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Next in Media
What's It Like to Ride the YouTube Wave for Nearly 20 Years
00:39:04
Next in Media talked to Michael Wayne, co-founder and CEO of Kin, about his nearly 20-year journey building a media company alongside YouTube's evolution. Wayne shared how his company navigated multiple business model shifts—from the MCN era to working with traditional celebrities on digital platforms, licensing content to streaming services and cable networks during the pandemic, and experimenting with FAST channels. The conversation explored the challenges of the changing creator economy, why YouTube is no longer the sole focus for content distribution, and how AI might transform storytelling and the media industry. Wayne also discussed his work with AI LA and his optimistic view on technology's potential to create new opportunities rather than just displacement. Join us for this fascinating conversation about adapting to constant change in digital media.
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- [00:00]
A
Looking to get more out of your YouTube advertising? With view Planner, you can buy with total confidence and clarity. View Planner is a verified YouTube brand suitability and contextual targeting partner in the YouTube measurement program. Recognized by Google as a trusted independent leader in driving and measuring performance on YouTube, their advanced technology gives you a clear edge. Only with View Planner we're talking custom curated contextual collections, exclusive content strategies, transparent reporting and AI driven optimization to deliver real results. Don't let your budget go to waste. Partner with View Planner and experience the difference. Visit viewplanner.com now to unlock your full advertising potential on YouTube. That's Vue Pla N E R.com hi everybody. Welcome to Nexting Media. I'm Mike Shields. My guest this week is Michael Wayne. He is the co founder and CEO of kin. Hey Michael. Thanks for being here.
- [00:55]
B
Mike. We've known each other a long time. It's always a pleasure to get on the pod and talk.
- [01:01]
A
Yeah, no, I'm excited because you are like sort of represent the YouTube journey over the last decade plus or more. So why don't I talk to you about that? All kinds of different things you're doing today. I don't know if it makes sense. Do you want to start with what KIN is? Or we can go back to the old days. Like when we first met, I thought of you as a guy that was like early. The company was called deca. You were a little bit. I think you might have been labeled as an MCN back then. How do you want to like tell the story here and how you got to where you are?
- [01:28]
B
Well, I'll try to keep it brief because it's 18 years. So we founded the company 18 years.
- [01:36]
A
Ago and there's like, that's like 20 versions of YouTube if you think about it over that time.
- [01:39]
B
Yeah, I mean, so the company was founded in 2007 as it relates to YouTube. Well, before I get into YouTube, I'll just tell you what we saw because I think it's important. We saw basically the media and entertainment landscape changing based on the Internet. We saw talent having direct relationships with their audience. The first incarnation of that we saw as blogging. So even before YouTube and the whole YouTube creator ecosystem, we saw bloggers.
- [02:07]
A
Those are the first signs of direct connections, not going around institutional stuff.
- [02:11]
B
That's correct. We saw distribution changing. So we saw us making content and distributing it on websites and in video players that could be embedded in a blog and all sorts of things like that. And we saw the cost of content creation coming down. So the Cost of cameras, new softwares for post production. We saw that trend very, very early and we thought, and I thought, and I continue to think, how are stories going to be told in this new world? Historically, I had worked in traditional media. I actually started like you in magazines and I worked at mtv. I then started my own magazine out of college, which is a whole story we could get into at some point. I then joined an early stage startup in the late 90s in LA that was one of the first streamers of video content. I mean literally one of the first streamers of video content. And then I worked at Sony Pictures, sort of tried to understand how a traditional studio works. And then I started deca, which a few years later we created a consumer facing brand called Kin can community on YouTube. So that's. Those are the, those are the pieces.
- [03:19]
A
Of the puzzle at that point. A lot of the trends that we're talking about today are we're starting, but it's still like a million years ago in Internet time. Were you still thinking about how do I translate a magazine or an MTV or some kind of lifestyle network to the Internet? Or were you thinking, you already know, this was going to be really different in terms of formats of things you're doing.
- [03:38]
B
You know, it's interesting you bring up MTV because the company I joined in 1998 was called Launch Media.
