9 Lessons From TBPN's $100M+ Exit

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Colin and Samir Show

Episode: 9 Lessons From TBPN's $100M+ Exit

Date: July 28, 2026
Guests: John Coogan and Jordy Hayes (TPBN)

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Main Theme

This episode features a live conversation with John Coogan and Jordy Hayes, the creators of TBPN, a daily technology and business livestream show “niche by design.” The focus is the jaw-dropping multi-hundred-million-dollar acquisition of TBPN by OpenAI, and the “nine lessons” the duo learned building and scaling their show to a massive exit in just two years. Colin and Samir guide the discussion, extracting actionable insights for creators and media entrepreneurs on building, branding, distribution, audience acquisition, and maintaining independence.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Go Full-Time (04:46)

• Commitment is Crucial:
  John and Jordy attribute their success to going all-in, treating TBPN as a “first class media product,” not a side project.

  • “We sort of burned all the other ships and focused full time, just like it was any other startup.” – John Coogan [02:59]

• The compounding effect accelerated once they prioritized TBPN above all else.

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2. Embrace Your Niche (04:46)

• Niche by Design:

  • TVPN’s internal goal was to appeal to 200,000 highly engaged professionals in startups and private markets.
  • They resisted pressure to broaden content for mass views, instead optimizing for relevance and utility to their small but powerful audience.

  “You just can't get millions and millions of views on an interview with a Series B company that's doing HR software. But our audience, as boring as that sounds to a lot of people, our audience loves that.” – John Coogan [04:46]

  • They compared themselves to niche creators in other categories and stressed the importance of going deep for a highly engaged subset.
  • “Most people won’t care about our content—and that’s the point.” – Jordy Hayes [06:53]

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3. Go Daily, Be Timely (08:07)

• Consistency and Iteration:

  • TVPN streams live, daily. This frequency enabled rapid improvement and strong news relevance.
  • They highlighted the “content barbell” model: a show should be either timely (news-driven) or entirely timeless (deep dives).
  • They chose the “timely” end: “If you record a show by the time you release it, there's a good chance that it's no longer current and it's no longer functioning as like a news product.” – Jordy Hayes [08:33]

• Rapid Feedback Loops:

  • Post-show, they immediately debrief and adjust, leading to faster iteration than weekly shows.

  “Every single day, every weekday we record and the second we go offline, we’re immediately talking about what could have been better.” – Jordy Hayes [10:06]

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4. Brand Differentiation Through Visuals (16:14)

• Unique Set and Visual Identity:

  • TBPN’s studio (“the Ultra Dome”) was designed for differentiation. High-quality production, suits rather than hoodies, and custom branding (akin to a Formula 1 team) set them apart.

  “Everybody has a slat wall. We went a very different direction … we call it the Ultra Dome. We even branded it like a football stadium.” – John Coogan [16:14]

  • Visuals were leveraged on social media to stand out when quote-tweeting or sharing clips.

• Sponsorship Integration:

  • Sponsors were embraced as part of the show’s identity, with prominent and creative ad placements (racing jackets, logos everywhere).

  “We really leaned into that and built the aesthetics of the show around with that kind of energy in mind … thinking about the business side as, like, really part of the content.” – Jordy Hayes [17:59]

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5. Treat It Like a Show, Not Just a Podcast (20:24)

• Television Mindset:

  • TVPN explicitly rejected the usual podcast conventions—format, cadence, tone—in favor of an “anything goes” show approach: live, multi-guest, flexible segments.

  “Once we opened our mind to, it’s a show, it’s live, it can be 10 guests for 10 minutes each, it can be one guest for two hours if we want … that really helped.” – John Coogan [20:24]

• Performance Energy:

  • Jordy described the high-energy, live-news broadcast mentality they adopted.

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6. Scrappy But Strategic Marketing (22:09)

• Billboard Campaigns & Barter:

  • They ran Emmy “For Your Consideration” billboard campaigns through creative barter deals, securing prime real estate without out-of-pocket cost.

  “Another way to differentiate … we partnered with a company to get all of these billboards for free. We did ads for their billboard company, and they us billboard ads.” – John Coogan [22:49]

• Hybridization with Legacy Media:

  • They actively engaged with Hollywood and traditional journalism, inviting mainstream reporters as guests and staying collaborative rather than adversarial.

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7. Hyper-Focus on Core Product (13:06; 14:39)

• Say No to Distraction:
  They turned down tempting side opportunities (scripted TV, documentaries, remote on-sites) to focus relentlessly on the live show.

