Entrepreneurial young people flock to 'mini private equity' as the job market stagnates

BlackSalmon/Getty Images/iStockphoto

• Young people are flocking to search funds, which seek to buy and grow small businesses.
• The model is popular with MBAs and young professionals looking to test their entrepreneurial mettle.
• The trend comes amid growing job insecurity for white-collar workers.

Just two weeks ago, Adam Froendt was a vice president of private equity and junior capital at Churchill Asset Management, a private capital affiliate of insurance giant TIAA's asset manager Nuveen.

Not yet 30, he had been promoted three times in his eight years in the industry, closing more than 60 middle-market private equity deals and 30 fund investments.

Last month, he quit that promising job to run a business. Now, he just needs to find one to run.

Froendt is one of a growing number of young people looking to test their entrepreneurial mettle through the world of so-called search funds. Sometimes described as mini-private equity or entrepreneurship through acquisition, a search fund is a small investment fund run by one or two people established to buy an existing small business. Once the business is purchased, the "searchers" run it with an eye toward creating value by streamlining operations and growing in size.

A 2024 Stanford Business School study found that search fund creation hit an all-time high in 2023, the latest year with data, with more than 90 first-time search funds raised. The strategy is particularly hot among young people, with Stanford finding that nearly 80% of first-time fundraisers in 2023 clocked in at 35 or younger, including many freshly graduated MBAs.

Some searchers, like Froendt, are so eager to be their own boss that they forgo outside investments — using their personal savings or their spouse's income to fund their entrepreneurial ambitions.

The boom in search funds is partly a response to a more complicated job market. White-collar jobs, once the obvious pathway to success, feel less stable. The dream of entrepreneurship is still alive and well, but tech startups can feel out of reach given the enormous shadow tech giants like Google and Amazon now cast over the economy.

Search funds and their various cousins offer a more realistic path to entrepreneurship.

"It's an alternative to the romantic entrepreneurial belief that you can only succeed by starting a company," Newton Campos, professor of entrepreneurship at IE University in Madrid and the founding partner of Newton Equity Partners, a recently launched fund that invests in search funds, told BI.

Froendt, who was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug running a car wash in high school, calls it "betting on himself."

"Traditionally entrepreneurship is thought of as "zero-to-one," involving brand new ideas starting at the ground floor," Froendt said. "When my eyes opened to the thought of being an entrepreneur in the context of an existing business, it immediately resonated with me."

Here's why some of the brightest young people are choosing to buy and operate unglamorous businesses like porta-potty rentals (yes, really) instead of climbing the corporate ladder.

Adam Froendt

Adam Froendt

How search funds work

The original search fund model, created in the 1980s, begins with an entrepreneur finding investors to fund their salary and expenses during a multi-year search for a business worth buying.

Froendt is taking a higher-risk and higher-reward path by self-funding his search, which takes, on average, two years. This model offers more flexibility over the businesses targeted, as well as more control and, eventually, more equity. As the founder of TrueGrit Capital, Froendt will be living off his "own personal balance sheet" (his savings) for up to two years.

The next step is to buy a successful small business, often from an owner-operator looking to retire. Froendt is looking for a company with between $3 million and $12 million in yearly revenue located between Maryland and South Carolina and in the healthcare services (think home health or care management), financial services (think insurance or accounting), or knowledge (think training or certification) industries.

The searchers' goals are to streamline operations, grow revenue, and create value for themselves and their shareholders. Most searchers plan to exit after five or more years, though some plan to hold indefinitely, which is what Froendt hopes to do.

The payout can be massive. According to the Stanford study, the average return on investment across the search funds studied was four and a half times invested capital, much higher than that of a traditional private equity firm.

There are many similarities to private equity, causing some to call the model "mini private equity." But Peter Kelly, a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business who conducts the biannual survey and who ran a successful search fund business in home health care, said the terminology is inaccurate.

Kelly, who prefers the phrase entrepreneurship through acquisition, said that the model borrows from private equity financing but is fueled by the entrepreneur's desire to become an owner-manager.

The manager of a private equity fund gets paid through fees, incentivizing them to grow their assets under management, he said. A searcher is a direct investor (usually the largest) and gets paid by growing the business.

A.J. Wasserstein, a senior lecturer at the Yale School of Business put it this way: "Search is about jumping into a CEO role and leading and building. Private equity is about providing capital."

