OpenAI’s TBPN Deal And Alex Cooper Divide The Internet, And Alix Earle Gets Into Skincare

0:00Hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy.

0:04Jasmine Enberg: I'm Kaya Yurieff. And I'm Jasmine Enberg. Every Thursday, we take you beyond the headlines to tell you what's happening, what it means, and why it matters.

0:15Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notifications screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of ten, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place, so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, wait, who talked to this customer last?

0:51And if you're worried about after-hours leads slipping through, Quo's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline. It's the number one rated business phone system on G2, and over 90 ,000 businesses already trust it to stay reachable. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus, get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash tech. That's Q-U-O dot com slash tech. Could Alex Cooper be heading into her flop era? Is Alex Cooper okay? Good morning to everyone besides Alex Cooper.

1:29Jasmine Enberg: So you're telling me a new reality competition show is coming out that involves Huda, Louis, Demi, and Dakota. This is absolutely insane. It is TVP and Toast now that it's owned by OpenAI. The internet is once again divided. We're going to bring you the tea and tell you what it means for the business of the creator economy. We will also talk to Julie Walsh-Smith, the CEO of Complexly, which is founded by OG YouTubers Hank and John Green, aka the Vlogbrothers, who recently sold their shares in the company to turn it into a nonprofit.

2:05Hi, Jasmine. Hey, Kaya. And hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy. I'm Kaya Urieff.

2:13Jasmine Enberg: And I'm Jasmine Unberg. Every Thursday, we take you beyond the headlines to tell you what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. Today, we're diving into two stories that are generating a lot of opinions online. What will the future of the tech show TV PM look like after getting acquired by OpenAI? And what's up with Alex Cooper's new reality TV show on YouTube that brings together a bunch of controversial influencers? We have both been sucked into these stories, so very excited to talk about this later on. But first, in honor of OpenAI's acquisition of TVPN, we made a special trading card for the founders and hosts of the show, John Coogan and Jordi Hayes.

2:51Jasmine Enberg: For those of you who don't know, the show makes baseball trading style cards for executives when they move companies. If you're listening, sorry, I know you can't see it, but we will post a clip onto our socials later so you can see it as well. And not just when they move companies, but when they get engaged, when they get married, all sorts of moves. Obviously, Coogan and Hayes are continuing their show as TVPN under OpenAI, but we still couldn't help ourselves. And they missed the opportunity by not making one for themselves. Later on in the show, stick around for our interview with Julie Walsh-Smith, the CEO of Complexly, which until recently was owned by YouTubers Hank and John Green and now is a nonprofit.

3:31Jasmine Enberg: We dive into why, and she also gave us a transparent look into how much their shows cost to make and why the company has taken such a strong stance against using AI. But first, a quick message from our sponsor. As every CMO or marketer knows, scale is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to creator storytelling. That's one reason why we named our company Scalable. This episode is made possible by Agentio, an AI-native platform for creator advertising, making it truly scalable and measurable. Agentio is also the title sponsor for our Scalable Summit happening on May 6th in Los Angeles. Manual sourcing, outreach, negotiation, contracting, briefing, content approval, all of that can take weeks to months to complete even with the best tools.

4:13That makes it impossible to scale from 50 to 500 creators without adding in-house headcount or getting external help. Agentio's AI platform solves this challenge, reducing the end-to-end process from months or weeks to days or even hours, allowing you to launch, learn, and optimize quickly. One person, creator, or growth team? Not a problem. Your team can manage 50 or 500 partnerships per month without adding headcount.

4:36Jasmine Enberg: Brands like Bombas, Maeve, Olipop, Ubers, Gims, and Cash App all trust Agentio with their campaigns. Bombas saw 5x improvement in return on ad spend and a 2x improvement in cost. Go to agentio.com to book a demo. So we have a lot to get through. Let's kick off with Alex Cooper. So Alex Cooper's new YouTube reality show, Unwell Winter Games, wasn't received very well, but she must have known that it was going to be polarizing. The show itself actually used that word to describe its contestants, which include convicted con artist Anna Delvey, whose story I am obsessed with, as well as Dakota Mortensen.

5:11Jasmine Enberg: He has been in the news recently due to allegations against his ex-partner and Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Taylor Frankie Paul, thanks to a very graphic video that has been circulating online. Paul's upcoming season of The Bachelorette also just got cancelled as a result of all of this. Now, the internet, of course, is focused on the controversy, including why a platform like Unwell that is supposed to empower women is giving airtime to people who are involved in or accused of domestic violence. There was one user who went even so far to say as, you know, as Paul is getting canceled, Mortensen is now getting a golden ticket.

5:51Jasmine Enberg: All of that is really valid. But today we're going to focus on the business strategy behind the move. So Kaya, thoughts? Well, immediately we're talking about it and the internet's talking about it. So the strategy is working because I think, especially as there's so many TV shows, even Netflix, think about just the dating concepts within Netflix, you have to do something different. But first, let's give a little context. So Alex Cooper has a sprawling business. Her media company Unwell has about 100 employees, roughly a dozen different podcasts, a film and TV production division, live events, clothing and a beverage brand.

6:28That's all according to a recent Fast Company profile on Cooper, in which Unwell was named one of the most innovative companies this year. Here's some of what she said. My goal is to build a media company that can turn entertainment into marketing across verticals. Influencer partnerships are extremely singular.

6:46Jasmine Enberg: Unwell, though, gives a partner a strategy, a media company, and an agency, an entire campaign. It's truly a one-stop shop. We have 50 million people who engage with Unwell on a daily basis, which is crazy to be able to say. I have executives at this company who have worked at Microsoft, Disney, Netflix, Meta. They have been instrumental in allowing us to create culture at this company. So Cooper has been crazy busy lately. She continues to host her Call Her Daddy podcast each week. She's signing new talent to her podcast network. She's also been expanding her consumer products venture into new types of unwell beverages.

7:24And she just hosted the Hannah Montana 20th anniversary special. I'm not done. She also produced a new Hulu reality TV show called Love Overboard. Again, back to all the dating concepts. In this one, singles compete in a dating competition that's on a yacht. And the dating reality show angle fits her universe, given that, you know, dating and relationships are often topics in her podcast. She's expanded into other areas. She's interviewed, you know, everyone from major A-list celebrities like Victoria Beckham to Kamala Harris. But producing two shows back to back is an interesting move. And while one is for a traditional streamer and the other is for social media, it does feel a bit at odds given how much streaming services are competing with YouTube these days.

8:07At the same time, though, I mean, Alex Earle launched a long form Get Ready With Me YouTube series and is also producing a, you know, Netflix reality TV show that's about her family. So, you know, we are out of this totally exclusive era. I mean, Cooper was, of course, part of it with her huge Spotify exclusive deal. And now there's more acceptance that creators, you know, need to and should be everywhere.

