Four Media Industry Leaders Partner to Launch ShowUp Studios

Four leading personalities in entertainment, music, and advertising —Mariano Chihade (Mandarina), Demián Falestchi (Kidscorp), Federico Lauría (DalePlay), and Carolina Lightcap (former Disney/Discovery)— are joining forces to launch ShowUp Studios, a new premium digital content studio and ecosystem for Gen Z, designed for YouTube, TikTok, and social platforms.

Show Up Studios combines the agility of content creators with the production quality of traditional media to build content at scale, using a model focused on brand integration and intellectual property development. In a landscape where Gen Z consumes an increasing amount of content on social platforms— and where the creator ecosystem continues to expand — the supply of premium content within this environment remains fragmented and difficult to scale commercially. This is the space that ShowUp Studios aims to fill.

ShowUp Studios plans to produce over 4,500 episodes within its first five years, spanning a variety of genres, formats, and runtimes —including both vertical and horizontal video— across both live-action and animation.

“ShowUp Studios was born with the ambition to build a studio and digital premium content ecosystem that is scalable and deeply centered on Gen Z —meeting this generation on the platforms where they already live; ensuring their voice is present at every stage of the process; and listening to their feedback as an audience day by day to deliver the content they are looking for,” commented Lightcap, who will lead the company.

“We are combining expertise in large-format productions with the new consumption dynamics of this generation—including vertical and horizontal formats, diverse genres and lengths, and collaboration with creators using a natively digital language,” said Chihade.

Lauría commented that “ShowUp Studios will serve as a space to discover and champion Ibero-American artistic talent, nurturing their growth within an ecosystem designed to generate long-term opportunities.”

“We are talking about approximately 100 million Gen Z across Latin America, the U.S. Hispanic market and Iberia, with a digital advertising market investment that exceeds $6.5 billion annually. ShowUp Studios uniquely bridges the gap between the media world and the creators’ economy, with the standards of quality and reliability that advertisers demand,” stated Falestchi.

The studio’s creative and operational approach is grounded in an ecosystem focused on building fandoms and communities; producing authentic, culturally relevant content for Gen Z; maintaining high production standards combined with storytelling fostering emotional connections; developing intellectual property with a focus on scalability; and strategically leveraging data and artificial intelligence to provide insights that inform creative development, distribution, and brand integration opportunities.

ShowUp Studios is already generating market interest as it conducts its pre-seed funding round. In the second half of the year, the company will host Upfront presentations to showcase its intellectual properties to advertisers before production.