Why it's growing

Search funds were developed in the MBA world, and some of its popularity can be traced to an ever-growing list of courses about the model.

Campos counts 25 schools that teach it worldwide but said he expects the number to reach 100 in just a few years.

As interest in search funds grows, more firms, including Pacific Lake Partners and Relay Investments, have raised funds to invest in them. Campos founded his own investment fund earlier this year to help institutional investors find search funds in Europe and beyond.

Campos, who said he sold a rental apartment to invest, has made 18 personal investments in search funds, which have netted him a nice return.

Websites like SearchFunder, which connects investors with prospective searchers, and a series of how-to guides have made "searching" easier than ever.

"A Primer on Search Funds," updated every few years by Kelly and his Stanford colleagues, offers a very granular guide to the process, including sample legal documents to help close a deal. Campos called the document the "Bible" for the business model.

Harvard professors and entrepreneurs Rocye Yudkoff and Richard Ruback have published the "HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business," another essential read for anyone interested in the industry.

They've even turned it into a podcast, recently discussing how buying a successful small business can be less risky than betting on a career with a large corporation.

"That institution might be around forever, but that doesn't mean you're going to be around forever inside that institution," Yudkoff said.

Interest in search funds is only expected to continue as tech and consulting firms cut jobs and Wall Street hiring slows amid fears of an economic downturn.

Some 15% of the Harvard Business School's 2024 class that were looking for jobs did not receive any job offers after graduation, compared to only 4% in 2021.

Search funds have even become the target of online jokers. They are a recurring theme of Search Fund Stu, a financial meme maker on Instagram whose page is full of jokes about unsexy businesses like port-a-potty rentals and social media influencers promoting the model.

Search Fund Stu told BI that he is operating a business that he bought through a search fund, and asked to remain anonymous so he can post freely. One of his posts shows a photo of an uncomfortable-looking dog, labeled "MBA without a full-time offer" and riding a mini-horse labeled "a $500k search fund."

Alongside the jokers, there are lively discussions on "SMB Twitter/X," where current operators commiserate and gloat about the highs and lows of the model, spawning some bonafide influencer stars, like Codie Sanchez, with more than half a million X followers and 2 million Instagram followers.

Sanchez left a career as a private equity investor to buy and sell small businesses and teach the model to others through her media brand, Contrarian Thinking.

Froendt recently quit social media but said that Walker Deibel, another influencer and author of the guide "Buy Then Build," played a big part in his decision to try out the model.

Kelly warns, however, that people shouldn't jump into search funds because they see it online. They are still quite risky compared to climbing the corporate hierarchy, with 37% of funds raised failing to acquire a company and 31% of companies acquired either still operating or having exited at a loss, according to the Stanford survey.

"We try not to promote it in the classroom, and I don't care if my students do it, I just want them to learn about it," Kelly said.

"If no Stanford business school graduates did it one year, I might say, 'That's too bad,'" he said, adding: "If 30 graduates did it, that would make me nervous."

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Sick of Musk and Zuckerberg, Gen Z is flocking to Tumblr

The creator of Kind Bars is now investing in longevity. Here's what his firm is betting on.

Camino Partners founder Daniel Lubetsky and president Elle Lanning.

Camino Partners

• Kind Snacks founder Daniel Lubetsky is going all in on longevity.
• The boutique fitness chain Barry's is among his VC firm's first longevity investments.
• Lubetsky's Camino Partners joins a growing cohort of investors throwing cash at antiaging startups.

Kind Snacks founder and Shark Tank regular Daniel Lubetsky is making his next bet on longevity.

Lubetsky launched his own venture firm, Camino Partners, in 2023, three years after selling Kind Snacks to Mars in a deal reportedly valued at $5 billion.

He no longer has a stake in Kind. Now, he's looking for companies to back that share Kind's ethos — creating natural, healthy products accessible to consumers, as he described it to Business Insider.

With that strategy, Camino Partners has invested in the global fitness chain Barry's, joining lead investor Princeton Equity Group.

The firm also backed medical spa acquirer WellLabs and home health company LiveWell.

Those three investments kick off Camino's full turn into longevity, Lubetsky said. Camino's portfolio includes 17 total investments, most of which are food brands, including the fast-casual Mediterranean franchise Cava and the regional burger chain Whataburger.

