He Built a Network to Make Content Creation More Affordable | OpenAI Buys TBPN | YouTube's TV Update

0:01Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Joshua Cohen. And I'm Avi Gandhi. Avi, so nice to have you in the building. I think this is number two co-hosting gig on Creator Upload for you. It is. It is. I love pinch hitting for Lauren. Lauren is out of town in an undisclosed location having her children do God knows what that's not on the screen. And Avi, Avi, we're great to have you back in the building. You are one of the OGs in the space. one of the first talent agents representing creators at WME. You also are a Streamy Award-winning producer. Hats off to that. A former head of creator partnerships at Patreon, and for the last three years has been a creator operating in the ecosystem.

0:41And now you are the founder of Creator Access Network. We're going to get into it later. I want to ask you about Creator Access Network some more. But just for everyone at home, give us the logline. Well, it's pretty simple. It's a membership. Creators pay an annual fee, and in exchange, they get the absolute best deals. on the absolute best tools, platforms, services to run their businesses. That's awesome. I'm stoked to get into it more with you later in the episode. But first, there's lots of stuff going on in the creator ecosystem this week. Have you been watching this NASA live stream? You know, I actually, I have not watched the NASA live stream, but I keep hearing about it from like human beings, like word of mouth, which is kind of strange because you would think that the YouTube algorithm would have, you know, tried to show it to me by now.

1:27But even though I watch lots of like Hank Green science content, apparently I'm not I'm not nerdy enough for NASA. So I don't know. It is kind of wild that it's turned into this water cooler moment. And for those not in the know, what everybody's watching is the crew of the Orion make humanity's first trip back to the moon since 1972. To be clear, they're not going on the moon. They're going around the moon. And it's all being streamed on YouTube and Twitch. So the Artemis 2 mission on the Orion ship is from astronauts Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch, and Reed Weissman. And they have set records in space traveling farther from Earth than any other humans in history.

2:05And NASA, at the same time, is beating its own records on the Internet. So between YouTube and Twitch, there have been over 10 million concurrent viewers. and not total, concurrent, peak concurrent viewers reached 10 million who were watching this live stream. The most watched distributor was NASA itself with a YouTube stream that peaked at 3.9 million viewers. There was also NASA en Espanol with 426 ,000 viewers and Fox News' live streams had 338 ,000 viewers. And NASA is really getting the word out about this through these 24-7 live streams that they're broadcasting through a bunch of their different channels.

2:44Now, they're no stranger to the online video ecosystem. NASA's basically been functioning like a creator for the last several years now, having a Twitch stream before other areas of government did and before lots of other brands did and more. They were on Twitter too, like, I don't know, like 10 years ago. I mean, they were like one of the first like government agencies like to really have a big voice on Twitter. I think that makes sense, right? Because if you take the quote nerds unquote of government, they're going to be the first to adopt this newfangled technology to enhance and get greater distribution on all the cool stuff that they're doing so the other nerds can see it.

3:23Yes. And I also think they probably live or die by public opinion, right? Like the more people care about NASA, the more willing, you know, Congress and, you know, whoever else makes those decisions are to fund it. That's my guess. Because it's not, you know, it's like some might argue that it's not like a necessary investment of our tax dollars. But, you know, me personally, like I think it's great. And, you know, frankly, I think we could all use some inspiration right now. And that's certainly what it is, what it is doing. I think that's a very good point. Maybe more so than any other government agency.

4:02they have to work more in the arena of public opinion, especially since they're fighting against all these social platforms for future astronauts. I'm sure when you and I were growing up, maybe astronaut was a big profession of interest for kindergartners and toddlers and pre-teens. And now, as we know, YouTube's the number one profession cited, or creator or influencer is the number one profession cited for that demographic. So it seems like they're doing a little bit of marketing for themselves for the future as well. That is absolutely crazy to think about. But yeah, yeah, that does make sense.

