Bonus: Casey Neistat full interview

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  Hey everybody, it's Neil I from the Vergecast. If you listened to this week's show, you know we had a special guest. Casey Neistat 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 Neistat. Casey Neistat is here.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Casey is here.

• 0:36Nilay Patel?

  Casey, I've been trying to get you on the show for a year, since we met at South by Southwest a year ago.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  You know, that makes it sound like this is some sort of like elusive, "I live two blocks from here, my office is three blocks from here." 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. For 365 days.

• 0:59Nilay Patel?

  So can I tell the story of when we hung out at South by Southwest?

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, please.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  One of the most insane dinners of my entire life.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think I may have been hosting that dinner, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

• 1:10Nilay Patel?

  It was very strange. So CNN had just acquired Beam.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:15Nilay Patel?

  And Casey, he invited me to dinner, CNN's hosting a dinner. There was like insane guest list. You were there. Cory Booker was there. It was like, it was a big dinner.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, who else was there? Alexis was there.

• 1:27Nilay Patel?

  Alexis Ohanian was there. It was a great dinner.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  There were some, and then there were some outliers there.

• 1:31Nilay Patel?

  I was there.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  I was also dressed like a piece of crap.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  And then there were a couple of people like in the corner that were like, "What did you invite me to? I'm wearing sweatpants."

• 1:51Nilay Patel?

  So it's this big fancy dinner, and it's supposed to be on the roof of a hotel in Austin.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Private chefs.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  And it was raining.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Torrential.

• 1:59Nilay Patel?

  Torrential rain, so I got moved inside. And Jeff Zucker was very angry that it had been moved inside.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  We all were.

• 2:06Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  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 fancy restaurant situation. So you could watch the chefs cook your meal.

• 2:30Nilay Patel?

  And the door just.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Chef separating the two, yeah.

• 2:33Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  It was bright.

• 2:42Nilay Patel?

  And then we're like, we should hang out more.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  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. So we weren't able to get our food. I didn't really notice or care, but I think the folks from CNN who organized it were like super upset about it.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Senator Booker seemed pretty chill about the whole situation.

• 3:09Nilay Patel?

  He was, he was very chill.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Food was great.

• 3:11Nilay Patel?

  You know, if you're a guest and you, I imagine a lot of people there are like 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 shit.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, I'm like, you know, I ate at McDonald's four days a week, like this fancy dinner, like I had alarms. This just felt normal to me, but they were really stressed out about it.

• 3:31Nilay Patel?

  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 about 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 let's, I want to start with you.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Please.

• 4:04Nilay Patel?

  So that was a year ago. We were celebrating Beam. Tell me a little bit about Beam. Like, what, what's that story?

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Ah, I mean, the whole story abbreviated and jump in for, for, 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, your temple and capture what you're seeing and share it to the world.

• 4:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  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 it as a tech company. And Google Glass then died and then Snapchat really came up and it, it sort of kept shifting and changing and growing. And, you know, it 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.

• 5:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  But, you know, in parallel with that life cycle of the software development company that was Beam was my YouTube channel. And the launch of my daily show on my YouTube channel, which was very much so about Beam, the tech company. And I think it was a confluence of, you know, the, 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 turn, CNN was most attracted and put forth, I think, the most interesting offer for Matt and myself.

• 5:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  And that is what led to the acquisition in November of 2016.

• 5:44Nilay Patel?

  What did you want it to be at CNN? Because I heard a couple of different versions from you and some other folks there that it went in a couple of different ways. What did you ultimately want it to be?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  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 interesting 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.

• 6:34Nilay Patel?

  But was it gonna be, when you launched Beam as just your own company, it was like hold it to your chest?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  It was purely, yeah, it was purely a software company.

• 6:40Nilay Patel?

  And then when you went to CNN, it was like, we're gonna take in all this input and make a daily show. And then you made a bunch of like, kinda standalone YouTube videos about some interesting topics. Was that the final decision?

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, well, that's where I was going with that. 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. 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

• 7:35Speaker 01

  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 innovator's thinking, just doesn't really mesh necessarily well with a larger entity like a Turner.

• 7:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  And that was where a lot of the struggles came from. As things were winding down early this year, Matt and I looked back and we're like, this is literally a case study for the innovator's dilemma.

• 8:10Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  This is what we were confronting here.

