Knowledge Creators 🤝 Cool Stuff

The latest content + happenings from the creators we rep here at Smooth

• Jacklyn gets the 30U30 stamp of approval | Jacklyn Dallas is officially a member of an elite squad known as the Forbes 30 Under 30. We’re lucky to have Jacklyn (who is quite literally 23 years old) in Smooth HQ all the time, so we can confirm: No one works as hard as she does. Congratulations on a major (and well-deserved) accomplishment, Jacklyn! We’re so proud to be on your team.

• Cat & Nat vs. teen screentime 💪 | Our resident teen parenting experts Cat & Nat just dropped one of their best resources yet: Screen Sense, a step-by-step course to help parents protect kids online with essential phone and social media safety tools. Knowledge creators are ideal candidates for courses, and this one aligns perfectly with one of the biggest issues Cat & Nat’s audience faces.

• Megan Tan wins big | Megan is an incredible visual artist and storyteller…and the Video Days Festival knows it. They awarded Megan with the top prize in the Best Visual category at their recent creator awards. We got to watch the ceremony at Smooth HQ and it was a blast—proud of you, Megan!

• And so does Emily Pitcher | Emily (you know her as SonderingEmily) won Best Game at OTK Network’s Winter Games Expo! Her forthcoming horror game, Lily’s World XD, is going to be incredible.

Brand Campaigns Hot Off the Press 🗞️

Some of the fun partnerships our team’s been working on with creators + brands

SonderingEmily x IBM | Emily is in the thick of solo developing her first game (see above). We dig how she used that experience (headaches and problem solving included) to showcase IBM’s Granite AI tech. Specific niche use cases + real world application = great partnership 🤌

And a bonus while we’re here: Namanh also dropped another outstanding video using IBM’s Granite AI to help with taxes. Love to see it.

Kallaway x Spotter | “It’s kind of like having a YouTube strategy expert in your pocket at all times.” Talk about a hook in this A+ partnership, in which Kallaway went deep on how Spotter can help YouTube creators maximize their impact and grow their audiences.

Tina Huang x HubSpot | This one is so valuable: Tina and HubSpot collabbed on an expert guide to help you craft super precise AI prompts—a resource that feels like a perfect fit for Tina’s tech- and productivity-focused audience.

Thoughts for the Road 🛣️

A little something we’ve been chatting about here at Smooth HQ

Passing the mic to Josh for this one. Take it away, boss →

A few years back, we supposedly hit “peak” creator economy. Venture money was flooding in. Everyone and their uncle was pairing the words “creator” and “economy,” even when it didn’t make total sense. The whole world was chasing creators.

Fast forward to today: I think we’re actually far from “peak” creator. Instead, we’ve entered a more mature, more interesting phase for the creator industry—and a lot of that is because platforms have finally adapted their strategies to better capitalize on the promise of creators. They’ve started to see creators as stakeholders instead of products.

So today, here are my quick takes on the big platforms—what I’m watching and why I’m bullish.

YouTube. For a long, long time, all roads have led to YouTube. It’s the platform for creators. But? Competition is heating up…and that’s a good thing for everyone. Innovation!

Spotify. Revenue sharing is rolling out, video is gaining traction, and podcasting is finally getting real monetization tools. RSS tech held things back, and Apple was happy to coast. Spotify has shown it isn’t.

LinkedIn. This one excites me. LinkedIn is evolving: It’s not just “here’s this lesson I learned in a career setback” anymore. It’s full of thoughtful, creative, multimedia content that honestly reminds me of when Twitter was…well, good. Next year, I expect the LinkedIn video feed to explode—and creators who embrace it will unlock incredible insights about their professional audiences (job titles, industries, and more).

Newsletters. Platforms like Beehiiv are making it easier than ever for creators to own their audiences. The team has kept up their breakneck pace on the product side while taking the right approach: They know creators want subscribers and advertisers. Beehiiv can do both.

Bottom line: We’re riding a wave of knowledge-driven creator content—particularly in business, tech, and education. Platforms that take creators seriously are the ones building the future.