4:44Speaking of YouTube, there's been a lot of announcements about product developments at YouTube this last week, all related around the TV experience of YouTube and what it's like to watch YouTube on TV and how to enhance that experience of watching YouTube on TV. As everyone who's a listener to this podcast and probably if you aren't well know that YouTube already now commands a dominant share of US TV streaming viewership. 12.5 % of US television consumption is now YouTube videos. And to be clear, that's not YouTube TV, it's actual YouTube videos. that are being watched 12.5 % of the time on US televisions.

5:24What normally kind of happens in a lean back experience is that you're on your phone doing something else unrelated to whatever it is you're watching on TV. Netflix famously has this issue where people can be consuming Netflix and watching something else on their phones. Famously because they reportedly encouraged writers and producers to change the actual dialogue that was occurring in Netflix shows to make it more consumable for an audience that wasn't exactly paying attention. YouTube, though, is taking another POV on this. One product development for this is Ask, which is YouTube's video-specific chatbot.

6:08It's already available on YouTube desktop and mobile. It's now coming to TVs with added abilities, like being able to use your TV's microphone to ask questions about whatever video it is you're watching. Another is the TV Companion, and it's a pairing system where a user's phone automatically recognizes what's playing on your TV, allowing you to interact with comments, control playback, or dive deeper into content without missing a beat. This is from Kurt Wilms, YouTube's Senior Director of Product Management. He also said that this system is strung together on YouTube's end with no complex pairing of Wi-Fi or troubleshooting required.

6:42So it seems to be a seamless kind of experience. Also, YouTube, in addition to these two announcements, said that they are starting to release stations for individual channels. And what a station is, is exactly what it sounds like. It's like an old school television channel where on a specific YouTube channel, you can just watch content at any time that's pre-playing that will be advertising interrupted, unless you subscribe to YouTube premium, of videos of whatever that creator's content is. The first way they're going to launch this is with Coachella. YouTube has been a sponsor of that music festival for some time.

7:22It makes sense to kind of do this station format around the musical experience, I think, at least to kick things off. But presumably, this will roll out to any given creator in the near future avi what do you think about all these announcements and youtube's kind of like dominance and now further entrenchment into the living rooms well i think it's interesting i think this is uh this is a competitive move right um you know they they've already beaten netflix at uh at market share uh for television screens right But they're not currently winning on market share for the second screen. That is probably going to Meta and TikTok.

8:06And so, you know, like, what are you doing when you're watching TV on your phone? You're probably scrolling Instagram or maybe TikTok. Right. I imagine YouTube Shorts is increasing in that time a little bit, but you're not probably watching another long form YouTube video while you're watching something on your TV. Totally. um and so you know i don't obviously have the data on this i'm sure nobody does but um i would assume that what they're trying to do is take back some of that screen share from uh meta and and in doing so uh pull some of the ad dollars uh from that platform out to theirs as well which you know could be good for creators overall um if the creators are sharing in some of those second screen dollars um that probably remains to be seen and depends on like how they do it what the content is on that second screen etc but you know youtube does share far more of the revenue than meta does so uh overall i would much rather those ad dollars go to youtube than to meta agreed and if youtube is enhancing just the lean back television viewing experience more people are probably going to engage in that lean back television television viewing experience which is going to then put more money in creators' pockets rather than them scrolling these other social media apps while they're watching something on TV.

9:29Right, right, exactly. I think, I mean, look, it all depends on what those experiences are, how compelling they are. You know, I think part of the reason people are scrolling on these other apps is like just, it's dopamine, right? It's, you're just trying to get hits of dopamine from what's happening on TV and from your phone at the same time. We're all just looking for a dopamine fix. And so is what they are going to put on that second screen going to give you the dopamine hit, the same dopamine hit or even more of one than what you're going to get from doomscrolling Instagram? It remains to be seen.

10:05I certainly hope so, if only for the fact that the dollars that go onto that second screen are more likely to be distributed to creators and more of those dollars will be distributed to creators. it's confounding that tiktok and instagram haven't released any kind of television app in any meaningful capacity in the last decade didn't instagram announced they were going to do that like i don't know they said they were going to do it i don't know what actually happened to that initiative instagram announced they were going to do it on amazon fire tvs and maybe they have launched it on that maybe it's going incredibly well i don't know i don't own an amazon fire tv right either way how have they not rolled this out to all major connected tv platforms and giving people the ability to really watch this stuff in their living rooms i mean i don't love watching short form content on a big screen i can tell you my children love it really and i think younger generations especially love it maybe it's because that's what they're used to maybe it's because they generally watch longer form stuff on their other screens.

