He Made $26M on YouTube...But Nearly Lost It All (Linus Tech Tips Interview)

Oh, I could take a look at your YouTube studio where I'm an open book. I don't give a shit you made over 26.3 million dollars for you To that sense yeah That is why this is what 10,000 videos look like you have over a hundred employees 16 million subscribers You've been making videos about tech for almost 20 years a lot of your content is reviewing products from brands But then you also take sponsorships from brands. How do you handle complex of interests? We're not afraid to criticize the hand that feeds us. Where do you draw the line? Apple Apple failing Why does Apple pay you? No single company in the tech space could ever hold us hostage real talk Our channel's been declining in viewership when you have a hundred people on staff You have to take any kind of drop extremely seriously. Do you regret not selling your channel for a hundred million dollars? Linus, thank you for coming on the show, man. I'm so excited to have you. Oh, thank you. It's my pleasure Dude, I gotta say I think there's so many things that you do that youtubers who aren't in tech can learn from and I want to dive into that But I actually analyzed your past 20 years of videos broke them down in different formats. I'm curious How you stayed relevant for nearly two decades over the years? I've had a tendency to get bored before the audience has had a chance to get bored With that said, I mean real talk, right? Like our channel's been declining in viewership for Probably the better part of 18 months and we still haven't gotten close even before that we were well off of our COVID sugar high So I think the LTT channel is tracking only like 45 million views for the last month and to be clear I'm not trying to sound like kind of spoiled I'm sure a lot of channels would love to do 45 million views in a month, but when you have a hundred people on staff You have to take any kind of drop extremely seriously because there's real world consequences for real people when there's a viewership decline, right? Whereas our high our peak was I think over 120 million views on LTT. Yeah, and so you know Even right now, you know, we're taking a long hard look at the content We're taking a long hard look at the upload cadence We're taking a long hard look at our packaging our titles and thumbnails, and we're trying to figure out okay Is there a new meta that we can adapt to is this it? Yeah, you know, because I've talked extensively about the curve You know the the natural life cycle of the youtuber Is this it am I at the end of the curve, right? Like you have to ask those questions because if you're not willing to honestly ask Am I just not that cool anymore? Then you have absolutely no chance of diagnosing whatever Malady is ailing your channel. Oh, what is the curve for people who don't know like just elaborate on that So back when social blade used to be able to retain more than two years of data Yeah, you could go to any channel on YouTube pretty much and you could see from day zero what their growth looked like and invariably Sometimes fast sometimes slow they would reach an apex and then once they started circling the drain It was very rare for a channel to not succumb to the gravitational pull and so I called that That life cycle the curve. Yeah any graph is technically a curve And what was it like life's like how many years? What do you say on average when you're studying a lot of these other YouTube channels would they have I was never that prescriptive of oh, oh, oh at the P. Yeah, yeah, yeah, nobody stays at the peak for long Yeah, like I can pull up my own channel. Yeah, and I'm sure you'll be able to see very clearly You know what my curve looks like at least if I don't manage to pull out of it here. Mm-hmm. Here's lifetime Oh, I could take a look at your YouTube studio. Okay. Okay. Wow. Yeah, but I'm an open book. I don't give a shit. Wow Okay, so this is your lifetime views. Yeah, it's life can I read this off you can do whatever you want nine billion views and You could see that it's gone up like kind of started hit a high during COVID. Yeah, but actually you have a huge peak recently So that's interesting to see like you hit 8.4 million views in a day That was a super viral short. Okay. Yeah, let's get shorts out of there. Yeah, so maybe filter out shorts So you could see like long form hold on. Oh, no, I don't have a way of doing it in this view unfortunately Can I see can I see what revenue look like during that time? There you go. So you made over $26.23 million. I haven't but Linus Tech tips is a channel. Linus Media Group Inc. Has done $26 million in revenue through you to that sense. Yeah Wow, that is wild. I mean, we have a lot of expenses. I know I know I want and I want to get into a lot of overhead a lot of I mean, Linus Media Group has paid more than 26 million dollars in salaries. Really? It's of course can I can I read off some of the highest like earning videos sure Yeah, I love building computers earned $139,000 so that was during kind of an infinite money glitch period on the platform Where super super long form live stream VODs were treated algorithmically very differently from regular VODs that were uploaded and because premium Pays out based on watch time. Yeah, if anybody went to sleep and that video started auto playing Go figure right it doesn't really work anymore, but that's interesting I mean, it's it's like kind of adapting to the changes and tweaks of YouTube, which is also an art in total accident total accident I don't know. I think you've been very smart to ride the