8:30Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I think that's true. But also YouTube doesn't provide funding or help produce these shows, at least to our knowledge. So it is still very different than doing a Hulu show and a Netflix show simultaneously. And I think exclusivity is probably less important here. I think it's weirder for Cooper to have two very similar shows debuting around the same time on two different networks because they could compete with each other. But I do think overall, you're right. Like we're moving away from that exclusivity era. I mean, we have Darman who has a Samsung TV deal. He also has a deal with Fox Entertainment.

9:06Jasmine Enberg: So that is a little bit more competitive, at least from the platform point of view. But I think what separates those two is that the content is different on Samsung TV. Of course, it's focused on his long form videos and the Fox Entertainment deal is for microdramas. But back to Alex, because the show also feels like it could be at odds with her recent big push into advertising. So back in October, she launched the Unwell Creative Agency really to help brands connect with her audience. It makes a lot of sense. As you heard in the video we just played, Unwell reaches about 50 million people daily.

9:41Jasmine Enberg: Most of them are Gen Z or millennial women who a lot of brands are desperate to reach, especially as, you know, their spending power has grown. They're also starting to define more of, you know, what we're watching and the entertainment landscape more broadly. We're also seeing the return of shows like Laguna Beach, which I am personally very excited about. But I wonder how brands are going to react to such a controversial show. Like she has a long-term partnership with Google. She also has a partnership with Target. And I didn't see any brands in the ads. That may be by design. But in that Fast Company interview, she also said that the vision for Unwell as a whole is to be a, quote, one-stop shop where brands can come in and be integrated across her properties.

10:25Jasmine Enberg: On the other hand, Cooper is no stranger to controversy. And those brands, at least so far, have been okay with it. I mean, there is a tell-all memoir coming out soon that's written by former Call Her daddy co-host Sophia Franklin with whom if you remember she had a very messy very public falling out and if you think back to Cooper's early content a lot of that was very unbrand safe. I do think what helps here is that she is producing the show meaning she's behind the camera not in front of it. I also think we are in this era where a lot of brands are rethinking what brand safety means and we've moved more toward a conversation and a focus on suitability meaning is this content, this creator and their audience a right fit for my brand?

11:13Jasmine Enberg: And I think for a lot of brands with Cooper, the answer is going to be yes. I mean, regardless of the controversial nature of some of her content, because she also offers a lot of range. Yeah, I mean, she's definitely refined her content and her interviewing style. I mean, like we said, she's brought on so many A-listers now onto the show, but she still also stays close to her roots, because that's what her core fans still want. I mean, she can still, you know, veer into, you know, topics like sex and drama and relationships and dating. And she still hosts alcohol fueled parties where she takes shots with attendees.

11:47I was at one a few years ago at South by Southwest. So there is this duality to Alex Cooper. But certainly we've seen, you know, some of her interviews definitely evolve. She does both. She interviews a presidential candidate, but also reality TV stars and gets into raunchy topics and drama. It'll be interesting to see, you know, in even if two years, she'll kind of continue this balance or become even more refined with the content she puts out. I do think it's worth pointing out, I mean, while there are millions of creators, and so many of them are women, few female creators have built companies of this size, especially media companies.

12:21I think so many of the most high profile and most talked about examples are run by men, like Mr. Beast, Dude Perfect, Rhett and Link. And they also often hire a lot of men, especially in senior leadership positions, as the recent timeline we put together in our newsletter shows. Alex Cooper on the Burnouts podcast said that her 100-person company employs about six men, though her CEO is her husband, Matt Kaplan. And to generalize a bit here, I mean, it's more common that we've seen female creators launch consumer products, which Alex Cooper also has. Dani Austin's a great example. She launched a hair care line called Divi.

12:54Emma Chamberlain has Chamberlain Coffee. The Toast podcast hosts Claudia and Jackie Oshry, along with Claudia's husband, who's also an influencer, founded a canned sparkling cocktail company called Spritz Society. The Kardashians, of course, are in a league of their own. But the only one that really comes top of mind for me in the media space is Dear Media from longtime influencer Lauren Bostick and her husband Michael, which includes a podcast network and also a brand incubator, which incubated the Spritz Society. But the latest consumer launch we've seen from a creator is Alex Earle. Alex Earl was actually a part of Alex Cooper's Unwell podcast network until February 2025.

13:31No one ever truly got to the bottom of what happened there. It appears the two are no longer friendly since then.

13:37Jasmine Enberg: Now, both of them are building out separate business empires. Alex Earl just launched a new skincare line. She actually teased it before on social media using the handle WTF is Alex doing. And she also used stories on her main account to encourage people to follow that account to find out what was going on. And I think a lot of that helped to build excitement. And it also gave the brand a built-in audience ahead of the launch. So about 400 ,000 people followed the WTF It's Alex Doing Instagram account, even before the handle changed to Real Actives, which is the name of her new skincare line. She also sent physical puzzle pieces to other influencers, which I found super fun.

14:18Jasmine Enberg: and they would post about it and spread the word that way as well. She also sent a locked suitcase with some of the products and the puzzle pieces in the end filled a billboard in Soho that then revealed what she was doing. She teased it on social for just under a week, which I think is enough time to build excitement, but also not too long where people get bored or impatient. I mean, we know how quickly things can move on social media these days. What also struck me was how much Alex Earl also used traditional media. Obviously, she had this huge strategy on social media. But you know, she had a billboard in Times Square, which I think was via Shopify, and she must be selling via Shopify because she tagged them and thanked them.

15:00But she also went to the top of the Empire State Building, which also lit up green for her launch. The brand colors are green. She went on Jimmy Kimmel. She went on the Drew Barrymore show. She did tons of traditional media interviews, including with Fortune magazine, who she briefed on the launch, several months before. So it shows how it's really not one or the other. I mean, she fired on all cylinders. Social media wasn't enough. I mean, she also used traditional channels and it was ultimately a smart strategy. And I think we've echoed that a lot. I mean, it's not the creator economy or nothing, right?

15:31Like you still need the traditional channels and kind of this approach of hitting all of these different outlets, I think helped a lot.

15:38Jasmine Enberg: Yeah. And none of this would matter if nobody bought the product, but they did. So Puck recently reported that real actives hit$1 million in sales in under five minutes after launching. By mid-afternoon, it had crossed$5 million, and then the line was sold out entirely by 4pm. Puck also said that it's, quote, shaping up to be one of the most successful celebrity beauty launches in history. That's not unlike Hailey Bieber's Rode brand, which hit about$10 million in 11 days. Alex probably did not come up with a strategy entirely on her own. She's tapped an experienced leader as CEO of her company, and it's a female executive at that, Andrea Bleeden, who formerly was a marketing executive at Kiehl's and The Body Shop.