11:17And so then if they have an opportunity to watch short form on the big screen, they will. I'm not quite sure. Like I don't see people as much. This is a focus group of my children and my children's friends that if given the opportunity, they're not really watching shorts on their iPads or smaller screens. But when they get to the big screen, they'll consume that for hours if given the ability. That's very interesting. I imagine that if that were more broadly the case, then these platforms might prioritize it more. But, you know, I think probably as we have seen over the last two decades in the creator space, like as, you know, younger early adopter demographics age up, platform features tend to follow them uh right like uh snapchat uh famously you know launched stories they were for uh you know they invented stories they were for you know high school kids uh back in the day or at least that's who was using it and then uh instagram rolled that out uh shortly after that and then everybody kind of adopted that format uh and kind of it's now like a de facto format.

12:29And I think most likely, you know, if this is the trend, like, you know, if your kids aren't the outliers and lots of other kids are doing the same thing, I imagine we'll see that soon enough. Totally. And if you are watching short form programming on your television screen, especially if it's from TikTok or Instagram, please let us know. Hit us up at info at creator upload dot com. Would love to hear about your viewing experience. Fascinating. Or just drop a comment. Let's see those comments. Or just drop a comment and let us know where you're watching this program to. It is also worth noting that there is also a slew of new YouTube product roles announced on various YouTube and Google job boards.

13:13For instance, there's a call for UX. Designer references the power of real-time interaction, while a shorts-oriented product manager opening mentions a one-of-a-kind immersive media experience. and in meanwhile India there's an expansion of a YouTube live hub in Bengaluru which will quote drive the live streaming offerings in living room surfaces end quote so YouTube is totally invested in this ecosystem and wants to further dominate it as much as possible now especially since they have way more than the critical mass of users who are consuming content on this screen they want to figure out other ways to keep them there more often and like you said future proof this from competitors as well i also think i mean i think like it's telling that you know the markets are the u.s and india i mean you know facebook platforms um are massive in india so um to my point about uh competitive positioning like um it makes sense that they would go after that market second.

14:15Yeah. And also TikTok is banned there too. A little bit more of a foothold. Yep. Yep. Okay, Avi, I want to move on to a big piece of news that happened last week after Lauren and I had already recorded. And it's that OpenAI has acquired the popular tech industry talk show TBPN, or Technology Business Programming Network for long. It kind of took everybody by surprise that OpenAI, this AI platform was acquiring one of the buzziest, most talked about, most written about. I mean, the amount of press these guys have gotten in the last nine months, especially year, has been incredible. If they have a PR person, the PR person has been living their best life for the last 12 months.

15:01I mean, that PR person made this company, right? Like made this exit. Perhaps. I mean, I think you could argue that maybe they made this exit too, but yes, They've been getting a ton of press and have done very well with the opportunities that they've been given. But basically, it's a daily talk show where the hosts, John Coogan and Jordi Hayes, go live on YouTube and X for three hours. And they focus on tech, business, AI, defense, and other areas of interest for Silicon Valley. They have taken a decidedly narrow approach towards their audience. They really want to speak to the 1 % of the 1 % in powerful positions where they hold purse strings at some of the biggest companies in the world.

15:51They've had CEOs from NVIDIA, Meta, obviously OpenAI, and a ton of other companies on the program. they deck out their set and the clothes that they're wearing sometimes and definitely the graphics on screen like they're in a nascar uh automobile with all the different types of advertisements that they have on it and they were on track to pull in more than 30 million dollars in advertising revenue this year before open ai swallowed them up it's a team of 11 they've been going at it for just a few years and then they have what is reportedly this 100 million dollar plus exit open ai presumably acquired tvpn because it wanted an easy way to access some of the most powerful viewers in the world and tell them about all the benefits of their products and just ai in general fiji simo who's the ceo of open ai and its head of agi deployment said of the founders that they have, quote, amazing comms and marketing instincts, end quote, and that she hopes they will, quote, bring AI to the world in a way that people will understand the full impact of this technology on their daily lives.

