Pod Insights Decoder Dropout CEO Sam Reich on the business of subscription comedy About this episode We’ve got something special for you today. It’s my friend Hank Green, longtime YouTuber, science educator, and viral TikTok star, interviewing Dropout CEO Sam Reich.
Hank did this episode as a guest host over the summer, and it’s a fan favorite, bringing together two internet personalities that’ve known each other for a very long time and who have a lot of inside knowledge about how the internet, Hollywood, and entertainment all intertwine.
Links:
Dropout’s Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping the internet weird | Decoder
How Dropout broke through in 2025 | AV Club
Dropout CEO on launching ‘Superfan’ tier, crossing 1M subscribers | Variety
How CollegeHumor reinvented itself for the new internet age | People
CollegeHumor shaped online comedy. What went wrong? [2020] | Wired
‘I believe in this enough to try to do it myself’ [2020] | Digiday
Jacob Wysocki needed a minute to process that Game Changer | Vulture
Game Changer smartly weaponizes its online following | Mashable
Vimeo CEO Philip Moyer is betting on the human touch | Decoder
Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons for $1.38B | The Verge
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Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
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Transcript 11,324 words · 12 speakers
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1:33 Speaker 04 Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. We've got something special for you today. It's my friend Hank Green, longtime YouTuber, science educator, and viral TikTok star, interviewing dropout CEO Sam Reich. Hank did this episode as a guest host over the summer while I was out with our new baby, and it's been a fan favorite, bringing together two internet personalities that have known each other for a very long time and who have a lot of inside knowledge about how the internet, Hollywood, and entertainment all intertwine. We think it's one of the best episodes of Decoder we put out last year, and it's honestly just a really fun conversation. Okay, here's Hank Green interviewing dropout CEO Sam Reich.
2:27 Speaker 05 Sam Reich, you are the founder and CEO of Dropout. Welcome to Decoder. Hi.
2:34 Speaker 06 Thank you so much for having me, Hank. Flattered to be here.
2:37 Speaker 05 You're doing a very interesting thing in a very different way than I think anybody else in media, which is why I think it's really going to be exciting to talk to you about this stuff. And also try and figure out the whys and hows that you can do that. But to start, usually I don't really tend to go in that much for origin stories. I think they're usually mostly just like a way to sort of make people think that they could imagine, that they could learn something from the very particular circumstances that one person experienced, which I think are going to be different from other people's. And also a way for people to toot their own horns. But can you give me an origin story of Dropout from the beginning of Dropout? So we don't need to get into
3:18 Speaker 05 like 2006 and College Humor and stuff, but just hit me with like, what, how did Dropout end up in your hands?
3:24 Speaker 06 Sometimes some people call me the founder of Dropout, which actually is not true. Dropout.
3:29 Speaker 05 Well, I.
3:30 Speaker 06 You beg to differ.
3:31 Speaker 05 I do.
3:32 Speaker 06 Great. I'll take it. Listen, Dropout was a priority that came out of IAC, who was our corporate parent at the time.
3:44 Speaker 05 So this was who owned College Humor?
3:46 Speaker 06 This is who owned College Humor. And for years and years, IAC was trying to figure out how we would make not just a lot of money, but a lot, a lot of money.
3:56 Speaker 05 Right.
3:57 Speaker 06 And there was always kind of a cynic might call it a get rich quick scheme of the time. And it was ad sales. And then social media took a big chomp out of ad sales. And then it was television. And it turned out television production didn't scale very effectively. And then finally, the idea was let's try going direct to audience.
4:16 Speaker 05 Yeah, just to go OTT, as they say.
4:19 Speaker 06 As they say. And there, there was a collection of-
4:23 Speaker 05 I'm not sure exactly what the top we're going over is, but we're going over the top of something.
4:28 Speaker 06 Yeah.
4:29 Speaker 05 I guess the whole system.
4:31 Speaker 06 It does feel like that phrase makes it feel like we're, we're gambling the house. And in a way, we kind of were.
4:39 Speaker 05 Okay.
4:40 Speaker 06 There was a collection of executives who were very bullish about this within College Humor. I wasn't necessarily one of them. I slowly but surely warmed up to it, imagining that if it didn't work, at least we'd get to create our own cool stuff for a while. The notion was go direct to audience. There won't be the gatekeepers that there are in Hollywood. We won't have to start over every year like we do in ad sales. That is, by the way, one of the intrinsic benefits of subscription is that you're not starting your business over every year versus ad sales where you have to go out and sell every year, start from zero.
5:16 Speaker 05 Mm hmm. And the, yeah, things are always changing.
5:20 Speaker 06 Yep.
5:20 Speaker 05 And also like you, you're, you're not just doing the YouTube thing where like certainly you're selling against views, but also you're selling on these platforms that decide whether or not you get the views that can have their priorities shift in ways that are going to be advantageous or not to your business. And that's always going to be, that's always going to be their, their idea.
5:41 Speaker 06 That's true. I, I think that was the sort of meat of our first announcement video. And I think it's really true where AVOD, as it were, is like-
5:50 Speaker 05 What is AVOD?
5:52 Speaker 06 Advertising video on demand.
5:55 Speaker 05 Gotcha.
5:55 Speaker 06 It's a word like you could also just say anyone who is not going subscription.
5:59 Speaker 05 Yeah.
6:00 Speaker 06 That is a business that involves like us, the audience, the platform and the advertiser.
6:06 Speaker 05 Mm hmm. Balance and all those things. Yeah.
6:09 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's not even a menagee trois. It's a menagee four.
6:13 Speaker 05 And everybody knows, once you, once you break trois, it's just a mess in there. There's no, it's, somebody's always getting left behind.
6:22 Speaker 06 That's right. That's right. It's harder for everybody to achieve orgasm. You can decide to keep that in or not.
6:30 Speaker 05 Never break trois.
6:32 Speaker 06 Never break toa.
6:33 Speaker 05 That's a business, that's a business rule. Honestly, I like, sometimes I look at YouTube and I'm like, oh my God, their party, the YouTube party that they are having has so many different people at it that they have to satisfy. And that includes like the government, you know, like regulators.
6:49 Speaker 06 Totally.
6:49 Speaker 05 And I'm like, man, I just never want to break toa. I want to have like my, my audience. I want to have my like team. So like the people who work for the thing. And then I want to have maybe the advertisers or maybe myself.
7:03 Speaker 06 And you, I mean, you can decide, you know, not to break toa if for instance, making money isn't important to you or satisfying the YouTube algorithm isn't important to you. You can decide that these aren't priorities.
7:16 Speaker 05 Yeah, well, I mean, you can't, if you're going to pay people salaries, you can't decide that money doesn't matter, but.
7:22 Speaker 06 Exactly. Exactly. This, this was a big aha moment for me in running a business, realizing that the simpler your business is arguably the better it is, or certainly the more effective you can run it.
