Navigating Creative Exits and Financial Struggles in Media

Today’s episode is packed with M&A talk, how one YouTuber succeeded at the creator economy, why Twitch is still losing money and an autonomous vehicle company that is making a comeback.

First up, Rebecca took a look at fintech giant Stripe’s acquisition of four-year-old competitor Lemon Squeezy. The buy will allow Stripe to beef up its merchant of record selling “in a big way,” according to Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. Deal terms weren’t disclosed, but Lemon Squeezy has a reputation for turning down other offers, including a $50 million Series A. The company’s founder said he was holding out for the right partner to take the business to the next level, and apparently Stripe was it.

This comment led Rebecca to explore the idea of M&A as an exit strategy. Does this practice create perverse incentives in venture capital, where investors are becoming more risk-averse and looking for a surer path to regaining capital, at the long-term expense of competition? Other startups have turned down such opportunities so they can go it alone. Just look at Wiz’s decision not to get acquired by Google for $23 billion, something we discussed on last Friday’s episode. 

Next, Rebecca touched on MatPat, the first big YouTuber to successfully exit his company, Theorist Media. Matthew Patrick turned his successful video series, The Game Theorists, into a full-fledged media business called Theorist, with 40 million subscribers across channels. But he was getting tired of the ceaseless content uploading, and found a way to convince investors that the business could go on without him. Now, he’s in Capitol Hill educating politicians about what creators need to succeed as small businesses. 

Speaking of creators and acquisitions, Rebecca pulled up a Wall Street Journal report that found that after 10 years, Twitch is still losing Amazon money. Amazon bought Twitch for $1 billion in 2014, but the company still isn’t profitable. And will it ever be? Twitch in 2023 generated about $667 million in ad revenue and $1.3 billion in commerce revenue, but that accounted for less than 0.5% of Amazon’s total 2023 revenue. Amazon defended its buy, saying Twitch has a long-term path to profitability. But broader trends that seem to favor short-form videos over watching someone play an entire video game live say otherwise. 

Finally, while we’re on the subject of comebacks, autonomous delivery startup Nuro is gearing up for one of its own. Nuro has been quiet for the past year or so after two big rounds of layoffs. Once the darling of the AV industry with over $2 billion in funding from high-profile investors, Nuro was burning money fast as it tried to scale and commercialize all at once. Now, Nuro is back with better AI and a new vehicle, the R3, which it will be testing later this year in the Bay Area and Houston.

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. 

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Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.

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