16:22Jasmine Enberg: We do still have to see if Real Actives has staying power. A big thing Alex Earl is promising is that her products are really good for acne-prone skin like hers. I mean, she's been very vocal and talked for a long time about her struggles with acne. And if Real Actives does not live up to the promise or if the products just aren't very good, it's not going to be a long-lasting hit. I mean, people have so many different choices for skincare, and it's an incredibly difficult market to break into in a long-lasting way. Plus, people are also very vocal about this stuff on social media, especially when it comes to creator or celebrity-led brands, right?

16:59Jasmine Enberg: I mean, Rode Beauty, for example, got a lot of complaints about its peptide lip treatment. They called it grainy. They said it smelled like mold and Haley Bieber eventually had to come out and, you know, discuss it in public. Alex Earle certainly has a lot of other creator brands to study and learn from kind of what went wrong. And we're already seeing her start to like respond to, you know, one of the products, the pump takes a little bit to warm up. And she made kind of a funny, you know, Instagram about it. It just takes a second. So I think her instincts are there in the beginning, but we'll see longer term how the product does.

17:36Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notifications screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of ten, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. The business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place. so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, wait, who talked to this customer last?

18:12And if you're worried about after-hours leads slipping through, Quo's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline. It's the number one rated business phone system on G2, and over 90 ,000 businesses already trust it to stay reachable. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus, get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash tech. That's Q-U-O dot com slash tech. On to our next big story before we get to our interview with Complexly CEO Julie Walsh-Smith, where she breaks down everything from the cost per episode to why the company decided to turn into a nonprofit.

18:54I don't think anyone saw this coming. OpenAI acquires TVPN. For those of you who aren't familiar, TVPN started about a year and a half ago and quickly captured the attention of Silicon Valley elite, garnered tons of legacy media coverage, including a feature in print from the New York Times Sunday Business section, which called them, quote, the sports center for the LinkedIn crowd. Another big part of their growth strategy was live streaming three hours every day on X, which has become so wildly popular in the tech community after Elon Musk's takeover. Anyway, OpenAI reportedly paid in the low hundreds of millions for the show.

19:31So congratulations to the hosts, John Coogan and Jordi Hayes. I don't know if we'll ever see a podcast acquisition quite like this one. But before we get into what all of this means, I wanted to talk a little bit about the acquisition announcement because the strategy was so interesting and honestly, a bit weird. So they broke the news through a Wall Street Journal exclusive, so Tapping Traditional Media, which says they wanted the legitimacy and as broad as possible reach. And it was the TBPN founders, not OpenAI, who announced it publicly, though Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, did go on Axios later in the day for a very awkward interview.

20:09Notably, he did not go on TBPN's show that day to talk about the deal, nor did any other OpenAI executive. We understand that from the point of view of maintaining editorial independence, which we will talk about in a little bit. But it also feels like if there was ever a moment to have OpenAI on the show, which they have in the past, but this really would have been it. Plus, while the TVPN guys opened the show with the news, they didn't spend a lot of time discussing it. I watched all three hours. On the plane, which I'm very impressed about. I had a three-hour flight back from Easter, and I listened to the entire thing.

20:45But it was interesting because their tone was more defensive than celebratory, which to me says they knew that this would be polarizing to their audience, and it sure was. But before we get into what people are saying online, Jasmine, reactions, why does OpenAI want TVPN?

21:00Jasmine Enberg: We and many other people have a lot of questions. But like you said, OpenAI acquiring TVPN certainly was not on my bingo card this year either. For OpenAI, though, this is clearly a marketing play. It's an expensive one. They're basically paying for vibes, for influence, but they can afford it. So they just raised$122 billion in funding at an$852 billion valuation. And TBPN, of course, doesn't require a lot of money for OpenAI to support like Sora did. That is good because OpenAI is burning cash. AI is very expensive. But anyway, why OpenAI wants this? AI has a very bad rep and it's getting worse.

21:41Jasmine Enberg: Even as more people are using it or are aware of the technology, a recent Quinnipiac poll found that only 3 % of Americans think they can trust AI all of the time. 27 % said hardly ever. And 55%, that's more than half of Americans, think that AI will do more harm than good in their day-to-day lives. So not great right now for AI. And OpenAI through ChatGPT, of course, is the poster child for the technology. Gen Z, as we've talked about on this podcast before, and now calls ChatGPT chat like it's one of their friends. Same with adults. It's not just the kids. I mean, we do, but that's because we learned it from your sister.

22:22Jasmine Enberg: But anyway, so on the one hand, this makes a lot of sense. Owning a friendly media source gives OpenAI a direct line to audiences to help reshape opinions about AI, as well as to build trust in their products. And that's regardless of what they're saying about editorial independence. We'll talk about that, like Kaya said, in a little bit. It's also classic tech playbook these days. I mean, we saw Elon Musk buy Twitter and then change it to X. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post and the list goes on. Of course, this is different. It's a creator media company, a podcast, not a social or traditional media company.

22:56Jasmine Enberg: But I actually think that's what makes this even more powerful and potentially more worrisome. Creators and podcasters in particular are now among the most trusted sources of news and information. So in theory, again, here, they could help boost OpenAI's image. What doesn't make sense, at least on the surface, is that the people who OpenAI most needs to reach an influence probably aren't watching and may never have even heard of TVPN. On top of that, it's also really hard to change people's opinions about AI. In that Quinnipiac poll that we just talked about, even people who said they knew a great deal or a good amount about AI were more likely to have negative rather than positive views on the technology.

23:38Jasmine Enberg: The good news is, for OpenAI at least, they were roughly twice as likely than those who said they knew hardly anything to say that the tech would do more good. I mean, tech companies have long wanted more friendly media coverage than what they get in the mainstream media, especially in the tech press. I mean, they've tried all sorts of different attempts at this. I mean, from just going on podcasts and inviting creators to big events like their developer conferences to, you know, VCs and their firms launching their own podcasts. I mean, remember Andreessen Horowitz trying to launch its own media website, Future?

24:11I mean, it launched in 2021 to a bunch of fanfare, and then you didn't hear much about it. And then it shut down in 2022 after, you know, people forgot that it existed. And I think the big issue is that a company, a firm like A16Z, has way too much of a stake in the space with all of their startup investments for future to have been seen as anything except marketing for their portfolio companies. So none of these attempts have hit because all of these folks had too much skin in the game. And I think Jordi and John were insiders, but they were neutral. And to your point, Jasmine, I mean, what's so interesting here is that OpenAI didn't buy a media brand that speaks to the general public.