waves as they come the second highest earning video which earned $102,000 Is I pray this computer sucks because I'm going to sell. Yeah, that was another live stream VOD got it got it And then the next high starting 78,000 how to build a PC the last guy you'll ever need. Yes, which is interesting That's one of those evergreen videos absolutely that seems like another evolution that you made which is like Making evergreen content versus now it seems like you don't make like evergreen as much like can you talk about like how you've evolved that As you keep your channel relevant as well. It's tough. There's there's always ebbs and flows and you know for To your point about how to build a computer the last guy you'll ever need we knew that it was not going to perform out of the gate Like that video was a 10 of 10 which for those who don't have the context means it was your worst performing video out of your last 10 up Wow, that was a 10 of 10 but to now be the second or third highest earning on your channel. That's remarkable That was intended to be a low performer a slow burn. Yeah, we call them and it was also to address the general boredom that our audience was starting to show with how to build a computer. Yeah, so I kind of went okay Let's just do it one time. Yeah, this will be the reference material piece It's that's like a 50 minute long video or something like that long. You know, it's so interesting I think every creator has a version of that video that they can make for their niche You think so. Yeah, I absolutely do because as you talk about that line is I'm reminded of a video I made that was about 50 minutes, which was just like our YouTube masterclass where I basically summarized tips from all in interviews with Mr. Bees with Casey Neistat and I put it in and it was a slow burn like it did not perform well out of the gate and now it is One of our top videos in terms of reoccurring views. Yeah, it is one of our top videos in terms of bringing subscribers AdSense and also we plugged our newsletter. Oh, and that has been the big thing that's grown our newsletter wicked smart and and I think it's like maybe once a quarter at least once a year Like I think a good thing for especially newer creators. I think I was like put that slow burn video out there That's almost like the you know compilation. Yeah, what you've learned about something in your niche at least in the past year Yeah, no, I think that's a great piece of feedback for young for new creators. So to see you do it at that level I think I think it's really inspiring. I just wanted to ask About the money and about the business of being a tech YouTuber even more. I think I think it's fascinating Especially with the amount of people that you employ a lot of your content is reviewing Products from brands, but then you also take sponsorships from brands. Absolutely. How do you handle like complex of interest? Everyone has their own personal line that they draw and everyone Will look at something that is beyond their line and go well, that's not okay. And so where do you draw the line? I draw the line between Paying for airtime on my channel versus paying for my opinion You cannot buy my opinion. You cannot buy my lab's team's analysis What you can buy is airspace for what is clearly Separately, obviously, you're talking points And that has been a pretty good recipe for us over the years Another thing that we did very early on is we recognized the vulnerability that being dependent on the same brands For sponsorship for providing products that we need to review in a timely manner That our responsibility is to criticize was inherently A conflict of interest because that's the thing a conflict of interest is not an actual Necessarily negative Occurrence what it is is a perception of a potential negative occurrence So the fact that we work with you know, let's say AMD On our AMD ultimate tech upgrade series and we review AMD processors when they release that is a conflict of interest But all we can really do at that point is say, Hey, these are, this is our editorial rules. AMD can buy talking points in AMD ultimate tech upgrade and they can, they can, you know, buy a promotion of a giveaway of a steam deck or whatever, what they can't buy is our opinion in our editorial videos. And then we just have to walk that walk. Is there like even subconsciously a chance to like favor them or have a bias if they're paying you for a sponsorship? Of course. And then you're reviewing their product. And in a review video that's supposed to be purely editorial. And I think that an extremely dangerous space that some of my peers seem to have ended up in is believing that they are impervious to conflicts of interest. I think to your point, you have to be constantly aware of it. If anything, what we have tried to do over the years is take a bit of a coaches son approach, which is not going to help me sell a lot of sponsorships right now, but is going to help me maintain my integrity for maybe another 17 years and maintain the perception of our channels integrity because, you know, no matter what, I don't care if you're our biggest sponsor, you know, I remember this one time. We did, we were working with Intel like very regularly, very closely at the time. And we uploaded this video where we had a makeup artist come in and do me up all like battered and bruised. And we had, you know, like light guns like like duck hunt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Like a super Nintendo. Yeah. Yeah. So we had like a plastic light gun. Yeah. And I did this intro from my video where I was reading