"There's overlap between consumer-packaged goods and longevity, but we're now going to focus not just on that overlap but on other areas of longevity as well," Lubetsky said.

Camino is capitalizing on a surge of interest in the burgeoning longevity industry, with scientific advancements in longer living emerging alongside tech entrepreneurs like Bryan Johnson spending millions to reverse the aging process.

But Lanning said Camino isn't chasing a trend.

"This space is certainly having its moment, but we're not here for the moment. We're here for the long-term durable solutions that will truly better people's lives," she said.

Lubetsky has mostly invested in food brands to date. Now, he's going all in on longevity.

KIND

On nature's side

Johnson and much of the growing throng of tech bros following in his footsteps don't just want to extend their lifespans. Instead, they want to elevate their bodies to superhuman status and, perhaps, prevent death entirely.

While Lubetsky says he's comfortable with some degree of technological intervention in longevity, he's more interested in backing companies scaling proven wellness solutions in areas like exercise, nutrition, and sleep.

"My predilection as we go into longevity will be not to do things that don't feel like what nature intended," he said.

Within longevity, Lanning said Camino is considering investments in aging, women's health, digital health, and overall well-being achieved through those more natural means.

Many of Camino's investments, including the new longevity bets, draw on a $350 million sum Lubetsky committed to the firm in 2023. Camino Partners president Elle Lanning, who leads the firm's investing practice, didn't say how much of the $350 million Camino has deployed to date. However, she said the firm is able to invest capital beyond that initial funding to go after "high-conviction opportunities."

Camino Partners invested in the high-intensity fitness franchise Barry's, originally known as Barry's Bootcamp, as part of its longevity strategy.

Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images

Taking the long view

Camino exclusively makes growth-stage investments. Lanning said the firm is focused on backing businesses with demonstrated traction and efficacy.

In particular, she said good investment candidates have $20 million in revenue, great gross margins, and the ability to draw in customers organically by solving a problem in the market.

She's wary of point solutions popping up in longevity, such as companies that identify biomarkers with blood tests or other tools but don't follow up with care options.

"In the long term, a business that gives you problem identification only and isn't giving you tracked solutions is going to lead to consumer fatigue," she said.

Lanning said she's all for people like Johnson experimenting with their personal longevity routines. But she and Lubetsky noted that they're prioritizing evidence-based solutions in Camino's portfolio with the goal of building credibility in a sector often characterized by unsubstantiated claims.

"We want to build a brand where whenever we invest, consumers can trust," Lubetsky said.

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Gen Z is facing a career apocalypse

 

C.J. Burton for BI

Throughout his college studies, Ryan Kim always had a postgraduation game plan. First it was to become a database manager. Then it was to break into fintech as a business analyst. But during his sophomore and junior years, as the tech industry laid off nearly half a million workers, Kim struggled to secure an internship. So he set his eyes on a new career: public service.

Kim was far from the only Gen Zer making the same pivot. Last year, according to the job site Handshake, the share of applications it received from college seniors for entry-level openings in tech dropped by 19% from 2022, while the share to jobs in government nearly doubled. Even younger kids saw the writing on the wall. In surveys, high school students used to cite tech giants like Google and Apple as the places they most wanted to work. But last year, in a startling shift, both the FBI and NASA ranked higher than any of those tech companies. Silicon Valley was out. Capitol Hill was in.

It took Kim only a single application to land a yearlong paid internship at the Food and Drug Administration. His performance reviews were good, and he planned to stay on at the agency after he earned his degree in May. "You hear so many horror stories of people in tech being laid off with little notice," he tells me. "Government jobs are secure. What drew me into it was the stability."

So much for that plan.

This month, with his graduation fast approaching, Kim abruptly lost his internship amid the government-wide havoc Elon Musk has unleashed at DOGE. With most federal hiring on an indefinite hold, he's been scrambling to find a job — any job. "It's been a huge source of stress," he says. "Most of the private industry has already hired their graduating students."

Kim is one of the roughly 2 million students set to graduate this spring into an exceptionally shaky job market. Things were already looking tough for the class of 2025, given the steep hiring slump in industries like tech, finance, and consulting. But now, as Musk takes a chainsaw to the government, many college seniors are in panic mode. Some have seen their offers at federal agencies rescinded; others have received no word on jobs they applied to months ago.