24:50TBPN has a really niche, specific audience of Silicon Valley founders, investors, tech bros. These people don't need convincing about AI. They're already bought in. Meanwhile, I've heard from other execs in the greater economy that had never even heard of TBPN.

25:07Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean, I texted one of my friends right after the news broke, and she is in the ad industry, and she was having dinner with another friend in the ad industry, and neither of them knew what I was talking about. They had never heard of TBPN before. Of course, now they have, and so have a lot of other people. So you can even see that in the subscriber numbers for their YouTube channel. So when the news was announced, TVPN had about 58 ,000 subscribers, according to news reports that I saw at the time. And then when I checked the next morning, they were up to nearly 65 ,000 YouTube subscribers.

25:38Jasmine Enberg: So that is about 12 % growth in less than 24 hours. So to your point, Kaya, this launch strategy may have been weird, and I agree that it was, but it worked, at least in terms of their own awareness. But then again, who knows if any of these new subscribers will actually ever tune in. But even 65 ,000, I mean, it still isn't that big, especially when you look at the price tag. And their episodes were only averaging about 70 ,000 viewers per episode across platforms. So I mean, if you look at top podcasts, I mean, they get millions of views and downloads. But again, they've been able to really permeate the specific bubble and their show has really become synonymous with Silicon Valley.

26:17And their strategy to get here has been really interesting. I think there's a few things that really helped them. So one, they took the show very seriously. They said on this episode announcing the acquisition that they had a mentor who told them, take this show 100 times more seriously than you do. And they said, we did. I mean, it looked like a show. It's shot in a studio. It has high quality cameras. They started wearing suits. On screen, they had a ticker of stocks, you know, banners a la cable news, recognizable kind of green brand colors. I think clipping also helped them a lot, especially sharing on X where their audience already is.

26:49You know, smart touches we alluded to at the top of the trading cards also made people more likely to retweet and share them. But even if you weren't tuning into the show, you were likely aware of it via their clips and their social media graphics. In their episode announcing the OpenAI News, they said they designed TVPN for people who have varying amounts of time. So you can read their newsletter quickly, which has a rundown of the show. You know, you can watch the whole stream, you can watch just one clip, or you can, you know, just glance at their social media posts of one of the trading cards.

27:19Either way, you're interacting with their brand and you're aware of it. Another big thing that helped, big names would come on the show. And then they would also share that they went on and that would generate more buzz and awareness. Again, I mean, this didn't necessarily translate to a ton of more viewers per episode, though surely this compounded over time. And it also helped create like you said the vibe the hype around it they also did kind of stunts like an emmy consideration campaign so all of these kind of savvy moves combined helped them drum up more attention and then last but not least coverage from legacy media was also a key part of this which added legitimacy i mean they had several profiles written about them from traditional media yeah

27:58Jasmine Enberg: and i also think that a lot of people have probably seen snippets of the show without knowing what it was and i think open ai's approach speaks to the moment that we're in right now in creator economy. Obviously, this is an extreme case. And I don't necessarily think it's replicable to the point of other tech companies all of a sudden going out and buying up creator brands, right? But then again, we had Brett Deshefsky recently making a good point saying HubSpot bought Hustle, which is a newsletter, but like zooming out with more content than ever before, what we choose to watch is becoming increasingly divided.

28:29Jasmine Enberg: And then there's algorithms that are dictating just more of what we see on our social feeds, which means that we might not even know who's producing the content that we're watching. And we've talked about this a lot on this podcast and what it means for creators who are trying to build an audience. I mean, spoiler alert, it makes it a lot harder. But we're also seeing a lot more brands really change their strategies to meet the moment that we're in. They're partnering with creators that have smaller but more targeted and more engaged audiences. And bonus points, of course, if they have a lot of spending power, like people who are interested in or who are in the tech industry do.

29:02Jasmine Enberg: And then they're extending those partnerships through things like paid ads on social media or on other channels. And if you think about TVPN, I mean, they were booked for the full year with sponsors, and they were reportedly on track to make over$30 million in revenue this year, which is up from$5 million in 2025. If you think about Scott Galloway, he has several podcasts, but one of his podcasts is the Prof G Pod, and it has over 700 ,000 YouTube subscribers, which is about 10 times more than what TVPN has now. And he makes about the same amount of money from his entire podcast universe, which also includes, you know, Pivot with Kara Swisher, as well as Raging Moderates, both all of which actually are incredible podcasts.

29:46Jasmine Enberg: I've listened to episodes of all of them. But all of that to say, like the numbers for TVPN really are staggering when you put it into perspective. Yeah, and I think one thing also to go back to the point of like what helped TVPN stand out is they did things differently. They had all the sponsors on screen at once, which was chaotic. I mean, there was, I think, more than 20 of them. Again, with the sports analogy, I mean, they even made these custom jackets like F1 drivers that had all their sponsors, you know, at once. And even though that seems a bit counterintuitive, one, it stands out. And two, I mean, the traffic supports that it that it was working.

30:20There was this tweet from Crust Data, which tracks web traffic, very, very funny name, love that. And it said that on average, TBPN sponsors grew their web traffic by 65 % after partnering with the show. So again, it speaks to the value of the targeted, engaged audiences and why OpenAI wanted TBPN. You know, it's unclear what happens with those advertisers moving forward. They disappeared from the show already on the announcement episode, and they didn't address what would happen in the future. So which brings us, you know, to the question that's on everyone's mind, Can TBPN maintain editorial independence when it's owned by OpenAI?

30:56First, we have to say that TBPN has said there's a clause in the agreement that gives them full independence. They decide on guests programming and their show is moving forward as usual, just with more resources. Yet, they're also going to be helping OpenAI with marketing and communications. And they report directly to the chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane. So they're chief lobbyist of OpenAI, which means that the lines are very blurry, to say the least.

31:21Jasmine Enberg: I think it's a valid question, especially because TVPN made such a big deal of maintaining their editorial independence in the announcement. I honestly found that a little weird, and it might actually hurt them more than helped because I know, Kaya, you said they were neutral, but they were never fully neutral voices to begin with. Like, sure, they were independent in the sense that they weren't employees of a specific tech company like they are now, but they were always fanboys of tech and the industry themselves. And that was a through line throughout their content. I mean, John Coogan was the co-founder of Soylent, if you remember that company.

31:57Jasmine Enberg: And Jordi Hayes is also a multi-time founder, including of a fintech startup. So they were very in this community. They also weren't doing hard-hitting or investigative pieces on AI or on technology like a traditional journalist would. They were very friendly to Silicon Valley. They were seen as insiders themselves. And I think a lot of that was the appeal of the show to viewers, as well as, of course, the tech executives that went on it as guests. And I think that piece, the access that they had, is probably what's going to suffer the most here. It is very hard to imagine that the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, or Mark Zuckerberg is going to want to come on the show now because they have companies that directly compete with OpenAI.

