Pod Insights How I Built This with Guy Raz ICYMI... HIBT Lab! Colin and Samir: Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry About this episode This week on How I Built This Lab, we're throwing it back to our very first Lab episode.
In this episode, Guy sits down with Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry, or better known as YouTubers Colin and Samir—a pair of creators who create content for other creators. (We know, pretty meta.) The creator economy barely existed a decade ago, but has quickly become a multi-billion dollar industry with a massive global reach. Colin and Samir discuss their 10-year business journey, and share insights on how to break into this rapidly-growing industry.
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5:07 Guy Raz? Visit mobili fuels.com for details. Hello, everyone. I hope you are all doing well. Two quick, important announcements before we get to the show. The first is, How I Built This is a free podcast. It is always free on all podcast platforms. But if you want to hear it a week early and ad-free, you can subscribe to Wondery Plus for a small monthly fee, where you will get access to all of Wondery's amazing podcasts. And if you do subscribe to Wondery Plus, you are also supporting this show. Secondly, I hope you've been enjoying all the new content we've been putting out. As you may or may not know, our team is working double time to get you two new episodes a week.
5:52 Guy Raz? But this week, our amazing producers are taking a short break, so we are throwing it back to our very first How I Built This lab episode. It features Colin Rosenblum and Sameer Chaudry, better known as the popular YouTube creator duo Colin and Sameer. Now, the creator economy barely existed a decade ago, but it's quickly becoming a multi-billion-dollar industry with a massive global reach. In this episode, Colin and Sameer walk us through their 10-year business journey so far. Plus, they share insights on how to break into the rapidly growing creator economy. It is such a good episode, well worth a listen. Hope you enjoy.
6:36 Guy Raz? Hello and welcome to our very first episode of How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. And what is How I Built This Lab? Well, it's a sandbox, a place we can experiment with all kinds of ideas around entrepreneurship. You can still expect to hear a long episode of the show every Monday, as usual, and every Thursday, a shorter episode of How I Built This Lab. And what's the difference? Well, on this edition of the show, we're going to talk with entrepreneurs working on world-changing ideas, people building the creator economy, and even past guests we featured on the show to find out what they're up to today. So, let's get started. Today, we're going to hear from Colin Rosenblum and Sameer Chaudry.
7:21 Guy Raz? They're better known as YouTubers Colin and Sameer. Now, 10 years ago, this sector, the creator economy, barely existed. But today, the creator economy is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion. And it's growing because marketing and advertising is increasingly moving away from traditional platforms like television and radio and towards social media. And this new economy has inspired thousands, maybe millions, of people to try and make a living from creating content. Now, to be clear, just a teeny tiny fraction of those millions are actually making a living from TikTok or YouTube alone. Even Colin and Sameer,
8:05 Guy Raz? whose videos attract more than 100 million views a year, can't rely on YouTube alone to sustain their business. They started, back about a decade ago, making lacrosse videos. Sameer actually started a sports channel on YouTube called The Lacrosse Network. Colin joined forces with Sameer because both of them had played lacrosse at college. But eventually, they branched out, making videos about everything from skateboards to their favorite coffee shops. Today, their videos focus mainly on other content creators and how they do what they do. They interview creators, they break down news within the creator world, and they offer insights on how to make a living in an industry that has the potential to reach a trillion-dollar valuation
8:50 Guy Raz? within the next 10 years. Colin, Samir, welcome to How I Built This Lab. Great to have you guys.
8:56 Speaker 01 Thanks for having us.
8:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, thanks, Guy.
8:58 Guy Raz? All right, let's start with your origin story. Because you got into content creation because of lacrosse. And basically, you would document lacrosse games, upload them online, onto YouTube. Samir, you were in LA. Colin, you were in Boulder, Colorado. How did you guys meet?