• 8:13Nilay Patel?

  So the classically, our audience knows the innovator's dilemma, I'm just gonna say it out loud. That's when a company has an existing product line, I think the classic example is 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?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  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 as large as an old school media company can do. Does that make sense?

• 9:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  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.

• 9:15Nilay Patel?

  Right. You made a very heartfelt video when you went down.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's because I believe that. CNN was an incredible partner, and they wanted us to do what we thought we needed to do to succeed. Unfortunately, the first thing we did was hire a bunch of people. In retrospect, huge mistake. 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 a real innovative spirit comes from.

• 9:50Nilay Patel?

  So you think you got too big too fast inside of CNN?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:07Nilay Patel?

  Right. But you need to have something to scale.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Sure, right.

• 10:10Nilay Patel?

  And that's like the main problem.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Right, and I think that's exactly the stress point that I'm trying to 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 wing theory. And ultimately, 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.

• 10:40Nilay Patel?

  Can you, what was the day that you decided to wind it down? Can you say, like, who'd you talk to? You're like, I'm done, you sent an email, you sent a text?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  It was not my decision.

• 10:47Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  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

• 11:32Speaker 01

  of balance sheets looks at things in ways that is not the way an entrepreneur would look at things.

• 11:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  You know, when I was building Beam with Matt, it was like survival and success at all costs. Pivot, shift, whatever 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, absolve itself of the expenses that were keeping us external, and let Matt and I go.

• 12:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so here's my question.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Please.

• 12:25Nilay Patel?

  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 of whatever happened with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and data usage.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Can I interject with a Cambridge Analytica story?

• 12:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, of course.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  I've never told this before.

• 12:47Nilay Patel?

  I'm here for it.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  What is the name of that, the CEO, the one that was caught yesterday on?

• 12:51Nilay Patel?

  Max.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  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, four, five thousand people in the audience. He spoke before me.

• 13:09Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  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 then 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.

• 13:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  And how to tap into those via data. And it was, it was haunting.

• 13:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  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 boos 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 don't, I don't know, certainly don't know him personally, but he, 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.

• 14:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Alexander Nix, by the way, he kinda does look like a Bond villain.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  That is my, that's my entire Cambridge Analytica story, so you can continue now. Sorry for that, sorry for that digression.

• 14:38Nilay Patel?

  Well, I wanna talk about what you just said. Your videos on 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 there's, then there's your stuff. And then there's what YouTube wants, thinks it is.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  That's a lot. Let's, let's unpack, let's unpack. First, um, Facebook. I think Facebook, if you look at the last, really, six, four, six years, and most, more pointedly, the last two years. A lot of the manipulation that's taken place on there, um, and I, and just speaking apolitically, whether it has to do with advertising, or it has to do with selling a, a political candidate, it's all data-driven. And Cambridge Analytica would be the first to say that it's data-driven. The, um, Russian hacking, data-driven. And behind that data is certainly, uh, things like, you know, news that's, that has no backing, and memes that are borderline ridiculous, or like Donald Trump arm wrestling Satan and Jesus, and like, all kinds of madness. But it's all data, data, data.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  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, by shutting down their access to the data. YouTube is-

• 16:07Nilay Patel?

  So, wait, not shutting down their access to publish, shutting down their access to the data?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  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, the public, et cetera, et cetera. Let's just assume they can flip those switches. Um, 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 memes 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.

• 16:46Nilay Patel?

  I'll have to 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.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Sure, but the impact, the impact of those, and again, like, there's that, there's a shitload to talk about on this topic, but what I'm speaking up purely is when it comes to political influence.

• 17:05Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  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.

• 17:28Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  If you look at what Infowar has been able to do, you look at their growth, it's because people subscribe to Alex Jones.

• 17:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  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.

• 17:49Nilay Patel?

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

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Sure, but then you're getting towards thought police versus...

• 18:06Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Fair, but I do think that there, 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 obtained 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 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.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Is that the, 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.

• 19:20Nilay Patel?

  So my disagreement here is, I think, just a disagreement in kind, right?

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 19:24Nilay Patel?

  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 like, 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?

• 20:09Speaker 01

  The question of thought police.

• 20:10Nilay Patel?

  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 that 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.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  I don't know what they're doing and why. No, I just listened to, Kara Swisher did a fantastic interview with Susan Wojcicki, I think two weeks ago on her Recode podcast.

