CEO Sam Reich on the business of subscription comedy

Summary

Decoder with Nilay Patel: CEO Sam Reich on the Business of Subscription Comedy

Podcast: Decoder (The Verge)
Guest Host: Hank Green
Guest: Sam Reich, CEO of Dropout
Release Date: January 12, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode features Hank Green interviewing Sam Reich, CEO of Dropout, for a deep dive into the unconventional business strategy and creative ethos behind Dropout, the subscription-based comedy streaming platform. The discussion covers the founding of Dropout, the dynamics of running a creator-led company, the economics of subscription comedy, and the cultural impact of keeping things "weird" in an increasingly business-driven media landscape.

---

Main Discussion Points & Key Insights

1. The Founding Story of Dropout

• Origins and the Acquisition

  • Sam is often mistakenly referred to as the founder of Dropout. In reality, Dropout was an initiative by CollegeHumor’s then-parent company, IAC, to experiment with direct-to-consumer business without intermediary gatekeepers (03:00).
  • After years of mixed success with ad-driven and broadcast TV models, Dropout was envisioned as a subscription platform so that “you’re not starting your business over every year versus ad sales, where you have to go out and sell every year, start from zero.”

    “One of the intrinsic benefits of subscription is that you’re not starting your business over every year.”
    — Sam Reich, [04:46]

• The “$0 Buyout”

  • When IAC wanted to divest, Sam wound up acquiring Dropout for no cash up front, offering instead to keep IAC as a minority stakeholder. A competing $3M offer from another company would have gutted the team.

    “So I went and I offered IAC $0... They would end up in the minority, the minority stakeholder...it was sort of like idiot insurance for them.”
    — Sam Reich, [11:55]

• Radical Downsizing & COVID Timing

  • The team shrunk from 105 to 7 employees just as COVID lockdowns began, catapulting Dropout into a true indie phase;
    [13:15–13:39].

    “We signed our deal with IAC on a Tuesday in March 2020. On Wednesday the basketball team stopped playing and on Thursday we were in COVID lockdown.”
    — Sam Reich, [13:26]

---

2. A Different Kind of Media CEO

• Creative-Driven Leadership

  • Sam actively creates, hosts, ideates, and writes for the platform’s shows (“Game Changer,” “Dimension 20”) and maintains close creative involvement.

    “You are the creative vision behind, I think probably, what is your most successful show, Game Changer.”
    — Hank Green, [17:20]

  • On creative escalation and challenges:

    “You have got a real sort of creative problem with Game Changer...you continue to escalate and eventually there’s no more rungs on the ladder you can...”
    — Hank Green, [19:12]

• Why So Few Creatives at the Top?

  • Business people increasingly helm media companies, with creative-led orgs considered riskier and more vulnerable, even as they offer unique opportunities.

    “The middle class of our industry has been hollowed out... we are run mostly by people who would be doing something like this, regardless of how successful it was, because we’re so passionate about it. Which means that we need to be creators because no savvy business person would do this.”
    — Sam Reich, [23:53]

---

3. Dropout’s Subscription Model & Marketing Funnel

• Not a Utility, But a Creative Brand

  • Sam rejects grandiose “disruptor” narratives, likening Dropout to “comedy SaaS.”

    “If you were to really corner me, I would basically say I run a comedy SaaS.”
    — Sam Reich, [24:50]

• Organic Social as a Growth Engine

  • Clips on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts drive most subscriber conversions ([28:09–31:16]).

    “The dominant [user acquisition method] is through organic social, meaning they’ve watched clips from our shows on largely Instagram and TikTok and YouTube Shorts.”
    — Sam Reich, [28:09]

• High Retention, High Engagement

  • Dropout’s focus on sticky, fandom-driven shows keeps churn low and engagement high.

    “What’s working... is that people subscribe and they stay subscribed...”
    — Sam Reich, [27:23]

---

4. Originality, Brand Control, and Content Strategy

• No Conventional Licensing

  • Dropout only hosts content they can actively market and run social for; traditional licensing dilutes the brand and doesn’t allow for Dropout’s social-driven amplification.

    “[If] we were to go license a mainstream show, there’s no way that they would allow us to power their social channels. So there’s no point to us doing that unless we get to do that.”
    — Sam Reich, [37:47]

• Production Scale & Company Structure

  • From 7 employees post-buyout to ~40 full-timers, with much talent on contract basis to enable nimble, project-based creative teams ([38:56–39:44]).
  • Emphasis on flexibility for cast and crew, resisting industry norms around exclusivity:

    “We are trying to position ourselves as everyone’s favorite second job, unless they don’t have a first job, in which case... we want for them to be very happy to be working with us...”
    — Sam Reich, [44:04]

---

5. Worker-Friendliness, Profit-Sharing, and the "Never Break Twa" Principle

• Profit-Sharing for Talent

  • Dropout offers straightforward profit share for key contributors; this is both an ethical choice and an artifact of not having outside shareholders to please.

    “The big one is probably this... basically, by hoarding money, you are satisfying someone. Which, like, we don’t have. There’s no one to satisfy.”
    — Sam Reich, [45:01–46:10]

• The “Menage Twa” Rule for Simplicity

  • Sam and Hank joke about business models getting unwieldy (“never break twa”), advocating for direct relationships between creator, platform, and audience whenever possible and resisting the temptation to add more complicating stakeholders ([06:06–06:52]).

---

6. Decision-Making, Leadership Challenges, & The CEO’s Role

• Priorities and Making Hard Choices

  • Sam references a Ruth Chang TED talk: big decisions are hard because pros and cons are balanced, and often it’s best to “just pick one.”

    “If you have your priorities in order, oftentimes the right decision will emerge.” — Sam Reich, [50:36]

• Public Persona & “Perfect Person” Problem

  • Being “the CEO who’s trying to do things the right way” means audience and staff expect exceptional conduct (the “perfect person problem”).

    “If you tell people you’re trying to do things well... people will expect you to do it perfect. And there’s no such thing as perfect.”
    — Hank Green, [59:25]

  • Sam’s approach: transparency about imperfection, commitment to decency, and comfort with criticism.

    "What I’ve claimed to be the case, and I really do still think is the case, is...I’m trying to, like, set maybe some new standards for decency, but I would underline that word.”
    — Sam Reich, [62:15]

---

7. Cultural Aspirations: Keeping Things Weird

• The Value of Weirdness
  • Sam sees Dropout as a platform for unique, unconventional comedy, aspiring to be a “walled garden of weird” akin to the spirit of early web series like Homestar Runner.

    “I wish that I could plant a forest full of weird trees on the Internet. I wish that the Internet was still a place where just, like, there was really fun, mysterious, hopeful stuff that existed a URL away. I would hope that Dropout can just be one of those things.”
    — Sam Reich, [64:15]

---

Notable Quotes

• “One of the intrinsic benefits of subscription is that you’re not starting your business over every year.”
  — Sam Reich, [04:46]

• “I went and I offered IAC $0... They would end up in the minority, the minority stakeholder. So it was sort of like idiot insurance for them.”
  — Sam Reich, [11:55]

• "The simpler your business is, arguably the better it is or certainly the more effective you can run it."
  — Sam Reich, [06:57]

• “We are trying to position ourselves as everyone’s favorite second job...”
  — Sam Reich, [44:04]

• “I, I feel really anti-pretentious about what this is... you want laughs, we will provide them for $7 a month.”
  — Sam Reich, [25:20]

• “I wish that I could plant a forest full of weird trees on the Internet.”
  — Sam Reich, [64:15]

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:00] — How Dropout originated under IAC and why Sam ended up running it
• [11:55] — The $0 acquisition and what really happened when CollegeHumor "sold" Dropout
• [13:26] — The timing of the buyout and COVID's impact
• [19:12] — The creative escalation of "Game Changer"
• [24:50] — Defining Dropout: “comedy SaaS”
• [27:23] — High retention and engagement as Dropout’s strategic driver
• [28:09] — Organic social as the subscriber funnel
• [38:56] — Company structure, full-time staff, and contractors
• [44:04] — Dropout’s approach to contractor/talent relations and non-exclusivity
• [46:10] — Profit sharing and not answering to outside shareholders
• [50:36] — How Sam makes decisions and keeps priorities clear
• [59:25] — Navigating the “perfect person problem” as a public-facing, idealistic CEO
• [64:15] — The aspiration to make Dropout “a forest full of weird trees”

---

Memorable Moments

• Hank and Sam’s recurring joke about the dangers of overcomplicating business models ("never break twa") injects levity into otherwise technical business talk.
• Sam’s candor regarding the $0 buyout and corporate realities post-acquisition demystifies the process of “taking control” in digital media.
• The discussion on profit sharing, second jobs, and keeping creative workers happy provides a rare look at ethical choices in a cutthroat industry.