clearly under duress a statement from Intel, like taking back, you know, the mean things that I said about their previous, you know, processor or something. And I'm like faltering in the read and the gun, like makes its way into frame and it's a blue gun because we were trying to convey, you know, that Intel would obviously like me to say nice things about their processor and take back the mean things I said. And in the middle of the statement, I go, no, I won't do it. And I like, I grabbed the gun and I like blow my way out of it and I like leave the frame. And, you know, that's the kind of thing that we go out of our way to do. We go out of our way to make it clear that when a company is deserving of criticism, that we will not shy away from it. We're not afraid to criticize the hand that feeds us because at the end of the day, we only want to work with companies that have the integrity to be criticized, that take accountability for the errors that they make. And another example was Nvidia, speaking of Nvidia, big company, arrogant company. Have they earned the arrogance? I don't know. They're trillion plus dollar valuation might say they have, but no question, they got an ego. And one of their people basically got into it with an independent reviewer, member of the media that I would consider much more on the journalism side compared to what we do, which is tech education. And we make it entertaining. And sometimes we will delve into things that journalists would do, but I've never claimed to be a journalist, whereas he tends to take more of a journalist approach. And so they got into it with this guy basically going, well, if you don't tow the line in terms of our marketing bullet points, we're not going to see you cards anymore. So you're not going to be able to do day one reviews. And that's going to hurt your business, basically like mafia tactics with holding access. And the funny thing is they're not obligated to send them a GPU, right? Of course not. They're not obligated to send me a GPU. I could buy a GPU the same as anyone else, but there's always been an understanding that there's a mutual benefit here. We benefit from having early access, giving us time to properly evaluate the product so that the day it goes on sale, people can be educated on them. And the benefit to them is if it's a really outstanding product, we will say really outstanding things about it. But the risk is if it's not a really outstanding product, we're going to be honest about that. And this particular Nvidia rep, who no longer works there, had fundamentally misunderstood that deal and thought that sending out GPUs was a marketing expense, and that this was a marketing exercise. It's like, bro, no, it isn't. And so instead of just not sending them a card, which is well within their rights, they sent them an email threatening to not send cards if they didn't get in line. Well, that's not okay. And so we called it out. Well, first I had a call within video to get their side of the story. It was exactly as bad as it sounded, worse in some ways. So that was horrible. And then we went on our podcast and ripped them a new asshole. This was on the heels of us doing a very lucrative brand deal with them around the launch of the 30 90 GPU. And they didn't work with us for two years, over two years, I think, because you criticized them publicly, because one person who isn't there anymore got asked for it about me calling out their abominable behavior. And so they didn't work with us for a very long time. How big was that deal just to put in perspective? The 30 90 deal. Yeah, I think I could probably just say, I think it was, it was over $50,000 though. Got it. So it was a lot of money. Yeah. But my business philosophy has always been diversify and spend conservatively. Yeah. Right. So we have always, always had a goal to get to the point where no single company in the tech space could ever hold us hostage. We will never be dependent on anyone in video. Apple Apple Apple has emailed me once. I think that's it. They like fucking hate me. Intel AMD. I don't care. Why does Apple hate you? Oh, because I'm not, I mean, it's speculation, right? Because they don't communicate with me. But there's a number of things. If you want to cover Apple, you have to play the game. You have to fit the image. I don't fit the image, right? Like I'm more was than jobs. And to be clear, Steve wasniac is a lot smarter than me. I'm not actually comparing myself to Steve wasniac. I'm just saying Apple moved away from the geeky nuts and bolts of their origin towards the, you know, now they're the company that the latest version of the AirPods Pro doesn't even have a little sort of lever point. So you can pry off the ear tip because that wouldn't be sleek enough, I guess. I'm not sleek. I also make content that they don't like. You know, I made videos on hack and tossing back in the day. So running that OS on on unapproved PC hardware. I am less focused on design and more focused on tech spec a lot of the time. I fundamentally disagree with a lot of their decisions. I I agree 100% with the with epics lawsuit that Apple was running functionally a monopoly and engaging in many monopolistic practices through their app store and through their ecosystem. I don't like user lock in. I like open ecosystems. So there's just a lot of fundamental disagreements that Apple as a company and I have. I don't like the way that unnecessarily many Apple devices end up shredded and e-waste because of issues with fleet management and the way that device unlocking has to be done explicitly. They shred for a company