• 20:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  There wasn't a lot of information there. And I don't know a lot of information, so. You know, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl 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 Infowars down, but let someone who's more legitimate remain without, you know, 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, I don't know how they could have-

• 21:22Nilay Patel?

  Well, you could. I mean, the thing is, you can't, you just have to do it.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Sure, you have to do it, but do-

• 21:26Nilay Patel?

  The problem, it sounds hard.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Chase that down. Like, do, do what? Who qualifies someone as an extremist?

• 21:33Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Where does free speech end, and where does thought police begin?

• 21:36Nilay Patel?

  But, so they are not the government, right? They don't have a free speech obligation to anyone. The First Amendment applies to the government-

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Sure. I could not agree with you more, but at what-

• 21:45Nilay Patel?

  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 gonna decide, and that is the end of it." And they could just decide. Every single day, they could just decide, "Ah, that's a little too racist," and turn it off. I don't know if that's the right answer, but it, there's nothing preventing them from doing it.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Sure, but you're speaking theoretically.

• 22:07Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm speaking very practically.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  I don't think you are.

• 22:09Nilay Patel?

  You could just decide.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Forty hours of content, and I'm not sitting here defending YouTube, I'm one of YouTube's biggest critics, despite biting the hand that feeds me, is like my middle name when it comes to YouTube. But, 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 and-

• 22:42Nilay Patel?

  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 gonna 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 responsibility is just, they come to you. You have them.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Right, and it's funny, because both Facebook and YouTube both say they're not media companies. They're technology companies.

• 23:12Nilay Patel?

  All the time.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Yet, they, they-

• 23:14Nilay Patel?

  They're the biggest media company-

• 23:14Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. And not only that, but their entire business model is based on being media companies, so.

• 23:20Nilay Patel?

  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 gonna like, try to build software that does it for us, or we're gonna say, we're gonna throw our hands in the air and say we can't stop it. But I think this, to me, this comes down to a pretty practical question.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:47Nilay Patel?

  Facebook yesterday announced like their Patreon clone. By the way, we're recording this on Tuesday. The show comes out on Friday. Casey's in the office.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Hey, we should've made that clear.

• 23:54Nilay Patel?

  We probably should've.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Otherwise, we're gonna sound like we're really late to the game.

• 23:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, Facebook's gonna shut down tomorrow and it's all over. But Facebook announced it's like Patreon clone, right? They wanna attract creators to that platform. Does that interest you? That's what I feel like YouTube seems like.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  You know.

• 24:10Nilay Patel?

  You can't get away from it.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  This is a much more exciting pivot here. I'm a man of medium intelligence, and in my, in my best mind frame, I can't think of a reasonable solution. And hearing someone's, I think, idealistic, simplistic answer to that, which is just do it, which is great, but like, literally do a math equation, forty hours, every minute of every day, there aren't enough human beings on planet Earth, seven billion human beings, to actually watch every piece of content and trust the judgment of all seven 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.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  So, in any event, that's always a dead-end conversation, because there is no- There is no satisfying conclusion.

• 25:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  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 was a better word than influencer, because that's just such a dirty, disgusting word, but generically, an influencer, someone who peddles their influence in exchange for goods and services. 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, practical answer.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 26:06Nilay Patel?

  And you've been doing stuff on Twitch recently.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  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. I need their platform. And they're like, YouTube is, you know, 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... Practically, they're 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

• 26:48Speaker 01

  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 of painting it as that when they're talking about the monetization opportunities and the platform and Twitch Prime and all these things that sound so much more exciting than a five-second pre-roll that you wait to skip and in return you get 50% of the 10th of a penny or whatever it is on YouTube. That sounds exciting.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  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 gonna go out of business this year and I don't think Twitch is gonna become, eclipse YouTube anytime soon, but I do think in the months and the years, tides shift. And when they shift, 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.

• 28:05Nilay Patel?

  So, I've seen a lot of Vine stars went to Instagram. When you think about where you're gonna 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?

• 28:17Speaker 01

  I've always aspired to be platform agnostic. I've 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 gonna 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.

• 28:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. How do you balance that out? I mean, you gotta make, you gotta eat.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it's very challenging.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  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.