7:33 Speaker 05 Yeah, especially at the beginning. Yeah. I mean, businesses get complicated because they have a lot of, because they've succeeded already. And they have opportunities to complexify, but they do not get complicated at the beginning.
7:47 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I am willfully trying to keep our business as uncomplex as possible and it is hard.
7:57 Speaker 05 You just added advertising. You did it. So you, you, the, the final episode of Game Changer.
8:02 Speaker 06 We did not actually add advertising to drop out. There are fans who are very concerned that it's going to happen.
8:09 Speaker 05 But.
8:09 Speaker 06 That is not going to happen.
8:11 Speaker 05 It was, there was a sponsorship though.
8:13 Speaker 06 There was a sponsorship, yes.
8:15 Speaker 05 That made us a lot of sense in place that you would have needed this. So that you could fund a high dollar game show.
8:22 Speaker 06 Quote unquote, made a lot of sense is an interesting way to put that. But yeah, I think, I think.
8:27 Speaker 05 As a viewer, it made sense.
8:28 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I warmed up to subscription. Like I warmed up to the idea of, oh, going direct to audience means we get to simplify this operation. It means that we get to call the shots. It means that even though budgets will be less, our creative autonomy will be more.
8:54 Speaker 05 I mean, would budgets definitely be less? Like the thing about, like, obviously per viewer, you're making a lot more money. It's really about the number of people you can convert. And that, that marketing, was there a lot of discussion about how you would actually market the subscription product? Or was it just like, let's make this available. We'll pop a bumper on the end of the videos and people will go sign up.
9:14 Speaker 06 The, the theory when we launched was that we would be converting YouTube subscribers to paid subscribers for a lot longer than that turned out to work.
9:25 Speaker 05 Oh.
9:26 Speaker 06 Do you know what I mean? Like that, that well ran dry fast.
9:29 Speaker 05 Yep.
9:30 Speaker 06 Yeah.
9:31 Speaker 05 That, that sounds familiar. So it turns out you did have a, a, a marketing vehicle eventually arrived, but this did not end up being a successful thing for the people at IAC and College Humor. And IAC is like a big media conglomerate. They don't like people. They own a bunch of magazines and TV shows, TV channels.
9:51 Speaker 06 For sure, for sure. And I think IAC kind of gets a bad rap in all of this, but for the record, they were patient with us in terms of us not delivering them a big chunk of money for over a decade. Arguably, they showed more patience than I think a lot of parent companies would in that same situation. And a lot of people in the meanwhile, gave birth to spectacular careers coming out of College Humor when IAC did not very much benefit.
10:16 Speaker 06 So I remain grateful to IAC for being our shepherds through that decade. And then they, when they got bored of us, we didn't objectively fail. We just didn't succeed spectacularly either. We had like 75,000 subscribers at the end of year one. I think they were hoping for like double that number.
10:35 Speaker 05 Yeah.
10:35 Speaker 06 They tried to sell us, but we looked very bad on paper because we had just burned through their whole investment. So a lot of people were interested at first, and then they saw the amount of money we were losing and the business plan, which had us losing even more money before turning profitable. And they all dropped out one by one, leaving me.
10:55 Speaker 05 Leaving you, man.
10:57 Speaker 06 Leaving me.
10:58 Speaker 05 And so you came with all your, your big pile of money that you somehow had and you just said, hey, I'm gonna buy it. Hey, hey, what's that? You got a cigar, backroom deals. No, this is the, this is the weirdest part of the story for me. So you did not, in fact, go to them with a bunch of money to acquire dropout. How did you, how did you acquire college humor from IAC, Sam?
11:19 Speaker 06 I find it very funny when like, there's, there's a certain soundbite on the internet. That's like, Sam used his dad's money to come and buy dropout.
11:27 Speaker 05 Oh, wow.
11:27 Speaker 06 Which is very funny in the context of my dad being the inequality guy. I'm like, you are misinformed in terms of how much money you think this family has.
11:37 Speaker 05 Yeah.
11:39 Speaker 05 For those who don't know, Sam's dad is, is Robert Reich, who was the labor secretary under one of the, Bill Clinton? Is that right?
11:45 Speaker 06 Yes, under Clinton, which as we all know, labor secretary is the most lucrative profession that you could possibly imagine.
11:51 Speaker 05 You see him on the internet sometimes yelling about inequality, probably.
11:55 Speaker 06 Yes, yes, yes, yes. And does it very well.
11:58 Speaker 05 He's very talented.
12:00 Speaker 06 So I went and I offered IAC $0, which was the amount of money I had to offer.
12:10 Speaker 06 There was another offer for three million bucks, but it would have gone to a competitor. They would have fired everybody and taken the assets and see what they could do with them. And I think that they liked the idea of gambling. Oh, sorry. So my offer was $0. They would end up in the minority, the minority stakeholder. So it was sort of like idiot insurance for them.
12:33 Speaker 05 So they'd get to hold on to whatever Sam does with it.
12:38 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Insurance for them in case things go very, very well. And I think that they liked the idea of gambling on me more than the idea of handing the company over to a competitor. It's a better story. If it works out, it's more exciting for them. And so we did that deal. And for the record, I would not have done that deal purely sentimentally. I did it because I really believed in the business case.
13:03 Speaker 05 You feel like you saw something that the people at the parent company didn't see, or that the executives who had been operating College Humor didn't see? Like where the value was maybe wasn't where they thought it was? Or?
13:16 Speaker 06 Maybe. I mean, what we did with the company was so disruptive. I have a hard time imagining any corporate parent going, yeah, let's try that. Like, it was so extreme. I think it probably only could have happened in a new environment.
13:33 Speaker 05 And so the, you know, kind of immediate first step was the company got very small after you. It was in your hands.
13:40 Speaker 06 Yeah, we went from 107 employees, I think we were, to, or 105 employees to seven employees overnight.
13:47 Speaker 05 So you were also signing up for that?
13:50 Speaker 06 Yes. We signed our deal with IAC on a Tuesday in March of 2020. On Wednesday, the basketball team stopped playing. And on Thursday, we were in COVID lockdown.
14:01 Speaker 05 Whoa. I didn't realize that. That's new information to me. That's wild.
14:10 Speaker 05 The basketball team stopped playing is such like a triggering phrase.
14:15 Speaker 06 No, totally, totally. That's how I get people with that story. They're like, oh, I remember.
14:21 Speaker 05 Yeah.
14:22 Speaker 06 I remember now.
14:23 Speaker 05 Then you had College Humor, which has since rebranded to align with the name of the pre-existing streaming platform. But I would call it, at this point, a pretty different business, and thus I consider you the founder of Dropout. But you don't have to consider yourself that. You certainly are the CEO, though, and you're super in charge. And a strange, a strange way for this all to happen. When you proposed this, did you feel like it was likely that they would say yes?
