Co-Founder @ Measure Studio 📈 AI-Powered Social Media Insights

I’m a 3x entrepreneur and M&A advisor who helps founders sell their businesses.

👋 WHY ME?

After I sold my first startup (Paladin), several founder friends reached out to me. They wanted to know what it was like and what I learned in the process.

A few of them were thinking about selling their companies and asked if I would help. After all, I understood the industry and probably knew most of the potential buyers.

So I agreed to help a few of those friends and found myself with a new side hustle as a boutique investment banker.

After cutting my teeth on a few deals, I realized how much I love working with entrepreneurs, so I made it official and launched my own M&A advisory practice: Quartermast Advisors.

🤝 WHAT I OFFER:

I help my clients manage the entire M&A process from start to finish, which includes:

✭ Preparing your materials (management presentation, financials, etc.)
✭ Identifying and getting in touch with the right buyers
✭ Negotiating the deal structure and economics
✭ Coordinating with legal and tax experts to protect your interests
✭ Asking thoughtful questions and providing useful advice along the way

🤔 WHY WORK WITH AN M&A ADVISOR?

Research shows that hiring a banker results in ~25% higher valuation premiums, on average.

It also frees founders up to continue operating the business and hit their targets. There's nothing worse than poor company performance during a sales process, so it's often more valuable for the team to focus on delivering good results rather than managing M&A discussions.

👨‍💻 WHO I HELP:

I stick to what I know: digital media, tech, and the creator economy. I’ve helped sell influencer agencies, talent management firms, enterprise SaaS companies, and more.

If you’ve been approached or are just thinking about selling your company now or in the future, shoot me a note. I’d be happy to chat and answer any questions.

If I’m the right fit, I’d love to help you out. And if I’m not, I’ll gladly point you in the right direction.

💬 I'VE BEEN FEATURED IN:
- Business Insider
- Digiday
- eMarketer
- Forbes
- Net Influencer
- New Economies
- PRWeek
- Scalable
- The Information
- The Publish Press
- TheWrap
- They Got Acquired
- Tubefilter
…and more

📢 I'VE SPOKEN AT:
- 1 Billion Followers Summit
- Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
- Digital Entertainment World (DEW)
- Digital First
- Digital Hollywood
- DMEXCO
- Social Media Week
- VidCon
- Youth Marketing Show (YMS)
…and more

James Creech

The creator economy is UNDER-hyped and will be far bigger than the wildest estimates.

Today, independent creators can already compete head to head with the giants by leveraging platforms: marketing & community building platforms (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram), e-commerce platforms (Shopify, Squarespace), financing platforms (Spotter, OpenSea, Patreon), talent platforms (Upwork, Fiverr). There are hundreds of niche platforms empowering independent creators and freelancers to make a living or create a sizable enterprise pursuing their passions. 

And with emerging GenAI, creators will be able to experience Exponential Creativity, competing even better than ever before.

As a result, for the first time in a hundred years, we now see a reversal and momentum shift back to small businesses. They aren't local in every town, but niche creators building global communities and selling products globally.

And its Day One. We predict there will be 500 million creators in 2029. 1 in 6 jobs will be a creator or someone working for them.

In 2029, the creator economy will become the global economy. What we watch and buy will be determined largely by creators.

Everything we know about how things are watched, marketed and sold will change.

Want to ride the wave? DM me

Rob Gabel

📺 Creator Television isn't coming, it's here. But until now, no one has been including them in the ratings. Until now...

Its a tragedy that nobody knows how BIG these top creators are with episodic shows watched on the living room TV 

Example: At the March 2025 Spotter Showcase, Nielsen+Spotter showed data that in the US, Jordan Matter's YouTube channel had more minutes watched --- on the TV screen (via YouTube app) --- than all but 7 streaming original series. 

Yeah, he and Salish didn't beat Bridgerton... but they came close

Streamers, brands, creators -- everyone is suffering from flying blind for this growing corner of the living room TV universe

Why don't more people know about this? The image below was a one off report. Nothing regular, no weekly releases.

That changes now. 

Spotter + Comscore have partnered to measure episodic, streaming shows on YouTube right alongside episodic, streaming shows on Netflix, Amazon, Tubi, Roku, Paramount, etc.

Who wants to see the Creator + Hollywood ratings side by side?!!?!!!!!!

(link in comments)

H/T Nic Paul Sam Rogoway Aaron DeBevoise Vineet Pathak and everyone who inked the partnership.

Rob Gabel 🇺🇸

Chief Strategy Officer @ Spotter | AI, Creator Economy

My favorite podcast episode of 2025, summarized for you in 3 minutes: Google the AI Company by Acqured:

1) Google is top 3 in all four layers of the AI stack. Nobody else has more than 2 

(cloud, ai chips, foundational model and consumer ai apps)

2) No other foundational frontier model company is profitable, Google is insane profitable

3) Google arguably has the most data out of any company to train their systems (android, chrome, gmail, search, ads, Gemini, drive, YouTube, maps, etc)

4) Google has more edges and distribution to embed and distribute AI as well (all of the above)

5) If OpenAI wasn’t founded out of fear Google was going to dominate and own all AI… Google probably would have dominated and owned it. They had all the top researchers and so much compute and data for the researchers 

6) But, a key reason Google hasn’t been broken up for a monopoly is because of completion from OpenAI, Anthropic etc. So you could argue that if Ilya hadn’t left Google, Google might be being broken up right now

What was your fave podcast episode in 2025?

(Podcast link in comments. Still worth listening to, their research is so deep snd the storytelling epic)

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