---

Summary Conclusion

This episode offers a rare, conversational, and deeply insightful look into one of the internet’s most successful independent media companies. Sam Reich positions Dropout as a test case for the future of sustainable, audience-driven, weird internet comedy—and explains, in practical and philosophical terms, what it means to lead with creativity and ethics in a business that usually rewards neither. Listeners leave with a sense of both the business mechanics and the cultural aspirations of Dropout, and what might be possible as more “weird trees” take root on the internet.

---

[End of summary.]

Transcript

[Sam Reich]

AI agents are getting pretty impressive. You might not even realize you're listening to one right now. We work 24. Seven to resolve customer inquiries. No hold music, no canned answers, no frustration. Visit Sierra AI to learn more.

[Podcast Announcer]

Support for today's show comes from Zoom. Work moves faster when everything works together. That means meetings, chats, docs and AI companion all supporting each other seamlessly. Learn more at zoom.com podcast and Zoom ahead.

[Advertisement Voice]

Support for this show comes from Adobe. The all new Adobe Acrobat Studio is reimagining how we use and interact with PDFs and the powerful impact they can have for your business and personal projects. And with their AI powered PDF spaces, you can collect files, synthesize information, and even chat with an AI assistant for fast insights. It's time to do more with PDFs than you ever thought possible and you can do that with Acrobat. Learn [e-mail] do that with Acrobat. That's Adobe.com Dothatwith.

[Podcast Announcer]

Hello and welcome to Decoder.

[Sam Reich]

I'm Nilai Patel, editor in chief of the Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. We've got something special for you today. It's my friend Hank Green, longtime YouTuber, science educator, and viral TikTok star, interviewing Dropout CEO Sam Reich. Hank did this episode as a guest host over the summer while I was out with our new baby, and it's been a fan favorite, bringing together two Internet personalities that have known each other for a very long time and who.

[Podcast Announcer]

Have a lot of inside knowledge about how the Internet, Hollywood and entertainment all intertwine.

[Sam Reich]

We think it's one of the best episodes of Decoder we put out last year, and it's honestly just a really fun conversation. Okay, here's Hank Green interviewing Dropout CEO Sam Reich.

[Hank Green]

Sam Reich, you are the founder and CEO of Dropout. Welcome to Decoder. Hi.

[Sam Reich]

Thank you so much for having me. Hank. I'm flattered to be here.

[Hank Green]

You're doing a very interesting thing in a very different way than I think anybody else in media, which is why I think it's really gonna be exciting to talk to you about this stuff and also try and figure out the whys and hows that you can do that. But to start usually I don't really tend to go in that much for origin stories. I think that they're usually mostly just like a way to sort of make people think that they could imagine that they could learn something from the very particular circumstances that one person experienced, which I think are gonna be different from other people's and also a way for people to toot their own horns. But can you give me an origin story of Dropout from the beginning of Dropout? So we don't need to get into like 2006 and College Humor and stuff, but just hit me with like, how did Dropout end up in your hands sometimes?

[Sam Reich]

Some people call me the founder of Dropout, which actually is not true. Dropout.

[Hank Green]

Well, you beg to differ. I do.

[Sam Reich]

Great. I'll take it. Listen, Dropout was a priority that came out of iac, who was our corporate parent at the time.

[Hank Green]

So this was who owned CollegeHumor.

[Sam Reich]

This is who owned CollegeHumor. And for years and years, I was trying to figure out how we would make not just a lot of money, but a lot, a lot of money.

[Hank Green]

Right.

[Sam Reich]

And there was always kind of a. A cynic might call it a get rich quick scheme of the time. And it was ad sales. And then social media took a big chomp out of ad sales. And then it was television. And it turned out television production didn't scale very effectively. And then finally the idea was, let's try going direct to audience.

[Hank Green]

Yeah, just go ott, as they say.

[Sam Reich]

As they say. And there. There was a collection of it.

[Hank Green]

I'm not sure exactly what the top we're going over is, but we're going over the top of something.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah.

[Hank Green]

I guess the whole system, it does.

[Sam Reich]

Feel like that phrase makes it feel like we're. We're gambling the house. And in a way, we kind of were.

[Hank Green]

Okay.

[Sam Reich]

There was a collection of executives who were very bullish about this within college humor. I wasn't necessarily one of them. I slowly but surely warmed up to it, imagining that if it didn't work, at least we'd get to create our own cool stuff for a while. The notion was go direct to audience. There won't be the gatekeepers that there are in Hollywood. We won't have to start over every year like we do in ad sales. That is, by the way, one of the intrinsic benefits of subscription is that you're not starting your business over every year versus ad sales, where you have to go out and sell every year, start from zero.

[Hank Green]

And yeah, things are always changing.

[Sam Reich]

Yep.

[Hank Green]

And also, like, you're not just doing the YouTube thing where, like, certainly you're selling against views, but also you're selling on these platforms that decide whether or not you get the views that can have their priorities shift in ways that are going to be advantageous or not to your business. And that's Always going to be. That's always going to be their idea.

[Sam Reich]

That's true. I, I think that was the sort of meat of our first announcement video. And I think it's really true where avod, as it were, is like, what is avod? Advertising Video on demand. It's a word. Like you could also just say anyone who is not going subscription.

[Hank Green]

Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

That is a business that involves like us, the audience, the platform and the.

[Hank Green]

Advertiser balance and all those things. Yeah, yeah.

[Sam Reich]

It's not even a menage trois. It's a menage.

[Hank Green]

And everybody knows once you, once you break trois, it's just a mess in there. There's no.

[Sam Reich]

It's.

[Hank Green]

Somebody's always getting left behind.

[Sam Reich]

That's right. That's right. It's harder for everybody to achieve orgasm. You can decide to keep that in or not.

[Hank Green]

Never break twa.

[Sam Reich]

Never break twine. That's a business.

[Hank Green]

That's a business rule. Honestly, I like, sometimes I look at YouTube and I'm like, oh my God. Their party, the YouTube party that they are having has so many different people at it that they have to satisfy. And that includes like the government, you know, regulators.

[Sam Reich]

Totally.

[Hank Green]

And I'm like, man, I just never want to break twa. I want to have like my audience, I want to have my like team. So like the people who work for the thing. And then I want to have maybe the advertisers or maybe myself.

[Sam Reich]

And you, I mean, you can decide, you know, not to break twa. If, for instance, making money isn't important to you or satisfying the YouTube algorithm isn't important to you, you can decide that these aren't priorities.

[Hank Green]

Yeah, well, I mean, you can't, you can't. If you're going to pay people's salaries, you can't decide that money doesn't matter.