17:00Avi, what do you think about all this? First off, I think, like, this is not a representative exit for creators, right? Like, this is Sam Altman invested in the tbpn founder's last startup uh when he was the ceo of y combinator so these guys are like boys club bros that have known each other for like a decade um and a hundred million dollars to open ai is a drop in the bucket right like they're i think they're currently raising something insane like 60 billion dollars or whatever um and so uh you know in his head he's probably like i need a new head of comms because everybody's leaving chat gpt right now for claude because you know we're powering uh you know uh bad stuff that people don't like and uh oh let me hire some guys that people do like to make us look better i mean that's most likely the strategic reasoning behind this and 100 million dollars is absolutely nothing to spend uh if they can sway public opinion, even 1%, right?

18:09It is really interesting that around the same time that this acquisition happened, there was a Ronan Farrow article that came out about Sam Altman and just the maybe not so great environment he's cultivated at his company. Yeah. I mean, remember the coup that happened like a year or two ago and he got pushed out and then he came back and he pushed everyone else. It's like this, you know, I'm sure someone will make a movie about it at some point. Hopefully Aaron Sorkin. But I do think there is an interesting kind of gem here or like nugget of opportunity, perhaps. If a tech company can acquire a creator company as a means of improving their marketing position, right, or their market position via marketing or however you want to phrase that.

19:05If a tech company can acquire a creator for marketing purposes, then why can't a bank acquire a creator for marketing purposes? Why can't a beauty brand acquire a creator for marketing purposes? Why can't a apparel brand? Why can't a beverage brand? You name it, right? They're creators in literally every industry and every category. The other day, I found creators who specialize in teaching people who use Salesforce. I mean, you know, They talk about a niche that most people don't think about at all. Why wouldn't Salesforce want to buy those creators and build them into their lead generation and marketing strategy, right?

19:44This dramatically increases the universe of possibilities for creators because historically, most creator exits and acquisitions have been to media companies or to private equity companies building media companies, right? Like, you know, like look at the Electrify's and the Lunar X's and those types of firms that are getting a lot of the press for acquisition. But there's also like lesser known, you know, private equity roll ups and, you know, creator YouTube channel roll ups that are doing the same. But media company economics are tough. And so those acquisitions are largely, you know, traditional private equity style acquisitions.

20:24They're looking at profit margin. They're doing conservative multiples against those based on comps to other media companies. But if a brand is acquiring, like if a huge brand in a specific industry is acquiring a creator for strategic purposes in order to improve their market position against competitors in that industry, then strategic multiples can be, just imagine the possibilities, right? strategic multiples can be, you know, almost infinite. I mean, look at like some of the insane acquisitions that like Mark Zuckerberg has done. I think that that is a really interesting new opportunity for creators.

21:02Now, is that something that we can force, right? Like, you know, is WME and CAA and UTA going to start calling CMOs and CEOs at big companies and pitching, hey, you should acquire our creator. You know, did you see Sam Altman just bought tbpn i mean i would be surprised if none of them have made those calls at this point but um are those companies going to be receptive right now maybe not i think maybe they wait and see how tbpn does for open ai over the next year or two um but if it does work out for them if there is a change in public perception of open ai if tbpn does have some impact on open ai's market a position and that story is told well, whether by OpenAI or someone else, then I think that becomes a very real possibility.

21:57And I think we start to see some really interesting stuff happening. I totally agree with you. And I think that it's really interesting, this point you bring up about now this opens up the world of possibilities for other companies acquiring creators in some capacity. And it's not going to be to the same degree that this happened by any means. I'm sure some creators have called their managers and agents being like, yo, get me this kind of deal. It is worth noting that the audience of TBPN is in an incredibly lucrative niche. I mean, like startups and some of the biggest companies in the world and some of the biggest venture-backed companies in the world is a very good niche to have your audience in.

