Short answers, pulled from the story.
Rooster Teeth launched in April 2003 with six University of Texas alumni including Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola, and Joel Heyman. The group initially operated from an Austin office under the name drunkgamers.com before renaming the site to Rooster Teeth Productions.
The company created a program called Sponsorships that allowed fans to pay five dollars per month for early access to content. This subscription model became the financial backbone of the company before it had any outside investors or funding sources.
Monty Oum released the first episode of RWBY at RTX 2013 on the 14th of July 2013 but died from a severe allergic reaction during a medical procedure on the 1st of February 2015. The series continued under Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross after his death.
Jordan Levin notified staff that the company would close on the 6th of March 2024 due to fundamental shifts in consumer behavior and monetization across platforms. Revenue had dropped nearly twenty million dollars in 2019 according to reports prior to the shutdown announcement.
Rooster Teeth launched its own community website on the 4th of October 2004 to maintain direct contact with fans. The site hosted over two million registered users by 2021 including one hundred thirty-five thousand members who paid five dollars monthly for FIRST access.