[Sam Reich]

But exactly, exactly. This, this was a big aha moment for me in running a business. Realizing that the simpler your business is, arguably the better it is or certainly the more effective you can run it.

[Hank Green]

Yeah. Especially at the beginning. Yeah. I mean, businesses get complicated because they have a lot of. Because they've succeeded already and they have opportunities to complexify, but they do not get complicated at the beginning.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I am willfully trying to keep our business as uncomplex as possible and it is hard.

[Hank Green]

You just added advertising. You did it. So the final episode of Game Changer.

[Sam Reich]

We did not actually add advertising to Dropout. There are fans who are very concerned that it's going to happen, but that is not going to Happen.

[Hank Green]

There was a sponsorship, though.

[Sam Reich]

There was a sponsorship, yes.

[Hank Green]

That made a lot of sense in place that you would have needed this so that you could find a high dollar game show quote, unquote.

[Sam Reich]

Made a lot of sense, is an interesting way to put that. But yeah, I think.

[Hank Green]

I think as a viewer, it made sense.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I warmed up to subscription. Like, I warmed up to the idea of, oh, going direct to audience means we get to simplify this operation. It means that we get to call the shots. It means that even though budgets will be less, our creative autonomy will be more.

[Hank Green]

I mean, would budgets definitely be less? Like, the thing about, like, obviously, per viewer, you're making a lot more money. It's really about the number of people you can convert. And that marketing. Was there a lot of discussion about how you would actually market the subscription product, or was it just like, let's make this available, we'll pop a bumper on the end of the videos and people will go sign up?

[Sam Reich]

The theory when we launched was that we would be converting YouTube subscribers to paid subscribers for a lot longer than that. Turned out to work.

[Hank Green]

Oh, do you know what I mean?

[Sam Reich]

Like that. Well ran dry fast.

[Hank Green]

Yep. Yeah, that sounds familiar. So it turns out you did have a marketing vehicle eventually arrived. But this did not end up being a successful thing for the people at IAC and CollegeHumor. And ISE is like a big media conglomerate. They own, like people. They own a bunch of magazines and TV shows, TV channels, for sure.

[Sam Reich]

For sure. And I think ISC kind of gets a bad rap in all of this. But for the record, they were patient with us in terms of us not delivering them a big chunk of money for over a decade. Arguably, they showed more patience than I think a lot of parent companies would in that same situation. And a lot of people in the meanwhile gave birth to spectacular careers coming out of CollegeHumor when IAC did not very much benefit. So I remain grateful to IAC for being our shepherds through that decade. And then they. When they got bored of us, we didn't objectly fail. We just didn't succeed spectacularly either. We had like 75,000 subscribers at the end of year one. I think they were hoping for like double that number. Yeah, they tried to sell us, but we looked very bad on paper because we had just burned through their whole investment. So a lot of people were interested at first, and then they saw the amount of money we were losing and the business plan which had us losing even more money before turning profitable. And they all dropped out one by one, leaving me.

[Hank Green]

Leaving you, man.

[Sam Reich]

Leaving me.

[Hank Green]

And so you came with all your big pile of money that you somehow had, and you just said, hey, I'm gonna buy it. Hey, hey, what's that? You got a cigar? Backroom deals. No. This is the weirdest part of the story for me. So you did not, in fact, go to them with a bunch of money to acquire Dropout. How did you. How did you acquire college humor from IAC Sam?

[Sam Reich]

I find it very funny when, like, there's. There's a certain sound bite on the Internet that's like, sam used his dad's money to come and buy Dropout.

[Hank Green]

Oh, wow.

[Sam Reich]

Which is very funny in the context of my dad being the inequality guy. I'm like, you are misinformed in terms of how much money you think this family has. Yeah.

[Hank Green]

For those who don't know, Sam's dad is Robert Reich, who was the labor secretary under one of the. Bill Clinton. Is that right?

[Sam Reich]

Yes, under Clinton, which, as we all know, labor secretary is the most lucrative profession that you could possibly imagine.

[Hank Green]

You see him on the Internet sometimes yelling about inequality.

[Sam Reich]

Probably. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And does it very well.

[Hank Green]

He's very talented.

[Sam Reich]

So I went and I offered IAC $0, which was the amount of money I had to offer them. There was another offer for 3 million bucks, but it would have gone to a competitor. They would have fired everybody and taken the assets and see what they could do with them. And I think that they liked the idea of gambling. Oh, sorry. So my offer was $0. They would end up in the minority, the minority stakeholder. So it was sort of like idiot insurance for them.

[Hank Green]

So they get to. They'd get to hold on to whatever Sam does with it.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Insurance for them in. In case things go very, very well. And I think that they liked the idea of gambling on me more than the idea of handing the company over to a competitor. It's a better story if it works out. It's more exciting for them. And so we. We did that deal. And for the record, I would not have done that deal purely sentimentally. I did it because I really believed in the business case.

[Hank Green]

You feel like you saw something that the people at the parent company didn't see or that the executives who had been operating College humor didn't see, like, where the value was maybe wasn't where they thought it was, or maybe.

[Sam Reich]

I mean, what we did with the company was so disruptive. I have a hard time imagining any corporate parent going, yeah, let's try that. Like it was so extreme. I think it, it probably only could have happened under in a new environment.

[Hank Green]

So, and, and so the, you know, kind of immediate first step was the company got very small after you. It was in your hands.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, we went from 107 employees I think we were to or 105 employees to 7 employees overnight. So.

[Hank Green]

So you were also signing up for that?

[Sam Reich]

Yes, we signed our deal with IAC on a Tuesday in March of 2020. On Wednesday the basketball team stopped playing and on Thursday we were in COVID lockdown. Whoa.

[Hank Green]

I didn't realize that. That's new information to me. That's wild. That's the basketball team.

[Sam Reich]

Isn't that crazy?

[Hank Green]

The basketball team stopped playing is such like a triggering phrase to me.

[Sam Reich]

No, totally, totally. That's how I get people with that story. They' oh, I remember. Yeah, I remember now.

[Hank Green]

Then you had College humor, which has since rebranded to align with the name of the pre existing streaming platform. But I would call it at this point a pretty different business. And thus I consider you the founder of Dropout. But you don't have to consider yourself that. You certainly are the CEO though and you're super in charge and a strange way for this all to happen. When you proposed this, did you feel like it was likely that they would say yes?

[Sam Reich]

No.

[Hank Green]

Ah, I love that.

[Sam Reich]

I mean I, I saw the writing on the wall, which is to say like, I saw that they didn't have a lot of options. But for the record, I was a Chief Creative officer and I didn't even then. Much to my own lack of credit, over the course of 10 plus years at IC, I didn't really speak business. So it was a leap of faith in me as a non businessman. That's what I felt very conscious of walking into that room.

[Hank Green]

We have to pause here for a quick break. We'll be right back.

[Sam Reich]

Every day, millions of customers engage with AI agents like me. We resolve queries fast, we work 247 and we're helpful, knowledgeable and empathetic. We're built to be the voice of the brands we serve. Sierra is the platform for building better, more human customer experiences with AI.

[Hank Green]

No hold music, no generic answers, no frustration. Visit Sierra AI to learn more.

[Podcast Announcer]

Support for today's show comes from Zoom. Work moves faster when everything works together. Zoom brings meetings, chat docs and AI companion together all on one powerful platform designed to help teams stay focused and connected with everything in one place. Collaboration feels smoother, ideas flow easier, and projects move forward faster. It's Smart, simple and built for people. Take control of your workday. Get more done and join the [e-mail] podcast zoom ahead.

