Creators are rethinking the exit

Driving the news: After selling The Home Edit to Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine in 2022, co-founders Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin seized an opportunity to buy the media company back, they announced in April.

• "It was owned by private equity. It was going to be sold. Why not take the opportunity for us to be the ones who own it again? It is our identity," Shearer said onstage at Axios House on Tuesday.
• Former "Today" co-anchor Hoda Kotb said at Axios House on Wednesday that she has no plans to sell her new wellness company Joy 101: "I don't want this to be a business I have and sell. I want this to be a business that I love and keep."
• As streamers like Netflix court podcasters, Mel Robbins told Axios at the Creators Stage on Tuesday that she would not consider an exclusive deal because she wants to keep her content free and widely accessible. (SiriusXM subscribers receive early access to new episodes.)

Yes, but: Some founders are satisfied with their deals. Rachel Zoe sold The Zoe Report to BDG (Bustle Digital Group) in 2018.

• "I stayed on as editor-at-large, and I'm still a big shareholder, and I love it, and I love what they're doing," Zoe said at Axios House on Monday.

The big picture: For many creator founders, ownership preserves agency and allows them to control how their content is distributed and how they engage with their audiences.

• "I think that the most important thing to me isn't the ownership," Shearer said when asked if she would sell again. "It's the agency. It's the autonomy. ... We were not gonna be able to do what we wanted to do unless we were at the top of the food chain."