What does it take to be a good man?

My dad spent 20 years as a NYPD detective before he retired and moved to Jersey. Growing up, I remember him being the only dad at the 3pm baseball practices. He had flexibility and freedom to be where he wanted, and he chose to sit in the stands and watch his son play. It wasn’t until many years after he passed, that I recognized just how truly special that time was.

You see, the only thing we have is time, and what you do with it, well, it’s a daily choice.

Today… I choose to be tired. I’m spent. Cooked. Whatever you wanna call it; my tank is officially empty. I’ve given absolutely everything I have this week; to my friends, to my family, to work, and like most of us who drive with that arrow hovering on E, my hope… is I can make it to that next gas station.

I was supposed to be in LA earlier this week, but instead spent yesterday at a funeral wishing a note had been left to decode what had been hiding behind that smile. But there was no note, only more questions.

I stayed up all night wandering through phantom “what ifs” until my alarm tocked at 4am, alerting me to leave my house so I could run around the Publish Press event preaching choir about creator ownership, then an uber to quick dinner with Nick and Jake on my team, all before boarding my same day flight back home just so I could make my sons school play at 9am the next morning.

I could have said goodbye to my dear friend from the plane. I didn’t need to be in LA schmoozing. And I sure as hell could’ve missed the 15min class play he’ll never remember I showed up to in the first place. But with flexibility and freedom, comes responsibility of time, no matter how exhausting it may be to spend it.

Because somewhere between London and LA, between the funeral and the play, between the meetings and the emails, somewhere; was a choice. And like my father, I wanted to be where I wanted to be. With friends. With my team. And most importantly, with my son.

Maybe if I recounted my week in a “come get ready with Jeff” TikTok, it might give people perspective when they see me galivanting at events across the globe or sitting quietly in the school bleachers. But I’m not looking for an award. Or a platform for which others to judge me. I need no sympathy on how hard my life is or a rating scale for how hard I can grind. I just do what I think is right.

So will I be the only dad at the play today? I don’t know, and I don’t care. Because my life will not be a comparison to others. Only to myself. A reflection of choices I get to make with the currency of time that I’ve purchased.

And if there is some final judgment at the end of my road, we’ll… let them judge.

Because right now, I do think I’m a good man…. Doing the right things, and hopefully if my dad is watching, he’ll think I’m a good father to.

→ Every Founder Must Know: Alexis Ohanian just nearly tripled the prize pool at his all-women's track meet ATHLOS. Then he handed event winners equity in the league.

→ The Garage: Frank Michael Smith vibe-coded a sports trivia game with Claude on his drive home from a wedding. A million users later, he is turning down sportsbook money.

→ The Bet: Spotify and Netflix just teamed up to outbid YouTube for one creator. The deal is worth up to $100 million.

Alexis Ohanian just nearly tripled the prize pool at his all-women's pro track meet ATHLOS, from $773,500 in 2025 to $2,114,000 in 2026. He added a second meet at StoneX Stadium in London this September, kept the original at Icahn Stadium in New York for October, and raised first place to $65,000 per event with a $25,000 series bonus. The woman who sweeps both meets walks home with $155,000 and a Tiffany crown.

That is the headline. The thing underneath should rearrange how you think about every brand deal you sign for the rest of the year.

Event winners now get equity in the league. Not the prize money. Not points toward an endorsement. A piece of the company that pays them.

That is not a purse. That is a cap table contribution.

Ohanian on CBS Mornings: "The cash compensates their participation and success, and the equity recognises what we're building together." The women already attached to ATHLOS read like an Olympic medal stand. Sha'Carri Richardson. Gabby Thomas. Tara Davis-Woodhall. Masai Russell. Marileidy Paulino. The biggest names in women's track now have a path to owning the league they race in.

There is no precedent for this in track and field. Unrivaled handed out a 15% pool to everyone who suited up. ATHLOS went further and tied the ownership to performance. The woman who crosses the line first gets the asset.

This is what happens when a venture investor builds a league instead of a fund. Ohanian co-founded Reddit and runs Seven Seven Six. He has spent two decades watching platforms capture the value talent creates. With ATHLOS, he wrote a different rule into the founding documents.

What Ohanian wrote into ATHLOS at the league level scales down to the deal level. The brand drafting your next creator agreement can do the same thing this quarter. Hand the creator who actually moves your category a piece of the company instead of a flat fee. The check gets spent. The equity compounds.

That is what OWM was built to help you do. We find the creators and athletes who already think like operators, before the deal gets expensive.

On June 3rd, OWM is co-hosting a little pitch competition alongside Raisi and Plug and Play, gathering 100+ top investors, creators and founders. The winner walks away with a Mac Mini, Delta Airlines status, three months of Raisi campaigns, and office space at Civic Hall through Plug and Play.

If you want to attend, or pitch, hit the link below. Only a few slots left.

Frank Michael Smith is a sports creator with 3.5 million followers, 1.8 million on TikTok and 1.4 million on YouTube. Earlier this month, he was driving home from a friend's wedding when he decided to mess around in Claude on a daily sports trivia game. Two days later, he had a prototype.

The News:

Per Sportico, Smith's daily game GeoSports launched less than a month ago. It has now crossed 1 million unique users, averages 95,000 daily players on weekdays, and peaked at 150,000 daily in its first week. Smith showed the prototype to a hundred friends. Then he put it on his Instagram story. Then Yahoo Sports newsletter author Kendall Baker covered it. Twitter took it from there.

Two weeks ago, Smith opened a pro tier at $5 a month or $40 a year. Inside two weeks: roughly 1,000 paid subscribers, about $47,000 in annual recurring revenue, $0 in marketing spend. He has turned down sponsorship offers from betting and fantasy companies because he wants to keep the game "pure," per his quote to Sportico. He also thinks sports fans, in his words, "have a lot of fatigue" from gaming industry advertising.

Rhino Studios, the company Smith founded in 2024 to house his game work, raised $500K at a $4M valuation last year. Smith said on the record he will not sell GeoSports for less than that. The comp set he is pointing at: The New York Times bought Wordle in 2022 for a reported seven figures, Spotify bought Heardle, Sports Reference bought Immaculate Grid.

The Operator Take:

Smith already has 3.5 million followers. He could spend the next two years making sponsored posts for the same DraftKings and FanDuel that are now lining up to plaster their logos on his daily game. The take-home from a single creator integration in that lane is well into six figures.

He turned it down. Inside three weeks of monetization, his self-distributed pro tier is doing $47K ARR with zero ad spend. By the time a sportsbook would have written a check, Smith will have built the asset they wanted to lease.

The product is the cap table. The audience that came to play GeoSports came because GeoSports is good, not because they followed a logo. That trust does not transfer to a banner ad. It compounds inside the product.

Spotify and Netflix do not usually share a bid. They shared one this week, for one creator.

The News:

Per Bloomberg and Variety, Spotify and Netflix jointly acquired the video rights to Jay Shetty's podcast On Purpose in a multi-year deal worth up to $100 million. The exclusive video launch hits both platforms on July 13. Shetty is leaving YouTube to do it. Three other companies were bidding in the nine-figure range. Spotify will sell the ads globally. Shetty launched On Purpose in 2019 and has released more than 800 episodes, putting him in the same top tier as Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper.

The Operator Take:

Two of the largest distribution platforms on the planet had to team up to outbid each other, and three other nine-figure bidders, for one creator. That tells you where the leverage actually sits now. The audience traveled to Shetty, not to the channel he sat on. He owns the relationship. Every platform he touches is renting it from him.

Stop pitching creators your distribution. Start pitching them ownership of your category. The ones worth your time already have the distribution part covered.

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