[Advertisement Voice]

Support for this show comes from Adobe, who are introducing the all new Adobe Acrobat Studio now with AI powered PDF spaces. Look, I'm sure when I say PDF you have a very specific thing in mind and I'm guessing it's an email attachment. Certainly not a dynamic asset that could help elevate your business, but Adobe Acrobat is changing that. It's time to do more with PDFs than you ever thought possible. Need AI to turn 100 pages of market research into 5 insights with a click. Do that with Acrobat. Need templates for a sales proposal that'll close that deal. Do that with Acrobat. Need an AI specialist to tailor the tone of your market report to sound real smart in real time. Do that with the all new Adobe Acrobat Studio. It's time to reimagine and rethink what a PDF can actually do. Learn [e-mail] do that with Acrobat. That's adobe.com do that with Acrobat.

[Hank Green]

Welcome back. I'm Hank Green talking with Dropout CEO Sam Raiche. We were just talking about his origin story, how he became, in my opinion, anyway, though not his, the founder of Dropout. And I think that's made him something very unusual, someone who actually cares about media. There was a time when media companies were more likely to be led by people who enjoyed making media and a time when now, maybe now, media companies are mostly led by people who are kind of on the numbery side, the business y side. And you are definitely, you are a current example of a person who is a media executive, if you'll excuse me saying that, but who is extraordinarily and deeply and constantly involved as a creative force, as a host on screen talent, but also constantly ideating and even writing like you're not. Like you're not just sort of showing up and reading the teleprompter. You are also coming up with ideas for shows and you are the creative vision behind, I think probably what is your most successful show. Game Changer.

[Sam Reich]

I think Game Changer and Dimension 20 are constantly duking it out for position on the platform.

[Hank Green]

Dimension 20 came along like existed as a product when CollegeHumor launched Dropout. Is that right?

[Sam Reich]

It was a day one Dropout franchise. Yeah. So did Game Changer, though.

[Hank Green]

Oh, I didn't know that. That's why it's gameraps. That's why? It has seven seasons or eight seasons or whatever.

[Sam Reich]

Exactly, exactly. I think.

[Hank Green]

And I know that you're not super proud of those early episodes, but we love them in my.

[Sam Reich]

That's nice. That's nice. I'm so determined to jump the shark.

[Hank Green]

Yeah. Well, I mean, you. You have got a real sort of creative problem with Game Changer in that you continue to escalate and eventually there's no more rungs on the ladder that you can.

[Sam Reich]

It's true. It's hard to go further than outer space.

[Hank Green]

Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

So, yeah.

[Hank Green]

If you don't know this, the idea of this, of Game Changer is it is a game show in which the game is different every episode and the contestants arrive not knowing what the game is going to be, and then they have to figure it out. Which.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, sometimes it takes more and less.

[Hank Green]

Work to figure it out, but yeah, I mean, the. The most. The season finale of the most recent season. I don't think I figured it out until, like, halfway through. Sure, sure. I was like, at what point is this gonna change? At what point is the next thing gonna happen? It was like, oh, no, this is the whole thing.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah.

[Hank Green]

But wild. And also part of this is that you work with a lot of improv comedians, and so that's kind of the. The jam that's the vibe is like, you know, we're gonna play in this space together. But it does seem like you're able to direct the future with the way that you write the shows. It felt like it could have gone a number of ways that would have been much less satisfying than the way that it went. Mm.

[Sam Reich]

Mm.

[Hank Green]

Was that an illusion? Did you create that illusion for me? Is that. Was that like sort of a written thing or could it have gone differently?

[Sam Reich]

I don't think so. I mean, I think that, like, we grappled with this internally.

[Hank Green]

Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

You know, because sometimes Game Changer is a game and other times it's more akin to performance art. And there certainly are the gamewalks who like those episodes better. And then there are sort of like the kind of lighter hearted audience members who appreciate Game Changer sort of no matter what it is.

[Hank Green]

Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

I really wanted to do this episode, and I would say that we pushed it through despite some inherent flaws that it has. And one of them is that the conclusion is inevitable. But what we wanted to do with Jacob and with the audience is to sort of like, tease them in terms of just how inevitable is it.

[Hank Green]

Yeah, no, it didn't feel inevitable as a viewer.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. To make him Feel like there might actually not be a net underneath him and to trick the audience into thinking there might not be a net underneath him either. But of course I would not have let him fail.

[Hank Green]

Okay, all right, you've ruined that for me now. I mean, the game feature host I know would absolutely terrorize anybody in any way that's part of the character.

[Sam Reich]

Well, I wasn't gonna like, stop the episode before he knew I stole his blood, let's put it that way.

[Hank Green]

Yeah, I guess there was a lot of stuff that you would want to have happen. Okay. Turned out very well. But back to the thing. Why do you think that it is less likely and harder to have a creative person at the helm of a media company now than it once was?

[Sam Reich]

I mean, I think like happens to industry in general, industries take on meta qualities as people want for them to be more successful. And therefore business people take over in an effort so that those businesses make more money. I think therefore, what you get is a little bit of like separate. What I've seen occur is this sort of separation between these companies that are giant and monolithic, and they're run mostly by finance people or maybe like promoted legal or marketing people, because those are the people who the board has basically decided can best pull the business levers. Right. Creative is the product, but let's pull the levers of the business. The product is a minor part of the business. I'm saying that facetiously, but that's the attitude of these, these companies. And then on my side of the aisle, these smaller businesses that arguably shouldn't exist because they're much more vulnerable. It's vulnerable to run a small business. It's. It's very vulnerable to run a medium sized business in the world we're in now, where the, the middle class of our industry has been hollowed out. Sorry to sound like someone you know, your dad, my dad. But we are run mostly by people who would be doing something like this, regardless of how successful it was, because we're so passionate about it. Which means that we need to be creators because no savvy business person would do this.

[Hank Green]

Yes.

[Sam Reich]

Now we are in an unusual position. To be clear. When I signed up to do this, I thought it might be nice and small and humble and that I could work without a boss on my own terms for a long period of time, which, coming out of the corporate world is what I wanted. It's been way more successful than I could have ever imagined and is a lot more work and more stress and more complicated than I could have ever hoped for. So yeah, I got into this to run a small business and in fact run a medium sized business.

[Hank Green]

Yeah, you do. Has it has grown? What kind of business is it? Is it it? Do you see yourself so like, obviously Dropout itself is a streaming platform, but I imagine that, that you do not consider yourself a person who runs a streaming platform. You could see yourself the CEO of a media company, I suppose.

[Sam Reich]

Although I'm like really into boiling this business down to its essence and also not sort of like glorifying it. And I think what it is is basically a subscript. Like if you were to like really corner me, I would basically say I run a comedy sass.

[Hank Green]

I don't think, I don't actually think that you're allowed to say that. I don't like, that's.

[Sam Reich]

I, I feel really anti pretentious about what this is. Like, yeah, you want.

[Hank Green]

Laughs we will provide them for $7 a month.

[Sam Reich]

Kinda. I mean, I think, I think I do feel a little bit like Andy Warhol sometimes insofar as like, I think Dropout means a lot of things to a lot of people and like, for, for my purposes we are a Campbell soup can on a canvas. Which is to say like the transaction is you Pay us now 699amonth and we deliver to you this collection of programming. And yes, we, we have all sorts of creative ambitions. And yes, I think Dropout has collected this like really unique and wonderful audience of people who are connected to the content, they're connected to the talent, they're connected to certain things that, that they've come to understand the brand stands for. But at the core of it is this like mechanism that's working. Yeah, it could work or not work. And if it didn't work, none of all of this would go away. Right. And that feels really important for me to know.