  • “The best use of our time was always stay focused on the main show … make the core product great.” – Jordy Hayes [13:47]

  • They cautioned that doing both timeless and timely content is incredibly hard unless you have vast resources.

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8. Don’t Raise VC—You Can’t Buy an Audience (25:39)

• Independence and Alignment:

  • Despite offers, they refused venture funding, asserting that more money wouldn’t improve their product or audience growth.

  “It's hard to take a venture capital dollar and turn it into a real fan. It's just very, very difficult.” – John Coogan [25:39]

  • They noted the democratization of production tools and the power of brand deals to fund high-quality content without external capital.

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9. Channel the “Golden Retriever” Mindset (27:33; 28:39)

• Positivity and Focus:

  • Being approachable (“hot, friendly, and dumb”), admitting what they don’t know on air, and maintaining hyperfocus on their mission, not rivals.
  • Coping with copycats and competition required a “friendly, happy, focus-on-the-ball” energy, not adversarial defensiveness.

  “Why is the golden retriever successful? ... Because they're hot, friendly, and dumb.” – John Coogan [27:53] “The golden retriever is simply focused on getting the ball, chasing the ball. They're not really worried about anything else going on at the dog park.” – Jordy Hayes [28:41]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On resisting mass appeal:
  “Even today where we’re at, we’re still first and foremost committed to that 200k. …I oftentimes don’t tell them, you should check it out, because I know they’re not going to find it interesting at all.” – Jordy Hayes [06:09]

• On daily iteration:
  “We did just under 250 episodes last year. We missed one weekday that wasn’t a holiday.” – Jordy Hayes [13:47]

• On what their acquisition signals:
  “It shows that niches are incredibly valuable and you shouldn’t be afraid to stay in your niche … make sure you’re not working on the wrong number.” – Jordy Hayes [32:00]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------|---------------------| | Introduction & Acquisition News | 00:30 – 02:06 | | What is TBPN? | 02:59 – 04:35 | | Lesson 1: Go Full-Time | 04:46 – 05:57 | | Lesson 2: Embrace Your Niche | 04:46 – 06:52 | | Lesson 3: Go Daily/Timely Content | 08:07 – 11:33 | | Focus on Timely vs. Timeless Content | 11:33 – 13:04 | | Focus on the Core Product | 13:06 – 15:25 | | Branding & Visual Differentiation | 16:14 – 20:05 | | Treat It as a Show, Not Just a Podcast | 20:24 – 22:22 | | Scrappy Billboard/Marketing Techniques | 22:09 – 23:24 | | Collaborating with Legacy Media | 23:34 – 24:57 | | VC Funding & Audience Building | 25:39 – 27:29 | | The Golden Retriever Mindset | 27:33 – 29:26 | | Acquisition & Industry Implications | 29:26 – 33:41 |

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Final Thoughts

This episode is an unvarnished, energetic playbook for ambitious media entrepreneurs. John and Jordy’s trajectory is a case study in hyper-focus, niche obsession, unapologetic commercialism, and the power of treating digital media like a “real” media business. Their blend of scrappy tactics, creative branding, and collaborative approach with both new and old media makes TBPN a model for a new era in the creator economy. Their sale to OpenAI is positioned not as an endgame, but as validation that depth—and loyalty—in a niche can be worth far more than broad, shallow reach.

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For creators, the biggest takeaways: Go all-in, own your audience, don’t fear “small” numbers, and don’t let outside capital or distraction dilute your product or mission.
For media watchers: This deal proves niche media built right can be both financially explosive and deeply influential.

Transcript

[Sponsor/Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for, from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook.

[Interviewer/Host]

Today's guests are John Coogan and Jordy Hayes, the hosts of tpbn. It's actually the second time they've been on the show, but the first time since some major news broke in April that their show was acquired by OpenAI for hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Excuse me, could you say that again?

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, it was pretty crazy. It was actually one of the most shocking things I've read in our industry and probably one of the most notable things that have happened in the creator economy since its inception.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

One of the major reasons for that price tag is because they are two of the smartest marketing minds on the Internet. These guys are truly incredible.

[Interviewer/Host]

This conversation comes from our event Press Publish la, where we covered the intersection of Hollywood and the creator economy. And what's interesting about these guys, they actually built the show in a studio in Hollywood and they call themselves Neo Trad Media, Basically adopting traditional television techniques, like looking at this live stream show that looks and feels kind of like SportsCenter, but bringing it into a new world, using Twitter as the primary distribution, looking and feeling kind of like a live streamer and honestly approaching the world of what maybe we consider podcasting in a completely different way. Daily live. No editing. Niche by design.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Okay, so in this conversation, you're going to hear the nine lessons from John and Jordi, all about how they actually were able to launch TVPN and in a matter of just two years, sell it to OpenAI for over $100 million.