9:16 Speaker 01 We met on the internet. We met on YouTube. I had graduated college, and I grew up playing lacrosse. And I had this idea that I felt like the sport lacked coverage. It lacked media. There wasn't a way to connect with other people who were playing the sport. So, you know, I was a film major, and I wanted to use my film degree in one way or the other. And I tried my hand at Hollywood and didn't really like the experience of working in Hollywood. So decided to just take matters into my own hand and film the community that I was passionate about, that I wanted to tell stories about.
9:53 Guy Raz? So you basically started a YouTube channel, right? Called The Lacrosse Network.
9:58 Speaker 01 That's right. I spun up a YouTube channel. I thought about it as the NFL Network for lacrosse. And by no means did I have the financing to do that. But I had a camera, I had a laptop, and I had a bunch of ideas.
10:09 Guy Raz? I mean, this is how Mark Cuban started Broadcast.com. He wanted to air basketball games and wanted to be able to hear them wherever he was. So the idea of taking lacrosse, which nobody really, no one was doing, and trying to create a channel around it is kind of a cool idea. Meantime, Colin, who you didn't know, Colin, you were a student in Boulder at the University of Colorado, and you were also on the lacrosse team, right?
10:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, but I would say, unlike Samir, I was not a film major. But once I graduated, I wanted to be a filmmaker. So for me, you know, the good story that I knew I had access to was my college lacrosse team. So I had just graduated, bought a camera, and started a web series about the team.
10:50 Guy Raz? Just to tell the story about the team, the lacrosse team.
10:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, so I had graduated. I was paying my bills by working at the front desk of a hotel. But when I would get off work, I would go film the lacrosse team, learn how to edit, and I would put out these episodes on YouTube. And my first episode that I put out had, I think, less than 1,000 views. But one of those views was Samir. And he ended up sending me an email.
11:13 Guy Raz? And Samir, what was the video? I mean, was it like a story? Was it just like highlights? Was it interviews with the lacrosse players? What made it compelling?
11:21 Speaker 01 So the video was a trailer. It was a trailer for a show that Colin created called Club Ball. And it explored what it was like to play club lacrosse at the University of Colorado. And at the time, what I was uploading was highlights, full games, some news and analysis. But this was the first piece of storytelling I had seen in lacrosse, where it was more about the players than it was about the game. It was a story about young people coming together and trying to achieve something. At least, that's how it was portrayed in the trailer. And it just so happened they played lacrosse. And immediately, I knew it was the type of content we needed to make this network work.
12:01 Guy Raz? So you reach out to Colin and you're like, hey, I'm Samir and I'm doing something kind of similar. And do you want to maybe talk? And is that literally what you did?
12:11 Speaker 01 That's exactly right. That's exactly what I did. And I think I was met with a, I'm good. Don't worry. Like, I'll just do this on my own. Or something, something around Colin not being that excited.
12:22 Speaker 02 Samir came with a lot of demands. So I was coming from the perspective of a first time artist who was very passionate about the music and about the storytelling. And I was interested in what Samir was saying. But for him, you know, he said, if you want to put this out on our YouTube channel, you're going to have to change the music. Everything needs to be copyright free. And I was using whatever I wanted to use. And of course, for, you know, for the network that Samir was building, that wasn't going to work.
12:45 Guy Raz? So pretty soon after you reached out to him, Samir, you actually convinced him to move to LA and to join forces with you, which is a pretty risky maneuver. I mean, you could, you could have hated each other. But why did you think he was the right person to try this out with?
13:00 Speaker 01 So I had another co-founder with me. And both him and I, we felt like we could do the broadcast side, but we knew we were missing this storytelling side. So I was very convinced that it was the stories about the people who played the game that were going to take us to the next level. And Colin was the guy to help us do that.
13:19 Speaker 02 I thought that what Samir and his co-founder were doing was really interesting and exciting. And again, you know, I wasn't a film major, but this is what I was interested in. So the prospect that someone would pay me anything at all to use my camera was very enticing to me. And that's what it came down to was, hey, here's three months, we called it, an internship, where you come out to work for the lacrosse network. And I said, why not?