- [03:45]
A
Oh sure.
- [03:46]
B
And Launch was essentially trying to be the MTV of the Internet. That was Dave Goldberg's vision for it.
- [03:52]
A
Yeah, there were elements of Spotify back then. You could see elements, yeah, Pandora, we.
- [03:56]
B
Had a radio player. That was early. We bought a company called music videos.com, which is one of the first streamers of video content on the Internet. From a very early point in my career saw this kind of opportunity and real disruption in the media and entertainment space. I think when I started deca, I don't think deca was trying to be any particular cable network for the Internet. I was just more interested in how can you create formats, how can you work with talent and trying to figure out ultimately how you could create IP that you could own and then monetize across whatever the distribution was going to be. To this day, that's still more or less what the company does.
- [04:41]
A
I think of you as women's lifestyle, stuff like that. But I don't know if that was necessarily the vision of was there a plan of like, what kind of content, what kind of talent? Or did that evolve as things evolved?
- [04:51]
B
It totally evolved, Mike. Like when we started deca, we had probably eight swings at the plate with different content verticals, different talent. Some things work, some things didn't work. One of the things we started with was a brand called momversation.
- [05:10]
A
Yes.
- [05:10]
B
Which was a, you know, basically we, we had the top 20 mom bloggers at the time in 2007. 2000, mom blogging was sort of at its pinnacle. Yeah. So we created a video series with the leading mom bloggers. And it was a real formative experience because we really learned at a very early point in time how to work with talent, create content, and then distribute that content back on their blogs. So we would create video, but all of the bloggers would embed that video back on their, on their blogs. And so we, we, we created this early about YouTube.
- [05:50]
A
It wasn't. We. YouTube was big, but it wasn't so like you, there was still thinking that it wouldn't be so YouTube centric in this world. The, the video world. I guess that's right.
- [05:58]
B
Although, and this was totally to serendipity, around the same time a guy came into my office who was a talent manager for the number one channel on YouTube called Smosh.
- [06:12]
A
Uh huh.
- [06:13]
B
And these were two kids, Anthony and Ian, who by the way are still producing content for SMAJ 18 years later, who were living at home with their parents who had the number one channel in the world on YouTube. And I had never seen kind of.
- [06:27]
A
Like skits, comedy, SNL meet kind of stuff.
- [06:32]
B
Yeah, that's right. But, but what was remarkable to me is, is their manager Barry came into my office and he opened up a very, very early, I don't even think it was called Google Analytics or YouTube analytics, but whatever it was, he opened, he showed me in every country in the world, their videos were number one. And they'd have millions of views and tens of thousands of comments. And in 2007, 2008, that was just mind blowing.
- [06:57]
A
You're not talking about creators all the time. It's like they're not on your radar at all.
- [07:02]
B
Not only that, I don't even think they called them subscribers back then. I think they called them followers. I don't think anyone really thought of what views were. But I saw this and I said, oh my God, what do you guys need? And they were like, well, we don't really have anything. And I said, okay, I'll give you some money, I'll give you back office, I'll use our editors. I basically said, let's be partners. And we did. We formed a new company called Smosh llc, which Deca and the kids were owners of and we ended up managing that business for four years. But I'll tell you, that was just one swing out of probably eight to 10 swings that we took in those early years of the company. Monversation was, was another one that worked. So we were, we were all over the place in terms of like trying things out.
- [07:46]
A
The business model, I'm sure you've experimented with so many different versions of that. And, and then the market changed a million times. But was it always, we're going to do stuff with brands, we're going to try and make money, we're going to rep classic display and video advertising. Like what, what, what were you trying back then in terms of how to make a buck?
- [08:04]
B
Well, the first thing we were trying to do is could we find in the Smosh case audience or build audience. That was really the first goal is like, where can we kind of catch lightning in a bottle? And then if we felt like if we could do that, which by the way is just the hardest thing in the world to do, even back then it was really hard to do. Now it's incredibly hard. We would monetize it through every possible. Monetization means obviously adsense and integrations and sponsorships and all of that sort of stuff, which we did, you know, and Smosh just as an example. Both Smosh and Mon Vers went on to monetize very well, have big sponsors kind of grow. But I think part of your question was like, was it always the intent to kind of build IP and monetize that IP? The answer is yes. And 17, 18 years later, that is still what the company does.