[Hank Green]

I guess I should ask what the mechanism is that's working. I wanted to ask something else, but hopefully I'll get there. But what's the thing that's working right now for you? So obviously more people are subscribed to Dropout this year than they were last year and last year than they were the year before that. It's growing. What is the thing, thing that is working there in terms of like your funnel, in terms of like, why do people sign up? Who are the, who are these people? Because you don't have like, you don't have like friends, you know, you don't have a bunch of like storied media properties. You don't have that many shows. There's not like that much content on Dropout.

[Sam Reich]

True.

[Hank Green]

But. But lots of people are signing up. I don't know if you can tell me a number of the number of people who you have subscribed.

[Sam Reich]

For a while, I've. I've been saying now we were like, spinning distance from a million. And that's still true?

[Hank Green]

Well, yeah.

[Sam Reich]

I mean, I think what's working without putting too fine a point on it, is that people subscribe and they stay subscribed. And then more and more. And also more and more people are subscribing and they watch and they watch.

[Hank Green]

So there's. People subscribe. They don't just, like, coast the way I do with Netflix, where I'm like, well, maybe there's something I'm going to want to watch there sometime. And I've, you know, my rocket money situation isn't what it should be, and I haven't. I haven't subscribed. But, you know, like, Dropout pops on my TV a fair amount. So, like, these people are subscribed and actively watching.

[Sam Reich]

Yes. We have a highly engaged user base.

[Hank Green]

What's your funnel? How do you get. How do people come into the platform?

[Sam Reich]

There are. There are a few different ways. The dominant one is through organic social, meaning they've watched clips from our shows on largely Instagram and TikTok and YouTube shorts.

[Hank Green]

And you design shows to be good at being. Well, I don't know if you design them that way, but you do.

[Sam Reich]

I would say better. Sometimes better and sometimes worse. We do that. Yeah. Right.

[Hank Green]

Game Changer is very good at this because it's just like. It's like kind of. Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

That.

[Hank Green]

Whose Line Is It Anyway? Vibe. For people who have never heard of any of this, where. Where there's just like, good Clipp moments a lot.

[Sam Reich]

I think Game Changer is good at this. I think Make Some Noise is very good at this. When you think of. Of Make Some Noise being. Being prompt execution. Prompt execution, arguably dimension 20 really shouldn't be good at this. And yet it somehow is sometimes.

[Hank Green]

Yeah. They're just talented, funny people. I say, as a person who was once on the show.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah. You get to claim a percentage of credit for that. That compliment. But it's so true, Hank. I mean, like, you as that character creating moments on the show, some little voice in the back of your head is like, let me turn this into a moment. And when you have a great moment.

[Hank Green]

Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

That becomes marketing for the show in the. In the world in which we now live. Yeah.

[Hank Green]

Yeah, and that didn't exist five years ago. Like that, like when Covid happened. That was a very small ecosystem and now it is a huge part of online video and also very hard to turn into value. So very few people are able to turn their reels and their shorts and their tiktoks into any. Any amount of money. Some people have ways. Some people have very large audiences, and then it gets easy. But you have, you. You've turned it around where it's like, this content only exists because of a thing that costs money. And if you would like to see more of it, you can come be one of the people who is the reason that this content exists by being a subscriber.

[Sam Reich]

I think it'd be very hard for dropout to work if we hadn't imploded. The advertiser supported part of our business.

[Hank Green]

Yeah, you just. You just kicked it off. You were like, I don't need this. Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

It was basically like, I can't run an ad business. I'd be no good at it. I'm in a lot of ways, like a terrible salesperson. Like. Sure. Like in that. So. So that just wasn't.

[Hank Green]

You can sell things. I just don't think that you want to sell that particular thing. Sure.

[Sam Reich]

Hey, thanks, man.

[Hank Green]

We know this is. Yeah, man.

[Sam Reich]

You are, on the other hand, a very good salesman. I have so many socks because of you, and I love them all.

[Hank Green]

Ah, I love that. So what you're saying is the vast majority, or, you know, the. The biggest hunk of the people who are subscribed to Dropout came in because they saw clips and then they saw another clip and then they saw another clip and they're like, fine, I gotta watch this. And where is this? I'll find it.

[Sam Reich]

The vast majority of people. So I think 10% of our subscribers right now come in through paid.

[Hank Green]

Oh, okay. So you just sort of like, run the best clips.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, we do. We do. We sort of use the organic social performance to, like, clue us into what clips we should amplify. And I think that's helped us out through lull periods, even.

[Hank Green]

That is. You're using the clip. You're just like. You're going. You're moving from organic to paid. Yes. So that's really the thing. And do you ever, like. I know that you did like Dungeons and Drag Queens, where there were some new. There was like new talent bring to the platform. These people have fans. Maybe those fans are going to sign up. Has that also been effective?

[Sam Reich]

Oh, for sure, for sure. I mean, you could argue that we are certainly like using the content to market itself, but there's all sorts of ways that we're doing that. So casting and stunt casting is certainly one of them. And Dungeons and Drag Queens was huge for us.

[Hank Green]

Great. Are the shows that have the most audience the most responsible for signups?

[Sam Reich]

I would say so, yeah. A bit of a self fulfilling prophecy there where it's like the most popular shows, the most watched on the platform tend to have the biggest social channels, tend also to drive the most viewers. Yeah.

[Hank Green]

So what are those?

[Sam Reich]

I mean no show that's currently on the platform doesn't have its own hardcore dedicated audience, you know, if a show isn't that problem.

[Hank Green]

Because you can't cancel anything. Sam.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, I mean we, we have not exactly formally canceled, but we have sort of production pause production sideline put on the back burner. Shows that didn't collect audience as well. The most popular shows on the platform are Dimension 20 and Game Changer and then the second most popular shows on the platform are some combination of smarty pants, very important people and make some noise.

[Hank Green]

That makes sense to me. We have to take another short break here. We'll be back in just a minute.

[Podcast Announcer]

Support for the show comes from Framer. Your marketing website sets the tone for your brand. If you're struggling to make simple changes or small updates, it might be time to try something new like Framer. Framer is an enterprise grade no code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Miro to move faster with real time collaboration, a robust CMS with everything you need for great SEO and advanced analytics that include integrated A B testing. Your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your dot com. From day one, changes to your Framer site go live to the web in seconds with one click without help from engineering. So whether you want to launch a new site, test a few landing pages or migrate your full.com framer has programs for startups, scale ups and large enterprises to make going from idea to live site as easy and fast as possible. Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a framer specialist or get started building for free [e-mail] decoder for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com decoder for 30 percent off framer.com/decoder rules and restrictions may apply. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. Imagine if any of the movies that included the line I need the right person for the job. Settled for I'll Just take about anyone. How many heists would have failed? How many deals would have fallen through? How many secret spy missions would have ended in disaster? So why would you accept just anyone when hiring for your business? When you need the right person for the job, you can turn to LinkedIn Jobs. And now LinkedIn Jobs is stepping things up with their new AI assistant. So you can feel confident you're finding top talent that you can't find Anywhere else. With LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant, you can skip the confusing steps and recruiting jargon. It filters through applicants based on criteria you've set for your role and surfaces only the best matches so you're not stuck sorting through a mountain of resumes. Hire right the first time. Post your job for [e-mail] partner, then promote it to use LinkedIn jobs new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's LinkedIn.com partner to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

[Advertisement Voice]

Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree.

[Sam Reich]

Zoe. This thing weighs a ton.

[Hank Green]

Drew, ski lift with your legs, man.

[Sam Reich]

Santa.

[Podcast Announcer]

Santa.

[Sam Reich]

Santa. Did you get my letter? He's talking to you, Bridges.

[Hank Green]

I'm not.

[Advertisement Voice]

Of course he did.

[Hank Green]

Right, Santa, you know my elf Drewski here.

