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Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex brought on the Most Online™ reporter at TC, Amanda Silberling to talk about one of her recent pieces, “maybe creator funds are bad.”

The column, mixed with the recent saga between Spotify and Joe Rogan, helped us ask a bigger question for this week’s episode:

What makes a platform economically viable for creators?

It’s no small question. Creators are a key plank in every platform’s success, from TikTok to YouTube to Instagram to, well, wherever you watch or listen to stuff made outside of major studios. But the financial relationship between platform and provider — creator, in other words — is often fraught and broken.

Creator funds are some proposed fix to the situation, but we find the to be more band-aid than holistic solution. Rev splits are good, and seemingly more sustainable, but with YouTube’s ad load reaching truly epic proportions, they may not be a fix-all. So we sat down to chew the fat and try to work towards a solution.

Which we mostly did, except for Alex, who decided that a return to feudalism is the only way forward. We’re back Friday! Talk soon!