Bari Weiss built The Free Press from a Substack newsletter into an independent publication with 1M+ subscribers, an editorial roster, and its own infrastructure. The reference case for journalist-to-publisher arcs in the creator economy.
Veritasium publishes roughly once a month. 16 million subscribers. PhD in physics. The most-cited STEM creator inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. The template for production-grade educational content.
Wondery paid $100M+ for three years of New Heights — the largest athlete podcast deal in history. Two brothers, one banter format, a Taylor Swift halo, and a new ceiling for sports-creator IP.
Modern Wisdom went from Love Island UK D-tier reality fame to a top-5 global business podcast in seven years — built from Newcastle, not LA. The reference case for long-form podcast scale outside the U.S.
Alex Hormozi built Acquisition.com on a structural inversion of the creator playbook — free content as the entire funnel, the operating-company portfolio as the product. The B2B operator template.