that claims to be so eco conscious. They shred so many devices unnecessarily through their policies and I don't like hypocrisy. They're an extremely hypocritical company. I mean, lines have you ever felt like it was hard to speak truth to power? Like like hearing you say that like Apple doesn't like you or that, you know, like you're so big now that your business is diverse with all your different income streams that I want to talk about that you can like have like more outspoken opinions in some ways versus I'm thinking about the smaller YouTubers who are starting out and if they speak bad about a company. Yeah. And if that YouTuber has to make like reviews of products to start out and like you said, like in that example, in video withholding like a new product could mean that creator doesn't make a video, could mean that creator doesn't make as much money and could mean that creator doesn't survive. I want to make one thing clear and video did still continue to see this product, but they didn't work with us in a sponsored capacity for years. Well, I think what these creators need to ask themselves is do they want to be a tech YouTuber or do they want to be a tech YouTuber for a really long time? Because if you ever make it big, I guarantee you someone will go dig back into what you did in the past and if your integrity was ever for sale, they'll find it. And so you're just you're robbing your future self by pulling your punches. I'm not saying that you should be malicious or you should be irresponsible. I think there were times in the past where there were errors in our content that I wish our production pipeline was more sophisticated and that we could have caught that have created problems. problems for for brands that we've covered. And I regret those things, right? You should never just be negative for the sake of doing damage. But if you believe something, then you should never hold back from that. And if you've measured something, then you should expose it. And what's interesting, like, and I think perhaps like relevant to think more like long-term is the relationship between quality and quantity when it comes to your videos, like you put out in a like a vast quantity of videos, like I was looking at it this past month, you put out over 25 videos across your different channels. And I'm wondering, how do you keep up the quality when you have to be so detailed? You're reviewing like products from companies that have put like years of R&D into it. Like, how do you like maintain that? Especially because like line is I have this video wanted to pull up from your channel that I, so here's an insight look at how we make our videos. I have everything that we just filmed for this video on this SD card. And normally I've copied it to my computer, put it on these drives, ship it out to my editor since we're all remote and our files are massive. But today, thanks to our sponsor Dropbox, the entire process just got a whole lot easier. With Dropbox, I could just plug in my card, start uploading to a shared folder with my editor, and that's it. And while it's uploading, I could battery name my files to organize them. And if my computer crashes in the middle of a project down the road or erases my work, then Dropbox Rewind helps me recover and restore things to exactly how it was before the crash. Best of all, with Dropbox Dash, which is Dropbox's new universe of search and knowledge management tool, if you can find anything across the apps you use most, like even if you forgot what you named your files or where you saved them, I can just type in a keyword and boom, instantly all the footage, edits, photos, it's all in there. Plus with Dropbox Dash, it integrates with Google, Notion, and so much more. So you can work in one place, not 10 different apps and tabs and folders. And with stacks, you can group together content related to one project. So all your scripts, project files, it's all in one place. And then you could easily share it with one click with your team and client. So thanks again to Dropbox for sponsoring. Try it today using my link below to see how Dropbox can help you and your team create faster. Right. Come back to the video. Oh, no. I was surprised you put this on your channel because video where employees talk about what it's like to work at Linus Media Group. It's interesting because a lot of the employees talked about like your speed of production and wanting more time to really double check the quality of the videos and especially the reviews. And I'm wondering like, how do you balance those two? Well, I can tell you now that our upload frequency is I think half of what it was two years ago. So as much as like, yeah, we upload a lot of videos, we also have a pretty sizable team. So our writing department is not spread nearly as thin as it used to be. Linus tech tips. The main channel only gets I think about three and a half uploads per week, other than the one show, the weekly podcast that's more off the cuff. And I think the expectations of perfection are a lot lower there is live. Whereas before it used to be six and multiple channels that used to post regularly. So techwiki, gamelings and MAC address have been hiatus while we just have gotten our house in order over the last couple of years. In terms of how we're doing it today, I mean, you see, you know, the frontman, right, for the band standing up there and, you know, singing, but what you don't see is our writing team is I think ten right now. Well, that's how because we have a lot of people doing the work. We've also put a lot of new workflows in place ever since, like