The Vergecast - Bonus: Casey Neistat full interview

Episode Date: March 23, 2018

Nilay talks one-on-one with Casey Neistat about a multitude of topics, including Beme, his view of YouTube, Twitch, and other platforms, sponsorship, and what he’s up to next. It’s exactly what you’d expect from Neistat, honest and direct. If you already listened to the edited version on The Vergecast this week, skip to 11:50. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, it's Nealai from the Vergecast. If you listen to this week's show, you know we had a special guest. Casey Nystatt stopped by our office and sat down for basically an hour long super candid interview. It was really fun. We ran an edited version of that in the show this week, but we wanted to give everybody the full interview. So here it is. If you've already listened to the Vergecast, know that we edited what you heard there. So if you want just the new stuff, skip about 10 minutes in past the beam conversation.

And that's where the new stuff starts. We'll put the exact timestamp in the description for you. But enjoy this, the full interview with Casey Nystad. Casey Nistadt is here. Casey is here. Casey, I've been trying to get you on this show for a year, since we met at South by Southwest a year ago. You know, that makes it sound like I'm, this is some sort of like elusive. I live two blocks from here.

My office is three blocks. It's just been, like, you should publish our DM thread alongside this podcast. It's just like this Tuesday. And it's like, nah, it doesn't work. How's Wednesday? Not good for me. Yeah. for 365 days.

So can I tell the story of when we hung out at South by Southwest? One of the most insane dinners of my entire life. And I think I may have been hosting that dinner. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It was very strange. So CNN and just acquired Beam. That's right. And Casey, he invited me to dinner.

CNN's hosting dinner. There's like an insane guest list. You were there. Corey Booker was there. It was like, it was a big dinner. Jeff Zucker was there. Who else was there? Alexis was there.

Alexis Sahanian was there. It was a great dinner. There were some, and then there were some outliers there. I was there. The CMO mark of Samsung was there. And I remember like I was dressed as I'm dressed now, like sweater and jeans or something.

There were some people there in suits. I was also dressed like a piece of clothes. And then there were a couple people like in the corner that were like, what did you invite me to? Yeah. I'm wearing sweatpants. So it's this big fancy dinner.

And it's supposed to be on the roof of a hotel in Austin. Private chefs. And it was raining. Tarrantial. Tarrantial rain. So it got moved inside. And Jeff Zucker was very angry that it had been moved inside. We all were.

And then the fire alarms went off. And the door between us and the private chefs that were cooking for us began to slowly close by itself. And if I could paint the picture a little bit more, it's like a big, big room. Like a substantial room. And the chef's kitchen was open to the dining area, like a sort of like a fancy.

a restaurant situation so you can watch the chefs cook your meal. And the door just starting going down. Separating the two. And the light on the fire alarm was like flashing. You jumped up and put your hat over the light because it was so distracting. It was bright. And then we're like, we should hang out more. I mean, there are more details to that story too.

The whole point is the chefs were supposed to serve us, but they couldn't get to us because there was a firewall between us. They had to go out through the fire escape into the stairwell going all the way around. We weren't able to get our food. I didn't really notice her care, but I think the folks from CNN who organized it were like super upset about it. Senator Booker seemed pretty chill about the whole situation.

He was. He was very chill. Food is great. You know, if you're a guest, and I imagine a lot of people there are professional guests that go to a lot of events, your job is to be chill and, like, not make a scene. If you're the host in that situation, you are losing your shoes. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm like a, you know,

I ate at McDonald's four days a week. Like this fancy dinner. Like, I, alarms, this just felt normal to me, but they were really stressed out about it. Anyway, so that was one of the first times we, like, seriously hung out a year ago. We've been DMing ever since. And I've been, I mean, why don't you come on the show for a couple of reasons? One, I'm just interested in what you're doing. Two, and I want to talk about that.

Two, whatever is happening right now with platforms, it just seems out of control. And I think you're obviously one of the smartest thinkers at YouTube as a platform, but you think about all the other platforms, too. So I want to talk to you about that stuff. Because I think whatever's happening with Facebook right now is coming for YouTube next. And I really want to kind of get your thoughts on that. But I want to start with you. Please.

So that was a year ago. We were celebrating Beam. Tell me a little bit about Beam. What's that story? I mean, the whole story abbreviated and jump in for details. But, you know, I started that company. It was an idea. And it was the original idea was still an awesome idea.

But basically it was everybody's going to be wearing Google Glass or something. like it in the future and imagine if you could just tap your temple and capture what you're seeing and share it to the world. And the idea was conceived before Snapchat launched stories. I got really excited about that idea and I raised money and then partnered with Matt Hackett and then launched as a tech company and Google Glass then died and then Snapchat really came up and it sort of kept shifting and changing and growing and, you know, had a really successful launch, but like most apps do, sort of leveled off, and then Snapchat got really awesome,

way better than us, and I think we struggled in that space. Yeah. But, you know, in parallel with that life cycle of the software development company that was being was my YouTube channel, and the launch of my daily show on my YouTube channel, which was very much so about being the tech company. And I think it was a confluence of, you know, the technical prowess demonstrated by the team more so than what the product accomplished itself, combined with what I did in the new media space via the vlog,

that ended up being an attractive prospect to a couple of companies. In Turner, CNN was most attracted and put forth, I think, the most interesting offer for Matt and myself. And that is what led to the acquisition in November of 2016. What did you want it to be at CNN? Because I heard a couple different versions from you and some other folks there, it went in a couple of different ways. What did you ultimately want it to be?