[Interviewer/Host]

These guys are truly some of my favorite people in our industry and some of the sharpest minds in media. So I think you guys will really enjoy this conversation. Here's our live episode with John Coogan and Jordy Hayes of tpbn. Part. What's up, guys?

[John Coogan]

We're doing well.

[Jordy Hayes]

Thank you for having us.

[John Coogan]

Thank you for having us.

[Interviewer/Host]

So I don't know if you have confirmed the news, but I remember seeing the headline. Funny enough, it was on April 2nd.

[John Coogan]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Host]

That OpenAI bought your show for reported hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Jordy Hayes]

Yeah, we thought about. We thought about doing April 1. We were ready to do April 1, but that was going to be even more confusing than it already was, even on April 2.

[Interviewer/Host]

So for people who haven't seen the show because it is niche by design, explain the show, where it's distributed, who it's for, all the above. TPBN in a nutshell.

[John Coogan]

Yeah. It's a live stream three hours a day from 11am to 2pm Pacific covers technology and business with a focus on startups and the private markets. Really Silicon Valley, where Jordi and I sort of built our early careers. And then little over a year ago, we were both in between projects and thought we should start a podcast. Very common people think there's an opportunity, but very quickly we realized that we had so much fun doing it and we had the opportunity to take it incredibly seriously. And so we sort of burned all the other ships and focused full time, just, just like it was any other startup and viewed it as an opportunity to build something not alongside something else, not in service of something else, but actually as a first class media product. That was going to be our entire focus. And that really started the compounding very quickly.

[Jordy Hayes]

I think we were lucky in our category too, because we weren't the first two guys in tech to say, hey, we should start a podcast. We were probably the millionth, but we had the benefit of the people in our category were using content purely as marketing. So they had a startup and they wanted a podcast to promote their startup or they had a venture fund and they wanted to get in front of founders and LPs. And so by coming in, and it was very easy for us to take it 10 times, 100 times more seriously than everyone else and build a lot of momentum really, really quickly.

[Interviewer/Host]

So why don't we dive into lesson one? Yes, because we've hooked the audience, I think, sufficiently with nine lessons. Right? You guys are waiting for the nine lessons.

[John Coogan]

Yes, it's time for nine lessons.

[Jordy Hayes]

Number eight will shock you.

[John Coogan]

Number eight will shock you. Number one was going full time. And I think that we talked a little bit about that. Number two was not being afraid to be niche. You've talked about this a lot, but we had an internal number. I don't know where we got 200,000 from, but maybe it's because I'd been doing YouTube before and I'd seen videos go into the millions and I felt the pull of, okay, I know what it takes to get a million views and it's being more general, talking about politics, talking about consumer, like you just can't get millions and millions of views on an interview with a Series B company that's doing HR software. But our audience, our niche audience, as boring as that sounds to a lot of people, our audience loves that. And so we said, we're going to be okay with that, and we're not going to try and view Max. We're not going to try and be obsessed with the metrics. We want the metrics to be healthy. We want the audience to be there. We want the audience to be real. And then we sort of built the rest of the business model around that idea of a niche audience where we were never selling against. Oh, there's so many views, and we're going to go 10 times bigger next year. It's like, no, we're going to actually reach people in Silicon Valley that are pretty hard to reach. Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

And there's a.

[Jordy Hayes]

There's. Yeah. Going. I don't. I don't know where we got the 200. I don't know either. I think it just sounded nice.

[John Coogan]

I think, yeah, 100 pay would be sandbagging, but if you go any higher, it's. Why not? Why aren't you.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Yeah.

[Jordy Hayes]

There was a lot of stories in our industry that weren't being talked about at all on podcasts, even though the industry was spending a lot of time listening to podcasts. And we knew that there was roughly 200,000 people that were going to be very interested in that, but the entire rest of the world wouldn't care at all. And so the opportunity was to actually just commit to that 200k. And even today where we're at, we're still first and foremost committed to that 200k. And so if people ask me what I do and I say, yeah, I've got a live show, I oftentimes don't tell them, you should check it out, because I know that they're going to not find it interesting at all. Right. Because it's only interesting for that.

[Interviewer/Host]

Right.

[Jordy Hayes]

200,000 people.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Was there someone else out there that was running somewhat of a similar niche play that gave you the confidence to do something like that?

[Jordy Hayes]

Was it us?