32:40Jasmine Enberg: They might also be more wary of letting the TBPN guys in on their news, inviting them to stuff if they're worried about how they might cover it or if the news is even it could leak to open AI, for example. And that said, though, there are a lot of smaller tech companies as well as non-tech brands that I think won't care as much and might even want to be aligned with open AI. So that was a very long answer to your question. But the short answer is, no, TVPN cannot be editorially independent, but they never really were. The only difference now is that there's no sort of illusions of neutrality, because instead of aligning themselves with all of tech and being pro AI, they're aligned with a specific company, which of course is OpenAI.

33:25But that's a very big difference. I think the reason TVPN worked so well is because they were insiders and friendly enough, but they didn't have a direct stake in the game. So they felt neutral, yet tech friendly. So like, if you think of the Andreessen future example, I mean, they have a direct stake, right? Even though these guys are fanboys of tech, they didn't have a vested stake. So I think that's why it worked. They found this balance that I think others in the tech industry that tried to do podcasts were not able to get. Now they're firmly in a lane and they picked aside. And it's not sitting well with a lot of the audience who have been very vocal online to the announcement.

34:03And you know, some people are saying, like you said, I mean, independence doesn't matter. I mean, they were never journalists or truly neutral. They even said on the show, like when people come to us with exclusives, we're like, give it to the journal, give it to Bloomberg and like, come on and contextualize it and talk about it. Like they were not in the business of doing any sort of reporting, or even breaking, you know, news. One person on Twitter wrote, quote, there's a place for scoops, accountability and traditional reporting. But this is a different product serving a different and growing demand.

34:30Everyone watching basically gets it. No one thinks these platforms are objective journalism. But even so, being part of OpenAI takes us to a very different scenario. And I think that's what got, you know, even the tech community and some of their biggest fans worked up about it online. I will say the reactions were mixed. I mean, lots of people cheered the founders on saying, you know, they got their bag, how great this was. But there were definitely negative reactions from fans. Here are a few posts that stood out on X, of course, where their main community is. Quote, trying to have their cake and eat it too.

35:01They want to keep doing the show. I get it. It's been a great show. But their audience will never be able to get over the fact that they are now highly paid open AI PR people. Second tweet. TBPN was always a show that was primarily about nodding and smiling enthusiastically at everything billionaires say. So this shouldn't be much of a disruption in programming. Obviously some snark in the last tweet. But that really encapsulates, I think, how, you know, they were seen of really propping up tech.

35:26Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean, I can see both sides of the debate. But ultimately, I think a lot of the drama will settle down and people will move on. And there is a very good chance that their core fans aren't going to care in the long term as long as the content is good. I mean, if you kind of just zoom out and think about the era that we're in, I mean, facts are constantly being debated. People are choosing what they want to watch because their viewpoints align with the content. And that's a huge reason why creators are so popular for news in the first place. But anyway, given all of this, because the TBPN guys certainly knew that this would be polarizing.

36:01Jasmine Enberg: I mean, I think that's one reason why they were so defensive, at least at the top of their show on Friday. Why would they sell? The obvious answer, of course, is the money. Hundreds of millions of dollars is very hard to turn down. It also said that TBPN had plans to expand and needed funding in order to do so. So that is probably very true. But I think a bigger element of this, at least in the near term, is that even what they were doing right now just is not sustainable alone. I mean, a three-hour daily live stream with a studio, with a team, it's expensive, it's time-consuming, and it takes a lot of resources.

36:35Jasmine Enberg: And we hear this all the time from creators these days, that it is just getting harder and harder to do it all alone. I mean, think about us. Even with a weekly pre-recorded show and a twice weekly newsletter, it is a lot to handle. And I think it's why we're seeing the rise of hybrid business models, especially in journalism and in media overall. And now, of course, there's non-traditional investors coming in and working with creators as well. Like, when are they going to go on vacation? Have they ever gone on vacation? I know they took Good Friday off and they said that that didn't have anything to do with the OpenAI deal, but that's one day.

37:11They did say that. They said that I think the markets were closed. So they were like, this was preplanned. You know, how would they have sustained this even with that much in revenue and long term commitments from brands? I mean, it's still, like you said, expensive to put on that show. It's also a lot of time, effort, energy. Speaking from experience, we know how much work goes into putting together a one hour show once a week, let alone a live show five days a week for three hours per day.

37:37Jasmine Enberg: And then you have to book guests too and, you know, script and come up with topics. It's not just sitting down and actually doing the show. It's all of the prep work that comes before it as well. Yeah, and they had a team. They had 11 people on their team. But as you add more team members, that's salaries. That's, you know, the costs become expensive even with a runway like that with so many sponsors. And I think knowing when to sell is really important because things may turn another way. I mean, think about Clubhouse, the social audio app. You know, what if it had sold to Twitter in 2021 for$4 billion?

38:08I mean, that didn't happen. And now, I mean, the app is technically around, but barely. Allbirds is another great example. The shoe company, they recently agreed to sell for$39 million and once was valued at$4 billion. I mean, at the same time, it can go the other way. What if Facebook had sold to Yahoo in 2006 for$1 billion, right? I mean, but I think for a lot of these companies that are built on the hype and the vibe and the cool factor, there is definitely a key moment to sell. And I think they nailed it.

38:38Jasmine Enberg: Well, if Facebook had done that, instead of having one of the best business deals in tech history, meaning buying Instagram in 2012 for a billion dollars, they would probably have one of the worst. So good decision for them. But speaking of timing, and this is the last thing on TVPN before we go to Julie's interview, it is also very interesting that this happened right after OpenAI ended its video app Sora, along with its$1 billion deal with Disney to license its characters. And the end of that deal was taken by many people as a potential backing away from entertainment for open AI. But the TVPN deal shows that that is not the case.

39:14Jasmine Enberg: They are still very interested in media and in creators specifically. And of course, and we talked a little bit about this before already, while the TVPN deal is expensive, the Disney deal kind of puts, you know, those low hundreds of millions of dollars into perspective. It is about a tenth of what they would have spent on Disney for them to use their characters in an app that is also very expensive to maintain because of all the compute and all the other costs. And, you know, was had a very not a great reputation itself. And as we noted previously, OpenAI also just hired Charles Porch, a 15-year veteran of meta and Instagram who helped onboard many celebrities to Instagram and worked a lot with creators.

