Is There Still Money in Being An Influencer?

0:00There's so many creators, so many influencers, and how can this sustain? I think more marketing money will go into people and less to television less to outdoor my big argument for 10 years Is that the long tail of influencers and creators is much longer than people realize that there's many 15 year olds right now Who are gonna make a decision in five years? Do I want to make forty thousand dollars a year being a creator or do I want to be forty thousand dollars a year being an accountant? And they're gonna choose a creator because they're gonna talk about football or fashion or wine or whatever they're passionate about So I think we're actually just in the beginning.

0:34It seems like almost every year we have a new trend. A couple years ago it was in a tease, you were a big enthusiast of it, then it was a metaverse, and now everyone's talking about AI. And a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of investors are getting into the hype train. There's a lot of noise, a lot of fear of missing out. So my question to you is, how can these founders or even investors, they can seize the opportunities with these trends, these new technologies, but do it right, not rushing into it and maybe doing it wrong. You know, this is the way it's been since the internet hit scale in the late 90s.

1:21There's always a trend, blogging, social networks, iPhone apps you know there's always going to be trends because technology is moving very fast now and you know when I invested in Facebook and Twitter there was 800 other social networks that you could have invested in right Orkid was big here I don't have to remind you that was trying to make it in the US so I think that the thing with AI or with NFTs the blockchain the things that are going to come in the future that we can't even think of right now it's always the same game which is you have to find the operators, the founders. You have to find the founders, the operators that actually can execute.

2:0498, 99 % of these businesses go out of business. You know, 99 % of iPhone apps that tried to be Instagram didn't end up being Instagram. And so this is a movie that I've seen 100 times. And so 99 % of the AI startups will fail. And the way you can be good at it or capitalize is by making the right decision on the individual person who's operating the business. The thesis exists. The blockchain will be important. AI will be important. These things will exist, but from an investing startup standpoint, a very small percentage succeeds. The problem is the popular culture doesn't realize how risky it is.

2:48Most founders think they're just gonna be an entrepreneur and a founder. It's gonna work. And so, you know, I think nothing has changed in that question. The big opportunities change. There will be monumental businesses built for May. It's just going to be less than 1%. There were 700 startups that tried to win search. Yahoo won it first. Google won it second. Those are the big companies. So I don't think every game's a winner takes all. Look at social networks. Snapchat's a viable business. Pinterest is a viable business. you know, TikTok and Instagram and Twitter X. So there can be three, four, five, six, seven.

3:28And then there's smaller businesses. There's a lot of platforms that we don't talk about that are smaller, that have successful businesses. They're just not a trillion dollars. So there'll be hundreds of thousands of viable AI businesses. Most will be small. But there will be enormous amount of money lost in investing because that's the nature of venture capital. they invest in 40, 50, 60 things, and usually one or two is what's exceeding. Hi Gary, my name is Shren. Thank you. Thank you for your time here for us. So my question is, you're a known for creating content, and I wonder, what advice would you give to someone who's starting to create content, like the ultimate advice?

4:15I think the ultimate advice for content creation is to talk about either one of two things. Something that you really know, you are genuinely someone who is knowledgeable about a subject matter, or something that you're a huge enthusiast in. Something that you're very passionate about. You may not know everything about fashion, but you might think about it 24 hours a day, and so you can make content about that. or like when I grew up and I started content the place I went to was wine because it was the thing I knew the most I knew the most about it and so I knew I could make a lot of content so I think the authenticity of knowledge or passion are the foundational pieces the ultimate advice to being good at content too many people do content wanting to be famous too many people do content wanting to make money too many people do content thinking they have to do what's trending.

5:14And those are all vulnerable frameworks for big success. The only things that really pull it off are talent or passion. And I think that's what you should be focused on. You're welcome. I think the other thing that I didn't mention is people don't realize how much skill is required to be a good content creator. How much understanding of the math around the art What do the first three seconds look like in your video? What time do you post? How many words do you use? What's the thumbnail look like? There's a lot of skill in content creation and I think people misunderstand that. Hi, Gary. Hi. I'm asking in Portuguese.

5:59Please. Excuse me.

6:22Thank you. to me the long tail the micro business like i talked about with ai there'll be hundreds of small is probably the thing i'm more passionate about than the big businesses or the big players you know my advice is to double down on what got them there a lot of times small micro influencers they they get confused once they start getting some traction they think they have to do something different. Now I have to act different. When you start getting traction, the key is actually to double down on what got you there. So I would say first focus on knowing what you're doing, doing more of it.

