A s a center schooler, Daniel Thrasher pictured himself profitable YouTube fame as a humorous man: sketch comedy, jokes, the works. For a very long time, he bombed.

Across the starting of faculty, although, he obtained a shock. A video posted years earlier during which he combines humor and music—he fools round with The Workplace theme—all of a sudden began to go viral. (Thrasher suspects a change to the positioning’s advice algorithm partly boosted its fortunes.) It has since gotten 21 million views and stays his third hottest clip. “That comedy constructed round me enjoying the piano—that’s what everybody had needed to see,” says Thrasher, 29. “I hit my stride after that.”

Loads of folks has seen it since. His eponymous YouTube channel has gathered 3 million subscribers—and drawn consideration from the funding arm belonging to a pair of YouTube’s largest stars. That might be Rhett and Hyperlink, cohosts of the long-running Good Legendary Morning present (and fixtures on our record of the top-earning YouTubers). Final yr, they launched a fund, The Legendary Accelerator, placing $5 million into it to take a position it in different YouTubers’ companies. They’re a part of a small however rising group of companies desirous to shove cash into the arms of those social media stars. Rhett and Hyperlink are two of essentially the most well-known. Two of the most important, Spotter and JellySmack, have stated they are going to make investments almost $1 billion mixed into YouTube channels and back-catalog royalty rights.

Legendary’s first funding was within the channel run by 26-year-old Jarvis Johnson, which they made final yr. Thrasher’s channel marks No. 2. Like all Legendary investments, it’s a more-than-$100,00 stake, buying minority possession. “Once we’re searching for creators for this program, we’re searching for creators that, at the beginning, have established good ‘content material/market match,’” says Neel Yalamarthy, who oversees the fund. “We’re searching for creators who’ve actually tapped into inventive ideas that resonate with a fandom—and have the power to scale.”

Thrasher does wish to lengthen himself. “I’ve all the time actually admired people who find themselves in a position to Tarzan-swing from being simply one thing on the web to one thing substantial and extra diversified.” His stuff does nicely on TikTok (2.2 million followers) as soon as he shrinks down an idea to a minute-long concept. “However, you realize, I’m not Fb, I’m not on Snapchat, I’m hardly on Instagram,” he says, naming apps he thinks he ought to take into account increasing to. “And I don’t have any merchandise.” Promoting branded merchandise might be fairly profitable, too—it usually accounts for a couple of third of a high star’s earnings—and Thrasher has some preliminary concepts for 2 clothes firms. He’d wish to market one separate from himself, away from his on-line picture and following. If it succeeded, it’d be a hedge in opposition to his stardom sometime disappearing as rapidly because it appeared to look.