business plan / 2026 / private + confidential
we don't
do small
do small
the executive production layer the creator economy has been missing.
Hot Juice Studios is building the executive production layer the creator economy has been missing. One house, five revenue engines: a creative + live-selling agency, turnkey creator studios, owned events, an invite-only ownership circle of the biggest creators alive, and a production company developing owned and creator-led features.
A half-trillion-dollar wave is landing and almost no one in the West has built the infrastructure to catch it. Brands are demanding elite-creator live selling, holistic creative campaigns, and broadcast-grade content, and they are forced to stitch together five vendors who never talk. We are the one place that does all of it: creative direction and strategy, activations and experiences, creator sourcing and content, and live selling inside a studio built for it.
We have spent two years finding product-market fit, building the brand, and signing partnerships, with almost no capital. We took a small friends-and-family round of ~$300K nearly two years ago, began transacting with brands like Medella and Saint Jō on content and production, and signed a 50/50 co-owned creator-week partnership with Reach. This is the build raise: the capital that turns a proven team and a proven thesis into owned infrastructure and a compounding, four-arm business.
We are raising ~$8M to own our flagship building in Burbank (~$35M post-money), with an asset-light ~$5.7M Ovation lease alternative (~$23M post-money). We do not foresee a Series A unless it is to expand beyond Los Angeles. Prove it here, then scale.
Hot Juice is led by founder and CEO Marcus Murphy, a multi-founder, brand and marketing executive, and celebrity host with over fifteen years of experience, three exits, and Fortune 500 partnerships. He served seven years on the LinkedIn Advisory Board through the Microsoft acquisition, has held advisory roles at HubSpot, and director-level positions at technology companies including Infusionsoft. He co-founded Creator Economy Live and has moderated and hosted at the highest level across the industry.
The company is built by three founders and a core founding team that has carried it through two years of building, almost entirely without outside capital. This is not a team learning the creator economy. It is a team with a straight-A pedigree across creative, production, marketing, and revenue, that has run marketing teams, run revenue teams, and knows how to monetize. We have the business acumen to back every ounce of the art.
advisory board: mccoy, parton, pronger, miles, mcdonald. partners and additional team to be added post-raise.
This is not hype. This is the math. The creator economy is a tidal wave, and the West has not built the executive production layer it needs to land.
Los Angeles holds the world's largest concentration of soundstage space, 8.3 million square feet, but roughly a third sits vacant, with occupancy at 62% in 2025, down from 93% across 2016 to 2022. Prices are at all-time lows. Yet operators with their own demand engine are thriving: Warner Bros. Discovery reported 91% occupancy across its Burbank stages. Generic rental stages fail. Demand-integrated houses win. That is precisely our model, and we are buying in at the bottom of the cycle.
A brand brings us an idea and we run it through us. We decide if it lives as experience, infrastructure, film, a page, or a feeling. We set the vision, write the brief, bring the right players, and execute at a level worthy of people's time.
The cash engine, generating revenue from month one. Not a single service, a system: creative direction and strategy, activations and experiential, creator sourcing and placement, content (UGC and paid-performance), and live selling inside our studios. Brands do not come to us for TikTok Shop alone, they come for a creative house that does all of it.
How it makes money: monthly retainers of $10-40K across three tiers, plus $15-25K setup fees, plus 5% of incremental live GMV. ~65% gross margin. Referral partners earn 20% of MRR. One lean team, shared across all arms, delivers it.
target: 8 clients onboarded jul-dec 2026, ~$100k+ mrr exit, run-rate over $2m into 2027.
A flagship turnkey creator studio in Los Angeles: broadcast-grade live commerce stages, podcast pods, activation spaces, retail and hospitality. The place the biggest brands and creators cannot find anywhere else. Turnkey live selling built for elite creators is the wedge; the studio is the infrastructure that pulls every other arm together.
How it makes money: full activation day rates from ~$22.5K, plus production services, parking, food and beverage, and membership. Modeled two ways, lease and own.
A week-long Los Angeles creator activation, co-owned 50/50 with Reach as a new entity. No one does events like we do. A loss-leader in year one that becomes a profit center and a sellable, annualized asset feeding every other arm. Nov 30 to Dec 6, 2026. ~1,200 creators across the week.
How it makes money: Hot Juice's 50% share of platform, brand, and activation sponsorship and passes, plus $10-25K content packages sold to participating brands (100% Hot Juice, run through the agency).
An invite-only equity circle of the biggest creators alive. Not a membership club, an ownership group. The point is not the dues; it is owning a circle of culture-makers who feed brands, deals, and IP into every arm. Structured as equity in the Flagship entity, keeping the Hot Juice cap table clean. Ramps in 2027.