[Sam Reich]

He handles the nice list. And elf. I'm six' three. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile. You can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies. Right, Mrs. Claus?

[Advertisement Voice]

I'm Mrs. Claus much younger sister. And AT T Mobile, there's no trade in needed when you switch, so you can keep your old phone or give.

[Sam Reich]

It as a gift.

[Advertisement Voice]

And the best part, you can make the switch to T Mobile from your phone in just 15 minutes.

[Sam Reich]

Nice. My side of the tree is slipping. Kimber. The holidays are better. AT T Mobile switch in just 15 minutes and get iPhone 17 on us with no trade in needed. With 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers plus tax and $35 device connection charge.

[Podcast Announcer]

Credits end and balance due if you pay off earlier.

[Sam Reich]

Cancel finance agreement. 256 gigs $830 eligible port in a new line.

[Podcast Announcer]

$100 plus a month plan with auto.

[Sam Reich]

Pay plus taxes and fees.

[Podcast Announcer]

Well check out in 15 minutes or less per line.

[Sam Reich]

Visit t mobile.com.

[Hank Green]

Welcome back. This is Hank Green talking with my friend and Dropout CEO Sam Reich. We were just talking about what's popular on Dropout and how it got that way, and that gave me a chance to ask how they make it and what else might go on the platform. Have you ever considered Putting stuff on that you didn't produce. So right now everything on the platform is college humor or dropout produced.

[Sam Reich]

For sure. For sure. We have. We are. I think the reason why it's tricky is because we consider social marketing to be a big differentiator in terms of how we do things. And if we were to go license a mainstream show, there's no way that they would allow us to power their social channels. Yes. So there is no point to us doing that unless we get to do that. Weird.

[Hank Green]

That's such a specific reason to not do that that I would not have imagined.

[Sam Reich]

I mean. Okay, the other reason. The other reasons are out there too. Right. Like if we just license anything under the sun, does it dilute the brand? We're not trying to be a utility, we're trying to be more of a brand play. But I would say that we are interested in potentially hosting content on the platform that we could power its social content. And so we are having some of those conversations because we think it'll be an interesting experiment. But we're being very, very, very choosy about it, obviously. Gotcha.

[Hank Green]

How many people are at Dropout right now?

[Sam Reich]

We are 40 ish on a full time basis. But that really doesn't account for so many people who are such major contributors to what we do.

[Hank Green]

Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

Because there are so many contract players involved. The crew side, on the talent side. Yeah.

[Hank Green]

And you. And like, you know, those people do feel a lot like part of the team especially. Cause like, in terms of like dropout kind of cast members, those people are mostly not employees. They are kind of the folk that people imagine when they imagine what dropout is like. There's just for sure, sort of a bunch of recurring comedians who come in and are seen as dropouts, the dropout family by the audience, for sure. People like our contractors, but are also something more, it feels like.

[Sam Reich]

Definitely. And which is why, by the way, profit share. And which is why, by the way, like so many of the things that we do, we bend over backwards to make working at Dropout a positive experience for folks. I think that Hollywood is a system where, where people are used to this and expect this to a degree. There are all sorts of inherent sort of benefits and drawbacks to the full time equation. Like we, we did have full time talent for a long time. The benefit, there is security for both of us. Right. Like we know that we have people that we can turn to and they know that they have that amount of job security. And then the downsides are that we have to make use of those people and only those people, because we have to derive that amount of value them. So it means that the pool gets smaller. And then the downside for them is that they can't explore other opportunities that might pop up as a result of their employment with us.

[Hank Green]

You know, there's also like, I mean, this is a big. This has been a weakness of a lot of YouTube companies. BuzzFeed is the best example where you have employees and then they get a really popular show and then they're being paid as an employee, but their show is making the company a bunch of money and they're not being paid as talent. And so if Seinfeld gets popular, Jerry Seinfeld gets paid more. But if the try guys get popular, how do the try guys get to negotiate a three times higher salary this year? It's sort of not how business works. And so the try guys start to feel pretty uncomfortable being part of BuzzFeed and maybe want to go do their own thing. And this from the very beginning of YouTube, a big problem. And I feel like this mod of just like listening to how Hollywood has worked in the past actually makes sense in this case where it's like, okay, well, you're going to come and you're going to do this show this season and the next season, if the show did really well, like, your agent's going to have a conversation with us and we're going to be figuring out and you're not going to like, you're going to be able to do a bunch of other stuff, but this is going to be a big part of your yearly income now, because that show is popular because people really like it and you're creating a lot of value.

[Sam Reich]

I don't know how much people know about exclusivity, but I think this stuff is so interesting where it's like, if you are signing up to participate in a project, let's say Apple TV comes and wants for you to be in their show, you will sign a contract with Apple TV that's like, you are committed to X number of episodes over a wide period of time. You're usually signing up for multiple seasons. But as a part of that contract is like, you can't do other things usually in that category. Which is to say, like, you can't do other streamers shows, for instance, without Apple's permission. But then imagine for a moment that Apple takes a long time to pick up a second season of your show and those times are built into your contract. So maybe it takes them like nine months. To pick up another season of your show for that nine months, you are not allowed to do other streaming things, which is a huge.

[Hank Green]

You just gotta learn a juggle or something. What are you doing?

[Sam Reich]

What do you do?

[Hank Green]

You just gotta, like, stay in shape, too, because they need you to look the same, you know? And it's like nine months went by, man. I'm a different guy. Yeah, for sure.

[Sam Reich]

Keep your hair the same length, keep your nails the same length, you know? Yeah. Don't. I mean it. It's that. That's tough. Exclusivity is really tough for folks who are grateful to be working with this business, in this business at all. And so very little negotiating room. So, like, our attitude about it is if we were not accommodating of people's other work, we would simply be forcing them to make a choice between us and the other work, whatever it is. So the fact that we don't ask for exclusivity of any kind means that Lou Wilson can work with us because otherwise he is full time at Jimmy Kimmel Live. Right? You know.

[Hank Green]

Oh, yeah.

[Sam Reich]

Interesting. We are trying to position ourselves as everyone's favorite second job, unless they don't have a first job, in which case, you know, they are very, you know, happy to be working with. We want for them to be very happy to be working with us, even.

[Hank Green]

So, I mean, you're getting a reputation for this, for being like. Like pioneering the more creative ways of doing things, being more worker friendly to everybody from PAs to talent and everything in between. And, you know, profit sharing for contractors is like, for talent. It's not usually how things work, though. There's residual systems, various ways of doing this. But I've never heard of anybody doing a straight profit share.

[Sam Reich]

Why do that?

[Hank Green]

I guess why? And also why is it hard? Is it hard? Is the reason that other people don't do it because it's hard, or is the reason because they don't have to?

[Sam Reich]

I don't think it's hard. I don't think what we're doing is that hard. Say nothing about our brilliant finance team who does it. But, like, specifically the reason we're doing profit share. And, like, not.

[Hank Green]

I don't mean like, it's logistically hard to cut the checks. I mean, it's hard to make the business model work.

[Sam Reich]

I. I think it is kind of hard to cut the checks.

[Hank Green]

Yeah. But I feel like Paramount can figure that out.

[Sam Reich]

I think royalties are harder. Yeah, right. Which is like. Royalties are harder, which is why we do profit share, because it's like a much simpler for us from an admin standpoint. I think that other companies don't do this because it is not standard and because they can get away with not. But the big one is probably this, which is that they have people that they need to satisfy, a whole category of people they need to satisfy who we don't have because they broke the company. They ascended twa. They made that critical error going up from twa. And right there, number four, number five, number six, depending on the company is the shareholders. And that means that, like, there are people like, basically by hoarding money, you are satisfying someone. Yeah, right. Which, like, we don't have. There's no one to satisfy.