14:51 Speaker 06 No.
14:52 Speaker 05 I love that.
14:53 Speaker 06 I mean, I saw the writing on the wall, which is to say, like, I saw that they didn't have a lot of options. But for the record, I was a chief creative officer. And I didn't, even then, much to my own lack of credit, over the course of 10-plus years at IAC, I didn't really speak business. So it was a leap of faith in me as a non-businessman. That's what I felt very conscious of, walking into that room.
15:28 Speaker 05 We have to pause here for a quick break. We'll be right back.
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16:58 Speaker 05 Welcome back. I'm Hank Green, talking with Dropout CEO Sam Reich. We were just talking about his origin story, how he became, in my opinion, anyway, though not his, the founder of Dropout. And I think that's made him something very unusual, someone who actually cares about media.
17:19 Speaker 05 There was a time when media companies were more likely to be led by people who enjoyed making media and a time when now, maybe now, media companies are mostly led by people who are kind of on the, on the number-y side, the business-y side. And you are definitely, you, you are a current, a current example of a person who is a media executive, if you'll excuse saying that. But who is extraordinarily and deeply and constantly involved as a creative force, as a host, on-screen talent, but also constantly ideating and even writing. Like you're, you're not like, you're not just sort of showing up and reading the teleprompter.
18:03 Speaker 05 You are also coming up with ideas for shows and you are the creative vision behind, I think probably what is your most successful show? Question mark? Game Changer?
18:16 Speaker 06 I think Game Changer and Dimension 20 are constantly duking it out for position on the platform.
18:21 Speaker 05 Dimension 20 came a lot, like existed as a product when College Humor launched Dropout, is that right?
18:28 Speaker 06 It was a, you know, day one Dropout franchise. Yeah. So did Game Changer, though.
18:34 Speaker 05 Oh, I didn't know that. That's why it's been around. That's why it has seven seasons or eight seasons or whatever.
18:39 Speaker 06 Exactly. Exactly. I think.
18:42 Speaker 05 And I know that you're not super proud of those early episodes, but we love them in my.
18:47 Speaker 06 That's nice.
18:49 Speaker 06 That's nice. I'm so determined to jump the shark.
18:52 Speaker 05 Yeah, well, I mean, you have got a real sort of creative problem with Game Changer in that you continue to escalate. And eventually, there is, there is no more, there's no more rungs on the ladder that you can.
19:04 Speaker 06 It's true. It's hard to go further than outer space.
19:08 Speaker 05 Yeah. So, yeah. If you don't know this, the idea of this, of Game Changer, is it is a game show in which the game is different every episode and the contestants arrive not knowing what the game is going to be, and then they have to figure it out, which.
19:23 Speaker 06 Yeah, sometimes it takes more and less work to figure it out. But yeah.
19:27 Speaker 05 I mean, the, the, the most, the, the season finale of, of the most recent season, I don't think I figured it out until I halfway through.
19:37 Speaker 06 Sure, sure.
19:38 Speaker 05 I was like, at what point is this gonna change?
19:42 Speaker 05 At what point is like, the, the next thing gonna happen? It was like, oh, no, this is the whole thing.
19:46 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah.
19:48 Speaker 05 But wild. And also, like, you know, part of this is that you work with a lot of improv comedians. And so like, that's kind of the, the jam. That's the vibe is like, you know, we're gonna play in this space together. But it does seem like you're able to direct the future with the way that you write the shows. It felt like it could have gone a number of ways that would have been much less satisfying than the way that it went.
20:12 Speaker 06 Mm hmm, mm hmm.
20:13 Speaker 05 Was that an illusion? Did you create that illusion for me? Is that, was that like sort of a written thing? Or could it have gone differently?
20:20 Speaker 06 I don't think so. I mean, I think that like, we grappled with this internally.
20:25 Speaker 05 Yeah.
20:26 Speaker 06 You know, because sometimes Game Changer is a game, and other times it's more akin to performance art. And there certainly are the game wonks who like those episodes ever better. And then there are sort of like, the kind of lighter hearted audience members who, who appreciate Game Changer, sort of no matter what it is.
20:43 Speaker 05 Yeah.
20:43 Speaker 06 I really wanted to do this episode, and I would say that we pushed it through despite some inherent flaws.
20:50 Speaker 05 Gotcha.
20:51 Speaker 06 That it has. And one of them is that the conclusion is inevitable. But what we wanted to do with Jacob, and with the audience, is to sort of like tease them in terms of just how inevitable is it?
21:04 Speaker 05 Yeah, no, it didn't feel inevitable as a viewer.
21:07 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, yeah. To make him feel like there might actually not be a net underneath him, and to trick the audience into thinking there might not be a net underneath him either.
21:16 Speaker 06 But of course, I would not have let him fail.
21:18 Speaker 05 Okay, all right. You've ruined that for me now. I've, I've, I mean, if this, the, the game feature host I know would absolutely terrorize anybody in any way. That's part of the character.
21:30 Speaker 06 Well, I wasn't, I wasn't gonna like, stop the episode before he knew I stole his blood. Let's put it that way.
21:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, I guess there was a lot of stuff that, that you would want to have happen. Okay, turned out very well. So, but back to the thing. Why, why do you think that it is less likely and harder to have a creative person at the helm of a media company? Now than it once was?
21:54 Speaker 06 I mean, I think like happens to industry in general. Industries take on meta qualities. Uh, as people want for them to be more successful and therefore business people take over in an effort. So that those businesses make more money. I think therefore what you get is a little bit of like separate, what's occur, what I've seen occur is this sort of separation between these companies that are giant and monolithic and they're run mostly by finance people or maybe like promoted legal or marketing people, because those are the people who the board has basically decided can best pull the business levers. Right? Creative is the product.
22:40 Speaker 06 But let's pull the levers of the business. The product is a minor part of the business. I'm saying that facetiously, but that's the attitude of these, these companies. And then on my side of the aisle, these smaller businesses that arguably shouldn't exist because they're much more vulnerable. It's vulnerable to run a small business. It's, it's a very vulnerable to run a medium sized business in the world we're in now, where the, the middle class of our industry has been hollowed out. Sorry to sound like someone you know.
23:18 Speaker 05 Your dad?
23:20 Speaker 06 My dad, but we are run mostly by people who would be doing something like this regardless of how successful it was because we're so passionate about it, which means that we need to be creators because no savvy business person would do this.
23:37 Speaker 05 Yes.
23:37 Speaker 06 Now, we are in an unusual position, to be clear. When I signed up to do this, I thought it might be nice and small and humble and that I could work without a boss on my own terms for a long period of time, which coming out of the corporate world is what I wanted.
23:56 Speaker 06 It's been way more successful than I could have ever imagined.
23:59 Speaker 05 Yeah.