[John Coogan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I learned a ton from you throughout the. I mean, I started doing YouTube in 2020 and watched every video you put out. Learned a ton. And there were other. I mean, Doug demuro has a great niche in cars, and there's so many other creators. It comes and goes. Whenever you pick up a new hobby, I feel like you find the pinnacle of that niche and you realize that there's a beautiful business there and there's A lot of people that would stop that person for autographs. And there's a lot of people that would say, who is that person? And that's just the nature of the modern Internet creator, I think.

[Interviewer/Host]

What's the most niche thing you guys watch? You think?

[John Coogan]

Ooh, most niche.

[Jordy Hayes]

I watched this guy on YouTube that just makes videos about submarines. Hi, Sutton. I can't listen to anything tech or business related at night.

[Interviewer/Host]

Right.

[Jordy Hayes]

Because it just keeps me up. Because I'm thinking, I gotta get back to that person or we gotta talk about that on the show tomorrow. And so this guy makes long form videos, like intricate details about submarines. And I just love it.

[Interviewer/Host]

That's amazing.

[John Coogan]

I love it.

[Interviewer/Host]

All right, what's three?

[John Coogan]

Three? Three is be daily. Gotta be daily. Timely and live. We talked about this. The content barbel, the barbell. Either timely or time less. Time less. Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

Timeless evergreen content right now either needs to be timely or timeless.

[John Coogan]

Timeless, yes, yes.

[Jordy Hayes]

And I think you guys maybe originated that idea. We remixed it and then someone else took it and ran with it and is probably gonna credit us.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's all open source.

[John Coogan]

Yeah.

[Jordy Hayes]

But in our industry, people were. And I think everywhere people are using podcasts to understand the news. But in tech, almost every show was publishing once a week. And so, you know, your favorite podcast might record on a Thursday, but then Friday morning they release. But on Friday some crazy news happens. And so there was a joke that was like pretty widespread that was unfortunately, you know, this event happened after the all in podcast recorded. So I won't have a take on this until next Friday. We can talk about it then. And so for us, the daily element, the space is moving so quickly right now in large part due to AI. And so there is news every single day. And if you record a show by the time you release it, there's a good chance that it's no longer current and it's no longer functioning as like a news product.

[Interviewer/Host]

So do you feel like even if you're not live the creators in here, like one of the requirements of this moment is to be available daily? Meaning like Kareem Rama with Subway Takes. We talked about it earlier in the day. Like, Subway Takes is available every day. There's a new episode every day on Instagram. Is that.

[John Coogan]

Well, I don't know if people get their news from Subway Takes. I feel like I'm always scrolling the back catalog. Sometimes there's news timely items like a presidential run or a political run. But it's more for. If you're in this reaction to the News content, you certainly have to be available when the news breaks.

[Jordy Hayes]

I think more importantly, it's like the daily iteration and improvement. So every single day, every weekday we record and the second we go offline, we're immediately talking about what could have been better. Like, hey, that 20 minute segment, that wasn't great. This guy just wanted to stay on his talking points. It wasn't a conversation, it wasn't interesting. That person shouldn't have been on at all. That person was amazing. It should have been way longer. We missed this story. We got to get to it. The Chiron wasn't as snappy as it should have been during the news section. So the daily nature is in large part news driven for us. But I would say even more importantly, you can just improve much more rapidly because of that constant iteration.

[John Coogan]

And the counterpoint to our show is the Acquired FM podcast, which. Which is once a month, actually, I think they do eight episodes a year now. And they are incredibly timeless masterpieces. Four hour episodes, deeply researched. And they can wait because the companies that they talk about are evergreen and those episodes will have runs for a really long time. Their back catalog's really valuable. And so if we were a weekly show, you might be tempted to say, oh, let's go do a deep dive like Acquired, but you're never gonna beat them at that. They're the best at the. And so what's on the opposite end of the barbell? It's daily live, instant reactions.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Considering you guys know us and our channel pretty well, if you had to advise us on either being eight times a year or daily, where would you put us?

[John Coogan]

Well, I mean, what we were talking about before was is there. So there are creators that are bifurcating across the barbell into timeless or timely, but I'm very interested to see if somebody can do both. We were talking about Markiplier, both a live streamer and also a filmmaker made a real movie, did both. I believe his movie will be timeless, but his live streams are very timely and I'm wondering where that comes together. I think it's a very personal thing. I don't think you can fit a one size fits all. But I do know that when something like the Markiplier movie happens, I would love to be able to get your take the same day instantly. And I noticed this today with actually I think tomorrow this car pod with Doug Demuro is going live and I know he's gonna have a great take on the Ferrari Luce, but it dropped on Monday or Sunday.

[Jordy Hayes]

Got it.

[John Coogan]

And so I had to wait a whole week. And I'm excited for that.