- [08:55]
A
Okay, so then I remember I'm, I'm, I'm jumping around. But I remember at one point you start working with YouTube, has its hundred channels era where they're funding some. Yeah, the MCNs are emerging. And then I believe you were working with like the likes of Rosanna Panzino. I always get her name wrong.
- [09:11]
B
That's right.
- [09:12]
A
And you eventually start going to celebs like give us that journey.
- [09:14]
B
Yeah. How the, how that all worked. So going back to monversation and working with bloggers, when we saw kind of these sub niches or niches on YouTube start to evolve. Beauty YouTubers, food YouTubers, baking YouTubers, basically all the niches that are pretty popular today, it felt very organic to us because we had just been working with a bunch of influencers in a network type way.
- [09:38]
A
Yeah.
- [09:38]
B
So. But we saw that YouTube was really changing the game. Like in 2007, 2008 when we started YouTube still had this, most people's perspective on it was. It wasn't quality. Yeah, it was very sort of UGC.
- [09:52]
A
Was like a negative thing.
- [09:53]
B
Was a negative thing in particular to brands and in particular to other, you know, other folks. So we kind of waded into those waters. Now you mentioned the funded Channels project. So that really helped us kind of push into YouTube. Not only that, so, so, so we were the third funded channel. They gave us a bunch of money to create kin. So up until that point we were deca, not a consumer facing brand. We didn't own any consumer facing DECA branded media. And then when we launched Kin, that was the first kind of step into owning a consumer facing brand. And we created tons of content for that channel. At the same time we started developing the MCN and we really took an approach of kind of quality over quantity. So we tried to find who we thought were the best creators in the women's lifestyle space and then start to represent them. But again like we had four years of experience working with SMOSH before that even started. So we, we, weirdly, even though we weren't on YouTube as a women's lifestyle company, we'd been managing.
- [10:55]
A
You weren't starting really from scratch. No, we completely figuring this out on the fly.
- [11:00]
B
That's right. We, we had, we had been managing the number one channel on YouTube for four years. So it just happened not to be a women's lifestyle. It was a young men's comedy.
- [11:07]
A
You fast forward a few years later, I know probably getting the time frame mixed up because it's funny because YouTube over the years I think goes back and forth between how involved they want to be in managing channels and doing stuff with brands versus not, you know, they had, they, they, I think when 100 channels era, they wanted celebs and they realized no creators are the RR thing. Then you start working with, call them recognizable talent from traditional media, but then they are on YouTube in a new way. How does that come about? And talk about that plan.
- [11:39]
B
The core, as I mentioned before, the core of the company and the reason we started the company was really to figure out how to create ip. And when we started developing the mcn, there were some seductive parts to that business you could scale pretty quickly. Now we could argue whether that scale was valuable scale or whether it was just sort of window dressing. But there were other things. There was a lot of venture capital money flowing towards these business models. So that was something that my company benefited from. We, you know, there was working with this new group of creators. We Were very excited to kind of not just be the only creators or the only studio, but work with these kind of little studios all over the world that were creating their channels. But what that model ended up turning into was much more of an agency model. Right. It took us away from what our core was, which was making IP and distributing that IP and owning that ip.
- [12:36]
A
So after you're sort of accidentally becoming like, making ads with the creator is not best at building ip.
- [12:44]
B
Yeah, we built. We built a large sales team. I think at one point we had 25, 30 people on a sales team. We also started to see that there were lots of cracks in this business model. I think one of the saving graces was that we never, like, went crazy. Like, we never went all in and tried to sign 10,000 or 100,000 creators. We were very selective. Talent agencies of the world started repping those talent. We realized, well, what are we doing here?
- [13:12]
A
Are we building a talent? They're big and they're going to be hard to. Yeah, they're going to be hard to displace.