23:59 Speaker 06 And is a lot more work and more stress and more complicated than I could have ever hoped for. So, yeah, I got into this to run a small business and in fact, we're in a medium sized business.
24:11 Speaker 05 Yeah, you do. It, uh, it has, it has grown. What kind of business is it? Is it, it, do you see yourself, so like obviously Dropout itself is a streaming platform, but I imagine that that you do not consider yourself a person who runs a streaming platform. You consider yourself the CEO of a media company.
24:29 Speaker 06 I suppose, although I'm like really into boiling this business down to its essence and also not sort of like glorifying it. And I think what it is, is basically a subscription platform. Like if you were to like really corner me, I would basically say I run a comedy sass.
24:53 Speaker 05 I don't, I don't actually think that you're allowed to say that. I don't like that's.
25:00 Speaker 06 I, I feel really anti pretentious about what this is.
25:05 Speaker 05 Like, yeah, it's a brand. You want laughs, we will provide them for $7 a month.
25:13 Speaker 06 Kinda. I mean, I think, I think.
25:17 Speaker 06 I do feel a little bit like Andy Warhol sometimes insofar as like I think dropout means a lot of things to a lot of people. And like for for my purposes, we are a Campbell's Soup can on a canvas, which is to say, like, the transaction is you pay us now $6.99 a month, and we deliver to you this collection of programming. And yes, we have all sorts of creative ambitions. And yes, I think dropout has collected this like, really unique and wonderful audience of people who are connected to the content, they're connected to the talent, they're connected to certain things that that they've come to understand the brand
25:57 Speaker 06 stands for. But at the core of it is this like, mechanism that's working.
26:06 Speaker 05 Yeah.
26:07 Speaker 06 It could work or not work. And if it didn't work, none of all of this would go away.
26:12 Speaker 05 Right.
26:13 Speaker 06 And that feels really important for me to know.
26:16 Speaker 05 I guess I should ask what the mechanism is that's working. I wanted to ask it from else, but I'll hopefully I'll get there. But what's the what's the thing that's working right now for you? So obviously, more people are subscribed to dropout this year than they were last year and last year than they were the year before that. And it's it's growing. What is the thing that is working there? I in terms of like, your funnel, in terms of like, why do people sign up? Who are the who are these people? Because you don't have like, you don't have like, friends, you know, you don't have a bunch of like storied media properties, you don't have that many shows, there's not like that much content on dropout. But but lots of people are signing up. I don't know if you can tell me a number of the number of people who you have subscribed.
26:56 Speaker 06 For a while, I've I've been saying now, we were like spinning distance from a million, and that's still true. Yeah. I mean, I, I think what's working, without putting too fine a point on it, is that people subscribe, and they stay subscribed, and then more and more and also more and more people are subscribing, and they watch.
27:19 Speaker 05 And they watch. So these people subscribe, they don't just like coast the way I do with Netflix, where I'm like, well, maybe there's something I'm gonna want to watch there sometime. They're there, I've and I've, you know, my Rocket Money situation isn't what it should be, and I haven't I haven't subscribed. But, you know, I like dropout pops on my TV a fair amount. So like, these people are subscribed and actively watching.
27:42 Speaker 06 Yes, we have a highly engaged user base.
27:46 Speaker 05 What's your funnel? How do you get? How do people come into the platform?
27:49 Speaker 06 There are, there are a few different ways. The dominant one is through organic social, meaning they've watched clips from our shows on largely Instagram and TikTok and YouTube Shorts.
28:06 Speaker 05 And you designed shows to be good at being, well, I don't know if you designed them that way, but you do now.
28:12 Speaker 06 I would say better, sometimes better and sometimes worse, we do that.
28:18 Speaker 05 Yeah.
28:19 Speaker 06 Right?
28:21 Speaker 05 Game Changer is very good at this because it's just like, it's like, kind of got that whose line is it anyway vibe for people who have never heard of any of this. Where, where there's just like good clipable moments a lot.
28:31 Speaker 06 I think Game Changer is good at this. I think Make Some Noise is very good at this. When you think of, of Make Some Noise being, being prompt execution, prompt execution. Arguably Dimension 20 really shouldn't be good at this and yet it somehow is.
28:45 Speaker 05 Sometime, yeah, they're just talented, funny people. I say as a person who was once on the show.
28:53 Speaker 06 Yeah, you get to claim a percentage of credit for that.
28:56 Speaker 05 Yeah.
28:56 Speaker 06 That compliment, but it's so true, Hank. I mean, like you as that character creating moments on the show. Some little voice in the back of your head is like, let me turn this into a moment.
29:08 Speaker 05 Uh huh.
29:09 Speaker 06 And when you have a great moment.
29:11 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
29:12 Speaker 06 That becomes marketing for the show in the, in the world in which we now live.
29:17 Speaker 05 Yeah.
29:18 Speaker 06 Yeah.
29:19 Speaker 05 And that didn't exist five years ago, like that, like when COVID happened, that was a very small ecosystem. And now it is a huge part of online video and, and also very hard to turn into value. So very few people are able to turn their reels and their shorts and their TikToks into any, any amount of money. Some people have ways, some people have very large audiences and then it gets easy. But you have, you, you turned it around where it's like, this content only exists because of a thing that costs money. And if you would like to see more of it, you can come be one of the people who is the reason that this content exists by being a subscriber.
29:57 Speaker 06 I think it'd be very hard for Dropout to work if we hadn't imploded the advertiser supported part of our business.
30:04 Speaker 05 Yeah, you just, you just kicked it off. You were like, I don't need this.
30:08 Speaker 06 Yeah, I was basically like, I can't run an ad business. I'd be no good at it. I'm in a lot of ways like a terrible salesperson. Like sure, Paul, like in that. So, so that just wasn't
30:21 Speaker 05 You can sell things. I just don't think that you want to sell that particular thing.
30:25 Speaker 06 Sure. Hey, thanks, man.
30:30 Speaker 05 We know this is there. Yeah.
30:34 Speaker 06 You are, on the other hand, a very good salesman. I have so many socks because of you, and I love them all.
30:40 Speaker 05 Ah, I love that. So what you're saying is the vast majority, or, you know, the biggest hunk of the people who are subscribed to Dropout came in because they saw clips, and then they saw another clip, and then they saw another clip, and they're like, fine, I gotta watch this. And where is this? I'll find it.
30:56 Speaker 06 The vast majority of people. So I think 10% of our subscribers right now come in through, through paid?
31:03 Speaker 05 Oh, okay. So you do, you just sort of like run the best clips?
31:08 Speaker 06 Yeah, we do. We do. We sort of use the organic social performance to like clue us into what, what clips we should amplify. And I think that's helped us out through low periods.
31:20 Speaker 05 Even that is, is you're using the clip. You're just like, you're going, you're moving from organic to paid. Yes. So that's, that's really the thing. And, and I, do you ever, like, I know that you did like Dungeons and Drag Queens where there were some new, there was like new talent bring to the platform. These people have fans. Maybe those fans are going to sign up. Has that also been effective?