[Jordy Hayes]

You've heard so many other takes.

[John Coogan]

Yeah. I wound up going to some other podcast to get more takes because I was so interested in that story. I know he's gonna have great content, and if he just had the permission to release that show on a Monday, which maybe might just be. It's a weekly show, but we'll do an emergency episode. People do that. That's how we started. We were just doing emergency episodes five times a day.

[Jordy Hayes]

I also think we have been very commercial from the beginning, as in everything. Yeah, yeah. I'm.

[Interviewer/Host]

Jump ahead, jump ahead.

[Jordy Hayes]

But for us, we had so many opportunities to go and make other forms of content. People would come up to us and say, do you want to make a new version of Silicon Valley? Right. And we would just say, sounds really. Yeah, the show. Right. Sounds cool. We don't have time to do that because we're live three hours a day, but somebody should do that. Or somebody would say, do you want to make a documentary? And we're like, sounds cool. That's a good idea. Somebody should do that. We don't have time to do that. We're live three hours a day. Or, hey, could you come and shoot this video? There's a rocket launching. It'll be really cool. And we're like, that's really cool. Unfortunately, we're live three hours a day. We won't be able to make it.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Are you always behind on that, or is one of you like, nah, we should go.

[Jordy Hayes]

Yeah, we hate.

[Sponsor/Announcer]

We.

[Jordy Hayes]

We hate traveling. We get invited to go all over the world every single week. And we did just under 250 episodes last year. We missed one weekday that wasn't a holiday. And so we're very committed to just being at our studio working. And so for us, when the main show was working, so when we had all these other opportunities, they were exciting. But we. The best use of our time was always stay focused on the main show. And so my question for you guys is, which of these things, which end of the barbell is going to be better for your business? Because the better your business is doing, the more resources you're going to have, the more things you can do over time. But our logic early on was like, yeah, let's do something like that in, like, five years. Like, let's get the reps in, but stay focused on the core product. Make the core product great. And I would say, if you're thinking like, oh, I want to do long form and I want to do Real time, daily. That's going to be super hard because somebody else in your niche will do long form full time and someone else in your niche will do daily full time. And no matter how talented you are, I think if you're competing with somebody who is spending 80 hours a week doing something and you can only give it 40, you're probably going to lose. And that's really painful. But part of it is making the choice and the sacrifice to focus, especially focusing in the short term, while you get your business to the point, while you get your team to the point where you can do multiple things, but doing multiple things is.

[John Coogan]

It's hard. Only Andrew Ross Sorkin has done it really, because he's live daily on Squawkbox, but he also publishes a book once a decade and then it gets turned into a movie or a show.

[Jordy Hayes]

Yeah, so we were with him.

[John Coogan]

It's really hard. And he's the one.

[Jordy Hayes]

Yeah. We asked him, how do you do it? And he said, I do TV on the way to work. So he wakes up at like 4am he goes to the studio, does, you know, squawk box, does the market open? And then by 9am I just a.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Is free.

[Interviewer/Host]

That's right.

[Jordy Hayes]

So then he's like writing and things like that. And so if you could figure out some setup where you could just do one type of content from 6am to 9am and then have the rest of your day free. Yeah, that would be great. Morning radio, but I don't think that's for me.

[John Coogan]

Yeah, no, he really showed us there's levels to this game because we were like, oh, we're exhausted. And he's like, I do it on my way to work. Actually, I think of it as like a warm up.

[Interviewer/Host]

That's crazy.

[John Coogan]

What's four Branding differentiation on set design, everybody has a slat wall. We went a very different direction with a bunch of. We got a studio that's a. It's all. We call it the Ultra Dome. We even branded it like, like a football stadium. Thinking about selling the rights to the stadium and put a lot of effort into creating a differentiated look that would pop out on social media clips so you would see something. This started very early. One of our first growth hacks was we needed things to talk about. So we'd react to the news, we'd react to people's posts on Twitter or whatever was in the news. We'd print out their tweets, wear a suit, film it with a 4K camera in this very austere wooden room that didn't really look like any other normal podcast set. And then we would quote, tweet the post of whoever originally posted the take or the news item. And we would quote, tweet it with the video and you would get a notification. You get a lot of notifications. Oh, 10 people liked your post, 1000 people liked your post. It all just becomes random numbers at a certain point when something's going viral. But if someone quote, tweets your post with a video, you have to watch that video. And so you watch the video, the

[Jordy Hayes]

video of two guys, two guys in

[John Coogan]

suits in 4K with the printed out tweet and you're like, why? This is so much above just a repost, which takes one second and a, like that takes half a second. And so that really created this like brand world of this bringing this analog to the digital tech community. We're wearing suits. Tech people normally wear T shirts. Why are these guys in suit? That's weird. But it's actually a more welcoming environment for a Fortune 500 CEO. So it wound up working out in the future. And then there were a lot of other of these little branding elements that came through. Jordy Wells.

