GTA 6 Isn't Out Yet, but Its Side Hustle Economy Is Already a Gold Mine for Young Creators

Source: My First Million | Published: 2026-04-29T10:01:44Z

GTA 5 made $1B in three days and still pulls in $500M a year after 12 years. GTA 6 is projected to hit $3B in its first year — and the content creation and mod economy around it could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

When he joined a company in 2012, the team had a single iPhone engineer — and the iPhone had been on the market for four years. He was building social media products: messaging apps, photo sharing, all leftovers from the previous wave. Snapchat already existed. WhatsApp was founded in 2009. He was floating in circles on the lazy river while the real waves were breaking in the distance.

The GTA 6 Peripheral Economy Is a Training Ground for Young Entrepreneurs

A friend of Sam's once talked him into going heavy on crypto, then went on to spot several waves early. About a year ago, this friend showed up at his house and said he wanted to launch a hostile takeover of Take-Two Interactive. Sam's reaction: You're insane — you don't even know what a hostile takeover is.

But the friend laid out a Buffett-style investment thesis: GTA 5 did $1 billion in sales in its first three days — bigger than any movie. Twelve years later, it still pulls in $500 million a year. The gaming industry is three times the size of Hollywood. And GTA has no substitute — there's no "Pepsi," only "Coca-Cola." The franchise has sold nearly 500 million copies lifetime, generated over $20 billion in revenue, was the fastest entertainment product ever to hit $1 billion, and sits in the same IP tier as Pokémon and Harry Potter.

The hostile takeover was shelved after the stock price ran up — a higher price means lower returns, which makes it harder to rally support. But Sam's real point wasn't about investing in Take-Two. It was about the peripheral economy that GTA 6's launch will create. Development alone cost $1 billion. Analysts project $3 billion in first-year sales, with pre-orders potentially breaking $1 billion before release.

During the GTA 5 era, someone built a mod called NoPixel that became more popular on Twitch than the official game and was eventually acquired by the company. This time around, the content creation, mod tools, data scraping, strategy guides, and in-game item trading around GTA 6 could generate hundreds of millions of dollars. The key: the game isn't out yet, and nobody has a first-mover advantage. For anyone between 13 and 25, this is a chance to learn business within your own circle of competence.

The G-Fuel Lesson: An Undervalued Trust Asset

Sean told the story of G-Fuel, an energy drink brand. At the time, brands evaluated influencer partnerships by follower count. Twitch streamers didn't have huge numbers, so nobody bothered with them. But G-Fuel spotted a mismatch: Twitch viewers watch the same streamer for eight hours a day — the depth of trust far exceeds what the follower count suggests.

G-Fuel ran the Nike playbook — found popular streamers, created custom flavors, custom shaker cups, and custom colorways for each one, and offered affiliate commissions. Traditional brands weren't touching these creators, so deals were easy to close. The result: G-Fuel went from zero to $100 million in sales, and people like Sam and Sean had never even heard of it, because the entire growth loop happened inside the gaming community.

The core lesson: the mismatch between influence and price is the best arbitrage opportunity there is.

Twitch Viewing Habits Are More Like Podcasts Than You'd Think

Sam doesn't game, but he was curious: do people really sit and watch someone else stream for hours? Sean broke it down into three scenarios — young people use their phone as the main screen to watch streams; others have it on the TV as background noise; and programmers leave it running on a second monitor or a background tab, like white noise in a waiting room.

The most popular category on Twitch isn't even gaming — it's "Just Chatting," where people simply talk. The third most popular is IRL, where streamers broadcast real-world adventures while viewers experience it from bed. There's a guy selling hot dogs with 80 people watching.

TBPN Acquired by OpenAI: An Epic Creator Exit

TBPN is a tech live-streaming show that was acquired by OpenAI after operating for less than 18 months. The rumored price was between $100 million and $200 million. Both Sean and Sam called it an epic deal for founders John and Jordi.

But Sam was blunt: it's a bad deal for OpenAI. He compared it to HubSpot's acquisition of The Hustle — HubSpot used media to sell $20,000-a-year software with a direct attribution chain, and grew users from 90,000 to 200,000 post-acquisition. OpenAI already has 900 million monthly active users. TBPN's flagship show might have 90,000 viewers — what kind of growth does buying it deliver?

"If the only justification is that it's cool, that's not business logic."

Sam's prediction was sharper: in two years, OpenAI's board will ask "why do we own a media company," then sell TBPN back to its founders while retaining a 5% stake. Just like what happened with Barstool — one deal becomes two deals, and the founders win twice.

OpenAI's Logic Barely Holds Up — But Barely

Sean tried to make the case for OpenAI: what's $100 million to a company valued at $800 billion? If that money buys John and Jordi's understanding of modern media strategy, a single brand-positioning insight could pay for itself.

The argument has some merit, especially given that AI faces a serious public image crisis. But OpenAI is talking out of both sides of its mouth: claiming TBPN will maintain complete editorial independence and won't become a propaganda vehicle — so what exactly did $100 to $200 million buy?