[Hank Green]

Well, I mean, iac, theoretically. Are they. Theoretically, they never come knocking and say, like, man, you could turn this into a big. A big boy. Now, come. Come and show us the success.

[Sam Reich]

I see. Theoretically. Me, theoretically.

[Hank Green]

Right.

[Sam Reich]

Brennan is also a partner in the company. Brennan, theoretically.

[Hank Green]

I've tried to invest, but you will not take my money.

[Sam Reich]

Maybe I someday will, Hank.

[Hank Green]

Let me know.

[Sam Reich]

And don't get me wrong, like, we're all making money, right?

[Hank Green]

Right.

[Sam Reich]

No one. Like, when we say profit share, we're not even talking about the whole profit. Yeah, right. Some of that profit goes to me and to iac.

[Hank Green]

And of course, there's also operational funds. You're not going to zero out the bank account every year.

[Sam Reich]

Of course. Of course there's operational funds. There's. There's play money. You know, we want to try new things.

[Hank Green]

Yeah, try new things.

[Sam Reich]

So all that money's going all sorts of different places, but there are no shareholders to satisfy, which means us being more and more and more profitable every year is not necessarily our first priority.

[Hank Green]

What is your first priority, then? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to do, Sam Reich?

[Sam Reich]

I don't know, man.

[Hank Green]

I don't know.

[Sam Reich]

Eric, what do you think I should do?

[Hank Green]

I don't know. That's a good point.

[Sam Reich]

You're in this same boat, more or less.

[Hank Green]

Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

Could really easily turn this around on you. I do it. Oh, please. Give me. Give me one. Give me one.

[Hank Green]

Oh. I mean, I feel a strong sense of obligation to the things that I have made and the people who I work with. I feel a strong sense of obligation to the audience, and I also very rewarded by making things sometimes. Like, obviously, there are some parts of my job that I do purely because of the obligation.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah.

[Hank Green]

Parts of my job that I do because I get paid to do it. And there are some parts of my job that I do that. And this is like, you know, different. Different amounts in every column and different activities, but sometimes I'm. I'm doing it because I just freaking love doing it.

[Sam Reich]

It's so fun.

[Hank Green]

Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah. That's interesting. I don't feel. I feel a little bit of a sense of obligation. I wouldn't say that's my primary driver. I think that I feel very aware and very grateful for the ability to create things under a unique set of circumstances where I don't have. I feel uniquely under the twa, uniquely lower than twa. And I think that's.

[Hank Green]

And you got to hold on to that. What we're learning.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, it's like a really. It's a really unique ecosystem to be a part of, and I think it means that we can create some uniquely cool stuff. And I love that. Like. Like, giving birth to the stuff is my. My favorite part. I'm an art. I'm an art snob at the end of the day. I mean, I've been to the Edinburgh fringe now, like, three years in a row. And this year, to have.

[Hank Green]

Be part of your job.

[Sam Reich]

Oh, total. I mean, barely.

[Hank Green]

Yeah, I used to. You pulled some acts out of there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, by the way, is like a very weird comedy festival that happens in Edinburgh. It's like. It's like weeks long, and it's tiny rooms, and it's just weird art happens. And I'm very jealous. I've never gotten to go, oh, Hank.

[Sam Reich]

We gotta go some year. And I'll. I'll show you around.

[Hank Green]

I'm waiting for my son to be old enough.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, that's fair. They've got great kids stuff, too. They've got a whole kids programming component. Oh, yeah.

[Hank Green]

All right. That we're going.

[Sam Reich]

But I. I just love, you know, weird and unusual stuff. And when I think about, like, what I want to leave behind in the world, it's more of it.

[Hank Green]

Okay, Love that. How do you make decisions? That's a decoder question. We gotta ask that one.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, I. There's a. There's a terrific TED Talk on decision making, which talks about how when you're faced with a difficult decision, it's usually because there's, like, pros and cons that feel roughly equivalent to each other, and so it kind of doesn't matter. So, like, just pick one.

[Hank Green]

Just pick one.

[Sam Reich]

Ruth Chang, how to make Hard choices. A lot of the important decisions, it's pretty clear what direction to go. And then with the difficult ones, you sort of have to decide what you're voting for, like, what you're optimizing for. And so if you have your priorities in order, oftentimes the right decision will emerge. Meaning, and again, hopefully, our business is like, pretty simple. There are a lot of factors that we have to incorporate, and those factors are something in between the content itself, the experience of the audience, the welfare of the cast and crew, our financials, what's personally creatively exciting to me. And if I have those roughly in the. They're not in that order. I don't exactly know what order they fall into off the top of my head, but if I have those in the right order, I can usually make the right decision.

[Hank Green]

How do you imagine dropout in the media world right now? Do you even feel like you're a part of this industry, or do you feel like you're kind of hanging off to the side? Do you feel like you worry about the industry broadly, or are you just sort of like, that's not me.

[Sam Reich]

It's more, that's not me. I mean, I do feel like I'm on a little bit of an island where I get to be sort of like, you know, the mad trickster king of my domain. Yeah.

[Hank Green]

And I mean, like, it's very weird to be like, you know, for most streaming platforms like that have been launched by big companies, to have a million subscribers would be a tremendous failure. And showing that that it seems like a little bit in terms of like macro media ecosystem things, it seems like this is a totally inevitable thing and that it should have happened more already.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah.

[Hank Green]

Everything keeps fracturing. Right. Like, so, like, you know, more and more nichification of everything. And why wouldn't this happen to streaming platforms? And we haven't even talked about the fact that Vimeo, like, enables this with a pretty low lift. So you use, I think, a product called Vimeo ott.

[Sam Reich]

That's correct. Yeah.

[Hank Green]

And so Vimeo, like, basically lets you build a streaming platform and it like, you know, they have a version of all integrates with itself and it can be in the app stores and it can be on Roku and all the PS5 or wherever, you know, for sure. And that simplifies this process. And I think that what Vimeo is betting on there is that this nichification will occur. But I think when you look at the people who use that, it's a lot of individual creators or people who have like a workout, like a thing, you know, they're like lifestyle influence type things. I think that maybe the RuPaul stream.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah. Wow. Presents.

[Hank Green]

Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

I think so. Criterion Collection.

[Hank Green]

Oh, okay. Yeah. And it, yeah, it just feels like it would head in that direction and that the different, you know, segments would each get their own little world, which will of course continue to make, alienate us from each other because no one's watching the same things. But.

[Sam Reich]

It feels symptomatic of this world of content that we're living in. And so it's a fair question, like, well, why not more? And that's a good question, I think.

[Hank Green]

You know, I kind of expected it. Like when you, when Dropout first hit for me, I was like, oh, two years from now everybody's gonna have one of these things. And like, that has not really happened. And people have tried to launch some that have been less successful.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, sure, sure, sure. I mean, I do think that like, as is the case in the Internet, when you're, you're browsing TikTok and you learn about someone with 9 million subscribers or followers who you've never heard of before, there are plenty of examples in our industry of businesses that are just running a little bit under the radar, that are doing very, very well. You know, I think Nebula, for instance, is one of those businesses. And you know, the, in the last couple of years, maybe a little bit inspired by us, maybe not depending on the specific example, but try guys have launched their answer to this critical role, have launched their answer to this. But my hope is that there are more people that follow in our footsteps because I think it's only better for Dropout if there are more examples that people can point to to say, I subscribe to this small collection of indie streamers and, and I think it, it behooves us to have that group be larger because it means better resources for our business as well. You know, we depend on third party technology in order to power Dropout and, and you know, if there aren't enough streamers to use Vimeo OTT or, you.