31:42 Speaker 06 Oh, for sure. For sure. I mean, you, you could argue that we are certainly like using the content to market itself, but there's all sorts of ways that we're doing that. So, so casting and stunt casting is certainly one of them.
31:59 Speaker 06 And Dungeons and Drag Queens was huge for us.
32:01 Speaker 05 Great. Yeah. Are the shows that have the most audience the most responsible for signups?
32:08 Speaker 06 I would say so. Yeah. A bit of a self fulfilling prophecy there. Where it's like the most popular shows, the most watched on the platform tend to have the biggest social channels tend also to drive the most viewers. Yeah.
32:18 Speaker 05 So what are those?
32:22 Speaker 06 I mean, no show that's currently on the platform doesn't have its own hardcore dedicated audience. You know, if a show isn't collecting audience-
32:30 Speaker 05 Well, now that's a problem, because you can't cancel anything, Sam.
32:36 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, we have, not exactly formally canceled, but we have sort of-
32:43 Speaker 05 Paused productions.
32:44 Speaker 06 Paused productions, sidelined, put on the back burner shows that are not, didn't collect audience as well. The most popular shows on the platform are Dimension 20 and Game Changer. And then the second most popular shows on the platform are some combination of smarty pants, very important people and make some noise.
33:08 Speaker 05 That makes sense to me. We have to take another short break here. We'll be back in just a minute.
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34:40 Speaker 05 Welcome back. This is Hank Green, talking with my friend and Dropout CEO Sam Reich. We were just talking about what's popular on Dropout and how it got that way. And that gave me a chance to ask how they make it and what else might go on the platform.
34:57 Speaker 05 Have you ever considered putting stuff on that you didn't produce? So right now, everything on the platform is college humor or Dropout produced?
35:06 Speaker 06 For sure, for sure. We have, we are. I think the reason why it's tricky is because we consider social marketing to be a big differentiator in terms of how we do things. And if we were to go license a mainstream show, there's no way that they would allow us to power their social channels.
35:26 Speaker 05 Yes.
35:27 Speaker 06 So there is no point to us doing that unless we get to do that.
35:32 Speaker 05 Weird. That's such a specific reason to not do that that I would not have imagined.
35:39 Speaker 06 I mean, okay, the other reason, the other reasons are out there too, right? Like if we just license anything under the sun, does it dilute the brand? We're not trying to be a utility. We're trying to be more of a brand play. But I would say that we are interested in potentially hosting content on the platform that we could power its social content. And so we are having some of those conversations because we think it'll be an interesting experiment. But we're being very, very, very choosy about it, obviously.
36:10 Speaker 05 Gotcha. How many people are at Dropout right now?
36:15 Speaker 06 We are 40-ish on a full-time basis. But that really doesn't account for so many people who are such major contributors to what we do.
36:24 Speaker 05 Right. Yeah.
36:25 Speaker 06 Because there are so many contract players involved, the crew side, on the talent side. Yeah.
36:31 Speaker 05 And you and like, you know, those people do feel a lot like part of the team, especially because like in terms of like dropout kind of cast members, those people are mostly not employees. They are kind of the the folk, the people imagine when they imagine what dropout is like, there's just
36:48 Speaker 06 For sure.
36:49 Speaker 05 Sort of a bunch of recurring comedians who come in and are seen as dropout, the dropout family by the audience.
36:56 Speaker 06 For sure.
36:57 Speaker 05 People like are contractors, but are also something more, it feels like.
37:03 Speaker 06 Definitely. And which is why, by the way, profit share and which is why, by the way, like so many of the things that we do, we bend over backwards to make working at dropout a positive experience for folks. I think that, you know, Hollywood is a system where people are used to this and expect this to a degree. There are all sorts of inherent sort of benefits and drawbacks to the full time equation. Like we did have full time talent for a long time. The benefit there is security for both of us, right? Like we know that we have people that we can turn to and they know that they have that amount of job security. And then the downsides are that we have to make use of those people
37:48 Speaker 06 and only those people because we have to derive that amount of value from them. So it means that the pool gets smaller. And then the downside for them is that they can't explore other opportunities that might pop up as a result of their employment with us. You know?
38:05 Speaker 05 There's also like, I mean, this is a big, this has been a weakness of a lot of YouTube companies. BuzzFeed is the best example where you have employees and then they get a really popular show and then they're being paid as an employee, but their show is making the company a bunch of money and they're not being paid as talent. And so like, you know, if Seinfeld gets popular, Jerry Seinfeld gets paid more. But if, you know, the Try Guys get popular, how do the Try Guys like get to negotiate like a three times higher salary this year? It's sort of not how business works. And so The tri guys start to feel pretty uncomfortable being part of BuzzFeed and maybe want to go do their own thing. And this, this from the very beginning of YouTube, a big problem.
38:48 Speaker 05 And I feel like this model of just like listening to how Hollywood has worked in the past actually makes sense in this case where it's like, okay, well, you're going to come and you're going to do this show this season. And the next season, if the show did really well, like your agent's going to have a conversation with us. And we're going to be figuring out that like, and you're not going to like, you're going to be able to do a bunch of other stuff. But like, this is going to be a big part of your yearly income now because that show is popular because people really like it. And you're creating a lot of value.
39:17 Speaker 06 I don't know how much people know about exclusivity, but I think this stuff is so interesting where it's like, if you are signing up to participate in a project, let's say Apple TV comes and wants for you to be in their show. You will sign a contract with Apple TV that's like, you are committed to X number of episodes over Y period of time. You're usually signing up for multiple seasons. But as a part of that contract is like, you can't do other things. Usually in that category, which is to say like, you can't do other streamers shows, for instance, without Apple's permission. But then imagine for a moment that Apple takes a long time to pick up a second season of your show. And then those, those times are built into your contract. So maybe it takes them like nine months to pick up another season of your show.
40:01 Speaker 06 For that nine months, you are not allowed to do other streaming things, which is a huge.
40:07 Speaker 05 You just got to learn to juggle or something. What are you, what are you doing?
40:11 Speaker 06 What do you do?
40:12 Speaker 05 What do you do? You just gotta like stay in shape too, because they need you to look the same. You know, and it's like, nine months went by, man, I'm a different guy.
40:20 Speaker 06 Yeah, for sure. Keep your hair the same length, keep your nails the same length, you know?
40:24 Speaker 05 Yeah.
40:25 Speaker 06 Don't, uh, I mean, it's, uh, that, that's tough. Exclusivity is really tough for folks who are grateful to be working with this business, in this business at all. And so very little negotiating room. So like our attitude about it is if we were not accommodating of people's other work, we would simply be forcing them to make a choice between us and, and the other work, whatever it is. So the fact that we don't ask for exclusivity of any kind means that Lou Wilson can work with us. Because otherwise he is full time at Jimmy Kimmel Live.