- [13:16]
B
And do we like being a talent agency? I mean, it was really that too. It was like no one really at the company.
- [13:19]
A
That's not what we signed up for.
- [13:21]
B
Yeah, that's not what we wanted to do. So. So, like, so many times when you're building a startup, you kind of have to take swings and take risks and pivot sort of towards the later stages of the mcn. We said, let's take a couple swings at the plate of getting back to ip. And there were a couple agents who had traditional talent. Like, you were referring to people who had long histories as television talent, like Atia Mori and like, others. And they were pushing kind of them on us, saying, hey, why don't you do something with them? And at the time, we were very kind of anti that. We were very digitally native, very much like, are they going to be any.
- [13:58]
A
Good at this anyhow? Are they going to be talent? Right.
- [14:01]
B
But we said, let's give it a shot. Let's give it a shot. Tia had just finished a pretty long run on the Food Network doing a show. She had tons of Instagram followers, tons of Facebook followers. She had a real passion for food. And we had this long history of working with YouTubers and kind of knew what it was took to become successful. So we said, let's try it. Let's partner with Tia.
- [14:23]
A
People who don't know she was on sitcom right way back.
- [14:26]
B
Her claim to fame was that she was one of the twins on Sister Sister, which was like one of the biggest comedies on ABC in the late 90s.
- [14:32]
A
But she was really doing it in terms of being a creator by this point.
- [14:36]
B
That is correct. So just to put it on the timetable, from about 201112 to about 201718 was the MCN sort of YouTube, I'd say right around 2016. 2017 was when we started trying to work with traditional celebrities. It was totally, you know, a risk. So we went out, we. We shot a bunch of videos with her, and we said, we're going to see if she can be a YouTub YouTuber. So we created TMRI's Quick Fix and we posted the first episode and it got like half a million views. And we were like, oh, okay, something is here. And we posted the second one and it got like a million views. And so we quickly realized that there were a couple things in our favor. One was we were working with talent who had a long history of just being in people's consciousness. Like, people kind of knew her from television. Instagram at that time did not have video. It was only.
- [15:36]
A
It was still a photo thing. Yeah, that's right.
- [15:38]
B
And so the arbitrage of saying, hey, tell your followers on Instagram to go watch you on video actually was pretty, pretty awesome. Right? Like, people would actually go to YouTube to follow it. We also created a different model with her, like, where we were really truly partners in this. She put in her kind of sweat equity and her promotion. We paid for everything and we split everything. So it wasn't like a traditional talent deal and continues not to. You know, when we work with talent, they tend. Tend not to be traditional talent deals where they just get paid. And that's it. It's really a partnership. And so that model of partnering with someone like Tia proved very successful for us. And we ended up doing a couple dozen shows in that model. Wow.
- [16:20]
A
Okay, so then I may be skipping some stuff. Tell me. But fast forward to. It strikes me as you're talking about this period of time where you're trying to be like alternative to traditional media, like digital stars, almost like the anti television. Now fast forward. YouTube is all of a sudden becoming a big consumption. The consumption of YouTube is blowing up a TV. And then also there's all this connected TV opens the doors to almost like an infinite number of channels. The fast thing becomes all of a sudden, they. They want your kind of talent. So is it weird that at one point, when do you start saying, maybe we want to be on television, even though we were trying to build our own thing and then what are opportunities opening there?
- [17:00]
B
It's a great question. And to be honest with you, again, it was serendipity. So as the pandemic started in. What was that? 2020. Yeah, yeah. Everyone's losing their mind because how did.
- [17:14]
A
You forget when the pandemic was.
- [17:16]
B
I was going to say 2019, but I couldn't remember if it was right at the beginning of 2020 or the end of 2019. I think the actual virus broke out maybe 19, because I think you're right, but I can't. But anyway, I think we sent all of our folks home in March of 2020 like everyone else did, or somewhere in there. March, April, May. A lot of the traditional media companies had a shortage of programming to put put on their cable networks and their streaming platforms. And here we had hundreds of half hours or what we could edit into half hours with recognizable names. So all of our talent had already been on tv. So we got very lucky and we ended up licensing to streaming platforms and cable networks. Probably three to four hundred half hours of our YouTube content that we're. That was sitting on YouTube that we just re edited into 22 minutes. And that content continues to run across probably six to eight different streaming platforms and cable networks. And ended up being a huge, huge benefit to the company because it was all, I mean it was 90% margin.