Well, I think what I wanted it to be and what they wanted it to be didn't exactly look the same. And it unfortunately took a long time to really understand that. But what I wanted it to be was I was excited about technology. And that's why I started Beam. Media and YouTube, those are things that I've always understood and I love doing. But technology was a new frontier for me. So with CNN and them expressing what their desires were in the tech space, you know, they have an app and they have some interest. testing tech, but they don't have anything that I would describe as outside of the realm of what you'd expect from a news media company like Turner or CNN.

So I saw an opportunity there for us to make some really forward-thinking software products. But was it going to be, when you launched Beam as just your own company, it was like hold it to your chest. It was purely, yeah, it was purely a software company. And then when you went to CNN, it was like, we're going to take in all this input and make a daily show. And then you made a bunch of like kind of standalone YouTube videos, about some interesting topics. was that the final decision? Yeah, I mean, well, that's where I was going with my diatribe there. Sorry if I was drifting.

But the idea, like, what excited me was to develop forward-thinking apps leveraging all the amazing resources that CNN had, and then to have a media component of it as well, a media component that leveraged the information that the technology enabled and then disseminate that via new media channels, so YouTube and social media and things like that. So that's a very, like, high-level. sort of wishy-washy elevator pitch for a company.

But to me, it felt like enough. And then from there, and I think this is where your confusion's coming from, and I think the world's confusion with what the hell we were doing came from. From there, like that was enough of a foundation for me as a tech entrepreneur and as somebody who's really sort of freewheeled my way through new media to build a company on. Like, here's a tiny foundation of an idea, go. And what works do more of and what doesn't work move on from immediately.

And I think where I struggled is that kind of entrepreneurial thinking, that kind of like innovators thinking, just doesn't really mesh necessarily well with a larger entity like a Turner. And that was where kind of a lot of the struggles came from. As things were winding down early this year, Matt and I looked back and were like, this is literally a case study for the innovator's dilemma.

Really? This is what we were confronting here. So the classically, our audience knows the innovator's something. I'm going to say it out loud. That's when a company has an existing product line. I think the classic example is like IBM and mainframes. And then a cheaper product comes along. That disrupts it.

And they can't invest in the cheaper product and compete in that market because they have to protect their larger market. So you're saying CNN was, they have to protect cable so they couldn't come at you because you would destroy their existing business. I think that's a very literal interpretation of it. But I think it had to do with the kind of nimble thinking that enables startups to operate and disrupt isn't necessarily the kind of nimble thinking that a company is large

as an old-school media company can do. Does that make sense? Yeah. I know I'm being a little bit evasive here, and I'm trying to speak carefully because CNN was a fantastic partner. And that's why I was very vocal in owning the failures and the shortcomings of Beam is not a product of CNN, but a product of my own shortcomings.

Right. You made a very heartfelt video when you went out of town. Yeah, and that's because I believe that. Like, you know, CNN was an incredible partner, and they wanted us to do what we thought we needed to do to succeed. Unfortunately, you know, like, the first thing we do was hire a bunch of people. In retrospect, huge mistake. Like, top heaviness is not something that is conducive to a startup environment.

Bootstrapping, where you have to hustle and you force yourself to go beyond your comfort zone, and you force yourself to assume responsibilities that go beyond your specific set of responsibilities. That is where real, like, innovative spirit comes from. So you think you got too big, too fast inside the CNN? Yeah, and I think that, you know, that getting too big, too fast goes back to, again, that sort of innovator's dilemma analogy, which is that the way a big company like that works is let's make sure we have the staff and the resources to scale the way we want to scale. Right. But you need to have something to scale.

Sure. Right. And that's like the main problem. Right. And I think that's exactly the stress point that I'm trying to our articulate. There was no malice there. There was nothing that I would fault CNN for. They did what they believed was really right. And I think that they were wonderful in that capacity. And we were trying to do what we knew how to do, which was the best, you know, West William, and through it. And ultimately, like, those two, the convergence of those two ideologies were in conflict, not in concert. And that was a really challenging environment for Matt and I to operate in. What was the day that you decided to wind town. Can you say, like, who'd you talk to you? You're like, I'm done. You sent an email? You sent a text?