It's not just government positions that are taking a hit — it's jobs at a whole host of businesses, nonprofits, and universities that rely on federal funding and contracts. And going to graduate school — the traditional backup plan for students during times of economic instability — may not even be an option, if the Department of Education winds up being unable to deliver financial aid in a timely fashion. As the government is slashed to the bone in the name of efficiency, the careers of many Gen Zers could suffer for years to come.

"The impact is broad scale," says Saskia Campbell, the executive director of university career services at George Mason University. "There is this sense of grief, of loss of opportunity. This is the first year I'm actually concerned."

To make matters worse, the outlook is likely to get even more dismal in the months ahead, as President Donald Trump's tariff wars spur companies to hold off on hiring. "Two years ago, the bulk of the uncertainty and fear was in Big Tech," says Briana Randall, the executive director of the career and internship center at the University of Washington. "Now it feels uncertain in a lot of areas."

All of that leaves America's soon-to-be new grads unsure of where to turn. Sarina Parsapasand, a public policy major who's graduating from the University of Southern California this spring, was hoping to land a job in government service. But now, given the chaos in Washington, she's switched to trying to land a job in the private sector. "I have bills to pay," she says. "I can't take the risk of being in a job that doesn't guarantee the stability for me to live my life."

It's a sentiment I hear over and over again from the students I speak with. "The job market just seems super unstable in almost any field," says Katie Schwartz, a sophomore at Tulane. "It's less about finding a job you really love now and more just about finding a job that's going to give you job stability."

I'm impressed by the clear-eyed pragmatism of these students — but I'm also saddened by how old they sound. Isn't job stability what you look for when you're middle-aged, with a mortgage to pay and kids to support? When I graduated from college in 2009 without a full-time job, I was panicked but still idealistic. These kids, in contrast, seem hardened by all the chaos they've endured from a young age. In high school, they watched their parents get laid off in the pandemic. In college, they watched older students struggle to land good jobs during the tech downturn — or worse, had their hard-won offers rescinded at the last minute.

The upheaval and uncertainty have taught today's graduates to prepare for the worst. Over the past year, one college senior tells me, she's been intentionally neglecting her studies so she could focus exclusively on her job search, sending out as many as 15 applications a day. The hustle paid off with three offers, including one she accepted from a government contractor. It's her "dream job," she says, because it would enable her to make a real difference in the world.

But now, given the chaos in Washington, she's leaning toward reneging on the offer and accepting a position at a finance company. (That's why she asked me not to use her name.) "I try to keep an optimistic outlook," she tells me. But when I ask her how she feels about taking her first steps into adulthood, she doesn't sound optimistic at all.

"It makes me pretty nervous," she says. "I think a lot of people in my generation have accepted that we're not going to live the same quality of life our parents provided us."

During hard economic times, we expect to hear stories about people losing their jobs. But the greatest casualties often end up being the young people who don't have jobs to lose in the first place. Hiring freezes hurt them the most, making it impossible for them to even get their foot in the door. And research shows just how long a shadow that can cast on someone's career. Five years after the Great Recession, my generation of millennials was earning 11% less than Gen Xers were at a comparable age. And our net worth fell 40% behind theirs, forcing us to delay many of life's biggest milestones: buying a home, starting a family, saving for retirement.

The effects go far beyond money. Students who graduated into the 1982 recession, for example, wound up with fewer kids and more divorces than those who entered better job markets. Even more shocking, the research shows, they were more likely to die early. Whatever gains in efficiency Trump hopes to achieve from DOGE, its most lasting legacy may end up being the harm it inflicts on the careers — and perhaps even the life spans — of his youngest constituents.

That leaves college seniors like Kim scrambling to find a foothold in a job market that is stacked against them. Many companies have already filled their entry-level positions, if they're hiring new grads at all. And he's now competing not only with his fellow students, but also with the flood of young government workers who have been laid off by DOGE — workers who have more experience than he does. As graduation nears, he's trying not to panic. But it's hard to retain a sense of hope when even lower-paying jobs in public service are no longer an option.

"I'm not sure how my future's going to turn out," Kim tells me. And that, when you think about it, is a future that should worry us all.

---

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent for Business Insider.

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History suggests Ukraine needs heavily armed peacekeepers to have a chance of success

Any peacekeeping force in Ukraine would be caught between two nations so armed to the teeth that nearly all forward positions are fortified.

Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images

• Peacekeepers have frequently failed to prevent wars, or have even become targets themselves.
• Peacekeeping forces tend to have more symbolic power than firepower.
• Ukraine's best chance is European mechanized brigades with a clear mandate.

As Europe mulls dispatching peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, the history of peacekeeping missions suggests the effort is far from a sure-bet. Peacekeepers have frequently failed to prevent wars, or have even become targets themselves.

Peacekeeping is usually associated with the UN, which first sent military observers to the Middle East in 1948 to monitor the armistice after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and today has 72,000 peacekeepers in 11 conflict zones. Russian peacekeepers served alongside NATO troops in Bosnia, and unsuccessfully acted as a buffer between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The African Union has also deployed forces from South Africa and African states in regional conflicts. For poorer nations, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, volunteering their soldiers for relatively well-paid UN peacekeeping has become a source of revenue.

The idea of using European troops to maintain a shaky peace between Ukraine and Russia immediately runs into a definitional problem. Would they be there to keep the peace, or to protect Ukraine? Peacekeepers are typically supposed to be neutral and act primarily as monitors. Indeed, the UN lists four basic principles of peacekeeping: impartiality, consent of the warring parties, and not using force except in self-defense.

Accusations of bias against peacekeepers are not uncommon. Israel, for example, has long accused the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) of ignoring Hezbollah activities along the Israel-Lebanon border, which led to Israeli troops entering Lebanon in October.

But a European peacekeeping mission would be problematic. Even though the proposed peacekeeping force in Ukraine would be under European rather than NATO auspices, the troops would come from NATO or NATO-friendly nations. It is hard to believe that Russia would see it as anything other than a permanent Western expeditionary force to defend Ukraine against another Russia.

Irish troops with the UNIFIL mission in southern Lebanon dismounted an armored personnel carrier in March.

Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images

There are essentially two concepts for a peacekeeping force. One is to act as an armed conflict monitor, which can document which side has violated agreements. Another is to have sufficient force size and a mandate to defend an attacked party, similar to the US-led United Nations Command established to defend South Korea from re-invasion that has been in operation for over seven decades.

Either way, there is a danger: What happens when the peacekeepers themselves are attacked, either accidentally caught in the crossfire or deliberately targeted?

Some 4,423 UN peacekeepers had died as of February 2025, of which 1,134 were killed by "malicious action." In Lebanon, UN troops have been hit by both Israeli and Hezbollah fire. In January 2025, several UN peacekeepers were killed fighting M23 rebels in eastern Congo.

Peacekeeping forces tend to have more symbolic power than firepower. Those ubiquitous white armored cars used by UN troops may be enough to deter unarmed rioters and looters, or perhaps insurgents with light weapons and IEDs. But in Congo, UN forces are having difficulty confronting rebels armed with anti-tank missiles and drones.

Any peacekeeping force in Ukraine would be caught between two nations armed to the teeth with artillery, tanks, missiles and drones. Fully equipped European mechanized brigades, backed by airpower, might have the firepower to deter attacks. In fact, Ukrainian officials have said that a European peacekeeping mission only makes sense if the peacekeepers are prepared to fight.

On the other hand, Russia invaded to dominate Ukraine and steer it away from the EU and NATO. A strong force of British and French troops on the Russian border could be viewed by the Kremlin as a provocation.

Russia doesn't even need tanks or cannon to make peacekeeping untenable. There are numerous ways to harass peacekeepers, from IEDs laid by shadowy pro-Russian groups, to artillery barrages that "accidentally" hit a barracks. While this would risk escalation with Europe and perhaps NATO, Moscow could hope that even a few casualties would spur the European public to demand the troops come home.

Ultimately, the success of peacekeeping is measured by whether peace is kept, or at least the violence is toned down. The record here is spotty. Israelis still remember how in 1967 the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) — stationed in Sinai as a buffer between Israel and Egypt — abruptly left in response to Egyptian demands. The result was Israel launching a preemptive strike against Egypt in the Six-Day War. UNIFIL troops have been stationed along the Israel-Lebanon border since 1978, but this hasn't prevented wars in 1982, 2006 and 2024, as well as numerous border incidents.