22:35Yes, but that niche aligns perfectly with the target market for open AI, especially if they're going to focus on enterprise deals right totally 100 you know you could see the same thing you know potentially have like i don't know uh uh name a a big food creator channel like binging with babish like yeah you could see a world where all cloud says hey we're spending this much money on uh influencer marketing and we're spending this much money on creating our content nobody's actually watching our own content influencer marketing seems to be working Why don't we just buy Binging with Babish? And now he's going to be Binging with Babish by Allclad.

23:17And he's going to be using Allclad in all his videos. He's going to keep doing what he's doing. People watch him. But now he is the Allclad YouTube channel. And we get to use Binging with Babish throughout all of our other marketing. He gets to help our other teams. He gets to connect with this audience in ways that we don't know how because we've been playing by this old playbook. And he obviously has written the rules to a new one. And so we can utilize that throughout our whole entire portfolio. Right. The reality is Benjamin Babish, and again, you're just using him as an example, probably gets a lot more eyeballs than Allclad's YouTube channel does.

23:51Allclad probably spends a lot of money on that YouTube channel. and someone in finance can do the math and say, hey, if we just acquire this creator with all these eyeballs, make him the executive vice president of content and oversee our content team and program the channel the way he has but build all clad into it so that we are constantly exposed in the kitchen as his tool and then we can use him however we want because we're paying him an EVP salary. He has an earn out to make many tens of millions of dollars and our stock price might go up or our valuation. I don't know if they're public or private owned or whatever, but the equivalent of our valuation goes up.

24:41That math is probably actually pretty good in a lot of cases and in a lot of industries. Obviously, tech has the highest multiples and the most insane valuations, et cetera. And so most likely, like, you'll see the biggest, craziest deals happening there. But, you know, I wouldn't rule out, especially in industries that are heavily reliant on influencer marketing and public perception and culture, right, apparel and lifestyle brands. I wouldn't rule out huge acquisitions in the future. Is it going to happen, you know, in the next year? Probably not. Again, I think it remains to be seen how this goes for OpenAI, but even if it doesn't work out for them, I think that at some point, some smart person at one of these companies is going to say, hey, this pencil's a lot better than us trying to do it ourselves.

25:28I like that. I love that idea. I hope it happens. And to be clear, this isn't the first time this kind of deal has happened, at least in this modern era. The first one that comes to mind for me is back in February of 2021. HubSpot, the CRM Plus software company worth tens of billions of dollars, purchased The Hustle. That's right. That's right. Which is a daily newsletter that went out to a bunch of entrepreneurs, along with the My First Million podcast hosted by Sam Parr. the CEO and founder of The Hustle, along with their digital platform trends that was surfacing a bunch of different interesting ideas of what's trending in the ecosystem for their audience of a bunch of entrepreneurs.

26:13They acquired that for 20 something million dollars back in 2021. And so maybe that's what also planted the idea in Sam Altman's head that like, hey, this is something we could do too. So Avi, now I want to get to Creator Access Network. Tell me about the origination of this and how it came to be. Well, you know, for the last three years, I've been living as a creator. After my time at Patreon, I sort of found this audience on LinkedIn, started programming content for them, and started growing, started earning money, launched a newsletter. And I've been sort of building a business doing that, doing brand deals, doing affiliates and referrals, And then sourcing advisory and consulting clients like Adobe and Discord through my content and the network that that content generates.

27:01But along the way, I kind of I've spent a lot of money doing it. Yeah. I'll give you an example. Right. I launched my newsletter and pretty quickly, like within the first couple of months, I had thousands of of subscribers. You know, they converted from LinkedIn. And then I had, you know, spent a little money on growth and I had a partnership to help me grow. And like within, you know, six months, I had tens of thousands of subscribers. Well, that pushed me into the paid tier on Beehive. And Beehive is a great platform. And, you know, I was happy to pay for that. But it took me more than a year to figure out, all right, how do I make money on this?