It was not my decision. Okay. It was not my decision. And, you know, I think towards the end, the last couple of months, Matt and I were really exploring and presenting with CNN myriad ways forward that we saw would yield success. And CNN was incredible in that capacity as well. Like, they had a number of ideas. And the process was a process of mutual exploration, meaning that, like, you know, the heads of CNN that we worked with, incredible, really, really smart thinkers. They presented us with opportunities. We would complement them back with other opportunities. And there was a lot of goings-ons there that we were excited about and some we weren't excited about. But ultimately, you know, ultimately a company of that

size and a company with that kind of balance sheets looks at things in ways that is not the way an entrepreneur would look at things. You know, when I was building being with that, it was like survival and success at all costs, pivot, shift, wherever the fuck it takes to make this company a success. But when you've got an entity as large as that, that's not necessarily the way they think. And I think at the end of the day, ultimately they saw being more financially responsible to absorb, you know, the assets that we had accrued over the course of a year of operating independently, absorb them into the company itself, absolved.

itself of the expenses that were keeping us external and let Matt and I go. And, you know, Matt and I really were empathetic to that position. And it was a, you know, it was a sort of a collective, we arrived at that place collectively. Yeah. So here's my question. So that's me. But a lot of that shift for CNN for every company is obviously Trump. CNN's doing great covering Trump.

And then there's this other parallel movement happening on social platforms. Facebook is just in the news right now. because whatever happened with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and data usage. Can I interject with a Cambridge Analytica story? Yeah, of course. I've never told this before. I'm here for it. What is the name of the CEO, the one that was caught yesterday?

Next. Okay. I spoke at this enormous conference in Germany or in Belgium, and this was less than a year ago. This was year 2017. And huge, huge, huge media conference, probably three, fourth, five thousand people in the audience. he spoke before me. Really? Yes.

And his presentation was what you'd expect. Data on screen completely objectively presented, meaning it was apolitical, but everything was referencing Donald Trump. And he broke down in a way that as I was watching from backstage, I was like, dude, are you sure you want to be saying this publicly? Like it was so transparent and open about exactly like, here's how you win an election. And none of it had to do with anything about sharing a message. or getting this candidate's position points out there.

It was purely about how to manipulate emotions and how to tap into those via data. And it was haunting. And as it wound down, he took a few questions from a panel that sat on the side of the stage. And it got combative super fast. This is a very liberal Western European audience and they started tearing into him.

And it got combative to the point where booze were being shouted and, you know, chants from the audience, and it was just gnarly. And it ended, and I watched him walk backstage, and I just remember seeing the guy, and, you know, I certainly don't know him personally, but he looked like a bond villain. I just remember, like, that was the last thing I thought.

And then I walked on stage. And my presentations are fun, and they're goofy, and I play my stupid YouTube videos, and I bounce around. So it was one of the toughest acts to follow. Alexander Nix, by the way, he kind of does a big bon villain. That's my entire camera.

British Analytica story, so you can continue now. Sorry for that digression. Well, I want to talk about what you just said. Your videos in YouTube are fun and goofy, but these are all platforms. Facebook is obviously a platform. It's under a lot of scrutiny for how people use and misuse it. YouTube, I think it's coming for YouTube next, right? There's a lot of dark, weird shit on YouTube, and then there's your stuff. And then there's what YouTube wants, thinks it is. That's a lot. Let's unpack. Let's unpack. First, Facebook. I think Facebook, if you look at the last, really six, four, six years and more pointedly the last two years. A lot of the manipulation that's taken place on there, and just speaking apolitically, whether it has to do with advertising

or it has to do with selling a political candidate, it's all data-driven. And Cambridge Analytica would be the first to say that. It's data-driven, the Russian hacking, data-driven. And behind that data is certainly things like, you know, news that has no backing and memes that are borderline ridiculous of like Donald Trump arm wrestling Satan and Jesus and like all kinds of madness but it's all data data data and I think that to a great expense there is a way for companies like the Twitters and the Facebooks of the world to sort of control that I hope that's a very that's my very naive optimism there is that they can shut that down by no longer giving these entities access to their platform so let's just assume that's the case and that's a sweeping

generalization. Let's just assume they can fix that by shutting down their access to the data. YouTube is... So, wait, not shutting down their access to publish, shutting down their access to the data. Any one of those levers. The point is there are levers attached to those. So access to the data, which drives the access to the public, et cetera, et cetera. Let's just assume they can flip those switches. The distinction that I'm trying to draw is that YouTube does not have that opportunity to flip

those switches. And what I mean by that is if it's data driving meme, and data driving fake news and data driving propaganda on these other platforms. On YouTube, it's the opposite of that. On YouTube, it's an individual looking into the lens in a very sort of demagogic way. I believe that, man. Like, there are some people, right? And there's a lot of those.

But there's also, like, weird robot conspiracy theories. Sure. But the impact of those, and again, like, there's a shitload to talk about. on this top. But what I'm speaking up purely is when it comes to political influence. Sure. Because that's what's in the news right now, Cambridge Analytica. And when it comes to what YouTube enables people, extremists on either side of the fence, to do by giving them this platform to speak into a camera, I think is going to be, and this is the point I'm slowly driving towards, but is, is, it gives them a platform to share their perspective that's about

a human being. Sure. If you look at what InfoWor has been able to do, you look at their growth. it's because people subscribe to Alex Jones. And I think that there are a lot of individuals out there that are extreme on either side of the spectrum that can leverage that. And that's a much harder monster to control than the potential switches, technical switches, that a platform like a Facebook might be able to throw.