• 29:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So, another thing I want to ask you about, you very famously I would 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 of-

• 29:47Speaker 01

  You guys are such fanboys.

• 29:49Nilay Patel?

  It's the reality of the situation. But, you know, that's like, 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?

• 30:11Speaker 01

  I think it's tough, and I think it's that that challenge is exasperated by my own fuck-ups of past. Like, I have worked with Samsung and not been clear with my audience on it before. Which is 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-

• 30:49Nilay Patel?

  It's true, he's got a 10, and what's that?

• 30:51Speaker 01

  That is an LG, it's not even a Samsung phone. I'm playing with it, it's LG right now.

• 30:55Nilay Patel?

  I found Jack, I'm just pointing it out to everybody.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  The S9 is super, super sexy, by the way. I just don't have one on my service provider yet. So, 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 to know, and that's not fair, that's totally like-

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  Especially as your audience gets bigger.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  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 a 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.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  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.

• 32:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  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 goofing off in France. And before that, we did a video where I flew on a drone and we shot that on Canon cameras. I don't even think there was a Samsung phone in that video.

• 32:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  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?

• 32:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  And the onus is on me. The onus is on the creator. And I think that, 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.

• 33:08Nilay Patel?

  You know, in fairness, I will say, I don't, the reason that we never do that is because I don't know how to solve that problem.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 33:15Nilay Patel?

  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 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. And I'm happy on my side. I think the people on YouTube.

• 34:00Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  It's tricky and look, this is a really simple thing that I'm looking, pushing ahead. You know, when I was with CNN for the last year, I wasn't really looking or courting any brand deals. But now, again, I gotta, I gotta 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, to see the Floyd Mayweather fight at the end of last summer. And it was with SeatGeek.

• 34:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  And I was super over it. I was like, this is a sponsored video by SeatGeek. Thank you, SeatGeek. And my audience didn't mind.

• 34:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:08Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  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 SeatGeek deal because there's no conflict there.

• 35:17Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  So looking ahead, it's, it's, 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, I am not a company that sells discounted tickets to events. So when I talk about SeatGeek and thank them for sponsoring my channel, there's no conflict. There's, there's, there's nothing like that. So I do think there are ways to navigate this minefield, but it's, it is tricky.

• 35:57Nilay Patel?

  I think that's where the Patreon-type models come in, the Kickstarter drip-type models come in. Where 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.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  This is interesting because I am Twitch, I've just started playing with and I absolutely like 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, 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.

• 36:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  But, the question then is like, why doesn't YouTube just copy Twitch? I don't think they ever could.

• 36:46Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 36:46Speaker 01

  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 a-vot, 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, you know, a lot of YouTubers on, 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 like, you will

• 37:29Speaker 01

  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.

• 37:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  And on Twitch, it's the norm.

• 37:56Nilay Patel?

  Do you think, like YouTube Red, would you ever make a YouTube Red series? Do you think that hides you in a corner?

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Um, I don't understand YouTube Red.

• 38:03Nilay Patel?

  So I pay for it and I love it just because the ads are good.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, me too, but what you're talking about, you asked me to do different things there.

• 38:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the original content, yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Interestingly enough, Susan, the CEO of YouTube, just described in that Recode podcast, that's a Vox company, right?

• 38:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm promoting them as a...

• 38:17Nilay Patel?

  Their offer code is Casey.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Oh, their offer code is Casey. She described Red as a music service.

• 38:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Did you hear that podcast, you know about that? I had never heard Red described as a YouTube ser- as a music service before.

• 38:30Nilay Patel?

  It was very confusing.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Very, very confusing. I use Red because I don't like ads.

• 38:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  What is a YouTube Red series? What is a YouTube original series? What- I have no idea what any of this means.

• 38:42Nilay Patel?

  The thing is, you could put it all together, right? You could- the fact that they described it as a music ser- because you get Google Play Music with it.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Okay, I don't even know how that works. I don't even know what Google Play Music is.

• 38:53Nilay Patel?

  Firthcast listeners tweet at me about Google Play Music all the time. I think Spotify's bad and they're all like, use Google Play Music. Anyway, you get it for free with Red and you get to watch a bunch of music videos, which is, I think, is maybe the primary use of what people do on Red. And that's why she said it. Don't really understand.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  But can I just watch music videos without Red?

