been a big learning curve! There's a big social component that we want to introduce, though time and resource will dictate how quickly we roll that out. Think HAM radio rolled into the mix! Anyhow. trying to work out what the Premium would look like cost wise. I like anyone am sick of subscriptions and at current you'd need a Spotify subscription to begin with. Don't want advertising. The version without TTS due to running on efficient LLMS could operate at next to nothing, which is kind of cool! Though with user adoption and scale, it will add up. Anyhow, just shooting ideas out! I'm currently sitting at about $5 bucks a months for the full DJ, PA, Assistant style version. Thoughts!

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Discovery is the worst thing that could have happened to Warner Brothers. Discovery went massively into debt to merge Warner Brothers away from AT&T. WBD's merger debt was $46 billion. They cut that down by about $15 Billion by sacrificing things across the Warner Brothers, WB Pictures, HBO, and Warner Animation slates. They didn't seem to cut much from Discovery. Now WB is mulling the sale of all or part of WBIE (aka WB Games). This is damn sad. I used to use WB as the example of the one Hollywood studio that got game dev and publishing consistently right. Back in the day, WB bought IP, assets, and studios from Midway including Surreal, Snowblind, Monolith, and NetherRealm along with venerable Midway & Atari IP & franchises. Key IP included Mortal Kombat, Rampage, Spy Hunter, NBA Jam, Cruis'n, NFL Blitz, Defender, Joust, Robotron: 2084, Gauntlet and the Rush series. WB grew smartly with internal development and publishing. WB published a range of titles across genres, sizes, and monetization for PC, Console, Handheld, and Mobile. WB was consistent. Now WBIE/ WB Games appears to just be an asset for WBD to unload to reduce debt. And this could be in whole or in part. Sigh. What a waste. ----- GameDeveloper: "Report: WB Discovery looking to sell off games, other divisions to prevent total breakup. Game franchises like DC and Mortal Kombat may once again be up for sale as Warner Bros. Discovery tries to make some money." (Justin Carter) (Aug 6, 2024) Warner Bros. Discovery's dire financial straits may lead to it selling off various "smaller assets" as a means to avoid a complete "nuclear option" corporate breakup. Financial Times, senior management like CEO David Zaslav are considering selling off its video game division. That side of the business includes original franchises WBD acquired (Mortal Kombat) and long-running transmedia brands (DC, Harry Potter). Since merging with Discovery in 2022, WBD has repeatedly affirmed its desire to stick around in video games, particularly live-service. It saw a big success in 2023 with Hogwarts Legacy, followed by the modest MultiVersus and disappointing Suicide Squad in 2024. According to the outlet, selling its games may be the one sale WBD could make without triggering complications, both legally and content-wise. The company recently lost out on media rights for NBA games and is re-rebranding its Max originals back to HBO. Notably, this is the second time this decade that WB Games has been up for potential sale. Back in 2020, when Warner Bros. was still owned by AT&T, parties like Microsoft and Take-Two were interested in buying the interactive division. At the time, a potential deal would've been valued for as much as $4 billion. If WB Games were to be sold off now, it's unclear for how much, given the performance of its aforementioned 2023 and 2024 games, along with Monolith's incoming Wonder Woman title." GameDeveloper: https://lnkd.in/gXuYt6Cq #gameindustry #wbd #wbie #wbgames #warnerbros

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Just want to give a shoutout to OpenVC. It's been a great resource, I've used it off and on for a few months, and today decided to get the yearly pass. It allows you to search VCs and submit your deck, with tracking and analytics. So you can see every slide a VC looks at on your deck, and when they back out. Helps for deck fine-tuning. It also allows VC's to tell you why they passed if they did. I've also gotten some followup meetings on ZOOM. It's just a great resource that doesn't cost thousands of dollars a month like most others. Also, had some tech support issues as well (my fault) and they were handled within half an hour. Thanks Stephane Nasser for such a great tool for entrepreneuers.

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Hot take: Everything and anything could work on YouTube if the market is sophisticated enough. Most people don't understand this, but there isn't a meta for what works and doesn't work on YouTube. The content that's working in a niche is just a by-product of the market maturing and the content creators ADAPTING. The problem with blindly following what's "working" is that you'll be competing for the crumbs while the top 1% is enjoying the whole cake. What should be done instead, is combining the styles you most enjoy from that 1% and mixing them together until you develop your style. Everything that matters is that: 1. You're more entertaining to watch than 60% of the content that's out there 2. You're value is good and clear enough for me to implement it myself, and then hire you to do it for me. THIS ONLY APPLIES TO THE CONTENT ITSELF, NOT THE PACKAGING. If the packaging is working, ABUSE IT until it no longer works, there's a reason why most people are using it. Follow me on my newsletter for killer B2B YT advice: https://lnkd.in/dY2KC36b

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The Hidden Cost That's Eating Into Creator Earnings: A $110,000 Wake-Up Call 💸 After building a business reviewing the finances of over 450 creators, I've noticed a critical oversight that's silently eroding creators' revenue: foreign exchange exposure. Let me break this down with a real example. On a £1M payment, the difference between last year's GBP/USD rate high (1.34) and today's low (1.23) is $110,000. That's money creators are potentially leaving on the table by not managing their FX exposure effectively. Here's what every creator earning in USD needs to know: First, open a dedicated USD account. When you receive USD payments into a GBP account, banks hit you twice - with fees AND an uncompetitive exchange rate. It's like paying a premium for the privilege of getting paid. Smart money management means holding your USD when rates aren't favorable. There's no rule saying you must convert immediately. Think of it as waiting for a better deal rather than accepting the first price you're offered. The game-changer? Working with an FX broker. High street banks typically charge an extra 1-2% on exchanges - that's $10,000-20,000 on every million. These aren't small numbers we're talking about. For creators with predictable USD income, consider forward contracts. They let you lock in current rates for future conversions, giving you certainty in an uncertain market. The creator economy is maturing, and it's time our financial practices did too. A few simple changes to how you handle foreign currency could significantly impact your bottom line.

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A meta executive confirmed that viral Instagram videos get shown in higher quality than less popular videos. Which usually means that larger creators get their videos show in a higher resolution, while smaller creators are left with low resolution videos. Instagram does this to save on expensive storage for bigger files since higher-quality videos require more CPU intensive encoding. But some creators say that this is “truly insane”, and is meant to help larger creators get bigger, and keep smaller creators from breaking through.  On the other hand, instagram says that quality doesn’t actually matter as much as you think it does. The actual content of the video is way more important. So this brings up two questions: 1. Do you think this is fair to decrease the video quality for smaller creators? 2. And do you think video quality makes a big difference?

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