27:45How do I position myself? How do I sell to brands? how do I use this as a lever to drive more consulting clients and during that time I was paying full price on you know whatever it was 30 40 000 subscribers and you know I didn't have that big of an audience right like if I had a huge audience or even like a mid-sized audience on TikTok or Instagram whatever like I could have probably had 10 20 000 subscribers overnight Right. Well, there's always a lag between like when you start building and when you actually start making a profit. Right. I mean, you run a business, you know that. I think anybody knows that every creator knows that.

28:26but if you're paying full price in that time you're spending a lot of money out of pocket and kind of praying that you figure out how to make it work i did end up figuring out how to make it work but it would have been nice if i didn't spend as much money out of pocket right on on my newsletter on the accountant i hired because i really suck at accounting and it was like dragging me back um you know on a bunch of stuff and um and so i kind of have this uh i was inspired actually buy I got like an Amex platinum flyer in the mail and you know I was like oh man nine hundred dollars like I don't know if this makes sense but then I opened it up and it was like thirty five hundred in value and I was like oh well I mean that seems like a no-brainer and like oh you can get four hundred free dollars worth of free lululemon and you know all these different like things you're getting you're really literally getting money back on it I was like that's uh I guess maybe I need Amex platinum um and you know I asked friends about it who had it and they're like yeah like it's great like i easily make my money back every year blah blah blah and i was like what what if i could have done this for my business yeah um like what if i could have not spent whatever it was like i think five thousand dollars give or take in the first year or two uh that would have been great like if i had those kinds of benefits and i would have been happily paid hundreds of dollars for that because i would have saved thousands of dollars yeah that's kind of where the idea came from and i'm like lucky i've been in this business for long enough that I know so many founders and executives in the space that, and also frankly, as a creator for the last three years who was writing about the creator economy, I was also like kind of banging on doors a lot, trying to get brand deals, trying to get sponsors for the newsletter, for my events at, you know, VidCon and other conferences, like all of those things.

30:08So like, I just kind of had this network and people I've been talking to and already pitching ideas and things like that. So, you know, when I started reaching out and saying, hey, hey, I'm thinking about putting this membership together where creators pay for access to the best deals, they can get the best discounts. Would you be interested? I got a lot of yeses very quickly. And from some really big companies. I really love that story, Avi. And I've been in the same position before where I didn't even know I was overpaying for something that I could have gotten some kind of deal on. And like you said, you put together, are seemingly honestly like what seems like a great stack tech stack for creators here i'm gonna get your website you have potential discounts from beehive fourth wall whisper flow epidemic sound teachable dot store domains kajabi and a lot more and so what's the basic value prop here for people who want to get involved you know right now we are 89 a year we're kind of in our open beta April 20th, we open up wide, go full price.

31:13That'll be$199 a year. And it's housed within a membership. So you pay for the membership, you get access. There's a community, you can chat with other creators and post and all that, but you'll get access to all the deals as well. And so we've got over 40 partners, over$13 ,000 in deals. And we're not limited to just savings. I mean, have a lot of savings on there. So for example, a lot of our deals will save you far more than the actual cost of memberships. Like Beehive, we were just talking about, you can save 25 % for up to a year. Compare that to the best deal they ever ran publicly, which is their Black Friday deal.

31:56It's 20 % for three months and it's four or five times better. And we have that for a lot of companies. A lot of our companies are offering deals that depending on your size, depending on what you need and what plan you take, you're going to save many hundreds of dollars, some even over a thousand dollars. But we also have partnerships with companies and platforms that let creators earn money. So for example, we have a partnership with Shop Your Likes, which is owned by Taboola. They're an affiliate network with over 20 ,000 brands and big, big brands, right? Like Walmarts and Nikes and Victoria's Secrets and all of those kinds of companies through us they're offering an 80 20 rev share now most affiliate platforms that you know like all the big name uh platforms that creators are using these days they take uh they offer a 70 30 rev share and so there's a full 10 more on 20 000 brands and because they're owned by tabula and they've got this whole huge network and they're going direct to brand like a lot of their brand commissions are better anyway.