[Hank Green]

Know, they're not going to keep supporting the product.

[Sam Reich]

Yeah, exactly.

[Hank Green]

Do you ever regret using Vimeo OTT or not building your own thing?

[Sam Reich]

No, we tried. People don't realize this. The first rendition of Dropout was built on Vimeo OTT's API, but it was our own product and we employed something like eight sophisticated engineers at IAC to build our own product around it. And it was brutal, which is to say it's just very hard to do very well. And these were great engineers. Yeah.

[Hank Green]

What you're doing is in part running a company, being a business person, managing your direct reports. I should ask how this is all structured. How many direct reports do you have.

[Sam Reich]

Technically? I think I have like two or three.

[Hank Green]

Oh wow. Something like that.

[Sam Reich]

I the what we decided pretty recently like within the last year is that I should have almost no direct reports. Like basically just the C suite and then everyone else should follow should fall under someone else.

[Hank Green]

Okay. But that's pretty new. What are, what are your departments?

[Sam Reich]

There is creative burgeoning department. There is marketing and make a lot.

[Hank Green]

Of YouTube shorts in the marketing department.

[Sam Reich]

There is yes and paid and email and everything else that falls into the world of marketing. There is tech, which is pretty small but does exist. There is production. There is programming as it is independent from production which are the folks who not only handle our content as it's related to like metadata, but also are responsible for like maintaining our programming schedule and putting stuff up into the platform. Also QC is a part of that department, meaning quality control. We have for instance one very talented person whose job it is simply to. This is not all they do, but it's a big part of what they do to watch every episode to make sure that there are no glaring issues with it before it posts to the website, to the platform. I think that's about it with like one or two straggling design with. With one or two straggling departments that like features like one person or two people.

[Hank Green]

Yeah. There's the person who keeps the dimension 20 lore book to make sure.

[Sam Reich]

Yes. Well, interestingly dimension 20 is kind of like its own department.

[Hank Green]

Okay. Yeah.

[Sam Reich]

Because it's such a big operation and lately Game Changer makes some noise have sort of become its own department as well.

[Hank Green]

So you're partially running this business trying to make all the things work and I assume mediating when people disagree with each other and doing all of that.

[Sam Reich]

HR is new. HR is new as of like the last like 7 heads.

[Hank Green]

And then you're also on screen talent. But I think there's another thing that. And creative and writing and all this. But there's another thing that you are that. I think that this is not that unusual. There's always like a public facing role to a CEO. But beyond that you really like. Not only do you have a public facing role as the CEO and on screen talent and kind of founder, depending on how you want to count that you know, you kind of embody what dropout is trying to be and and a strength and I think a potential problem is that you're trying to be a good guy while you do it like you're not. Carl Icahn you're not, you know, like ruthless businessman Sam, right? You're, like, trying to do this the right way. And one of the things, my brother and I call this the perfect person problem. That if you tell people you're trying to do things well and you're trying to do things right, then people will expect you to do it perfect. And there's no such thing as perfect. And there's always things that you're balancing and how do you imagine and manage your own public perception where you want people to know that you really are trying to do things better, but you also are not trying. You also need to convey to people that you will not be perfect.

[Sam Reich]

I think this is definitely a work in progress. So who knows?

[Hank Green]

The dropout audience, in part because of, I mean, there's like a demographic thing here, but there's also, you know, they're responding to and signing up in part because of a halo here that you're helping to create by, like, doing things well. Their expectations are going to be high.

[Sam Reich]

Like, you've got.

[Hank Green]

You got some, like a high expectation crowd. And I've seen some examples where, you know, they feel as if you're not maybe living up to your values or something like that. Is that management, that reputational management? Is that. Do you see that as a big part of your job? And how do you imagine that?

[Sam Reich]

Yes and no. I mean, I think that when I say work in progress, I guess that applies not only to this meta question, but also sort of the way I look at dropout in general, which is perfect, isn't impossible to achieve standard. And I try, at least when I'm out in the world, to really, as much as possible convey that I am like a comedy person who inherited this thing, who is trying to do things novelly and experimentally, but that I don't even know as much about this kind of stuff as, like, Adam Conover does, as, like, part of my peers do. So when I say work in progress, I really mean that, like, we are trying things and we will. We will make mistakes. And what I'm specifically not doing on social media or anywhere else for that matter, in conversations like this, on panels, is to portend as if dropout or I have it all figured out, that we are an exceptionally moral company or that we are an exceptionally idealistic company, because I think that that tension between running a company and being good to people inherently exists. So we are what I've claimed to be the case, and I really do still think is the case, is like, I consider myself a highly Creative person. I'm trying to make content that's as, like, innovative and interesting and funny as possible, and I hope people hold us to that standard. And otherwise, I'm trying to, like, set maybe some new standards for decency, but I would underline that word. I am also, as you have coached me through a lot over the months and years, Hank, becoming quickly used to the fact that you can't please everybody and that, you know, you will have to make decisions that are unpopular sometimes, and that's okay. I actually, you know, some people, particularly entertainers, need to be liked by everybody. And I think some people worry about me in that way because they think that my affable nature means that I would really dislike being unpopular. And I am actually, like, totally okay if some people don't like me.

[Hank Green]

It's just part of growing up in a household where a lot of nasty things might have been said about your dad.

[Sam Reich]

I honestly like, you know, nepotism, I'm sure, served me even ways that I'm not fully conscious of and, like, all sorts of ways. But. But one thing that is really useful is that my dad modeled fame for me. So I do have someone, like, very close to me out there in the world who's also a public person who, by virtue of his job, deals with controversy at least three times a year, which does. It probably thickens my skin a little bit.

[Hank Green]

Interesting. Is there on the list of reasons that you like this or want to do this? We talked about those before, but let's end here with this. Is there is on that list just that people aren't doing things weird enough. And you want to do things weird. You want to show that, like, 100%.

[Sam Reich]

You and I have connected a lot on the topic of Homestar Runner over the years. Homestar Runner may be, like, hugely responsible for my career, taking the direction it has. It was incredibly influential on me and something I loved about it. It was like. It felt like a walled garden of weird that existed at a URL. Like, I could. And I think about how sometimes, like, that resonates. I wish that I could plant a forest full of weird trees on the Internet. I wish that the Internet was still a place where just, like, there was really fun, mysterious, hopeful stuff that existed a URL away. I would hope that dropout can just be one of those things.

[Hank Green]

All right, well, that feels right to me. And I hope that you keep doing it, and I hope that people keep finding it and loving that weird being in a little place where a lot of strange things happen.

[Sam Reich]

Hank you are also hugely responsible for and inspiring in the creation of weird stuff for the Internet that you're also inspiring insofar as you just are so prolific in terms of the amount that you do.

[Hank Green]

Yeah, I do, if nothing else.

[Sam Reich]

But. And also a lot else. So thank you for being both the friend.

[Hank Green]

There certainly is quantity.

[Sam Reich]

But a sincere thank you for being both the friend and the inspiration that you are.

[Hank Green]

Thanks a lot. I appreciate coming on and chatting with me and getting into the weeds and the details here and someday we will find some other podcasts where we will just do pits.

[Sam Reich]

I look forward to that day.

[Hank Green]

All right, thanks Sam.

[Sam Reich]

Thank you man.

[Hank Green]

I'd like to thank Sam for taking the time to speak with me and thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like to let us know what you thought about the show, you can drop us a line. You can email the [e-mail] they really do read every email. Or you can hit me up directly on threads or bluesky. Decoder also now has a TikTok and an Instagram. You can check those out. DecoderPod. They're a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Decoder is a production of the Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Rice. The Decoder music is by Brickmaster Cylinder. See you next time.