39:54In March, he took on a similar partnerships role at OpenAI, joining quite a few other meta executives, which includes Fiji Simo, who is CEO of Applications and apparently the brains behind the TVPN deal. So it all comes full circle. Now the question is, what happens to the show in the long term? As TVPN co-host John Coogan put it, quote, we're going to be live every day, three hours a day, as long as we want. While OpenAI may not be able to discontinue the show for the terms of the deal, the co-host may at some point want to throw in the towel. Will they still be doing this in two years?

40:28Jasmine Enberg: We will have to see. But now it is time for our interview with Julie Walsh-Smith, the CEO of Complexly, an educational media company founded by Hank and John Green, also known as the Vlogbrothers. The OG YouTubers recently sold their shares in the company and turned it into a non-profit. Here's a little of what Hank said when he announced the sale on YouTube.

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41:42Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus, get 20 % off your first six months when you go to quo.com slash tech. That's Q-U-O dot com slash tech. As of January 1st, 2026, this is real. It's happened. It's done. Complexly has entered its next phase, relaunching as a nonprofit organization. Over the years, a lot of people have knocked on our door asking if they could maybe buy Complexly, and their prices were compelling. But the ideas interest us, not the payoff. But look, we did listen. And not just because the payoff might have been enticing, though that is part of it, but also because we wanted to make sure that we were doing the best thing for the mission of the organization.

42:24And maybe like a big influx of capital and a lot of energy going toward selling to schools, et cetera, maybe that would have been the thing that would have the biggest impact. But in all the conversations between John and Julie, who's the CEO of Complexly, other people at Complexly, it just seemed like if we wanted to ensure that people today and forever will have access to this content, that a different path was the right path. Hi, Julie. Welcome to Scalable.

42:49Jasmine Enberg: Hello. It's so good to be here. Thank you for having me. It's so nice to have you here. And I don't know, Kaia, if I've actually told you this story, But Julie and I first met in Montana last summer. We had dinner in Missoula. Am I saying that correctly? It is Missoula, which is actually where Complexly is headquartered, which was a surprise to me when I found out because you don't expect to have a creator media company headquartered in Montana. No, we may be one of only, you know, a couple. Hank was based here when he started Vlogbrothers, and that's why we are a little crew based out of Montana.

43:21I mean, we're mostly remote now that we have ever since the pandemic, but there's still about 20 of us here in Missoula. And we, you know, we come into the office. We have our studios in the basement. Yeah, it's a good spot. But Jasmine, it was so good to meet you last summer.

43:37Jasmine Enberg: And then we ran into each other in Dubai as well. And now you're here on Scalable. So I feel like it's just been like a world tour of us bumping into each other. So it's really fun. So I actually knew that you were based in Montana because Hank and I, a few years ago at my summit for the information, talked about the Montana TikTok ban, which at the time was a headline. So he is, I think, the biggest creator in Montana. So we were, we were talking a little bit about that. But Hank and John Crean are the founders of Complexly. They are longtime YouTubers. I've gotten to know Hank a little bit over the years, and I find him incredibly thoughtful and also just so funny.

44:12But I'm curious before we kind of get into things like what is it like to work with him and John like give us a little bit of kind of insight into the culture of complexity. You've been there for so long. Yeah, I've been here for 12 years now. And I started as Hank's assistant, actually. So I was reading every email he sent and received. I was helping with his taxes. It was very much like I got really into his world really quickly. And honestly, over the years of just gotten to see Hank and John behind the scenes. What I usually say, because it's true, is that people, you know, they think of Hank and John as like do gooders and really thoughtful humans.

44:55And behind the scenes, they are even more thoughtful and generous. And they really make decisions that they think are for the best of, you know, their audience and their staff. Hank and John have had, you know, a front row seat to the rise of the creator economy. They've had to really navigate, you know, the rise of short form and changing platforms and all of that. So what is all that change sort of meant for you as a business? And how do you keep up with all of it? Yeah, it's hard. We've been a, you know, a real business for almost 15 years now with staff and processes and email addresses. And so I think we have for a while now not been able to be as fast and adaptive as individual creators have.

45:39And so Hank and John have often been our pioneers doing all the testing for us and figuring out the rise and fall of different trends and different platforms and formats, making it so that we haven't had to invest our resources into doing that and really only plug in where we see opportunity after they've tested it out or even after other creators have tested it out. So it's been nice that we haven't had to be the guinea pigs. And, you know, for better or for worse, it means we are not usually the first one on the scene for any new trend or format.

46:16Jasmine Enberg: So speaking of change, earlier this year, Hank and John sold their shares in Complexly and they turned the company into a nonprofit. Tell us a little bit more about that decision, what it means for you as a business and how we got here. It has been probably one to two years of earnest exploration into the long-term kind of structure and home for Complexly. We have, over the course of the past decade and a half, been working toward that key man issue. You know, Hank and John establishing Crash Course and SciShow back in 2012. But over the years, we have pulled them off of every single, you know, hosting duty.

46:57So we brought in other hosts. They're not writing every script. We have a staff of 85 full-time employees now. So we have been working toward that standard creator conundrum for a while now. And so it was really just a matter of, well, where is this entity and this IP really going to end up? And we started having serious discussions a couple of years ago when there's more acquisition and investment going on in the creator space. We had obviously some interest come to us for acquiring or investing in Complexly. And we took those conversations out of curiosity to see, you know, is this a way for Complexly to have the most possible impact over the course of the next several decades?

47:44And we even explored other options like employee ownership. Nonprofit was always a potential route. You know, obviously, because Hank and John founded Complexly, wanting to create engaging educational content that we make for free for everyone, forever, everywhere. And that is not the most appealing target for, you know, commercial investment. After really turning over every stone, we kept coming back to nonprofit. And the reason I think we didn't get there faster is because it's a one way door. You know, once you donate the company to the public, which is what Hank and John essentially did, you can't undo that really.

48:27And so we really needed to make sure it was the right call. So finally, in the middle of last year, we really, you know, Hank and John had come to a point where they were ready to make the final call. And then it was off to the races with lawyers and CPAs for another six months. And we were really excited to make it official at the beginning of this year. It took a lot of thoughtfulness, Kaya. You just said Hank is very thoughtful. And yes, we did not make this decision lightly. And it's really generous of Hank and John, I think, to make sure that Complexly is being placed in the hands of the public and protecting our content and our educational mission from kind of the ups and downs of the market or, you know, potentially becoming, you know, History Channel was once the History Channel and now it's ancient aliens.

49:15Like we're trying to avoid that future for our brands. And so we do feel like that the public ownership model is ultimately the right place for complexity to live.

49:25Jasmine Enberg: So you talked a little bit there about de-risking in terms of, you know, key man or key person risk, which is a big theme in the industry these days. Also talked a little bit about, you know, wanting to have impact and your mission. So like, how do you think about complexity? Like what is the impact that you're trying to have and what is it ultimately that you're trying to achieve? Yeah, I really love this question. We've been talking about it a lot lately, and we've made the internal kind of statement around what our purpose is. And our purpose is to inspire curiosity. We inspire curiosity because curiosity builds understanding, and understanding builds a better world.