41:03 Speaker 05 Right.
41:04 Speaker 06 You know?
41:04 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
41:06 Speaker 06 Interesting. We are trying to position ourselves as everyone's favorite.
41:11 Speaker 06 Uh, second job unless unless they don't have a first job, in which case, you know, they are very, you know, happy to be working with. We want for them to be very happy to be working with us even so.
41:24 Speaker 05 I mean, you're getting a reputation for this for being like, like pioneering the more creative ways of doing things, being more worker friendly to, uh, to everybody from PAs to talent and everything in between. And, you know, profit sharing for contractors is like for for talent. It's not usually how things work, though. Like there's like residual systems, like various ways of doing this. But like, I've never heard of anybody doing like a straight profit share. It, uh,
41:54 Speaker 06 Why do that?
41:56 Speaker 05 I guess, why? And also, like, why is it hard? Like, is it? Is it hard? Is the reason that other people don't do it because it's hard? Or is the reason because like, they don't have to?
42:05 Speaker 06 I don't think it's hard. I don't think what we're doing is that hard. Say nothing about our brilliant finance team who does it. But like specifically, the reason we're doing profit share and like not.
42:15 Speaker 05 I don't mean like it's logistically hard to cut the checks. I mean, it's hard to make the business model work.
42:21 Speaker 06 I think it is kind of hard to cut the checks. Uh,
42:24 Speaker 05 Yeah.
42:24 Speaker 06 But it, it,
42:26 Speaker 05 I feel like
42:29 Speaker 06 I think royalties are harder.
42:31 Speaker 05 Yeah.
42:31 Speaker 06 Right. Which is like,
42:32 Speaker 05 Royalties are harder.
42:34 Speaker 06 Which is why we do profit share because it's like a much simpler for us from an admin standpoint. I think that other companies don't do this because it is not standard and because they can get away with not. But the big one is probably this, which is that they have people that they need to satisfy, a whole category of people they need to satisfy, who we don't have because we're not a public company.
43:02 Speaker 06 They ascended toa. They made that critical error. Going up from toa.
43:11 Speaker 06 And right there, number four, number five, number six, depending on the company is the shareholders. And that means like there are people like basically by hoarding money, you are satisfying someone.
43:24 Speaker 05 Yeah.
43:25 Speaker 06 Right? Which like, we don't have, there's no one to satisfy.
43:29 Speaker 05 Well, I mean, I see theoretically, are they, they never come knocking and say like, man, you could turn this into a big, a big boy now. Come, come and show us the success.
43:38 Speaker 06 I see theoretically, uh, me theoretically, right?
43:42 Speaker 05 Yeah.
43:43 Speaker 06 Brennan is also a partner in the company, Brennan theoretically.
43:46 Speaker 05 I've tried to invest, but you will not take my money.
43:51 Speaker 06 Maybe I someday will, Hank.
43:53 Speaker 05 Let me know.
43:54 Speaker 06 And don't get me wrong, like, we're all making money.
43:57 Speaker 05 Right.
43:58 Speaker 06 No one, like, when we say profit share, we're not even talking about the whole profit.
44:04 Speaker 05 Yeah.
44:04 Speaker 06 Right? Some of that profit goes to me and I see.
44:07 Speaker 05 And of course, there's also uh, uh, operational funds. You're not, you're not gonna zero out the bank account every year.
44:13 Speaker 06 Of course, of course. There's operational funds, there's, there's play money, you know, we want to try new things.
44:19 Speaker 05 Yeah, try new things.
44:20 Speaker 06 So all that money's going all sorts of different places, uh, but, but there are no shareholders to satisfy, which means us being a more and more and more profitable every year is not necessarily our first priority.
44:33 Speaker 05 What is your first priority then? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to do, Sam Reich?
44:37 Speaker 06 I don't know, man.
44:41 Speaker 06 I don't know, Hank, what do you think I should do?
44:44 Speaker 05 That's a good point.
44:48 Speaker 06 You're, you're in the same boat, more or less.
44:53 Speaker 05 Yeah.
44:53 Speaker 06 Could really easily turn this around on you.
44:55 Speaker 05 I do it.
44:56 Speaker 06 Oh, please, give me, give me one, give me one.
44:58 Speaker 05 Oh, I mean, I feel a strong sense of obligation to the things that I have made and the people who I work with. I feel a strong sense of obligation to the audience and I also very rewarded by making things sometimes. Like, obviously, there are some parts of my job that I do purely because of the obligation. Uh, there's some parts of my job that I do because I get paid to do it and there are some parts of my job that I do that, uh, and this is like, you know, different, different amounts in every column and, and different activities. But sometimes I'm, I'm doing it, uh, because I just fricking love doing it. It's so fun.
45:35 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah.
45:38 Speaker 06 That's interesting. I don't feel, I feel a little bit of a sense of obligation. I wouldn't say that's my primary driver. I think that I feel very aware and very grateful for the ability to create things under a unique set of circumstances where I don't have,
45:57 Speaker 06 I, I feel uniquely under the tois, uniquely lower than tois.
46:02 Speaker 05 Uh huh.
46:03 Speaker 06 And I think that's a very-
46:04 Speaker 05 You gotta hold on to that. What we're learning.
46:07 Speaker 06 Yeah. It's like a really-
46:10 Speaker 05 Hold on to the tois.
46:11 Speaker 06 It's a really unique ecosystem to be a part of. And I think it means that we can create some uniquely cool stuff. And I love that. Like, like giving birth to the stuff is my, my favorite part. I'm an art, I'm an art snob at the end of the day. I mean, I've been to the Edinburgh Fringe now like three years in a row and this year-
46:39 Speaker 05 That's a nice thing to have, be part of your job.
46:41 Speaker 06 A total, I mean, barely.
46:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, I used to, you pulled some acts out of there.
46:48 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, for sure.
46:49 Speaker 05 Fringe, by the way, is like a very weird comedy festival that happens in Edinburgh. It's like, it's like weeks long and it's tiny rooms and it's just weird art happens. And I'm very jealous. I've never gotten to go.
47:01 Speaker 06 Oh Hank, we gotta go some year and I'll, I'll cheer you around.
47:05 Speaker 05 I'm waiting for my son to be old enough.
47:07 Speaker 06 Yeah, that's fair. They've got great kid stuff too. They've got a whole kids programming component.
47:12 Speaker 05 All right. We know that. We're going.
47:14 Speaker 06 But I, I just love, you know, weird and unusual stuff. And when I think about like what I want to leave behind in the world, it's more of it.
47:23 Speaker 05 Hmm. Okay. Love that. Um, uh, how do you make decisions?
47:31 Speaker 05 That's a decoder question. We gotta ask that one.
47:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, I-
47:38 Speaker 06 There's a terrific TED Talk on decision making, which talks about how when you're faced with a difficult decision, it's usually because there's pros and cons that feel roughly equivalent to each other.
47:49 Speaker 05 Yeah.
47:50 Speaker 06 And so it kind of doesn't matter. So like, just pick one.
47:53 Speaker 05 Just pick one.
47:55 Speaker 06 Ruth Chang, How to Make Hard Choices. A lot of the important decisions, it's pretty clear what direction to go. And then with the difficult ones, you sort of have to decide what you're voting for, like what you're optimizing for. And so if you have your priorities in order, oftentimes the right decision will emerge. Meaning, again, hopefully our business is pretty simple. There are a lot of factors that we have to incorporate. And those factors are something in between like the content itself, the experience of the audience, the welfare of the cast and crew, our financials, what's personally creatively exciting to me.
48:38 Speaker 06 And if I have those roughly in the, they're not in that order. I don't exactly know what order they fall into off the top of my head. But if I have those in the right order, I can usually make the right decision.
48:49 Speaker 05 How do you imagine dropout in the media world right now? Do you even feel like you're a part of this industry? Or do you feel like you're kind of hanging off to the side? Do you feel like you worry about the industry broadly? Or are you just sort of like, that's not me?
49:10 Speaker 06 It's more that's not me. I mean, I do feel like I'm on a little bit of an island where I get to be sort of like, you know, the mad trickster king of my domain.
49:22 Speaker 05 Yeah, and I mean, like, it's very weird to be like, you know, for most streaming platforms that have been launched by big companies to have a million subscribers would be a tremendous failure. And showing that that, it seems like a little bit in terms of like macro media ecosystem thing, it seems like this is a totally inevitable thing and that it should have happened more already.
49:43 Speaker 06 Yeah, I completely agree.
49:45 Speaker 05 Where everything keeps fracturing, right? Like, so like, you know.
49:49 Speaker 05 More and more nichification of everything. And why wouldn't this happen to streaming platforms? And we haven't even talked about the fact that Vimeo like enables this with a pretty low lift. So you use
50:01 Speaker 06 Yeah.
50:02 Speaker 05 I think a product called Vimeo OTT.
50:04 Speaker 06 That's correct. Yeah.
50:05 Speaker 05 Uh, and, and so Vimeo like basically lets you build a streaming platform and it like, you know, they have, they have a version of it that's, that's all, it all integrates with itself. And it can be in the app stores and it can be on Roku and all the PS5 or wherever, you know?
50:21 Speaker 06 For sure.
50:22 Speaker 05 And, uh, and, and that, that simplifies this, this process. And I think that what Vimeo is betting on there is that, is that this initiation will occur. But I think when you look at the people who use that, it's a lot of likes, like individual creators or people who have like, like a workout, like a thing, you know, they're like lifestyle influence type things. I think that maybe the, the RuPaul
50:48 Speaker 06 Yeah, wow presents.
50:49 Speaker 05 Yeah.
50:49 Speaker 06 I think so. Criterion Collection.
50:51 Speaker 05 Oh, okay. Yeah.
50:53 Speaker 06 Mm hmm.
50:53 Speaker 05 Um, and it, yeah, it just feels like, like it would head in that direction and that the different, you know, segments would each get their own.
51:02 Speaker 06 Yeah.
51:03 Speaker 05 Their own little world, which will of course continue to make, alienate us from each other because no one's watching the same things, but.
51:10 Speaker 06 It does, it feels symptomatic of this
51:13 Speaker 05 Yeah.
51:13 Speaker 06 world of content that we're living in. And so it's a fair question like, well, why not more?
51:18 Speaker 05 Yeah.
51:18 Speaker 06 And it's a, that's a good question. I think, you know,
51:21 Speaker 05 I kind of expected it. Like when you, when dropout first hit for me, I was like, oh, two years from now, everybody's going to have one of these things. And like, uh, that has not really happened and people have tried to launch some that have been less successful and yeah.
51:35 Speaker 06 Sure, sure, sure. I mean, I, I do think that like, as is the case in the internet, when you're, you're browsing TikTok and you learn about someone with nine million subscribers or followers who you've never heard of before, there are plenty of examples in our industry of businesses that are just running a little bit under the radar that are doing very, very well. You know, I think Nebula, for instance, is one of those businesses. And, and you know, the, in the last couple of years, uh, maybe a little bit inspired by us, maybe not, depending on the specific example. But Try Guys have launched their answer to this. Critical Role have launched their answer to this. But my hope.
52:16 Speaker 06 Is that there are more people that follow in our footsteps because I think it's only better for dropout if there are more examples that people can point to to say, I subscribe to this, you know, small collection of indie streamers. And, and I think it, it behooves us to have that group be larger because it means better resources for our business as well. You know, we depend on third-party technology in order to power dropout. And, and, you know, if there aren't enough streamers to use Vimeo OTT, or, you know,
52:54 Speaker 05 They're not going to keep supporting the product.
52:56 Speaker 06 Yeah, exactly.
52:57 Speaker 05 Do you ever regret using Vimeo OTT or like not building your own thing?
53:01 Speaker 06 No, we tried. People don't realize this. We, the first, the first rendition of dropout was built on Vimeo OTT's API, but it was our own product. And we employed something like eight sophisticated engineers at IAC to build our own product around it. And it was brutal, which is to say, it's just a very hard to do very well. And these were great engineers.
53:29 Speaker 06 Yeah.
53:30 Speaker 05 What you're doing is in part, running a company, being a business person, managing your direct reports. I should ask how this is all structured. How many direct reports do you have?
53:44 Speaker 06 Technically, I think I have like, two or three.
53:49 Speaker 05 Oh, wow.
53:49 Speaker 06 Something like that. I, the, what we decided pretty recently, like within the last year, is that I should have almost no direct reports, like basically just the C-suite. And then everyone else should follow, should fall under someone else.
54:09 Speaker 05 Okay.
54:10 Speaker 06 But that's pretty new.
54:11 Speaker 05 What are, what are your departments?
54:13 Speaker 06 There is creative burgeoning department. There is marketing.
54:21 Speaker 05 They make a lot of YouTube shorts in the marketing department?
54:26 Speaker 06 Uh huh. There is. Yes. And, and paid and email and everything else that falls into the world of marketing. There is tech, uh, which is pretty small, but does exist. There is production. There is programming as it is, uh, independent from production, which, uh, are the folks who not only handle our content as it's related to like metadata, uh, but also are responsible for like maintaining our programming schedule and putting stuff up into the platform. Also QC is a part of that department, uh, meaning quality control. Um, we have, for instance, one very talented person whose job it is simply to, this is
55:07 Speaker 06 not all they do, but it's a big part of what they do to watch every episode to make sure that there are no glaring issues with it before it posts to the website, to the platform. I think that's about it with like one or two straggling, oh, design with, with one or two straggling departments that like features like one person or two people.