However, the UN does claim that peacekeeping works, pointing to successful missions in places such as Cambodia and Namibia. Stationing troops in allied nations has also succeeded in maintaining peace: US troops in South Korea may well have deterred North Korea from invading, while those deployed in Germany during the Cold War helped prevent a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

Peacekeeping seems most likely to succeed either when the peacekeepers either have overwhelming force, or when the warring parties themselves decide to stop fighting. A European peacekeeping force in Ukraine might enjoy neither.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn

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Hollywood is entering its Trump era

Hollywood is adapting to the new era of Trump.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

• Hollywood is toning down liberal themes in response to the new political climate.
• Studios are being cautious about diverse characters and storylines.
• Economic factors were already driving a shift toward conservative, broadly appealing programming.

Hollywood is quietly bowing to the new era of Trump.

As big entertainment companies have cut back on their corporate DEI efforts, creatives and their reps say there's also been a perceptible chill on liberal themes in programming.

No one is issuing diktats, but the shift has manifested in subtle ways, according to 10 writers, producers, and talent reps who spoke with Business Insider. It's taken the form of studio execs asking producers to tweak storylines and characters — or nixing them altogether — and companies backing off past directives to ensure casts were diverse.

Zoe Marshall, a feature and TV writer whose credits include CBS's "Elsbeth," said producers and studios had explicitly told her that certain storylines — such as some involving queer and social justice themes — were no longer acceptable.

"Over the course of my career, I have never felt like I had to actually consider what was going on in the administration when I was thinking about what was going on on the screen," she said. Marshall, as well as some others in this story, avoided naming associates and studios to protect job prospects.

An entertainment lawyer previously told BI some financiers were scrutinizing filmmakers for their political views before deciding to invest. This person said several of their clients received notes from streamers or networks that they felt were designed to avoid provoking Trump or his allies. One of the notes was to avoid making a prominent trans character come across as too positive.

"I've never had a president figure so much in decision-making," this person said.

Independent films usually have more artistic freedom because they're financed outside traditional studios and institutions. But there's a chill in the air in the indie space, too.

Jonathan Handel, an entertainment lawyer, said a trans-related documentary had faced delays because its subjects were "terrified" about a backlash.

"There's more transphobia in the air than three months ago," he said.

Another entertainment lawyer, Harry Finkel, said some studios that once made great efforts to spotlight minority groups are now signaling they're more focused on not offending the right.

"There is a repetitive comment appearing along the lines of, 'We're looking for something with more broad appeal,'" he said.

One producer said a major studio told them to be race-blind in casting, a "stark departure" from what they were used to hearing a couple of years ago when diverse casting was paramount.

The rightward shift is being met with distress among some who have pushed for more diversity on the screen.

But others are feeling a bit more creative freedom.

Creators are taking more liberties to pitch jokes and other material they think could appeal to people on the right, two agents told BI. Talent like Shane Gillis, who landed on Netflix last year after being dropped by "Saturday Night Live" in 2019 over racist comments, are hotter than ever.

Shane Gillis is a hotter commodity than ever in Hollywood.

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for Clusterfest/Getty Images

Hollywood is self-correcting

Industry insiders see a clear-cut difference between now and Trump 1.0.

Then, entertainment execs locked arms in their vocal opposition to the president's policies. Disney CEO Bob Iger called Trump's reversal of a Dreamers program "cruel and misguided" and resigned from a presidential panel in protest of the White House's withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. Even Fox's James Murdoch criticized the president. On the screen, shows like CBS's "The Good Fight" and NBC's "Will & Grace" reboot confronted Trump and took on hot-button political issues. CBS set targets for its programs to meet diverse casting targets.

In his second term, Trump has revived complaints against TV networks, challenged the funding of public media, and blocked some news outlets from covering events. Studios, like many in corporate America, are overhauling DEI programs. TV networks that belong to media and entertainment conglomerates are on edge.

In March, Amazon announced it was bringing the Trump-starring reality show "The Apprentice" to Prime Video. It's also paying for a Melania Trump documentary that the first lady will executive produce.

Hollywood was already moving in a conservative direction before Trump's election to a second term. After long playing to the coasts, studios and streamers embraced faith-based, conservative-themed, and family-aimed entertainment.

Disney, often caught in the culture wars, had already begun to pull back on political messaging in its offerings before Trump. Netflix and Amazon both did deals for faith-based programming in 2024.

