The software market is bifurcating. A few massive model companies (OpenAI, Anthropic) will be worth trillions and handle general tasks. The rest of the value will be in hyper-verticalized "for me" products. Mid-sized, general-purpose software companies will be squeezed out and struggle to compete.
Events like the Super Bowl halftime show are now designed to be spectacular for TV and social media, even at the expense of the live audience's experience. The priority is generating viral clips for 800 million remote viewers, not satisfying the 80,000 people in the stadium.
Top-tier creators are evolving their business models beyond simple sponsorships. They now leverage their influence to secure equity stakes or a percentage of sales they generate, enabling them to capture long-term upside and align more deeply with the brands they promote.
In an era of powerful general AI models, smaller software companies' advantage is deep vertical expertise. They win by creating a product so tailored to a specific niche that it feels like a custom, in-house solution. This 'for me' experience is something large, horizontal models cannot replicate.
The creator economy will bifurcate. One stream will feature authentic creators with deep fan connections. The other will be AI-generated personas, including personalized versions of real people like MrBeast, designed to deliver perfect content for each individual viewer, leading to a co-existence of human and AI creators.
For emerging creators, the primary goal is building a small, loyal audience that loves their authentic content. Data-driven optimizations for retention and growth—a strategy used by giants like MrBeast—are ineffective and premature without first establishing that core human connection and product-market fit.
Top-tier podcasters like Steven Bartlett of "Diary of a CEO" prioritize data-driven retention over natural conversation. This means intentionally cutting transitions or skipping empathetic follow-up questions to immediately jump to the next high-interest topic, keeping viewers hooked even if it feels jarring or "heartless."
The most successful creators monetize effectively not through sheer follower volume, but because their smaller, deeply connected audience will show up for anything they do (brand deals, events). This engaged 'real two million' is more valuable than twenty million passive followers who lack a genuine connection.
Initially dismissing AI for creative tasks, media companies now recognize its inevitability. The key to adoption is framing AI's value around revenue generation (making more money), which is a far more compelling business case than simply cost-saving (e.g., reducing producer headcount).