50:02And so we have a lot of really passionate people here. and we have to kind of realize that the way that we're impacting the world for the better is by giving people the light bulb moment they didn't know to expect or helping them pass a test or helping them become an engineer or having them watch like a fun interview with Hank and Rachel Bilson and learning something that you know you weren't really expecting to learn. So really, it's about curiosity. And it's not necessarily just curiosity for the sake of, you know, a classroom use, but really just to inspire an entire generation of lifelong learners.

50:43I'd love to dive in a little more on kind of the key person risk because it is a bit of a conundrum, right? So many people are attracted to creators because it's a person, right? And then creators often try to kind of branch out. We just saw, you know, Alex Earl launch a skincare line and you've seen so many different kind of consumer products or shows or all these different things. And obviously you can't replace, you know, John and Hank as hosts overnight, right? It's a process. But how do you balance those two things? Because obviously they, you know, they've been at the heart of this content for so long, but it's also not sustainable, right?

51:16For them to be writing every script and doing everything. I mean, Jasmine and I are in that phase now where we are writing and doing everything. So 85 person team sounds amazing. But how do you think about that? Because, you know, the creator economy is about people, but it's a challenge, right? When you're running a business that's so tied to a creator that you want to broaden out, but then you don't want to lose the audience at the same time. Yeah, it is challenging. And I think that is something we faced as we looked into traditional exit models where Hank and John needed to be involved for X amount of years.

51:50And, you know, but then what happens after that? And I just feel like the way we've always thought about it is it's a long game. It's a slow drip. It's brand building beyond the personality. You know, we have for so long the umbrella brand of Complexly was Hank and John. It wasn't Complexly. We actually didn't even have a brand until 2016. was we launched Complexly as our umbrella brand. And people, a lot of people still don't even have never heard of Complexly, but they watch Crash Course and SciShow and Eons and Bizarre Beasts and Study Hall. So we are really trying to kind of replace Hank and John as our umbrella brand with truly with Complexly.

52:35We want to be seen as synonymous with trustworthy. We want when people are out there looking at everything on YouTube or other platforms, and they're not quite sure what information is going to be good and trustworthy and fact-checked. If they see our name pop up, they're going to know to go to us for that trusted information. Hank and John, in that process, are just transitioning from being leaders of the company to cheerleaders. So we're never going to be completely separate, but they can then continue their separate careers as creators. I think that the way that Hank and John have been successful in overcoming their key man risk, at least as successful as one can be, because it is still tricky, is they've just had 15 to 20 year runway.

53:31And they've been thinking about it the whole time.

53:35Jasmine Enberg: Let's talk a little bit more about sitting at the intersection of creator media and educational media, because there has to be a balance, right, between being entertaining and also them being educational. Like, I think back to my days at school, I loved going to school, and I would probably go back if I had the time, but adding that to our crazy schedules right now seems completely impossible. But anyway, even when I was at school, though, like, I found, you know, the textbooks to be pretty dense, you know, they were hard to get through, even if I loved the subject material. And obviously this was a very, very different time without aging myself, but we didn't have YouTube to turn to.

54:15Jasmine Enberg: We didn't have a lot of resources outside of what we were provided at school. But now that we do, and you are an educational channel, producing educational content on YouTube, how do you sort of balance all of that? Being entertaining, being educational, especially as you're competing with so many other creators and channels and things that are kind of sucking up our time. It's not easy. And any educational creator, we have many friends in this space, they would tell you the same. It is kind of a constant battle. We have editorial standards that we will not compromise on. And so that is the reality within like in which we make creative decisions.

54:54And it can feel limiting sometimes. But we cannot, again, with this long game, become the most trusted educational media brand without really sticking to our standards. And then beyond that, we do have to chase views and chase reach. And the algorithm isn't something that can be totally disregarded because to a certain extent, it mirrors consumer behavior. And we want to we want to find those audiences. And so just because we're not fully reliant on advertiser income, and we never have been, and I actually don't think a lot of creators are. I think they make their money in a lot of different ways, as do we.

55:40We can never just be making content that we think is good for the world and uploading it and calling it a day. If it's not reaching people, then we don't have impact. So audiences will always be important. You're also in a moment where you're competing for views with other creators, but also you're now competing with AI. You know, it's changing how we're searching for things, how we're shopping, how we're learning things. You know, how does that impact your strategy and your business as people are increasingly going to AI and also generating content with AI? I try not to make two definitive statements about AI because it changes all the time.

56:15And, you know, things won't age well. Opinions won't age well. But where I can say we've stood for the last few years now is we came out with an AI policy for our creative processes back in 2022. It just puts parameters on the fact that we don't create scripts with generative AI. We don't create animations and illustrations or use images that were created with generative AI. And that was kind of a scary moment because you never know, well, if everyone else does it, are we just going to be the Luddites who are not competing at all anymore? We actually posted that AI policy on our LinkedIn and got a ton of like positive feedback.

56:57And people really saw it as like a leadership step in the space to really make that stance. And that's where we are still. You know, we don't we think that people want to watch content that was made by humans. And I think we've been right so far on that. I think a lot of creators are just kind of not feeling that threatened by AI when it comes to, you know, creative competition. But, you know, we'll always kind of be, you know, try to be aware of any threats there.

57:27Jasmine Enberg: Do you think that slows you down at all, though? I mean, if you think about just how quickly things are moving and how quickly creators have to get content out there, you already said that sometimes you're not the fastest moving creator company. I mean, if you're not using AI to help with your scripts or to produce content and others are, do you worry at all that you might fall behind? Yes, I do worry about that. I think that's the tradeoff, right? So we're making a bet that people are going to want to see content that was made with, you know, humans driving that the creative process. I don't have any issue really with a back end, you know, administrative processes or kind of busy work being done with the help of AI.

58:09I think that's really important and we're not going to put a stronger parameters around that.

58:14Jasmine Enberg: So I wanted to dig in a little bit deeper into production. How long does it take for you to make an episode from start to finish? What does an episode cost, especially since, you know, you're not using any AI in scripting or in the content generation and so forth? Yeah, that varies based on which channel you're talking about. Crash Course is going to cost $5 ,000 a minute. SciShow is going to cost$500 a minute. And that is different because of the amount of resources we're pulling in and the production timelines of each of those shows. So Crash Course is often six months to even 18 months of development before the series is launched and even wrapped.