Why Americans Hate AI (and Sam Altman)

Polling data Sean has seen shows AI is even more unpopular than Trump. Sam Altman has become the "hateable face" of AI — someone threw a Molotov cocktail at his house, and two days later someone else fired a gun at it. The Molotov thrower was later arrested at OpenAI's offices.

Sam believes the root cause goes beyond AI itself. Many people's baseline state is deep dissatisfaction: they went to college, did "everything right," work 60 hours a week, and still can barely make rent — always one month away from bankruptcy. On top of that, you tell them their jobs are disappearing, electricity bills are going up because of data centers, and someone is pulling in hundreds of millions in compensation. Anger is the natural response.

As for the personal animosity toward Altman, Sam thinks the core issue is inauthenticity. Altman comes across as someone who tells you whatever you want to hear — and he's admitted himself that he avoids confrontation and tends to mirror the other person. By contrast, Elon Musk, even when he's insufferable, is at least perceived as real.

Elon May Be Suppressing TBPN's Reach

Jason Lemkin noticed that after OpenAI acquired TBPN, they practically vanished from his feed. Numerous users reported the same thing. It could be an algorithmic coincidence, but given Elon's track record — he tried to acquire Substack, was rejected, and X then effectively shadowbanned all Substack links — the theory isn't far-fetched.

What TBPN Actually Got Right: Inverting the Clip-to-Show Relationship

Sean argues that TBPN broke a default assumption in the podcast industry. The traditional model: the long-form show is the product, and clips are promotional tools. TBPN flipped it — the four-hour livestream is a single "planting," designed to yield 20 great short videos per day. The short videos are the product; the livestream is the production line.

This means they show up where users are already scrolling, using 10-second and 30-second clips to drive distribution, instead of trying to pull people onto another platform for an hour-long show. Combine that with going all-in on Twitter when nobody else was doing it, and the results were remarkable.

"The Great Lockdown": John Turned Down Every Temptation

Before founding TBPN, John had 450,000 YouTube subscribers and videos hitting a million views. He walked away — because it wasn't something he wanted to do for ten years.

Sean invited him to a basketball camp with the Airbnb founder, the Reddit founder, MrBeast, and others. John's response: Can I bring Jordi? Can we record the show there? When both answers were no, he declined. At that point, TBPN didn't even have a live show — it was just an account replying to tweets on Twitter. He said he had momentum and didn't want to break it for even 48 hours.

When Sean asked how he felt about the acquisition, John replied: "This is proof of the great lockdown."

Twelve months. Full commitment every day. Regardless of whether anyone else thought it mattered.

Hearst: A 200-Year Media Empire That Started with a San Francisco Newspaper

Sam has been studying William Randolph Hearst, trying to understand how to build a company that lasts 200 years. Hearst's father was a Missouri miner who got moderately wealthy, went broke, then became one of the richest men in America by 60. Hearst himself went to Harvard, took over the social hierarchy, then convinced his father to buy the San Francisco Examiner.

His rivalry with Joseph Pulitzer (yes, that Pulitzer) gave birth to "yellow journalism" — big headlines, photographs, emotional narrative over facts. "If it bleeds, it leads" comes from that era. Hearst's papers even played a role in pushing the U.S. into the Spanish-American War.

At his peak, 20% of Americans got their news from Hearst media. He spent the equivalent of $20 million a month and occasionally blew $2 to $4 billion on houses over a span of years. He built Hearst Castle — 40,000 acres with a private zoo of zebras, camels, and polar bears, later donated to the state of California as a museum. The government had to intervene and take over his company multiple times because he spent too aggressively.

Today, Hearst Corporation is still family-owned, generates roughly $15 billion in annual revenue, owns 20% of ESPN, half of A&E, magazines like Cosmopolitan, and that same San Francisco newspaper Hearst bought all those years ago.

How Hearst Collected Talent: Show Up in Person, Pay Generously, Take the Heat for Them

Hearst's most underrated skill was discovering creative talent. He was one of Mark Twain's earliest employers and signed Jack London. His method was simple: go find them yourself. He read a pamphlet by a 23-year-old journalist in Oakland, then traveled there in person to recruit him. Sam offered an analogy: imagine Phoebe Gates knocking on your door six months into your podcast, just because she read a blog post you wrote.

He paid well above market rate — Congress even held hearings on whether he constituted a "creative talent monopoly." More importantly, he took the heat for his creators. When a reporter wrote an article criticizing the president, Hearst said: Don't worry, I've got your back. That sense of safety earned fierce loyalty and assembled the strongest editorial team of the era.

It All Comes Down to Two Paths: You're the Genius, or You Can Recruit the Genius

Sean distilled every discussion into one framework: every company has one "main thing" it needs to get right, and that determines 70% of the outcome. For The Hustle, the "main thing" was first finding speakers who could sell tickets, then writing articles that could go viral. For Grüns (the supplement company just acquired for $1 billion), the "main thing" wasn't turning Athletic Greens into a gummy — anyone can do that — it was world-class marketing funnel capability.

Once you've identified that "main thing," there are only two paths: the founder is the world-class person who figures it out, or the founder is a world-class recruiter who brings those people in. An A+ person might cost 50% more than a B+ person, but they might produce 10x to 100x the output. That's the biggest asymmetric arbitrage in business.