13:43 Guy Raz? Yeah. So you move out there and you guys start to build up the lacrosse network. And how did you get the content? I mean, you couldn't physically record every lacrosse game that was being played at colleges around the country. So how would you get the footage?
13:58 Speaker 01 There was times and days where we would get a call that there was a game going on in San Diego at 5 o'clock, and it was 11 a.m. in LA, and we would just get our gear together and drive and go film it. But as we started to recognize we needed more content, we started to license content. And so over the course of the next couple of years, it went from one channel to 60 different channels about lacrosse.
14:21 Speaker 02 We also, at that time, put ourselves on camera because we realized in Southern California, there's only so much lacrosse that we can film. But we can talk about lacrosse multiple times a week. And that actually was uncomfortable because I never thought I would be on camera and be sort of a quote-unquote YouTuber. But it really unlocked our channel and the success we were able to have because we could upload really consistently.
14:46 Guy Raz? I mean, I'm curious, you didn't, I don't think you guys had a whole lot of money, right? Did you raise any money, Samir?
14:52 Speaker 01 We did not raise money. And the reason that I positioned it as an internship to Colin was because we had no money, really. You know, the money that we had was partially my savings account, and that went a lot quicker than I thought. I had written out a financial model and a business plan around the lacrosse network. And, you know, I had this per-video budget that was around $4,000 when we first started. Now, we never spent that money because I showed it to someone who actually worked at YouTube. And I was trying to get them to get excited about our idea. And he was like, you're going to spend $4,000 a video? You're going to go out of business. That is not what YouTube is.
15:32 Speaker 01 A YouTube video has to cost you $0, and you have to be able to do it over an extremely long period of time. And there was a moment where I did try and raise money. And I got on the phone with an investor that I connected with through my brother. And he had experience, he played lacrosse. He had experience working in sports broadcast and he was working at a, at a big venture capital company. And I got on the phone with him and I started to pitch him what we were doing. And about 90 seconds in to my pitch, I said, we're broadcasting games. And he stopped me and he said, I want to stop you right there. You just used the word broadcast. I've worked in broadcast. What you're doing is not broadcast. What you're doing is making home movies.
16:16 Speaker 01 And to be honest, you're not that good at it.
16:18 Guy Raz? Wow.
16:19 Speaker 01 This is not a business. This is a hobby.
16:26 Guy Raz? All right, 2014. So two years in, you get acquired actually by, by a sort of a new kind of upstart sports network called Whistle Sports. And I'm assuming that, that this was not going to make you financially independent for the rest of your life. It wasn't that kind of acquisition.
16:46 Speaker 01 That's right. It, it was an aqua hire. You know, there was a cash component of them purchasing RIP and the network, but the main part of it was that we got jobs. You know, we, real resources.
16:58 Guy Raz? Real money to put behind growing the, the network.
17:02 Speaker 01 It was money, you know, people who had done this before or something like it, not on YouTube, but had done something like it, media expertise and community. We got to be a part of a group of people who wanted this reality of, you know, sports networks or the modern day sports networks existing online and recognizing that niche communities had value on the internet.
17:26 Guy Raz? But a couple of years in, I guess the two of you started to experiment with videos that didn't always have anything to do with lacrosse, right? How did that start?
17:38 Speaker 02 I think what we started to realize was that so much of your identity is wrapped up in who you are as a creator, the image that you put out online. And for Samir and I, even though we loved lacrosse and we were super passionate about it, that was four years plus of our image being all about lacrosse. But at that time, YouTube had also changed drastically. And you've got guys like Casey Neistat, who have YouTube channels just off the base of their own name. And they're building these huge businesses. And so Samir and I looked at each other and felt like we'd developed this skill set to succeed on YouTube. And it doesn't maybe necessarily, it doesn't have to be in lacrosse. Maybe it could just be under the name Colin and Samir. And we'll tell stories about whatever we want.