58:56And that is just because we are pulling in, you know, people with PhDs to write the curriculum. Often we have a funding partner who is also providing us some, you know, connections to other subject matter experts as well. And there's a relationship there that's, that's managed. And then SciShow is more, you know, we're doing four or five episodes a week and it's just more in-house and a faster turnaround. So a SciShow episode can be, you know, six to eight weeks from pitch the episode topic. We assign it to a writer, whether we have an in-house writer, freelance writer, and then it comes in and kind of that production pipeline is just faster moving than, than say crash course.

59:36What are kind of the primary revenue stream, especially for kind of the creators and educators that you're featuring the shows, you know, how does the monetization look like for that? And do they have any ownership in the brand as well? All of our talent is freelance. Now we used to do co-production shows years and years ago, where there was some sort of shared ownership, but we felt like those didn't always have, have like longevity that we needed for the brand and kind of got, I guess, sticky, I guess, if one partner wants to move in one direction and the other one wants, you know, that that's hard to, that's hard to navigate if there's a shared ownership.

1:00:11So we actually try to avoid that now and just bring in great talent on and paying them, you know, like a day rate for, for appearing. And that has worked well for us. Um, we also, you know, all of our writers are freelance or they're in-house. So, so oftentimes in creator, in the creator world, the writer and the on-camera host is the same person. Um, and I think it's, it can be challenging for us because that's not the case. Um, usually it's not the case, um, because we have experts writing the scripts and then we have somebody with either charisma or authority or a mix of both being the one to deliver it on camera.

1:00:47Everyone always asks about advertising because I think when you hear media, you hear, okay, that's advertising business. What do you guys make? But I always have to correct whoever's asking that. Advertising is about 20 % of our revenue. And that includes even the, you know, shout out sponsorship, bumper sponsorships and AdSense, of course. And then another 40 % of it is audience support, whether that's Patreon or we run a couple fundraising campaigns every year. One of them just wrapped actually, it's our SciShow campaign where we did kind of this, you know, it's kind of like your PBS sponsorship where fundraising drive for like two weeks, we'll be asking people to donate and they get this little perk.

1:01:32And then we have one of those for the Crash Course Coin as well that does really well. So that's audience support. And then the other 40 % is funders and philanthropists who are really, you know, writing significant checks to us to produce a series or content that is mission aligned with them. Becoming a nonprofit just lets us lean into those revenue streams. We are not abandoning advertising, but that's not going to be our priority moving forward. And we're really just, you know, I guess I just mentioned audience support. That revenue stream grew 56 % last year and we weren't even, we weren't even a nonprofit.

1:02:11last year. And so now we've, again, kind of unlocked more opportunity here. People know that when they give to our shows that it's not going into Hank and John's pockets because they'll say it themselves, they don't need it. And yeah, I think we're just excited to see what happens with the revenue mix as a nonprofit, but we don't expect that 20 % of advertisement to grow.

1:02:37Jasmine Enberg: Do you think that's a replicable business model for other creators, especially ones that aren't in, say, educational content or aren't a nonprofit? Because that kind of seems like the ultimate goal that a lot of creators are striving for right now, to lessen their reliance on advertising and really be able to go direct to fans to make money. Yeah. I don't know that it's going to be the right move for everybody. I think it's totally fine if you want to exit your company and become financially independent. For Hank and John, they have already done that multiple times, though this was not that opportunity for them.

1:03:14And so they were comfortable donating their shares of the company. So if a creator is going to need some sort of exit for themselves, there are different ways to think about it. You could do employee ownership. Of course, you can take investment. You can do like a perpetual purpose trust where your vision for the company is intact forever. But then as far as, you know, different revenue streams and lessening reliance on advertiser revenue, they should just be out there meeting their fans. They should be doing live events and inviting them to like wear this cool t-shirt and really just building the community around them.

1:03:51Those are the biggest opportunities for reducing your reliance on advertisers.

1:03:57Jasmine Enberg: So we are also in this moment now where facts are constantly being debated. You also have creators behaving like trained journalists, you know, spreading information, some of it good, some of it bad. And then, of course, AI, which, you know, is making it harder to tell what is real and what's not online. I mean, tell us a little bit more about how you as an educational content company really are ensuring accuracy in your work. We have been fact checking at Rescript for several years now. I can't even tell you how long. But I do remember kind of being annoyed at the beginning. I was like, we haven't been fact-checking scripts all this time.

1:04:38Now we're having to spend money on this. You know, I'm looking at the numbers wondering why we suddenly have to invest in this. But now that's our superpower. I mean, people are going to be tired. If they aren't already, they're going to be tired of not knowing what's true and who they can trust. and we want to be able to be that resource that they know is fact-checked and we bring in subject matter experts and we interview scientists and we have, you know, a really incredible, talented, diverse team with incredible professional backgrounds. So hopefully we are seen as the gold standard.

1:05:13Jasmine Enberg: I think my concern is more, does it even really matter anymore? Our hope is that we can look at what happened with yellow journalism and I hesitate to use this example because you two probably know more about it than I do, but that did not end up being what journalism was for forever. The, you know, kind of attention grabby, high mass type of journalism that kind of tore society apart for a little bit there. And then people got sick of it. And I do think people are going to get sick of being inundated with so much media that they don't know which way is up and that they're going to start kind of anchoring to someone they trust.

1:05:55And our hope and what we're banking on is that eventually people will get tired of feeling lied to and manipulated and really seek out the trustworthy sources like complexly. I hope people want to seek out trustworthy sources. You would hope. What we've also seen is just this huge huge kind of news cycle around protecting kids and teens online. I mean, we've seen countries move to ban social media use, you know, starting with Australia, Meta and YouTube were just found liable for, you know, knowingly designing their products to be addicting. You do have educational content for kids and you're on YouTube.

1:06:31What do you kind of make of this moment? And what does it mean for your business as well? Kids content is really hard and it has been for a long time. I am really proud of Crash Course Kids and SciShow Kids. Those are our two kids' IPs. My kids are four and six, and they love SciShow Kids. And we have actually pulled back on investing in that area with our own cash. We really, you know, we're happy to make it if someone wants to come along and help fund it. But there's really a challenging business model there if you're not the Blueys and the Cocoa Melons who can go then, you know, sell plushies at Target and everything.

1:07:12So I do think that there's a pretty challenging model out there for kids' content, and we're not going to be pushing in that area. It's also a very fraught time for, you know, kids' audiences on these platforms, and we think that there's good reason for that. It is a very tricky subject, and we sympathize with all the people who are, you know, who are claiming that these platforms have not been designed in the best entrance of kids. So yeah, we're just kind of pulling back from there right now and making sure that our content is available to those families, but also making sure that it's available on other destinations like third-party licensors or kids' content apps.

1:07:54Thank you so much for joining us, Julie. We so appreciate it. Thank you, Julie.