- [18:23]
A
You're in a good spot in that you're. If you. There's so much, so much such a range of content on YouTube. Your stuff lent itself to television probably better than, I don't know, somebody playing Minecraft or just the typical vlogger because it was like lifestyle stuff that they needed.
- [18:39]
B
It felt very much like it could be seen on television or a streaming platform and it didn't. You know, it still had some of the YouTube touches to it, but we could re edit it to make it a little bit more tv. It was malleable like that. And plus we had name brand talent who most of the people we were talking to were very excited about having on the network. Yeah, so, so that was. That really got us through the pandemic, to be honest with you, because it was really hard to produce content or sell brand deals or drive audience. Right. So. Yep.
- [19:12]
A
All right, so then what about. Give us your. It's been interesting because there's this. There's like a fast mania period where all of a sudden all the TV manufacturers are rolling out a million channels and then they have the big, the big. The two Bs and Pluto's and they get Acquired and I've heard, you know, you hear different things like there's, there's way too much at once. You can't get. You can't get any viewership data. You know what's going on or it's great, it's extra money. What, what was your experience like there and where do you think this is going now? As they all kind of say I want creator stuff on my fast channel.
- [19:45]
B
As, as I've mentioned a few times, our goal was to create IP and to own IP and by 2020, 21 to 22 we had a large library of what I would call non celebrity lifestyle programming where we actually just used our own talent and we had a growing, a large and growing library of celebrity led YouTube talent. So a YouTube IP. And so when the fast channel kind of phenomena started to pick up we, we thought wow, like this could be a really interesting distribution for us. A distribution channel for us. And we had enough of our owned and operated library to stand up a fast channel on our own which was fairly for. For a small independent studio that was.
- [20:41]
A
Yeah, there's not a lot of that happening yet.
- [20:43]
B
There's not a lot of.
- [20:43]
A
Usually someone else is grabbing your content for, you know, licensing or something like that.
- [20:48]
B
That'. We were approached by Roku and a couple other folks to stand up a channel which we did and we operated that channel across a few platforms for about two years. And while it was fun to see a Kin linear 24. 7 channel on Roku, what we found was that two things. One is it's not insignificant the amount of people and resources and just mind space you need to dedicate to make a fast channel successful and monetize profit.
- [21:24]
A
A no brainer. The machine does it? Not necessarily.
- [21:27]
B
Well, I think it depends from my talking to lots of folks. If you're the BBC or if you're Endomall Shine and you have either endless amounts of library content that can be reprogrammed or, or edited into new programming or you have a channel like the Biggest Loser or Survivor.
- [21:49]
A
You all. You own Gunsmoke, just throw that out.
- [21:53]
B
Yeah, you can do it.
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A
Who cares, right? That.
- [21:55]
B
That's right. I would say there's probably a lot of money that can be made in. From what I understand, people do make a lot of money. Now I don't think they make a lot of money compared to probably their streaming distribution channels and their, and their network stuff. But I think essentially there is still a lot of maturation. I think from our standpoint that the fast business needs to kind of go through. So we, we just didn't think the juice was worth the squeeze at the end of the day. And we're an IP business and so us having a channel where we're putting all of our IP through started to limit or at least reflect not so positively on maybe some of the distribution deals we were trying to cut.
- [22:40]
A
Interesting.
- [22:41]
B
So we decided, you know what, we probably can make more money with less headache by just licensing our programming to other people. And that's what we ended up doing. So after two years, we actually shuttered the FAST channel. And it was the right decision for us. It's not the right decision for everyone. I don't want to paint a picture that we're like, oh, fast is terrible or everyone, this is just never going to work. Because I think for some folks it works and I think it will work for other folks as time moves on. Just for us, we made a financial decision that made sense for us.