18:21 Speaker 02 And we'll really get to express ourselves fully 100%.
18:27 Guy Raz? All right, we're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, we're going to hear how Colin and Samir pivoted from lacrosse to creating their own YouTube videos that had nothing to do with lacrosse. So stay tuned. You're listening to How I Built This Lab.
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22:26 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. My guests are Colin and Sameer. So before the break, we were talking about, of course, the lacrosse network that you built, Sameer and Colin, that you helped to grow. But you guys decide to leave Whistle Sports and to start your own new thing, which was making content around, well, initially inspired by Casey Neistat, who was on How I Built This a couple of years ago. What was the thing you guys were gonna do?
22:55 Speaker 01 There's only a few times in your life and in your entrepreneurial journey where you're lucky enough to be as naive as we were in that moment. And the reason I say that is because we had, for some reason, no fear around the fact that we had no idea. And we stepped out. Even my dad and my family was very confused why we left. It was almost, it sounded like it should have been exactly what we wanted to do. We were getting paid really well to make lacrosse videos and sports videos. But we just knew that we wanted more. We wanted more, a more diverse set of storytelling. We wanted to explore ourselves differently. And so we didn't really have any ideas.
23:38 Speaker 01 And we just started making whatever was interesting to us. Our first video on the channel is just an exploration of the street Fairfax in LA. The next video after that, I think, is us going to our favorite coffee shop. But quickly, we started to recognize that the audience that we had built in lacrosse was not that interested in us talking about Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. And we were, where we thought we were starting from a position of, we've built an audience, we've done this for four and a half years on YouTube. We were actually starting from zero. And I think that was one of the most startling experiences to go through.
24:21 Guy Raz? Right, because you were all of a sudden, I mean, the lacrosse audience was a niche audience that you had cultivated, but they weren't necessarily interested in your coffee choices or other content. So you had to start from scratch, entirely from scratch.
24:38 Speaker 02 And the scary thing is, we also had to start from scratch when it came to building a business, because YouTube clearly, again, was not going to be a business. So now we're finding ourselves freelancing again, doing all of these odd jobs and production projects, which is not what we set out to do.
24:53 Guy Raz? This is, I think, around 2018, right? And this is when you decide to launch what you call the Colin and Samir Show. And already, by 2018, you're hearing a lot of people say, "Hey, YouTube is saturated. There's no space to get to break in. It's all, the big creators are already dominating it." And I'm sure you were hearing that, too, from people who were like, "Who are you guys? What are you making?" Was any of that discouraging initially?
25:23 Speaker 01 The years between 2016 and 2020 would have to be some of the most discouraging of our careers. It was not because YouTube was oversaturated. It was because we couldn't figure out what we wanted to make. There's this great quote about making movies that talks about how making a movie isn't the hard part. It's figuring out what to make the movie about. That's the hard part. And that was our experience. We were making all types of different content. We made a show called What's Good, about good news. We started to make our own skateboards and made a show about making skateboards. We were just trying
26:05 Speaker 01 to find ourselves online. And all the while, again, like Colin mentioned, struggling to build a business and doing odd jobs to get enough cash to keep going. And we described this term burnout as creative output without direction. And that's what we experienced.
26:23 Speaker 02 I also think we got a little bit humbled. When we left the Lacrosse Network, we were really confident, borderline overconfident about our abilities because of what we were able to do. Then, two, three years later, we find ourselves really struggling. And I think that was a gut check for us. It was tough to internalize. And you had to start asking, are we actually as good as we thought we were when we left that job?
26:47 Guy Raz? You eventually landed on an idea to actually focus on content creators themselves, to actually make a channel about people who are YouTubers and creators. How did you land on that idea?