How it makes money: $50K one-time equity buy-in (capital, via Flagship) plus ~$2,500 annual dues (recurring revenue). The deeper value is pipeline and culture that compounds.
A real development and production company, built so creators and partners can bring ideas, scripts, and IP and we develop them: strategic POV, creative, packaging, attachments, and the path to shopping a project. We develop homegrown features we own (The Fringe), co-develop and executive-produce alongside partners (Flipper, with the Ross family), and selectively invest in creator-led productions. It is the engine that turns owned IP into revenue and brand gravity, and it gives our sound stages real productions to make.
Creator-led film is breaking out: a 20-year-old's debut feature opened to $118M worldwide on a $10M budget, the biggest debut in A24's history; another creator self-financed a feature that did $50M on a $3M budget. Studios are pivoting marketing toward creators with built-in audiences. We are built to harness this wave.
How it makes money: development fees (~$55K blended), executive-production fees (~$400K blended per feature, above and below the line), and film-fund management (2% management fee plus 20% carry on net profits). Dev and EP fees are the base; carry is upside as films sell.
We are positioned for both paths, with inside tracks on each. The turnkey capability is the moat at either location; the building is the upside.
The premier Hollywood & Highland space. Open sooner, monetize sooner, asset-light. ~$1M buildout offset by ~$400K landlord TI, $27K/mo base rent on a 10-year signed-ready LOI, 18 months negotiated. 5-6 month buildout.
Own a ~$7M appreciating asset at the bottom of the soundstage market. ~$1M down, financed balance, ~$1.5-2M buildout, 8-12 month buildout. The real-estate play that multiplies the exit. Our CFO is the broker on the deal.
real ovation leasing schematics and burbank (1001 s. victory) floor plans included in the data room and appendix.
Year one is the investing year, modest by design. Then five engines compound against a team and an infrastructure that already exist, scaling to three studio locations and an owned production slate.
| $ in millions | yr1 | yr2 | yr3 | yr4 | yr5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| agency | 2.07 | 5.61 | 9.26 | 12.95 | 16.66 |
| studios (1-3 locations) | 0.71 | 7.02 | 7.88 | 7.88 | 7.88 |
| events / flagship | 0.14 | 0.31 | 1.15 | 1.94 | 3.17 |
| production | 0.00 | 0.40 | 1.30 | 2.64 | 5.50 |
| circle dues | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.04 | 0.08 | 0.11 |
| total revenue | 2.92 | 13.34 | 19.65 | 25.49 | 33.33 |
| total costs | (3.09) | (5.33) | (8.05) | (10.92) | (13.08) |
| ebitda | (0.17) | 8.01 | 11.59 | 14.57 | 20.25 |
| ebitda margin | — | 60% | 59% | 57% | 61% |
By year five, roughly $33M in revenue at a 61% EBITDA margin, across five engines that share one team, one brand, and one physical footprint. Cumulative over five years: ~$95M revenue and ~$54M EBITDA. The model funds the second studio from operations in year three and the third in year four, without a second raise.
Creator-media and studio assets trade at roughly 8 to 17x EBITDA (median ~11.6x for media companies). On year-three EBITDA of $11.6M, that implies an enterprise value of roughly $90M to $140M; by year four, $115M to $175M. Our first exit window opens in year three. From there, we have options: take an offer, keep building with our investors toward a larger outcome, or sell piece by piece, each engine is structured to stand alone.
This is not a hypothetical buyer pool. The exact companies we are built for are acquiring right now:
We are building, deliberately, the kind of asset all four of these buyer types are paying 8 to 17x EBITDA to own.
Pre-revenue and early-revenue companies raise to attack a moment, and this is the moment. The creator economy is doubling toward $500B+ by 2030; live commerce in the US is where China was in 2019; and LA soundstage prices are at a generational low. Capital deployed now compounds; capital deployed in two years buys a worse position in a more crowded market.
We have done the hard, unglamorous part already, with almost no money: product-market fit, brand, partnerships, and a signed co-ownership with Reach. We have transacted modestly and deliberately, a ~$300K friends-and-family round, early brand and content work with Medella and Saint Jō, and a growing agency pipeline, precisely so that this raise funds building, not discovery.
sources: carta / pitchbook, public reporting. full comparison in the data room.
A media company with owned infrastructure, owned IP, and the top creators in the world. Our first exit window opens at year three; from there we decide together, take an offer, keep compounding, or sell engine by engine. The money is a byproduct of doing the work at this level. We are here on purpose. Come build it with us.
marcus murphy / founder + ceo / hello@hotjuicestudios.com