- [23:13]
A
I want to catch up on where things are today and what you're doing. But broader question for you. You know we hinted at this earlier. YouTube has got back and forth with how involved they want to get in. There's now. Now you don't have to explain to. There's so much excitement around the creator economy and creator media and brands are probably get it way they never did 10 years ago. But it's still not that easy to scale and YouTube's trying to help with their newer programs. Do you see that still as a challenge of brands wanting to spend more here, but it's not that easy or are we going to solve that?
- [23:48]
B
This is just a big question. I mean look, as we talked about, I love YouTube. I was there at the beginning of YouTube. We were there with the funded channels with YouTube we own an MCN, we've distributed content. I think the last five years has just been really disorienting in media in general. I wouldn't just say YouTube. So the behavior of short form video, the difficulty in building audiences through long form, just the monetization. And I mean that like, you know, when, when we were doing our celebrity led channels, there was a pretty straightforward calculus in terms of how many views we needed to generate which would create this amount of revenue and so forth. But it felt like even over the last few years that they're kind of like the cost per view, cost per acquisition, CPAs. It started to become very performance driven and I think continues to be very performance driven.
- [25:12]
A
Because shorts specifically kind of throws all that calculation off.
- [25:16]
B
Well, no, I think long form Videos was always like, well, how many views? And there was this kind of, you know, cost per view model where benchmarks.
- [25:25]
A
It made sense.
- [25:25]
B
You have to benchmark. And, and I think definitely short form coming out of COVID changed that. I think the middle class creator on YouTube has had a lot more challenges. Yeah, look, we, we did a program in 2023 and 2024 with TikTokers, really not YouTubers. And I've seen TikTokers who do short form. You know, people don't really watch. I mean some people watch their longer form videos on TikTok or Reels, but who have just not gone on YouTube and have made tons of money. Right? They have, they've kind of circumvented going and building their channel on YouTube. So I think, I think being a creator is just different now. I think you can, there are so many different ways to be a creator that it's not just like it used to be, where it's like, if you're a YouTuber, you're a YouTuber and that's like, that's the end all, be all. And so for us, the calculus for how we would fund shows and create shows has changed. Right. Like we maybe don't go straight to YouTube to test something interesting. Maybe we do something on short form on TikTok or, or Instagram and see how that evolves. You know, we. One of the benefits of having a lot of people license our programming is that a lot of those streaming platforms funded originals with us. So we probably did over the last two, three years, probably eight to 10 originals that didn't, you know, that were on YouTube but were also like co funded with a cable channel or co funded with streaming network. And those, those shows continue to make money for us because they're, they're sitting on like Philo. We have a show, we've done two seasons with a, a show with Philo Film Rise, which is one of the bigger fast companies out there. We did a show called Not Like Mama which you know, continues to pay dividends. So there's, there's just like, I guess what I would say is for us, YouTube is not the anchor anymore. It's a, it's a piece of it. But as we starting ip, we're constantly looking at new ways of doing that.
- [27:46]
A
All right, what else is going on with you now? You're doing, you. We talked before the, you know, before the pod. You, you're doing. You've had to figure out, everyone has to figure out where AI fits into their business, where it's going, you're in the, in one of the. Everyone, everyone in like professional life is freaking out a little bit, I think. But you're in, you're in a community where there is opportunity. But that's also a little scary. But I mean, if you make this sound like it's ominous, ominous. But tell me what you're doing in AI, what you're learning about maybe how it fits into how you work and what's going on.
- [28:18]
B
Yeah, so I started kind of the AI journey about four years ago. I, I had, at that point I wanted to get more involved with startups and mentoring. I had, I've had some incredible mentors in my career that really helped me a lot. And I just, you know, was so grateful for that. I was like, I'm probably at the age now where maybe I can impart some wisdom on someone younger. And so I met a couple young entrepreneurs, one of which has started an AI company in London called Papercup, which does AI dubbing. So they, they make synthetic voices using models and things like that. And this is before ChatGPT launched. This is like, you know, AI. I was like, I don't know anything about AI. And so, but I like this young founder and, and I thought I could really help him because my whole career had been in media and entertainment and his technology was built for media and entertainment as well as other industries. But, and so I started getting involved in that and, and, and then ChatGPT launched and sort of all of the foundational LLMs pickup speed and I just was like, okay, this is starting to feel a little bit like the late 90s for me when I joined Launch and Web 1.0 and kind of that.