27:04 Speaker 01 It wasn't a kind of decision that we sat together and made. What happened was during the time when we were trying to figure out what to make content about, we would have these conversations over coffee about the world of creators and this community that we were a part of. And one day, we just thought, what if we just turned these conversations we're having in the morning into videos? And so we started writing scripts about our thoughts on the creator space, different creators. And over time, what we started to recognize was that we were doing the same thing we did in lacrosse. We were making content for the community that we were a part of, telling stories about the people in that community.
27:47 Speaker 01 As the pandemic happened, everyone's attention started to shift to online media. It's where the global conversation was happening. We had a universal experience and a universal topic that shifted everyone's focus to online creators. And a lot of people became online creators during 2020. A lot of people became more interested in online creators. And it was just this moment in time where that audience just expanded in 2020.
28:15 Speaker 02 It gave our show a real reason to exist, I would say, because for the first time, it felt like all of these people want to be creators. It's one of the most sought after careers, but it also is one of the least understood. And so that's where I think we finally found not only just the audience, but our value prop and how we were actually going to start transforming the people who were watching. And that, I would say, is what really made our channel start to take off.
28:41 Guy Raz? So let's, let's talk nuts and bolts here, guys. You started to make videos about content creators. And I should mention, these are very extensive videos. These are anywhere from a half hour to, some of them are two hours long. They're very well-produced videos. First of all, walk me through how you kind of divide up the labor, because there's a lot of work that goes into each of these videos.
29:06 Speaker 01 For us, when we look at our business, it's always kind of worked where I'm more of the business revenue partnerships and Colin's more of the creative director. And that's, that's naturally been how it works. It's kind of funny that I'm the one that went to film school and he's not, but that's just how we operate. And I think it's really important to have those two sides to a creator business, the kind of operational side and then the creative side.
29:33 Guy Raz? And I wonder, how do the economics of YouTube work? Because I've, you know, I've heard different things, like, you know, we know of the PewDiePies or the Mr. Beast, and we hear these stories about YouTubers making 10, 20, 30 million dollars a year, even if with a video that has a million views, right? From what I understand, as a YouTube creator, you don't make that much money off of that video. Is that right?
30:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, I can actually give you kind of a high level of how much the platform has paid us over the past couple of years. So in 2020, our channel did 5.6 million views and we made $16,000. In 2021, our channel did 107 million views and we made $109,000. And in 2022, so far, we've made $50,000 on 73 million views. So you can kind of understand from there that we have a team of six people who work on the show. That would be hard to sustain a business just on what the platform pays you.
30:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I think what we see with a lot of YouTube creators is a couple of things. One, that no two creators have the same roadmap. So they're all taking bits and pieces of ways that other creators are monetizing. And another thing for us and a lot of creators, when it comes to those brand sponsorships, is that not all views or not all listens are created equal. For us, the people who are listening are a certain type of person. And there are advertisers who are more interested in those people than there would be other advertisers. And that's where it really comes down to the benefit of having a niche audience and why so many creators can build a valuable living, even if their topic is very niche.
31:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, this is aggregating an audience of a certain type, building a community, and then finding the most relevant business for that community.
31:24 Guy Raz? Tell me a little bit about your plans beyond what you're doing now. I mean, what other products and things are you working on that will help you continue to build the business, the Colin and Samir business?
31:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think to start, what we want to do right now, we want to focus on, is delivering our value to the audience as best as possible and in as many ways as possible. And a lot of that is telling a diverse set of creators' stories, so we can educate people on the different roadmaps that exist. We do that right now on YouTube through our show, we do it across social platforms, we do it on our podcast, and we do it in our newsletter, The Published Press. So we get to hear a lot more about what's happening in the creator space. We get to work on that project and build an audience in a completely different way, and an audience that we own. And I think that's a really important distinction. When you think about all of us as creators, we're building our companies on rented land, in a sense, right?