[Jordy Hayes]

Yeah, visually, early on, with our first sponsors, I pitched them as we're building a Formula one team. So you're gonna sponsor an entire season. You're sponsoring the next 12 months locked in, fully contracted. You're not getting out of it. Technically you could maybe not pay us, but you know, it'd be, you know, it was very solid. And then we're just going to put you everywhere. Right. So we weren't afraid. A lot of people in tech will have a podcast, but they don't run ads because they're like, I'm a hotshot investor or a founder. I don't need this sort of like lowly ad revenue. We took the opposite approach. I love advertising. I think it's like it's the economic engine of, of the Internet. It's amazing. It allows great products to be free. And so we really leaned into that and built the, built the aesthetics of the show around with that kind of energy in mind. So we made like racing jackets that had all of our sponsors. We put logos like everywhere. Right. A lot of now I see more shows kind of following in our footsteps and I feel a little bit bad because it's kind of makes the Internet a little uglier. But at the time with advertisers, it was like, hey, you could go sponsor a podcast where you're going to get one mid roll ad. And there's going to be no evidence that your ad is in the content unless somebody sees that exact moment or they scroll into the description and look around for it. And so we just really leaned into that and it created its own brand. And so thinking about the business side as, like, really part of the content, I think is important and. And really resonated with advertisers and gave us permission to just be loud and proud about our sponsors, which our sponsors loved. Right. And I've worked with creators in the past where advertising is like a necessary evil. They're like, I wish I didn't have to do this, but I got to do it. You know, being apologetic with their audience. And your audience should want you to be selling advertisements so you have more revenue, so you can make better content. And so we just embraced that and made it part of the product really quickly.

[John Coogan]

Can we give a round of applause for all the sponsors of Press Publish la? They make it possible.

[Jordy Hayes]

Thank you, Gemini.

[Interviewer/Host]

Jeff, can we get them up on the screen?

[Jordy Hayes]

Joby?

[John Coogan]

Gemini.

[Jordy Hayes]

Yeah. This is the missed opportunity. We got a Martin.

[John Coogan]

We're not sponsoring this. Get on it. Yeah. Number five.

[Interviewer/Host]

Number five.

[John Coogan]

Are we ready? Treat it like a show, not a podcast. Podcast is sort of a narrow box. It needs to be. People have concepts of what it is. One interview a week. It can only be one guest per show, per podcast episode. And I think once we opened our mind to, it's a show, it's live, it can be 10 guests for 10 minutes each. It can be one guest for two hours if we want. It can just be us, but no guests. We can take it on the road. We can do whatever we want with it. That really helped. And then also it gave us permission to pull best practices from television, pull best practices from other media products that didn't feel like we had to fit in a narrow box. And then that also made us a different product to advertise.

[Jordy Hayes]

Yeah. When I think when you're. When you're making a show, you're in the mindset of a performance.

[John Coogan]

Yeah.

[Jordy Hayes]

Which is, I think, quite different than the mentality of going into a podcast, which is. All right, let's sit down, turn on the microphones. It's very calm. But John and I, in the hour leading up to the show are, like, chugging Andrew Huberman's Yerba Mate, like, tons of nicotine. We're getting, like, really, really high energy. We're leap up, Paul. Every single day. I want to be exhausted when the show ends because I'm going to go Home and sleep and do it again the next day. And so that mentality of, like, you're making a show, this is a performance, people are giving you their time. You need to. You're there to entertain. And we function as like, a news source, but we want to be the most entertaining news source.

[Interviewer/Host]

I think another thing that I love about this concept of treating it like a show, and maybe this will come up a little later, but I want to pull up this image of. I think this is La Brea.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

The billboards that you guys have up all over L. A right now.

[John Coogan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

Like that.

[Jordy Hayes]

If we don't win, we're fucked. I'm kidding.

[Interviewer/Host]

That is another element of treating it like a show. Like, there's billboards all over L. A. Yeah. For your Emmy consideration.

[Sponsor/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Jordy Hayes]

Yeah. And this was another way to. Another way to differentiate is like. Yeah, we're not a. You know, we view ourselves as, like, interactive. You know, an interactive entertainment news product. It's not a. We don't want to be in the. In the podcast category.

[John Coogan]

Yeah.