- [29:35]
A
There's a lot of echoes that error for sure.
- [29:36]
B
There' of echoes of that era and it, and it. There was also, I think, some echoes of early days of YouTube and just a lot of energy. And in particular in la, where we have obviously a very big creator community, and not just creator community like a YouTube creator, but creator community in the sense of being directors of photography or editors or graphics effects people or designers. You know, just a really rich community here. And I started to see stuff as we all did online on TikTok or Instagram, people starting to use some of these early tools and I just threw myself into it. So I started going to meetup groups in la. I started meeting kind of people who were making AI content. And there's an organization here in LA called AI la which puts on dozens of events a year, some big, some Small. Probably the biggest event they put on is called AI on the lot, which was. It was in its third year. It was in May in LA and about 1600 people came to it. And it's really the kind of cross section of traditional entertainment and this entire new AI world. And so I got so involved, in fact, I joined the board of AI la and now I'm the board chair of the organization and I'm kind of helping steer it because I feel very.
- [31:05]
A
Much like you've officially become venerable in this industry.
- [31:09]
B
Well, I just wanted to help steer, you know, I thought having been in the space for so long, that. And I'm just so curious about where this is all going, and it very much sort of scratches an itch for me. I mean, the whole reason I got involved in being in the Internet space originally and with technology is that this kind of storytelling and how that's going to evolve with new technology was always the thing that kind of got me excited. It's why I joined Launch in the early days. Right. So this is probably going to be bigger in terms of its impact on storytelling than even maybe the Internet in general. And so I just wanted to be in the middle of it. And so now for the last few years, I've really gotten in the middle of it and I've learned a lot about all these different platforms. Ironically, very little of it impacts kin my business. At least yet. At least yet. I mean, I can see some of these things starting to impact our business. Ultimately, I'm very, very interested in the Avatar space. I think that's probably where you will see some of the first major impact in terms of creators and in terms of lifestyle creators. So imagine you can have a AI version of Gordon Ramsay at your disposal whenever you want. So if you're cooking, you can chat with Gordon about, should I add more of this or more of that? Or what recipe should I make tonight? Or like, my son doesn't like this or my daughter doesn't. You get the idea, like, yeah, I think you're going to start. Yeah, he's crummy.
- [32:47]
A
That would be good.
- [32:47]
B
That would be a good use of that. So. So I'm really interested in that and that that might be something that impacts my business. But in general, I'm just fascinated with the AI space and how it's kind of opening up these really interesting creative worlds around the world. And I don't know if you saw, I have a podcast called AI Hero, which I've done four episodes of. So I, I'm. I took A hiatus because I just got very busy with work and. And it takes time, you know, you know how it does take. It does take time. And, and I. So I said I'm going to do four episodes and just see how it goes. And I loved it. It's just now I need to figure out, you know, was it the right format, do I want to mix things up? And so now my son just went to college last week, so I feel like now with one less kid in the house. Yeah, I'm gonna maybe buckle down and start it up again.
- [33:37]
A
Last thing. So this is hard to sum up, I think, but is it. You know, there's been so much with the AI hype in our industry and high in particular, like it's. It tends, the conversation tends to be about either everyone's going to get fired or we're going to pump out a whole bunch of crap. Slop's going to. Are you give us something hopeful for either the creator world or this industry. You're feeling like these tools can be channeled in a way that makes new kinds of content and where the innovation is positive.
- [34:07]
B
I do. Well, look, I think there's a couple things to your question. One, is Hollywood was in trouble way before AI?
- [34:14]
A
Totally, yes.