32:21 Speaker 01 Like YouTube could change tomorrow. I don't think it will, but it could. And we would lose our access to that audience there. So what we're doing with building this newsletter allows us to aggregate this audience that we're passionate about, deliver value to them in a different way, in a way that we have more ownership over. And as we look to the future, I think it's expanding upon this concept of education, moving in that direction where we can roll out more education and more ways to deliver that value to the creator audience.
32:52 Speaker 02 The newsletter is not called Colin and Samir's newsletter, and that was very intentional. It's called the published press because scaling yourself as a creator is one of the hardest things to do. Casey Neistat can't scale himself necessarily, right? If he doesn't want to upload, there's no Casey Neistat on YouTube that day. And the same pertains to us on the Colin and Samir channel. There's, there can be a cap to that. But with the published press, we have a writer. And of course, we're in the edits and we're looking at it very closely. But that's a machine that can deliver the same value prop, but we're not as heavily involved. And that's really exciting for the longevity of our careers and the impact that we're able to have.
33:36 Guy Raz? We're gonna take another quick break. More from Colin and Samir in a moment, and we'll find out how they built a business around creating YouTube videos. Stick around, you're listening to How I Built This Lab.
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35:30 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So I'm talking with Colin and Samir of the Colin and Samir Show on YouTube, and I'm talking about how they built a business around their YouTube channel. You know, this creator economy, right? It has a market value estimated to be bigger than $100 billion. And I mean, this is like YouTubers and podcasters and influencers. So let's talk about how you build a business around being a content creator. I mean, you've learned from a lot of people. You guys are doing it yourselves. How do creators sort of generally start out building a sustainable business? I mean, you obviously have to have viewers and advertisers, but where do you begin?
36:13 Speaker 01 You know, I think the mistake we made when we stepped out of the Lacrosse Network and started creating was we didn't think about the audience we wanted to create for. So I would say that a large part of starting out is thinking about an audience and a value prop and thinking, here's the people I want to make content for. What do I want them to feel? How do I want to transform them? So for us, you know, once we started to figure out what we wanted to do in our format, it was, okay, we want to make content for creators. We want them to feel educated. We want them to feel empowered. We want them to feel less alone. And that gave us a guiding light. Now, the next thing that was missing was process. And that's an extremely important part of being a creator because what was happening
36:56 Speaker 01 for us was we were having some pieces of content that would do really well, that would get millions of views, but we would try and reverse engineer and say, how do we do that again? And we couldn't figure it out. And so when we decided to turn this into a podcast, into a talk show, That's when we could actually understand and build a foundation for process. And process also enables team. We were able to bring team members on to help us with that process. And it also enables monetization because then you're able to communicate to the industry, what do I do? What can you buy? What's the product that I offer? And that's a really important piece of the puzzle.
37:38 Speaker 01 And you can also look out in a year and say, okay, for us, we upload every Monday. We take six weeks off. That's how much inventory we have. You can buy a 60 second ad slot. And because we're talking to creators and we want them to feel educated, who are the advertisers who have that same mission? Let's talk to them and let's see if they want to support our mission as well because we're aligned. And so I would say those four things to solve, audience, value, process and monetization, it really is kind of the creator business plan. Now, to get to that point even, you kind of just have to create a lot to find yourself and figure out what you want to create because it's a really long road.
38:21 Speaker 01 It's taken us 10 years to get to this point. And obviously, we uploaded all types of different content to get to the Colin and Samir Show.
38:30 Guy Raz? How important are numbers, our subscribers? I hear this all the time. I've got X number of subscribers, this number of subscribers, that number. Is it really the key to building a sustainable business, having a massive number of subscribers, like millions and millions of subscribers?
