A management company picked one of its own creators over outside investors.

Smooth Media manages knowledge creators, people teaching audiences about AI, business, and personal finance.

For five years, it’s been bootstrapped, representing more than 70 creators.

On September 8, 2026, the company gave creator Cat Goetze, known online as CatGPT, an equity stake and a seat advising co-founders Josh Kaplan and Jenny Rothenberg. She’ll advise on Smooth’s management business, new services, branding, and internal tech.

She’s the first outside shareholder in Smooth Media.

Smooth Media just handed over equity to the one creator on their roster who’s already building the same way.

Goetze has built a personal brand teaching AI to more than a million followers, funded a landline phone company, and now is building her own creative technology studio @catlabs. All without outside investment.

“Nobody ever crossed that threshold until I met Josh and Jenny,” she says, describing the bar she holds for anyone who takes a cut of her revenue.

Managers are now building alongside their smartest creators.

Talent agencies have taken a cut of their biggest names for decades without ever giving one of them a piece of the agency itself.

CAA sold a majority stake to the investment firm Artemis in 2023, in a deal that valued the agency at $7 billion. None of it went to the actors, athletes, or musicians on its roster.

Smooth did the opposite. It let ownership go to the person building the audience, Goetze, not past her.