- [34:15]
B
So I mean, if you look at AI on the lot in May, we had a. I want to say he's a banker now, I forgot the gentleman his name. But he's someone who basically does reports on the state of the media entertainment world. And it was pretty grim. And this is not. This has no AI impact on it. It was just overall profits being down, overall challenges in the market, less programming, you know, smaller players struggling, all the things that, you know, that you report. Things change.
- [34:46]
A
Yeah, all this stuff. Right.
- [34:48]
B
A lot of things have happened. So I think what we're seeing is just an acceleration of the bifurcation of the media space. And what I mean by that is like on one end of the spectrum you just have the Netflixes and the Amazons and the Apples and the Disney's who have more resources and money than any company has ever had their way around.
- [35:13]
A
And just wait, no one?
- [35:15]
B
Yeah, I mean Apple is bigger than the entire media and entertainment industry industry, period. Right. Just one company and by like multiple. Multiple.
- [35:23]
A
Yeah, it's insane.
- [35:24]
B
So you just have companies that have been built on algorithms and technologies really at the end of the day, and one end of the spectrum controlling storytelling. And companies in the middle I think will get consolidated or will go out of business. And then you see the acceleration of the Creator economy. Right. So the other end of the spectrum, which again is very algorithmically driven, so the Googles and the TikToks and the methods of the world. And so I think what AI will do is it will probably create completely new ways of creating content. Now, whether those get absorbed into both the creator economy and kind of traditional storytelling, long form storytelling, tv, movies, I'm guessing it does. I see a lot of work in sort of special effects, in, you know, creating content that was very expensive to create before now can be created obviously a lot. But I see AI beyond just the creative piece, every piece of the media and entertainment production process, workflows, all of them are going to be impacted by AI one way or another. I'm always an optimist. I kind of feel like everyone's always afraid that a new technology is going to kill everyone. And that goes back thousands of years back to Icarus and like our deep seated psychological fear that technology.
- [36:51]
A
Is this a good idea?
- [36:52]
B
I don't know. Kind of. It will kill us. I think this is just a human condition thing. But I was listening to a Marc Andreessen Fireside Talk the other day and he made a good point. He said, listen, when cars happened, everyone was worried that blacksmiths were going to go out of business. And there was this whole thing about blacksmiths going out of business. And the fact is, yeah, blacksmiths went out of business. But guess what? Every town in America got paved roads. And that created tons of jobs. It created the restaurant industry. Like the restaurant industry didn't exist until there were paved roads.
- [37:29]
A
Right. You couldn't get there. Yeah, right.
- [37:30]
B
You couldn't get there. Right. And so stores and I don't need to go on, you know, state the obvious. Like technologies can be scary and they will disrupt and they will get rid of jobs that the new technology can do better. But I don't think we know what.
- [37:47]
A
The new restaurants, what, what the new.
- [37:49]
B
Jobs are going to be. I mean, think about it. Think about you and I when we started in our career. Like the job social media manager would have sounded like, like it was from outer space, right? Yeah, yeah. Like, oh, I made that up.
- [38:00]
A
Social media ops guy on program or an adopt.
- [38:02]
B
Yeah, these, these are crazy. And now it's like, you know, there are people who are spending their entire careers doing social media management.
- [38:09]
A
Yeah, yeah. So there's whatever. There'll be a new version of that hopefully. And that'll. That'll open up.
- [38:14]
B
It'll be, it'll be painful and I'm sure it already Hollywood will need to disrupt. I. I just feel like. And again, getting back to why I started my company to begin with, I am long on storytelling that connects people.
- [38:26]
A
Yeah.
- [38:27]
B
I think we are at a human level. We want to know why we're here, and we want people to tell stories that help us make some sense of that and connect us as. As humans. And I think we need more of that. And it's going to be weird, and it already is weird from where we came from, but I'm excited about the future.
- [38:46]
A
All right. That is a pretty honest but hopeful note to end on. Michael. Awesome conversation. We could talk forever, but we could. I want to let you go, but thanks so much for your time and let's do this again. Some deck.
- [38:55]
B
Hey, Mike. Anytime. Always love talking to you and look forward to the next one.
- [38:59]
A
Thank you.