Two founders with experience at Google and YouTube are adding another financing option to the $37 billion U.S. creator economy. Content execs Matt McDonald and Derek Scobie are behind Artie, a new platform that aims to be the middleman between rising creators and their financiers.
As creators experiment with more ambitious projects and ventures, their financing needs have become more pronounced. Artie will fill in the gaps by circumventing traditional distribution models to forge direct connections between creators and venture capitalists.
McDonald, the former Global Head of Connected TV and Streaming at Google, will be Artie’s CEO. Scobie, a veteran of YouTube’s ad division, will fill Artie’s CCO role.
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“At YouTube, we saw the power of democratizing distribution. Artie is about democratizing access to capital,” McDonald said. “Every creator should be able to access the resources to get their project made — on their terms.”
A brief history of creator financing
YouTube’s earliest days can best be described as the battle of the bootstrappers. By and large, the platform’s top videos were amateur labors of love.
The 2007-08 writers’ strike brought some Hollywood know-how to YouTube, but the platform itself didn’t make a serious investment in its homegrown talent until 2011, when it deployed $100 million across dozens of digital hubs as part of its Original Channels Initiative. That effort revealed some difficult truths about the industry we now call the creator economy. For example, while lump sums of cash got nearly 100 original channels off the ground, turning those endeavors into sustainable businesses was not so simple.
The next institutions that rose up to back creators were multi-channel networks, or MCNs. Companies like Maker Studios and Fullscreen became digital media power players who raised millions and used that capital to meet the needs of partner creators. Eventually, however, MCNs succumbed to the same issues that had plagued the YouTube Original Channels Initiative.
To make a long story short, creators learned what happens when they cede control of their channels to outside backers and moneyed interests. The next phase of creator financing would have to be a system that empowered channel owners without forcing their hands.
An embarrassment of riches
Let’s flash forward to our current post-COVID landscape. In the wake of incidents like the Defy Media collapse, today’s creators know how valuable it is to control the rights to their work. At the same time, the pandemic-era rise in creator value has made influencer marketing a hotter buy than ever before.
Spotter was one of the first companies to show what a flexible and deep-pocketed approach to creator financing could look like. Its catalog licensing program gave creators the runway they needed to execute ambitious projects by leveraging the continued utility of their existing video libraries.
Many other independent financiers and VC firms have further evolved the field of creator funding. Companies like Electrify, Viewture, and Slow are forking over millions to creators who are ready to do big things. Spotter’s 2025 creator upfront showed just how far these investments have come: The biggest names on platforms like YouTube and TikTok can now produce polished, serialized projects without handing over the reins to external studios.
‘Detours’ are ahead
Artie is putting itself at the center of the creator financing boom. By playing the matchmaker between creators and backers who are willing to support their work, the new startup will “bridge the gap between creative vision and financial reality.”
Detours is the first project uplifted by Artie. The animated series comes from Danny Pellegrino, who is branching out from his podcasting roots.
As for Artie’s namesake? That would be McDonald’s pet dog, and I’m not sure he has any opinions on creator financing — but he’d probably be happy to provide a few licks free of charge.