Maybe. I mean, like, I think Alex Jones is dangerous, right? Like, peddles a lot of nonsense. He says school shootings or hoaxes. Like, that is a dangerous individual in my mind. You could, YouTube could just shut him down, right? And they're kind of hinting at like, here's a strike, here's another strike. Sure, but then you're getting towards thought police versus.

But it's the same with Facebook. Facebook says, we're taking your data away. You can't make these memes. It doesn't matter. The memes, whether or not they're designed to convince you, are still speech. Fair, but I do think that it's much easier to define nefarious, nefarious rule-breaking maneuvering on a Facebook. Cambridge Analytica, you know, they should not have had access to those 50. They obtain that data of 50 million Americans under false pretenses that is against the rules.

They're not supposed to do that. Russian hackers, like Facebook should be able to say that foreign governments cannot buy, or at least they can say, foreign governments are not able to buy access to individuals for political purposes. So what is YouTube's move? Like, political people aren't allowed to talk to camera. And this is the point I know I'm not doing your job articulating myself here, But this is the point that I'm trying to draw, is that the ability to share extreme information

is going to be much, much, much harder to control on a platform like YouTube because it's about a human being, because it's about subscribing to an individual versus a Facebook, which is about manipulating the way data is disseminated. So my disagreement here is, I think, just a disagreement in kind, right? I make a lot of videos now.

I didn't start that way. I started writing. What Facebook once upon a time gave me the opportunity to do is distribute my writing. Right? So you can shut down my access to your data that just means I'm worse at distributing my writing. Or if I was a cartoonist,

I'm worse at distributing cartoons. I don't think there's a big difference when it comes to modulating speech between a video and a piece of text or a video and a photo or a meme. And so I think the difference in kind that I just find myself drawn to is I don't really care if it's someone

talking to camera who's dangerous or someone writing something goes viral on Facebook that's dangerous, whether or not you're subscribing to a person, you can still turn it off. I think the question of who do we turn off, when do we turn it off, the question of thought police. How do we communicate why we're turning things off? None of these platforms are doing a good job of it. And to me, I think one of the biggest struggles at creators like you have when I talk to people is YouTube seems to be like the only game in town that is doing an even reasonable job of communicating. what the hell it's doing and why. And I don't think they're doing a great job.

I don't know what they're doing and why. No, I just listened to Karras Swisher did a fantastic interview with Susan Wojiki, I think two weeks ago on her Recode podcast. Yeah. There wasn't a lot of information there. And I don't know a lot of information. So, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg, here we are nearly 24 hours out from the revelation of the Cambridge Analytica breach.

And we haven't heard from them. I don't really understand what YouTube's doing. I don't understand how they could ever shut someone like an Info Wars down, but let someone who's more legitimate remain without becoming the thought police. I don't understand how they could put out rules and regulations and community guidelines that enable anyone from sharing their political beliefs, but shutting down extremists. And how do you define extremists?

I don't know how they could. I mean, the thing is you can't. You just have to do it. Sure. Sure, you have to do it. But let's chase that down. Like, do what? Who qualifies someone as an extremist?

Sure. Where does free speech end and where does thought police begin? So they are not the government, right? They don't have a free speech obligation to anyone. The First Amendment applies to the government. I could not agree with you more. So if you are running YouTube, you could literally say we will not allow anything that we think is racist on this platform. And we're going to decide, and that is the end of it.

And they could just decide. Every single day they could just decide, oh, that's a little too racist and turn it off. I don't know if that's the right answer, but there's nothing preventing them from doing it. Sure, but you're speaking theoretically. No, I'm speaking very practically. I don't think you are. You could just decide. 40 hours of content, and I'm not sitting here defending YouTube.

I'm one of YouTube's biggest critics, despite fighting the hand that feeds me is like my middle name when it comes to YouTube. And I don't mean to be defending the platform, but at 40 hours of content being uploaded every minute of every day. every day of the week, every week of the year. How could they possibly do that without painting themselves into a wildly, you know, dangerous corner of picking and choosing favorites and falling along political lines? I mean, I think that's the thing that I, look, I run a media site, right? We decide what to publish. I think I probably have a lot of bias that, like, if you're going to be a media organization, you have some responsibility to publish the right things. they spend a lot of time claiming that they're not a media organization or a news organization, right?

I think Facebook does the same thing. Once you say that you are, then the responsibilities just, they come to you. You have them. Right. And it's funny because both Facebook and YouTube both say they're not media companies, their technology companies. All the time. Yeah, they're the biggest media companies in the game. And not only that, but their entire business model is based on being media companies. So to me, I think it just comes down to you could. It might cost you a lot of money. It might be really hard. to do, it might lead you to have a bunch of very annoying philosophical questions. But none of those are impossible, right? They just seem hard. And so instead, we're going to try to build software that does it for us,

or we're going to say, we're going to throw our hands in the air and say we can't stop it. But I think, to me, this comes down to a pretty practical question. Facebook yesterday announced, like, their Patreon clone. By the way, we're recording this on Tuesday. The show comes out on Friday. Casey's the office. Hey, we should have made that clear. Otherwise, we're going to sound like

really late to the game. Yeah, like Facebook is going to shut down tomorrow and what's all over. But Facebook announced it's like Patreon clone, right? They want to attract creators to that platform. Does that interest you? That's what I feel like YouTube seems like you can't get away from it.