The incentives for the programming shift are economic as well as politically expedient. Studios and streamers are being conservative with their entertainment dollars as the cable business wanes and some streamers struggle for profitability. They're looking for sure things and pockets of audiences where there's opportunity. Faith-based and family-oriented shows can be made relatively cheaply, without the need for big-name stars, and can travel globally.

"I think the correction is more in the direction to more broad, less niche," one agent said. "More stuff that won't automatically turn off 50% of the country one way or the other."

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OpenAI is getting overwhelmed by 'Ghiblified' photo edits. So is the guy who helped popularize the craze.

Studio Ghibli

Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

• There's a new craze for making "Studio Ghibli"-style photo-edits with ChatGPT.
• OpenAI's servers are getting swamped by demand — as is the engineer who helped popularize the trend.
• But it has also prompted discussion around the ethics and copyright implications of the images.

OpenAI is getting overwhelmed with photo creation prompts in the style of Studio Ghibli films — and so is the guy who helped popularize the craze.

Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio known for films with vibrant animation styles like "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro." Users on X flooded the service this week with AI-generated images in the style of Studio Ghibli films.

Grant Slatton, a software engineer in Seattle, helped popularize the "Ghiblified" AI photo edit trend. In a post on Tuesday afternoon, hours after OpenAI launched upgraded image-generation tools, he shared a photo on X of his family and dog at the beach in the animated style, captioning it: "tremendous alpha right now in sending your wife photos of yall converted to studio ghibli anime."

Slatton is not the first person to use AI to create anime-style imagery, of course. But his Tuesday tweet seems to have been instrumental in the growth of the current wave. The retweets and replies quickly rolled in as other users followed his lead. As of writing it has 42,000 likes and almost 27 million views, and he has been bombarded by messages from X users about their own attempts, he told BI.

"It's the single most net-positive day I've ever seen on Twitter," he said. "I got hundreds of DMs and replies telling me their spouse or kids or grandparents loved the pictures."

tremendous alpha right now in sending your wife photos of yall converted to studio ghibli anime pic.twitter.com/FROszdFSfN

— Grant Slatton (@GrantSlatton) March 25, 2025

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joked on Thursday that the company's servers were "melting" after ChatGPT users flooded the service.

"we are going to temporarily introduce some rate limits while we work on making it more efficient," Altman said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. "hopefully won't be long! chatgpt free tier will get 3 generations per day soon."

Altman added that it's been "super fun seeing people love images in chatgpt."

OpenAI began blocking some requests for Ghibli-style content on Wednesday night after deciding to ban "generations in the style of individual living artists," the company previously told BI. ChatGPT does allow for generating images with "broader studio styles," the company said.

"Our goal is to give users as much creative freedom as possible,
a spokesperson said. "We continue to prevent generations in the style of individual living artists, but we do permit broader studio styles—which people have used to generate and share some truly delightful and inspired original fan creations."

OpenAI did not respond to a follow-up question from BI on Thursday afternoon about why some tiers of GPT users are still able to generate the images.

Slatton had previously made an animation-style photo of his family in December 2023, but the DALL-E model at the time required a "painstaking" process of describing exactly how he wanted it to look. But ChatGPT generated the new photo with a simple prompt of "convert to studio ghibli please," he said.

"It does it as easily as translating English to Spanish," Slatton told BI.

Slatton said the response to the post has been overwhelmingly positive with even some people who would normally be anti-AI art posting photos of themselves "Ghiblified."

Users who haven't been able to access the feature have also DMed him "heartwarming" requests with their family photos, he said, adding that he "probably did over 100" photos.

A backlash quickly followed the Ghibli-edit craze. Questions have been raised about the ethics and copyright implications of mimicking a specific artist or studio's style — issues that have bedeviled the artificial intelligence industry for years.

A clip from a 2016 documentary interview with Mizayaki also went viral, in which the director watches a zombie-esque 3D animation with disturbing movements produced by an artificial intelligence model.

"I can't watch this stuff and find [it] interesting," Miyazaki said, citing the experience of his friend with a disability and mobility issues. "Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."

Some X users have interpreted his comments as a blanket denunciation of all AI art, though others disagree. "I interpret this as him being opposed to artificial life, artificial emotions, artificial pain," Slatton said. "Whereas the ghiblification trend is an enhancement of real joy."

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