All 23 Media & Entertainment posts we have indexed from venture capital blogs and newsletters, plus the highest-scoring pieces of the past year and the people who write about it most.
Meta's Q3 earnings reveal aggressive capex ($135–145B annually) driving Muse toward product-market fit (10M+ US/Canada signups, 25% DAU), positioning AI agents as a transaction layer—not subscription—with commerce as the wedge and enterprise as the growth lever, while forcing the company to monetize far faster than its historical playbook allowed.
McKenzie Lock, Netflix's former GM of Product, Operations & Creative, explains how she led a 300-person org through an AI overhaul by starting with human outcomes—not AI capabilities—and building buy-in from skeptical creative teams through transparent workflows, concrete "today vs. tomorrow" scenarios, and shared accountability across product, tech, ops, and creative functions.
Mattel's head of digital gaming reveals how studios win IP licenses: pitch the unexpected, not the obvious. The company rewards creative risk alongside polish, targets specific audience cohorts, and values dormant IP arbitrage over marquee brands.
Sensor Tower's inaugural ad monetization report ($12B across 19 countries) underestimates the true market size and reveals that ads now represent 13–23% of mobile game revenues—a primary revenue engine, not a side system. The real opportunity lies in IAA-first hybrid games that monetize attention without cannibalizing their core ad loop.
Getty Images filed for Chapter 11 with $910M annualized revenue and 27% EBITDA margins, gutted by AI-driven subscriber loss (down 25% YoY), a failed $100M+ Shutterstock merger, and $2.1B in debt; Koch and the Getty family will own 100% post-restructuring while public shareholders receive nothing.
Riot CFO Mark Sottosanti reveals how Arcane Season 2 broke even through skin sales and new player attribution, Riot's dominance in China and Korea (59% of player spending), and why the studio hit 5 of 7 game launches while protecting League's team from poaching.
Playtika's acquisition of SuperPlay and its breakout hit Disney Solitaire created a paradox: the game is phenomenally successful but generates accounting losses, threatening debt servicing and forcing owners to choose between selling the studio to Tencent or keeping their growth engine.
CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 disaster wasn't driven by public market pressure but by remote work that fragmented visibility across a complex pipeline—a waterfall process where no one saw the whole picture. The studio's recovery, transmedia strategy, and structural culture offer lessons on franchise building and the risks of scaling.
The Sociology of Business (7) · Deconstructor of Fun (7) · A16Z (4) · BIG by Matt Stoller (3) · Lenny's Newsletter (3) · Not Boring (2) · USV (2) · Feld Thoughts (2) · Sequoia (2) · QED Investors (1)
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