38:48 Speaker 01 I think in reality, what's more important is the average number of people who are listening or are watching every time you upload. That's a lot more representative of your actual community that's there and cares. When it comes to subscribers, that's this aggregate number that can be built over a long period of time, but it doesn't necessarily mean you can reach all of those people. I think the opportunity that we're moving into right now is for more niche audiences. I think what's amazing on the internet is you can find content about almost anything, and you can find really well-developed communities about all kinds of different things. And so I think the future, or the present right now, is growing a depth of connection
39:30 Speaker 01 with an audience, rather than growing wider audiences, growing deeper. And I think that's something we're going to see a lot of as we move forward in the creator space. I think there's a lot of different opportunities to meet those communities where they are and find the right monetization strategy. Some of that might be a Patreon, or some of it might be merchandise, or some of it might be ad-supported. But I do not think you need millions of subscribers to grow. I think you need a passionate community to build a business.
39:57 Guy Raz? What explains why somebody blows up on YouTube? Is it what they do? Is it how long they've been around? What do you think?
40:06 Speaker 02 There's a lot of factors, obviously. I think the really interesting thing about some of these creators that reach millions and millions and millions of people, their content transcends language. So YouTube is a global platform, and the majority of the views come from outside the US. So if you're a creator who's making visual content, whether it be kids' content, or Dude Perfect who's doing these amazing trick shots, or Mr. Beast who is giving away thousands of dollars, you don't need to speak the language to see the reaction on that person's face when they receive it.
40:38 Guy Raz? So how does it make you guys think about what you do? Because when I see your videos, I think they're similar to what I do. It's like slow TV, like this is slow media, what I do, right? But I'm not doing trick shots, and I'm not, this is not a fast-paced show. You have to have patience to listen to How I Built This. And I feel like there's an element of that in your videos. You're very thoughtful. And does it, can it translate into a world where that is your primary source of revenue?
41:05 Speaker 01 I mean, in our experience, right now, the experience we're having, the answer is yes. And I would say that similar to what we talked about before, it's about depth and that depth of connection. Now, you do, it's not as easy to build a business. I think getting 40 million views on a video, like your advertising rates are going to be fantastic, but it's also a lot harder to produce a video that gets 40 million views. And, you know, we've spent time with Mr. Beast, we've spent time with Dude Perfect, and watching them make their videos, it's, it's hard work. And you have to study the algorithms, you have to study the metrics, but you also have to want to do that.
41:42 Guy Raz? Do you think there's enough space for everyone in the creator economy? I mean, do you think that anybody who wants to make a business out of this could theoretically do that?
41:55 Speaker 01 I think, it's a tough question. I think right now, there's a lot of people who are going to try. The barrier to entry has been significantly lowered, and a lot of that is because of TikTok or YouTube Shorts, this short form vertical content, people are having a lot of success. And most importantly, they can take a lot of shots. It's not as hard to make a video anymore with short form vertical content, but it is hard to sustain an audience over a long period of time. I think a lot of people can, can make money right now in the creator economy, but to make a career, I think, is extremely challenging. And I think it's just like any other entrepreneurial venture, and I think it's really important to recognize that the term creators, creators are a subset of entrepreneurs.
42:39 Speaker 01 It is, it is, it follows the same trajectory of how hard it is to launch a startup. Our product just so happens to be media.
42:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think if you want to be a creator, the question you should be asking yourself is, does creator have to be a career? Or can it be a tool in your toolkit to help your business? Or to make some extra cash on the side, doing what you love? You need people who really want creator to be a career, and there are some people who, before they know it, creator has become a career, because they have developed the audience, they have the viewership that will sustain a business. But it doesn't have to be that way for everyone.
43:16 Guy Raz? Yeah. You guys have been at this for 10 years now, and it's, it's a grind. There's a lot of work that goes into producing all the videos you guys make. I mean, is it fair to say that you're actually working harder now than you were when you started?
43:34 Speaker 01 I would say that's absolutely fair to say. You know, we reflect on, on the last 10 years and say that it, it took us 10 years to get our ticket to enter the race. Now we're in the race.
43:46 Speaker 02 But at least we have direction because in the past, we didn't know where we were going. And there's nothing like running, but don't, not knowing where you're supposed to end up or when to stop.