[Jordy Hayes]

And then with this, too, it's like we maintain the mentality the entire time of being super scrappy. We partnered with a company to get all of these billboards for free.

[John Coogan]

We did ads for their billboard company, and they us billboard ads.

[Jordy Hayes]

We got like, 10, I think let's

[Interviewer/Host]

just thank the sponsors of press.

[Jordy Hayes]

Thank you, sponsors again.

[Interviewer/Host]

Let's get them back.

[John Coogan]

It was a great barter. Deals are underrated.

[Interviewer/Host]

All of our sponsors.

[Jordy Hayes]

Yeah, but underrated. Figuring out a way to get 10 or even 20 billboards, I don't know how many there are with $0 out of our pocket is just like maintaining that mentality. Right. Because there's no way we ever would have run a campaign like this if we had to. I mean, it's completely ridiculous. Running a billboard campaign for a niche live show.

[John Coogan]

I think that also links to number eight. We're sort of jumping around. We'll get back to it, but we're

[Jordy Hayes]

running out of time.

[John Coogan]

Yeah.

[Jordy Hayes]

We're used to three hours. Yeah.

[John Coogan]

Sort of this idea of, like, a lot of people in tech have had sort of a hostile relationship with the media. They've seen themselves as like disruptors up in Silicon Valley. Hollywood's this other thing. We, by virtue of the fact that we have families here, we built our show. Our studio is in actual Hollywood, and we always saw what legacy media does as amazing and incredibly important to how we do the show. I read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover every day to prep for the show. And some of the best journalism is still being done in legacy media. The creators in this room are doing amazing things that are extremely entertaining. But that doesn't mean that the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times aren't incredibly valuable sources. And, and so something like this is sort of a way to just take seriously everything that is great about Hollywood. And we did this across the course of the show where we would engage with the media in Hollywood. Having New York Times reporters come on the show, having Vanity Fair reporters come on the show, and then also saying yes to doing profiles. A lot of tech people are like, oh, it'll be a hit piece. And there's always risk. When you let a real journalist come and hang out with you for a week, you, you might say something that you regret. They could always take a quote out of context. But we realized that there's a lot of mutual respect there and that they're trying to tell a story to their audience that's worth telling. And we wanted to be a part of that. And so we never came at it

[Jordy Hayes]

as like, yeah, we were never antagonistic. Tech has always been about disruption, building the next billion dollar company, taking down incumbents. And so I think people expected us to say things like, we're coming for cnbc. And we were at no point doing that. I like everyone at cnbc, we have friends there. We were like, we're just trying to best serve these 200,000 people and we don't care if other people are also trying to serve that audience. That's great. But being hyper collaborative with every different player in our category served us really well. Where are we?

[Interviewer/Host]

John Frank?

[John Coogan]

How many of them are number six? We're on number six.

[Interviewer/Host]

We're on six.

[John Coogan]

Six is you can't buy an audience. Even though we talk to venture capitalists all day and we've raised money for previous ventures, we didn't raise money for this venture even though we saw it as serious as a startup. In fact, we probably worked harder on this than some of the previous startups that we've run just because we were in the right pattern of life. But we didn't raise money because fortunately, so much of the equipment and tooling that's necessary to actually produce a great media product has been democratized. Your phone can film things and even higher end camera gear can be offset with brand deals. At a certain point, it's hard to take a venture capital dollar and turn it into a real fan. It's just very, very difficult. And so I think that there's Some people that see big deals and think think that that's a prerequisite, and I don't think it is at all. Jordi, did you have anything else?

[Jordy Hayes]

Yeah, I mean, part of it is that we have probably one venture capitalist on the show every day. And again, that probably sounds crazy to some of you guys, but, yeah, we're constantly fielding offers, probably daily offers, hey, can I invest? And every single time, we just. Early on, we're like, what would we do with the money? And we could not find a single thing that would actually make the show better. Like, we really, really tried. And part of that was, if we had wanted to, if we were trying to go after something other than serving that 200,000 people, there would have been things we could do with the money. But if you actually had that, again, like, staying true to how do you make the best daily media product for those 200,000 people? We couldn't find anything. And so that just helps you stay aligned with why you started it in the first place.

[John Coogan]

We have number nine. The last one. 30 seconds left.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

We already did it.

[John Coogan]

Seven was B Commercial prioritize annual brand deals. I think we covered it. 9 was this idea that we had early on that you should be channeling the mind of a golden retriever, which is, why is the golden retriever successful? Why do people like golden retrievers? Because they're. They're hot, friendly, and dumb.

[Interviewer/Host]

And so nine really will shock you.