This is a much more exciting pivot here. I'm a man of medium intelligence and in my best mind frame, I can't think of a reasonable solution in hearing someone's, I think, idealistic, simplistic, answer that, which is just do it, which is great,

but literally do a math equation, 40 hours every minute of every day, there aren't enough human beings on planet Earth, 7 billion human beings to actually watch every piece of content and trust the judgment of all 7 billion people. Like, it's just, it's impractical. But I agree that there is a solution somewhere. I just don't know what the fuck

that solution is, and it leads to this, like, extraordinary position of frustration that I imagine the company has, and I have no empathy for their frustration. I don't care. Solve it, YouTube. Solve it. So in any of it,

that's always a dead-end conversation because there is no, there is no satisfying conclusion. But this conversation is much more enticing. This is much more exciting. So your question was, is Facebook's new monetization opportunity exciting for creators?

The short answer is yes. I think that as a creator, I wish there's a better word that influencer because that's just such a dirty, disgusting word, but generically an influencer, someone who peddles their influence, influence in exchange for goods and service. You know, as someone who makes a living on social media, there's always a desire to find new

outlets for monetizing the content that you create. And I think if Facebook is coming up with inventive ways to do that, sure, that's interesting. That's a very pragmatic, a practical answer. I think a more romantic or more emotional answer is just that what's cool right now? Where are the eyeballs right now? what's socially and culturally relevant right now. Yesterday I tweeted Ninja, who's a huge gamer, a huge streamer on Twitch.

I tweeted his interview with CNBC, and I said if YouTube's not scared of Twitch yet, they should be now. And you've been doing stuff on Twitch recently. Yeah, I mean, I think Twitch is a really interesting platform. But there was a lot of people that came back to me who were not creators on either platform. And they're like, YouTube is bigger than Twitch by a multiple of, X. YouTube has nothing to worry about. YouTube is not for streaming. YouTube is not for gaming. Twitch is only

totally reasonable responses that I, that practically, unemotionally, they're all correct. Except when you put the X factor of emotion, you put the X factor of culture, you put the X factor of cool in there. And all of a sudden it becomes a very real existential threat. Not to YouTube as a viable search engine for video that is the, you know, global standard for searching for video, but the community, the community of creators and their audience, which is a huge, extremely exciting, extremely valuable piece of property in the media space. I would argue the most valuable piece of property in the media space. They're vulnerable.

YouTube is vulnerable. And if Twitch is seen as the new cool guy, cool kid in town, which like Ninja did an amazing job and so did CNBC, a painting it as that when they're talking about the monetization opportunities on the platform and Twitch Prime and all these. things that sounds so much more exciting than a five-second pre-roll that you wait to skip, and in return you get 50% of the tenth of a penny or whatever it is on YouTube, that sounds exciting. And if there are interesting people like Ninja and the other people that are really dominating Twitch as a platform, combined with the mass frustration that's taking place

with the creator community on YouTube, that's what I see as an existential threat. I don't think YouTube's going to go out of business this year, and I don't think Twitch is going to become eclipse YouTube anytime soon. But I do think... in the months and the years, tides shift. And when they shift, like, Snapchat seemed like this impenetrable, invulnerable monster when it came to being socially relevant and cool. And Instagram is mopping the floor with them when it comes to social relevance right now. So I've seen a lot of, like, Vine Stars went to Instagram.

When you think about where you're going to be, is your home YouTube and you're like looking for something else? Or are you trying to be distributed everywhere? Or how do you see that playing out? I've always aspired to be platform agnostic. I always said I'm only loyal to my audience. I have no loyalty to a platform. I love YouTube, but if my audience is not on YouTube, I'm going to go to wherever my audience is.

And this is why, no matter how interesting the monetization prospects are on Facebook, the majority of my audience right now is not there. So even if they had really compelling ways to pay me, if my audience isn't there, I don't care. inversely, if there are places that I'm not making any money at all, but my audience is there, I'll go there. Yeah.

How do you bounce that out? I mean, you got to eat? Yeah, and I think it's very challenging. Yeah. But I think that how I balance that out is the main reason why YouTube is such a priority for me. It's where the majority of my audience is. So what you see me doing on Facebook, what you see me doing on Twitch, what you see

me doing on Instagram and places like that. It's experimental to see, like, how does the audience respond to stuff here? versus what you would see me doing, and you have seen me doing on a platform like YouTube, which is a much more committed, consistent respect for both the audience, the content, and the platform. Yeah. So another thing I want to ask you about, you very famously have a deal with Samsung. I always think about that when we do our videos, because that's a line that we as journalists and reviewers just can't cross. Like, Samsung can't pay me to do anything.

They offer. We say no, like, all the time. Apple can't pay me to do anything. Everyone believes Apple pays us to do everything. It's just the reality. You guys are such fanboys. It's the reality of the situation. But, you know, that's just a line we don't cross.