7:03But the biggest thing that I think small niche operators, creators should be doing is becoming more knowledgeable about the platforms. Maybe they're just winning on YouTube shorts. Maybe they're just winning on TikTok. But there's LinkedIn, there's Twitter, there's Snap, there's so many more platforms and that can help them grow. Too many of those individuals focus on one or two platforms. Right? We saw five years ago, people that won on Instagram, they were hesitant to go on TikTok and that hurt their growth. So spreading to more places where they produce content would be my number one piece of advice.

7:43My friend. How do you see the future of creator economy? Do you see consolidation? Do you see a new TV kind of stuff? Like put together a huge amount of creators? How do you see that? No, I actually think more expansion. I think what we're feeling now is actually gonna grow dramatically. Back to the last question. My big argument for 10 years is that the long tail of influencers and creators is much longer than people realize. That there's many 15-year-olds right now who are gonna make a decision do I want to make$40 ,000 a year being a creator or do I want to be$40 ,000 a year being an accountant?

8:23And they're gonna choose a creator because they're gonna talk about football or fashion or wine or whatever they're passionate about. So I think we're actually just in the beginning. I know a lot of people think that there's so many creators and so many influencers and how can this sustain? I think more marketing money will go into people and less to television, less to outdoor, less. and that will go, but not everyone's gonna make a million dollars. But do you see them getting together to create networks? Probably not. You know, I mean, you know, I'm not so sure that, yeah, sure, some, but not at scale.

9:01First of all, the biggest problem with that is personalities. It's hard for five or six people to agree on something, you know? And, you know, the reality is the networks are, is the internet. you know so the reality is the distribution is commoditized anyone can get it sure getting together creates some more hype houses those kind of things but I don't I think that's a small part of the overall ecosystem and I think it will continue to be that way very good

9:37thank you I just wanted to ask about like how do you see the prospects of like switching and then keep in the audience to go from content as text to one form which is quite difficult to make a face. Alright, makes sense. To your point, the reason it may be difficult is it might not be in the DNA of the news to be good at video. When you have a newsletter, it's actually very easy to get people to video because you have attention and they just have to click and watch. I don't believe it's hard to get people from, there are very few people on earth that only read text. They read text and they watch video.

10:24My concern, my concern when I hear that from you is, is the organization good at video? Many organizations are better at video than they are at text. Better at text than they are at audio. Better at audio than they are at text. So the question there is, it's not hard to take people's attention from a newsletter to video. I've seen it a hundred times around the world. It just might not be the thing that the organization is great at yet. Right? Maybe not yet. Maybe it needs to bring a different style of video, different talents internally. But to me, there is no, an audience isn't like, oh, I only look at the news newsletter for text.

11:06I don't want to get video from them. If you give them good video, they will click it and they will watch it and they will stay. Picking up a question about the long tail. Yes. So if the content is more decentralized, what are the big opportunities? Is it like content platforms, creative tools? Because a lot of people want to get into the market and make money out of it. So what do you see in the future about this decentralization of content? All three of the things that you're thinking about are all viable. You can be a human that decides to be a content creator. That's a business. You could be a human that's more of a tech engineer and you can create the tools for the creators or you can create the next platform.

11:57You know, TikTok is not the end of the social network evolution. Just like Facebook wasn't, just like Twitter wasn't, just like Snapchat wasn't. Like every three to five to seven to 10 years, something will come along and that's assuming that the phone continues to be the remote control of our lives. What is absolutely looming is the metaverse. It's looming. The hype has been here but it's not real yet. But I don't think anybody sitting in this room doesn't think in the next 30 years that people are going to do virtual reality. We just have to wait. You know, just like the phone. It took a while for the phone and its development to become what it is today.

12:36but as long as the phone is the primary device of attention in our society, there's always the opportunity for a new social network. The internet is unlimited. So the tail has to go long for distribution but creating SaaS businesses for tools, creating platforms or being the content producer are all three viable plays for the long term for the people that are trying to get in and make money. You just have to be self-aware of which one of those are you more likely to be good at. All right, with this, we finished the session, so thank you very much. Thank you very much, Kili. We'll be looking forward to seeing you on stage.

13:12Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.