• 39:10Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  You and I both right now are just making wild assumptions here as to what this huge product that defines their platform actually is. And that is the problem.

• 39:25Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Sort of.

• 39:50Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna bundle them up and you get early access to their stuff.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  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- 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 Yoda say it?

• 40:26Nilay Patel?

  Angerous hate.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  All those, all those things. And I think that like that is the trouble with Red.

• 40:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  And this conversation started with you saying, would I ever do a Red series? And my answer is like, I don't know what a Red series is.

• 40:39Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  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, 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 a, as some sort of YouTube original? And it, it didn't 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.

• 41:19Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Dude, I, I spend whatever, 12 bucks 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 does something really funny and I click tip jar and I send them a buck. I know exactly what I just did. And I think on Google, the services are so convoluted and they're so, 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, it does make it harder for creators to go beyond

• 42:13Speaker 01

  working with brands or, or AdSense, which I think are very, very old school models for monetizing content on a platform as forward as YouTube.

• 42:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So, let's end, you just mentioned you're starting a new series. Can you talk about it? What's your next thing?

• 42:27Speaker 01

  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 Beam.

• 42:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  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 realized 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 it 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, you know, what transpired six months into my vlog where I was doing, you know, a million and a half views a day.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  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 are exploring every opportunity that presents itself because of, you know, because of this new show that I'm hoping

• 43:48Nilay Patel?

  So it's a show?

• 43:49Speaker 01

  We'll find an audience. I mean, it's a YouTube series.

• 43:51Nilay Patel?

  So it's a YouTube series on your channel?

• 43:52Speaker 01

  On my channel.

• 43:53Nilay Patel?

  But you're building multiple businesses around it?

• 43:55Speaker 01

  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.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  You know, whether you like his content or not, you know, Jake's somebody I've known for years and is doing interesting things from a business perspective.

• 44:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  But this is such a new thing, and that's why I called 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?

• 44:33Nilay Patel?

  Right. And he's got multiple lines of business, right? He runs Team Ten.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Sure, and nothing I'm doing is modeled after or 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.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  I don't want to take the wind out of the sails because I'm really excited about the launch video.

• 45:26Nilay Patel?

  Well, when you launch it, you'll come back. It won't be another year.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, let's start the DMs now and I can be back in less than a year.

• 45:31Nilay Patel?

  Well, dude, I've taken up an hour of your time. Thank you so much. I'm excited for your next thing.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  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 on the podcast. You didn't even mention it.

• 45:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's another brand deal. Oh, here, here's what I'm gonna say. Casey brought us some hot sauce.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Hey, that's all I was looking for.

• 45:53Nilay Patel?

  He brought us like, what, 12 bottles?

• 45:55Speaker 01

  12 bottles of hot sauce.

• 45:56Nilay Patel?

  It's in a beautiful bag. They're great. Are they for sale? You can plug the hot sauce.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  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.

• 46:08Nilay Patel?

  It's, it looks delicious.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  It's spicy.

• 46:10Nilay Patel?

  It's, I'm into it. I love a good hot sauce.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Everybody loves a good hot sauce.

• 46:13Nilay Patel?

  I'll make you, I'll use it tonight.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  No, but that's not a plug. You can't buy, I think maybe you can buy it in the stores. I'm not selling it. I don't make, if you buy hot sauce, I don't make any money. I just, I just, you know.

• 46:22Nilay Patel?

  It was a very nice gesture.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Hey, that's all I'm looking for.

• 46:24Nilay Patel?

  Casey also showed up and rode one of our video director's unicycles around the office.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  I appreciate that The Verge offices have a unicycle.

• 46:30Nilay Patel?

  We, it's real wacky. I describe our, The Verge culture as a really high-performing Montessori. Like, it's like a surprisingly productive Montessori.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  My three-year-olds in Montessori and I concur. That is exactly what the vibe in here is like.

• 46:42Nilay Patel?

  It's just a bunch of smart people doing whatever they want and sometimes it's good. It's like all. 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.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  You have to have a, 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 it's a very, very hard principled thing to do when you've been doing things the same way for 20 or 30 years.

• 47:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And we see that, right? We're, 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.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Great to be here.

• 47:39Nilay Patel?

  Thank you for the unicycle adventure.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Thanks for inviting.

• 47:42Nilay Patel?

  Thanks, man. I appreciate it.