You live on the other side of that fence. Do you ever feel pressure from your various brand deals to do something or say something? Do you think of yourself as a journalist? When you were at CNN, that was a question I always wanted to ask you the most. Like, are you doing journalism here while you have this brand deal? But now you don't. So where do you see yourself in that spectrum? I think it's tough.

And I think it's that that challenge is exasperation. by my own fuck-ups of past. Like I have worked with Samsung and not been clear with my audience on it before, which was just stupid. No, I mean it. And looking back at it, like I recognize the stupidity there. And the tough thing is, and this is an excuse,

this is merely me trying to share my thought process. But I've always sort of maintained an objectivity. I've always been super transparent about the fact that, no matter what contract I might have with a Samsung or something like that, I still carry an iPhone. I've always been transparent with the fact that like No matter what He's got a 10 and what's that?

That is an LG It's not even a Samsung phone I'm playing with it's LG right now I've found Jack I'm just pointing it out to everybody Yeah The S9 is super super sexy by the way I just don't have one of my service provider yet

So I've I've screwed up in the past And I should have been much much more transparent in the past with it But again it's like The way I think is it's like No one's really gonna buy my favor And I know that in my heart, but I expect my audience and that's not fair. That's totally like...

Especially as your audience, it's bigger. Yeah, and I'm an asshole for even thinking that. And I think that that's something I've learned is, as my audience has grown, is like, you know, we were talking about earlier, a mutual friend of ours who works in the tech space, who right now is like posting for T-Mobile. And it's not a big deal for him. You know, he's got 20,000 followers, and it's not, the consequences are small. And I think that when I look at the times, I've screwed up egregiously. with not being super transparent about my brand partnerships, it's just been because of failure

to really acknowledge the repercussions of that. But to answer your question, I think as long as that transparency is there and you're overt about it, I think it's okay. I think I am unique in that capacity because I love doing tech reviews, and I've never once been paid by Samsung

or anybody else to say something favorable about their device. And this is, again, these are distinctions that I expect my audience to understand and that expectation is completely unrealistic. But it's like every brand partnership I've ever done with Samsung has never been about promoting a device. Yeah. I mean, go back and look at every single video.

We did a video for Christmas and it was about, you know, turning a shopping mall into a playground for kids. And we did a video this last summer that I got really, really beat up on social media for. But it was just about me and my best friend, like goofing off in France. And before that, we did a video where I flew on a drone and, like, we shot that on Canon cameras. I don't even think there was a Samsung phone in that video. Yeah. So, again, it's like Samsung is a sponsor and enables these big ambitious projects, but then I'll do a review of one of their phones,

and like, how's my audience possibly supposed to understand a distinction there? Yeah. And the onus is on me. The onus is on the creator. And I think that the creator needs to do a really good job of being really clear with that, and I have not done a good job. Yeah, in fairness, I will say, I don't. The reason that we never do that is because I don't know how to self that problem.

Sure. Right. Like, I think it's more important for us to say, just always have that answer at the ready. They can't do that. We don't allow them to do that. And it's like always in my back pocket and we always say it. But I look at the future of creators on these platforms. And I don't know how you grow a business without doing that stuff, like quite honestly. And I think that's a huge problem, especially as these platforms hoover up more and more of the ad dollars, they hoover up more and more of the attention. You either got lucky and you started the verge of. in 2011 before they existed and you have enough scale. Or you have to play, if you want to start something new, you have to play in that game. And there has to be a middle ground. And I honestly, I don't know what the answer

is. I'm happy on my side, I think the people on YouTube, I love a lot of tech YouTubers, I love your channel, you have to make different decisions to run that kind of business. And I look at it and it seems really hard. It's tricky. And look, this is a really simple thing

that I'm looking, pushing ahead. When I was with CNN for the last year, I wasn't really looking or courting any brand deals. But now, again, I got to pay the bills and I have to focus on my business. So I am looking for brand deals and companies that I think I can align with. And what was really interesting to me is I did a brand deal. I don't even think they paid me. They just gave me tickets to go to both the Super Bowl and then go to see the Floyd-May Weather Fight at the end of last summer. And it was with Seat Geek.

And I was super over. I was like, this is a sponsored video by Seekkeek. Thank you, Seek. And my audience didn't mind. Yeah. They didn't object. And I think like, and again, in retrospect, this is such a 20, you know, hindsight's 2020.

This is such an obvious distinction. But I think the audience respects that you have to pay the bills. Yeah. I don't hate The Verge because I see that you've got Ford ads that are the top 60% of your homepage. I understand you guys have bills to pay. Right. And I think my audience and YouTube's audience at large, like they don't mind that you

have to do brand deals. and they don't mind that I'm doing a Seek Geek deal because there's no conflict there. What's challenging is one of my closest friends, huge YouTuber, and all of his videos are about beautiful cinematography and cameras, and he's fully sponsored by Canon. So how does the audience know

if Canon really is the best or he's being paid to say? That's where the conflict comes from. So looking ahead, it's being much, much more clear and transparent in what brands I'm working with and which brands don't present conflicts. You know, I am not a company that sells discounted tickets to events. So when I talk about Seekek and thank them for sponsoring my channel, there's no conflict.