55:28 Speaker 05 Yeah. There's the person who keeps the dimension 20 lore book to make sure.
55:33 Speaker 06 Yes. Well, interestingly, dimension 20 is kind of like its own department.
55:38 Speaker 05 Okay. Yeah.
55:39 Speaker 06 Uh, because it's such a big operation and lately game changer makes some noise have sort of become its own department as well.
55:45 Speaker 05 So, so you, you've got, you're partially, uh, run this business trying to make all the, all the things work. And I, I assume mediating when, when people disagree with each other and doing all of that.
55:56 Speaker 06 HR is new. HR is new as of like the last, like, uh, seven heads.
56:01 Speaker 05 And then you, you're also on screen talent, but I think there's another thing that, uh, and, and creative and writing and all this, but there, there's another thing that you are that I think that this is not that unusual. Like there, there's always like a public facing role to a CEO, but beyond that.
56:21 Speaker 05 You really like, not only do you have a public facing role as the CEO and onscreen talent and kind of founder, depending on how you want to count that, that, you know, you kind of embody what dropout is trying to be and, and, and a strength and I think a potential problem is that you're trying to be a good guy while you do it. Like you're not Carl Icahn, you're not, you know, like ruthless businessman fan, right?
56:51 Speaker 06 Sure.
56:51 Speaker 05 You're like trying to do this the right way. And one of the things, my brother and I call this the perfect person problem, that if you, if you tell people that you're trying to do, do things well and you're trying to do things right, then people will expect you to do it perfect. And there's no such thing as perfect. And, and there's always things that you're balancing. And how do you imagine and like, and manage your own like public perception where you're, where you want people to know that you really are trying to do things better, but you also are not trying, you also need to convey to people that you, you will not be perfect.
57:26 Speaker 06 I think like, this is definitely a work in progress. So who knows?
57:31 Speaker 05 I think that like the dropout audience, in part because of, I mean, there's like a demographic thing here, but there's also, you know, they're responding to and signing up in part because of a halo here that you're helping to create by like doing things well. Their expectations are going to be high. Like you've got, you've got some like a high expectation crowd. And I've seen some examples where, you know, they feel as if you're not maybe living up to your values or something like that. Is that management, that reputational management, is that, do you see that as a big part of your job? And, and where do you, how do you imagine that?
58:06 Speaker 06 I guess and no. I mean, I think that like, when I say work in progress, I guess that apply, that applies not only to like this meta question, but also sort of like the way I look at dropout in general, which is like, perfect is an impossible to achieve standard. And I try, at least when I'm out in the world, to, to really as much as possible convey that I am like a comedy person.
58:33 Speaker 06 Who inherited this thing, who is trying to do things uh, novel and experimentally. But that I don't even know as much about this kind of stuff as like Adam Conover does as like part of my peers do. So when I say work in progress, I really mean that like, we are trying things and we will, we will make mistakes. And what I'm specifically not doing on social media or anywhere else for that matter, and conversations like this on panels is to portend as if dropout or I have it all figured out that we are an exceptionally
59:14 Speaker 06 moral company, or that we are an exceptionally idealistic company. Because I think that that tension between like running a company and being good to people inherently exists. So, so we are, uh, what I've claimed to be the case, and I really do still think is the case is like, I consider myself a highly creative person. I'm trying to make content that's as like innovative and interesting and funny as possible. And I hope people hold us to that standard. And otherwise I'm trying to like set maybe some new standards for decency. But I would underline that word.
59:49 Speaker 05 Hmm.
59:50 Speaker 06 I am also, as you have coached me through a lot over the months and years, Hank, becoming quickly used to the fact that you can't please everybody. And that, you know, you will have to make decisions that are unpopular sometimes. And that's okay. I actually, you know, some people, particularly entertainers, need to be liked by everybody. And I think some people worry about me in that way because they think that my affable nature means that I would really dislike being unpopular. And I am actually like totally okay if some people don't like me.
1:00:33 Speaker 05 Hmm. It's this part of growing up in a household where. A lot of nasty things might have been said about your dad.
1:00:40 Speaker 06 I honestly like, you know, nepotism, I'm sure served me even ways that I'm not fully conscious of and like all sorts of ways. But, but one thing that is really useful is that my dad modeled fame for me. So I do have someone like very close to me out there in the world who's also a public person, who by virtue of his job, deals with controversy at least three times a year.
1:01:08 Speaker 06 Which does, it probably thickens my skin a little bit.
1:01:11 Speaker 05 Interesting. Is there on the list of, of reasons that you like this or want to do this? We talked about those before, but let's, let's end here with this. Is there, is on that list just that people aren't doing things weird enough? And you want to do things weird? You want to like show that like?
1:01:33 Speaker 06 A hundred percent. You, you and I have connected a lot on the topic of Homestar Runner over the years. Homestar Runner may be like, like hugely responsible for my career taking the direction it has. Like it was incredibly influential on me. And something I loved about it was like, it felt like a walled garden of weird that existed at a URL. Like I could, and I think about how sometimes like-
1:01:56 Speaker 05 That resonates.
1:01:58 Speaker 06 I, I wish that I could plant a forest full of weird trees on the internet. I wish that the internet was still a place where just like there was really fun, mysterious, hopeful stuff that existed a URL away. I would hope that Dropbox can just be one of those things.
1:02:17 Speaker 05 All right. Well, that feels, that feels right to me. And I hope that you keep doing it and I hope that people keep finding it and loving that weird, being, being in a little place where a lot of strange things happen.
1:02:33 Speaker 06 Hank, you are also hugely responsible for and inspiring in the creation of weird stuff for the internet. You're also inspiring insofar as you just like are so prolific in terms of the amount that you do.
1:02:50 Speaker 05 Yeah, I do. Nothing else.
1:02:55 Speaker 06 But, and also a lot else. So, so thank you for being-
1:03:00 Speaker 05 There certainly is quantity.
1:03:06 Speaker 06 But a sincere thank you for being both the friend and the inspiration that you are.
1:03:10 Speaker 05 Yeah, well, thanks. Thanks a lot. I appreciate coming on and chatting with me and getting into the weeds and the details here. And someday, we will find another podcast where we will just do bits.
1:03:23 Speaker 06 I look forward to that day.
1:03:26 Speaker 05 All right. Thanks, Sam.
1:03:27 Speaker 06 Thank you, man.
1:03:31 Speaker 05 I'd like to thank Sam for taking the time to speak with me, and thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like to let us know what you thought about the show, you can drop us a line. You can email the team at [email protected] . They really do read every email. Or you can hit me up directly on Threads or Blue Sky. Decoder also now has a TikTok and an Instagram. You can check those out, at DecoderPod. They're a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. See you next time.
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