43:56 Speaker 01 So I would say, you know, whether it's, we just entered a race or we just entered a marathon, I would say we haven't even hit mile one yet. And, um, you know, to have, have the stamina to do this, I think it's, it's helpful to have a partner. It's helpful for us to keep each other afloat and it's not easy. You're dealing with algorithms, you're dealing with audiences, you're dealing with a creative output that's not easy to do on a week to week basis. So we're lucky to have a team. We're lucky to have, you know, started to, to build a business out of this and started to build a company and a culture where people can support each other and we can put some process around this and try and make this, try and make a real run at this.
44:35 Guy Raz? I know this is a question that I get all the time and part of me thinks when I'm asked this question, well, if I had the answer, don't you think that other people would have the answer to this question? But I'm gonna ask you it anyway. Where do you see opportunities for people who want to get into YouTube?
44:52 Speaker 02 I think there's a lot of opportunity when it comes down to the topic that you choose to talk about. I think if our history has shown us anything, underserved communities are communities that are going to be excited about your videos and they're going to come back again and again, whether it was the lacrosse community or now the creator of a community. It was the decision to talk about a community that we're a part of that happens to be underserved that has led to us actually being able to build a community that we can then find ways to monetize.
45:22 Speaker 01 I also think to remember that if you want to make it on YouTube specifically, YouTube is a search engine. So thinking about searchable topics is really important as a starting point. You know, a lot of times it's, it's important to start with searchable topics within underserved communities so that you can aggregate that initial audience and then introduce your personality. Into that as well. I think the mistake we made was starting to think about just making whatever interested us and there just wasn't an audience for it yet. So I do think you need to take a lot of shots and getting yourself in a space where you can do that and where you aren't relying on YouTube or relying on social, which was what we did. So don't do that. But
46:04 Speaker 01 just take a lot of shots. Think about it as a search engine and think about how to serve an audience that's underserved.
46:12 Guy Raz? I know it's really is impossible to predict the future. You know, 10 years ago, if you ask people, what's the future of X, Y, and Z? I don't think people would have predicted TikTok, right? But if you if you if you if you tried to think about where the creator economy is headed, in 10 years' time, do you still think that YouTube will be the dominant force?
46:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, I definitely do. I think there's something about the power of, you know, search, but also the length of the content. I think when you sit with someone for five, 10, 15 minutes, you're building a depth with the creator that you're not necessarily getting in 15 seconds on TikTok. And with the TikTok for you style page, it prioritizes the videos and not the creators. So if you took the biggest creators off of TikTok, you can still enjoy TikTok. But people come to YouTube specifically for the creators because they want to watch them for long periods of time. And once you have people watching for a long period of time, that's actually when you can build a career off of whether it be advertising or selling
47:20 Speaker 02 a product or a service.
47:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think on TikTok, you're a cog in their algorithm. You're going through it and you're just seeing what's next. And it's learning about what you like in terms of what's next. It's much less about the creators and much more about the experience of the for you page. And I think if you look back in time, history has shown us that people follow people, whether it was the radio, television stars, movie stars, musicians, like we're interested in people. And YouTube lends itself really well to building relationships with people.
47:52 Guy Raz? Colin and Samir, thanks so much, guys.
47:54 Speaker 02 Thanks, Guy.
47:55 Speaker 01 Thanks, Guy.
47:58 Guy Raz? Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab. You can follow How I Built This on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening right now. You can binge all of our episodes ad-free by subscribing to Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. If you want to follow us on socials, we're at How I Built This on Twitter and Instagram, and I'm at Guy Raz on Twitter and at Guy dot Raz on Instagram. This episode was produced by Carla Estevez with editing by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Andy Huether. Our music was composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, J.C. Howard, Chris Messini,
48:40 Guy Raz? Liz Metzger, Sam Paulson, and Kerry Thompson. Our intern is Margaret Serino. Neva Grant is our supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.
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