[John Coogan]

Yes, nine will shock you. But this idea of there's a lot of people that are overly adversarial. You want to just be friendly. You want to look good on camera, show up every day, try and be healthy, and not try and be an expert in everything. And so actually letting you. Letting the audience know when you don't know something is something that typically in scripted content that gets edited, you edit out all the places where you're uncertain, and you fact check everything. But in a live show, we found that actually taking someone on the journey with us, of our skepticism of where is our frontier of uncertainty around this particular topic was actually a benefit.

[Jordy Hayes]

Wow.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

I like that.

[John Coogan]

It was just a funny mindset.

[Jordy Hayes]

And when people are. I'm sure many people in this room have had the experience of being completely copied or knocked off. Early on. We started, there were big, big media companies in the first six months that created a TVPN clone. And I get really briefly worked up about these things. John maintains the golden retriever mindset. The golden retriever is simply focused on getting the ball, chasing the ball. They're not really worried about anything else going on at the dog park. Right. They just want to get the ball. And so maintaining that, reminding yourself, like, you know, just stay. Just channel. Channel that and focus on the ball. Don't focus on anything else.

[Interviewer/Host]

What do you think the deal that you guys made, signals about the media industry, if anything at all, like having a niche tech livestream be acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars. What does that signal to where we are in the creator economy? Was it signal to where we are in entertainment?

[John Coogan]

Yeah, I think about it as. So just to set the table, like, the show's still editorially independent. We do the show exactly the same, but we do provide advisory services. We advise on different topics that come up on the show. We flow that back to the. To the team at OpenAI. And we've also done this with our sponsors for a long time. Oh, you're running a Super bowl ad. Like, we'd love to chime in on that because we react to all the super bowl ads and we see what ads work in technology and don't. We'll give you a bunch of advice. Yeah.

[Jordy Hayes]

We fully delivered the concept for a Super bowl ad that ran last year.

[John Coogan]

It did really well. And we also ran our own super bowl ad.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

What was the ad?

[Jordy Hayes]

I don't want to take. I don't think it's fair to take credit.

[John Coogan]

We can take credit for our super bowl ad, which did.

[Jordy Hayes]

Which we also ran a Super bowl ad.

[John Coogan]

We did, but we ran it in a small market. But we designed it to go viral, where we included the logos of basically any company that had been on the show, got their logo in a mosaic pattern. So we put your logo in the super bowl, and everyone was very happy. It was like a community, a love letter to the community. But I think what this might say, if it says anything, is that TVPN was very much like an audition tape for what we can do. That then was a reason to want to work with us. And the way to work with us was with this type of deal. But I can imagine, like, every time I see Doug demuro talk about the design of some car, I'm like, why doesn't Ferrari buy this guy's company? Or, like, why doesn't he work with Range Rover? Because he's complaining about it. He's making good points. He should have a voice in the board, or he should be sitting on the board of these companies, because I think he's really talented and has great points. And this is just the way to actually flow things back Yeah, I think

[Jordy Hayes]

the other thing is we had built, like, truly, it was such an incredible business. We did an interview with you guys and people started doing math on somebody made a spreadsheet based on, like one thing that I had said in that moment and extrapolated our revenue from it. And I was relieved because it was like 80, 90% lower than what it actually was at that time. And so the business was doing so well that we didn't even really want anyone to know. And so during the process with OpenAI, we didn't go out to sell the business. We never intended to sell the business. And there were multiple times in the early discussions where we basically said, like, hey, look, like, if this doesn't make sense for you guys, we're happy to keep running our business. And we really meant it. So there was no point. We never companies. I think the biggest lesson is not my quote, but companies are bought, not sold. So if you go out and you try to sell your company, you have no leverage, you'll get beat up on price. You come across as like, you know, needing something. Whereas we truly had the mindset of just, we're just going to do this for 30 years and eventually we'll retire on the mics. Right? And so having that leverage of full independence, we were making money, we didn't need to do any deal, allowed us to get the outcome that we did. But I think that, yeah, it shows that niches are incredibly valuable and you shouldn't be afraid to stay in your niche. Right. Again, every person in this room wants to see the number go up, Right? Like, humans in general are number go up machines. You just wake up every day, you want the views to go up, you want the followers to go up, you want the bank account, all the, all these things. But you need to figure out, make sure that you're not like, working on the wrong number. And our outcome would have been a lot different if we were doing something like just optimizing for views and not staying true to that core community.

[Interviewer/Host]

John Coogan and Jordy Hayes, everybody. Thank you guys so much.

[Jordy Hayes]

Thanks for having me.

[Interviewer/Host]

Appreciate it, boys.