There's nothing like that. So I do think there are ways to navigate this minefield, but it is tricky. I think that's where the Patreon-type models come in, the Kickstarter drip type models come in. Well, now you're just taking money from an audience, right? And you don't have this, like, third party that may or may not influence you. This is interesting because I am Twitch I've just started playing with, and I absolutely love Twitch. What an incredible platform. And Twitch's monetization tools on there, like the way that you're able to make money off

of Twitch is wildly different from the way you make money on YouTube, even though you're essentially disseminating the same kind of content. I monetizing the same kind of content. And it feels so much more organic, so much more fair, so much more honest. And the opportunities there are myriad. They're not just sort of a single-payer. method, which is AdSense. Yeah.

But the question then is like, why doesn't YouTube just copy Twitch? I don't think they ever could. Really? I don't. I think slowly, over time, they could introduce monetization products that maybe look like it. But the trouble is you go to YouTube and you expect to see it for free. You expect everything to be Avod because that's how it's always been. So the minute on YouTube you're asking for money, you're a bad guy.

This isn't how YouTube works. And I think it's that sort of collective understanding that is really challenging. You can't innovate. You can't innovate once the audience has a built-in understanding of what it looks like, especially when it comes to money. It's why a lot of YouTube creators that use Patreon get a lot of shit for using Patreon. It's understood. If you use Patreon as a YouTuber, you will be given a hard time by the audience.

You'll be picked on for saying things like, why are you asking your audience to pay you money for your channel? This isn't how this works. It's a big topic of conversation on YouTube. I don't agree with it, but it is a big topic of conversation. And then you go over on Twitch with things like a tip jar and subscribers and prime subscriptions. It is the same exact, exact method of giving someone money. And on Twitch, it's the norm. Do you think, like YouTube Red, would you ever make a YouTube Red series?

Do you think that hides you in a corner? I don't understand YouTube Red. So I pay for it, and I love it just because the ads are good. Yeah, okay, me too. But what are you talking about you? me different things there. Interestingly enough, Susan, the CEO of YouTube, just described

in that Recode podcast, that's a Vox company, right? Yeah. Yeah, so promoting them. Their offer code is Casey. Their offer code is Casey. She described Redd as a music service. Did you hear that podcast? You know what I've never heard Red described as

YouTube as a music service before. It was very confusing. Very, very confusing. I use Red because I don't like ads. Yeah. What is a YouTube Red series? What is a YouTube original series? I have no idea what any of this means.

The thing is you could put it all together, right? You could, the fact that they described it as a music, because you get Google Play Music with it. Okay, I don't even know how that works. I don't even know what Google Play music is. Vergecast listeners tweeted me about Google Play Music all the time. I think Spotify's bad. They're all like use of Google Play Music.

Anyway, you get it for free with Red, and you get to watch a bunch of music videos, which I think is maybe the primary use of what people do red and that's why she said it. Don't really understand. Can I just watch music videos without Red? Yeah, but you have to watch ads. But I think their data shows that people with Red subscriptions watch a lot of videos. I think

that's what she was getting at. I do not understand. You and I both right now are just making wild assumptions here as to what this huge product that defines the platform actually is and that is the problem. So, yeah, of course. But you could do it because Red if I'm a Red subscriber when I watch your videos,

a little bit of my Red $10 a month funnels at you through some complicated process, right? I mean, that's the whole, you take the ads away. I'm not just giving YouTube money. YouTube's giving some of that money back to the creators. If they could construct that argument, then you have something like a Twitch Prime, right?

Where you're saying, you love your favorite creators. Sort of. We're going to bundle them up and you get early access to their stuff. Sort of, but, you know, Twitch Prime is me being like, dude, I love you. Boom, here's five bucks. It's such a clean transaction. And if you and I can't even define,

or the CEO can't even define what Red actually is, How are you exposed to, how do you expect the regular sort of ordinary viewer to understand what this is? And that, like, this is not so different from what we were talking about before about working with brands. Like, when you don't understand something, you're frustrated by it. Confusion equals frustration equals anger. How does you know to say it? Angrily say it. All those things.

And I think that, like, that is the trouble with red. And this conversation started with you saying, would I ever do a real? Red series. And my answer is like, I don't know what a red series is. Right. I know it's a thing that they give creators money for and then it goes on to their channel that some people can see and I don't. So the answer is until they're able to really clarify that, I think it would be, it would be challenging. I did go to YouTube. You know, I'm about to start a new series on my channel and I went to YouTube for money. I was like, hey, this is more expensive than I'm going to be able to afford off of AdSense. Can I do this as some sort of YouTube original? And it did.

really align with what they were doing what red was, which was a learning experience for me. But outside of that, you know, I don't know where or how I might fit into what I now understand YouTube Red is. Yeah, I think the question of what it is is, it's out there. I just, there's something, and this is true of Google, I think, in general. They always have all the pieces. And they just need someone to put them together into a coherent product. Dude, I spend whatever, $12 a month on Netflix.

and therefore I can log into Netflix and watch videos. I spend $9.99 a month for Spotify, open up my Spotify app, I can listen to all the music I want. Like, I just want to know what a transaction is. And even on Twitch, when somebody I really like to something really funny, and I click Tipjar and I send them a buck, I know exactly what I just did. And I think on Google, the services are so convoluted.

