(2025-06-23) No Netflix Deal No Trust Fund How The Fck Do I Fund A Youtube Show

No Netflix Deal. No Trust Fund. How the F*ck Do I Fund a YouTube Show? Today’s entry is for every legacy producer, writer, or director who wants to make their first real YouTube show — and needs an honest roadmap for how to actually pay for it.

how do you get that first YouTube show made? And how do you make money — or at least not lose your shirt — doing it?

Your Trusted Playbook is Broken. Here’s Why You’re Losing Sleep Over It.

the new reality is:

• Legacy buyers want risk-free hits, not speculative slates.
• Equity isn’t chasing movies and TV the way it did.
• Audiences are on social, watching creators who deliver now.
• If you could find the money its impossible to hit legacy costs and make that money back on YouTube alone.
• One digital show won’t pay back legacy budgets.

Creators don’t wait for permission. They build formats, test ideas cheaply, and create repeatable systems that keep the lights on.

*This pattern is everywhere: volume and cadence plus multiple revenue streams. Not every creator sells merch or memberships — but all of them spread risk across multiple income buckets. It’s not so different from a healthy legacy studio.

The takeaway: One YouTube show won’t build you a sustainable business. But you still need to get that first one made — and use it to build the rest.*

You won’t get Netflix money to make a single YouTube series — but the smart money is coming back, just not the way it did before. The catch? Your show needs to plug into something bigger than itself.

three conversations I’ve had recently — vague on purpose

One: A veteran film executive is quietly building a software platform for creators: take one piece of longform content, automatically spin out all the short versions for every platform, A/B test them in real time using AI, then re-edit for maximum reach. Call it picks and shovels for the next digital gold rush. But they need content to run through their platform so they are funding shows.

As YouTube pushes more premium viewing (we’ve all heard that stat— 45% of US YouTube watch time is on TV sets and how they want to increase production value of creators), more legacy talent wants in. But real premium takes time and budget. Even top creators know: scripted content can pull you away from your core and has no guaranteed upside (unless you’re Dhar Man and that’s what you do).

The creator economy was built on sweat equity and low costs. Now as we talk about ramping up in premium how do we get there?

Kinigra Deon, like so many successful creators, is a great counter-example: she tests with shorts, pilots what hits, then expands. Sometimes, she cuts a hit series into a feature-length movie later. Her edge? She owns the audience so she can test before she invests too much time. Legacy creators don’t often have that capability because they didn’t control their audience through social platforms

Add to that: many legacy teams don’t know how to make a polished short for $2,000 or $10,000 or for that matter $100,000 an episode

A slick YouTube show no one watches is just digital landfill.

Step one: leverage other people’s distribution first. Drop the pilot on a creator’s channel, license it to a big Facebook page, cross-post on TikTok in snack-able chunks. This builds audience and validates the concept before you sink budget into growing your own hub.

Partner with a creator who has an audience. If you’re credible, you have currency. Dan Jinks won an Oscar; Nebula gave him a show on their platform to oversee because of that. If David Bernad (The White Lotus) wanted to make micro-dramas tomorrow, big creators would answer the call.

Look for overlooked communities too: One Minute Documentaries posted a short about a kid obsessed with crocheting — 10 million views. Sometimes, one passionate OpenVerse (as I call uncontrolled communities) can outperform a mainstream pitch. (subculture?)

And always think beyond the show: How does one show build a flywheel that sustains a community, more shows, and eventually commerce?

Creative Juice, backed by MrBeast amongst others, offers “Juice Funds” — advances from $10K to over $250K, repaid as a cut of the channel’s future revenue. No bank loans, no personal guarantees — performance pays it off.

These models rely on one thing: a real, monetizable back catalog or a strong, predictable revenue stream. You, the legacy producer, probably don’t have that on your own — but a creator might.

Fan Investment & Tokenization

If you’re a creator looking to raise true investor capital — not just tips, merch sales, or patron perks — for a single social-first series, you need platforms purpose-built for turning your fans into actual investors who share in your success.

This is regulated investment crowdfunding for creators, where the audience backs your work in exchange for real revenue sharing.

Here are some to know:

• SEC-approved crowdfunding for YouTubers. Fans buy shares of your future AdSense earnings for a set term. Record raise: $1.3M in nine days.
• Fans buy digital tokens tied to a share of your revenue, plus perks and possible resale value. Smart contracts handle payouts automatically.
• Fans invest directly in a celebrity’s new venture — albums, tours, product lines — and earn a true financial stake, not just early access.
• Fans stake money upfront for a planned video and get a slice of its AdSense after it launches.
• The one to watch for legacy talent — a regulated “Creator Public Offering” where fans can invest as little as $50 for a share of your future income. Up to $5 million per raise.

The Bigger Truth: Make One Great Show — But Plan Beyond It

One show alone won’t replace your studio deal. It’s the bridge — the test case that proves you can work in this sandbox and keep your shirt on.

This is the real mind shift for legacy folks: you’re not here to make a hit.

You’re here to build the scaffolding around the hit — the format you can rinse and repeat, the sponsor-friendly segments, the behind-the-scenes spin-offs, the community Discord that keeps fans sticky, the newsletter that converts followers into paying members.

A single YouTube show is a proof of concept; the second proves it wasn’t a fluke, the third proves you can translate your skills from legacy to new media consistently and bob’s your uncle. You can build to scale.

The creators who last don’t chase viral one-offs — they build ecosystems.

You know how to develop franchises and spin IP into toys and remakes — same muscle, just new bones. So make that first show tight, make it native to the platform, make it cheap enough to fail gracefully — but design every frame to be the first brick in the next ten projects you’ll make once the system works.

As I hinted above, I see some potential in one specific platform: OverSubscribe.

(rest paid)