And we haven't even talked about YouTube TV. There's so many different versions, and they've changed so much over the years that all of that confusion just yields mistrust. And I think that until everything's clarified, it does make it harder for creators to go beyond working with brands or AdSense, which I think are very old-school models for monetizing content on a platform as forward as YouTube.

So let's end, you just mentioned, you're starting a new series. Can you talk about it? What's your next thing? Yeah, so kicking it off like kind of the first week of April. It is something I'm much, much, much more excited about than I have been, probably since I started being. Like the butterflies in my stomach, I haven't felt since I was raising capital for my tech company. But the short of it is, you know, I'm going all in on content creation because after years of, you know, building tech and everything else, I realize that's the thing that I just find most satisfying is actually making things. It's what I love doing.

and the approach this time around and the way that I'm scaling it and turning into a business is that I now know the sort of the value and the opportunities that come along with having a successful series online having that level of influence having what transpired six months into my vlog where I was doing a million and a half views a day and the opportunities that were coming at me that I was just leaving everything on the table because my focus is on the creative. So with some understanding of what that looks like, I'm now building infrastructure around myself and a business, businesses, around myself to absorb, to mitigate and to, you know, to make sure we're exploring every opportunity that presents itself because of, you know, because of this new show that I'm hoping. So it's a show. We'll find an audience.

I mean, it's a YouTube series. So it's a YouTube series in your channel. On my channel. But you're building multiple businesses around it? preemptively. And that's something that I think is certainly new for me. And I don't know this is going to sound crazy to say, and your audience is going to give me hell for saying this. I spent a half an hour on the phone last night with Jake Paul getting advice. You know, whether you like his content or not, you know, Jake, somebody I've known for years

and is doing interesting things from a business perspective. But this is such a new thing. And that's why I call Jake, this is such a new thing to really figure out and understand what the value of having a successful YouTube series is. And how do you take advantage of all that value? Right. And he's got multiple lines of business, right? He runs team 10. Sure, and nothing I'm doing is modeled after it looks like what he's doing. But the point is, he does have those things. There's no objectively stating he does have those things. And I want to be in a position where I'm able to really, really make sure that I'm not leaving opportunity on the floor because I'm focused on making my videos. Instead, let's build an infrastructure. Let's have the right people in place.

Let's have the right physical space in place. Let's have everything around me that I need to have around me. So when my creative does find its audience and that audience is excited by it and the opportunities that beset that, I'm in a position to really not miss out on them. So that's the most sort of ambiguous way. I can talk about what I'm doing. I don't want to take the wind out of the sales because I'm really excited about the launch video. Well, when you launch you'll come back.

It won't be another year. Yeah, no, let's start the DMs now and I can be back in less than a year. Well, dude, I've taken up an hour of your time. Thank you so much. I'm excited for your next thing. I made a really big gesture of bringing gifts by the studio here.

And I thought you'd make a fuss out of it to make me seem like a good guy in the podcast. You haven't even mentioned it. Well, it's another brand deal. Here's what I'm going to say. Casey brought us some hot sauce. Hey, that's all I was looking for. He brought us like, what, 12 bottles?

12 bottles of hot sauce. It's in a beautiful bag. They're great. Are they for sale? You can plug the hot sauce. Oh, I don't need to plug it. I told you, I'm not getting paid for the hot sauce. It's my friend's company.

He gave me free juice and he put my face on a bottle of hot sauce. It looks delicious. It's spicy. I'm into it. I love a good hot sauce. Everybody loves a good hot sauce. I'll use it tonight. No, but that's not a plug.

You can't buy it. I think maybe you can buy it in the stores. I'm not selling it. If you buy hot sauce, I don't make any money. It was a very nice chance. Hey, day, that's all I'm looking for. And rode one of our video directors unicycles around the office. I appreciate that the Verge offices have a unicycle.

It's real wacky. I describe the Verge culture as a really high performing Montessori. Like, it's like a surprisingly productive. My three-year-olds in Montessori, and I concur. That is exactly what the vibe in here is like. It's just a bunch of smart people doing whatever they want. and sometimes it's good. It's like, all I got.

I'm like, I'm happy with that. That's the, we talked a lot about scaling up a business. It's surprising to me that we're as big as we are inside of a company that has gotten way bigger. And it's still. You have to have a long enough rope, a long enough leash to really find your voice in media to succeed today. And I think that's why the bigger companies that are slower moving are struggling against smaller, more nimble companies is because that's a very, very hard. principled thing to do when you've been doing things the same way for 20 or 30 years. Yeah. And we see that, right? Now we're a bigger media company, but there are bigger media

companies that want to come work with us. And a lot of those conversations, we just sort of let them taper off because it, the verge is a big thing that feels small. And I want it to feel small for as long as it can. But thank you, not to talk about us at the end, but thank you so much for showing up. Thank you for the hot sauce. Great to be here. Thank you for the unicycle adventure. Thanks for everybody. provide it. Thanks, man. I appreciate it.