I said, there was significant valid criticism, even if it came from in my opinion, a malicious place. And even if it was full of mistakes and false assumptions, there was a lot of valid criticism of our channel, right? And so we have to put, oh, like, like just errors in the accuracy, you know, errors on the graphs in incomplete explanations. And that's something that we were looking at already, you know, I had already hired a CEO to help me get the ship in order. You know, we had already started the process because we had recognized the issues, but it takes time. And these things take time. And so we've put a lot of processes in place. So we have a more formal error response rubric now, you know, where we determine the severity and we have, you know, how to determine what the severity is and what the action that we take is. So it's no longer a question internally, like, oh, there's an error in the video. What do I do? Because that used to be it. It used to just wait until like I made a call. Whereas now we have all these different severity levels and we have all these different action plans that we can take. If an error is spotted, if it was like, take me through a decision tree, like what's an example? Sure. Here, I can just, I can just bring it up, right? Because we post it, we published it. Yeah. Here it is. Video error handling, standard operating procedure, or SOP. Okay, we classify errors in terms of whether they are script errors or verbal errors or whether they are visual errors, those have their own sort of action plans. Yeah. And then we rate them in severity from one, which is very low severity. This statement could possibly be misunderstood, but is generally true. And most people would be fine with how it's currently presented all the way up to five, which is very high severity. This statement is very incorrect. Basically, the opposite of correct, there's no charitable interpretation that could make this anything, but completely irresponsible. And so at a one, we take no action. At a five, the video is removed until a corrective action can be taken. Who's assessing this? And so this would be assessed by our channel manager. Channel manager. Yeah. And is this after the video is done? Well, this would be this, okay, this assumes that the video is published. Okay. Yeah. But oh, before a video is done, we fix it. We fix it. Yeah. And you try to do everything to put good faith effort to fact check and and make sure the video like is as true as possible. This is it. Like comments are coming in. Like hey, that's off. What's going on? That's where your channel manager assesses its severity. Oh, yeah. One of those actions. So beforehand, we do our own script review. So two writers will look at any script at least before it gets published. And then we also have a really amazing group of community members that we call the ECC squad. That's so interesting to hear because I got to be honest, I got one thing I struggle with is like, I put a ton of research into these interviews and our graphics and everything. And I want to make sure there's accurate as possible. And the few times I've tried to like outsource our higher people for this, I found errors. That's why you got to do both. And yeah, but then I'm like, I just, I just say, no, no, thank you. I'm not outsourcing this. And I bring it back in house. And I feel like that's hurt us from growing as fast. Yeah. And you're putting out so many piece of content. And some of it, you're like the bloodiest is the first one through the glass. But also you've developed processes that can fix that. And you know, they create their own problems. I mean, I can tell you that Bernode on our team is way worse now that we have these like endless checks like our Dan, one of our guys who works kind of in IT slash admin slash, she's our podcast producer. Where's a lot of hats? He created a flow chart of the process, start to finish of create ideating an LTT video and pressing publish. And it was, I kid you not like like 10 pages long for like flow processes and stuff with all the different departments and all the different checks that need to be done. And we're trying to figure out how to streamline it again right now, because it's, it's this constant dialing in. Nobody ever has it perfect. And yeah, we're we too fly by night and Lucy go see before. Yeah, undoubtedly. Did we go too far the other way to the point where we had like fact check paralysis? Yeah, probably. So we're going to have to find our balance again. That's so interesting here in the context of YouTube, because I feel like to succeed on this platform, you have to be a speedboat, not a cruise ship. And it's interesting to hear like how you navigate that as such a big channel. How about a speed ship? I don't know. I mean, like, the world's biggest jet ski. It's like a little, you're a little guy on the top of it. It's like huge. I mean, I just like, I, I, I, we're growing. And it's, it's been a lot to like think about like checklist and processes. I can't imagine like the scale of 100 plus employees. And it's not something that comes naturally to me, which again is why I sort of recognized the situation we were in and was trying to hire process. Yeah. And, and, and leadership in that way. Anything else with like writing or scripting or like other like rules of YouTube that you have, like, Linus, like, I mean, I just think like, like, you could pen to paper before you turn on a camera in a really interesting way and seeing you, like, go through a teleprompter. Like, it seems like you're very like tactical with the words that you say. Nobody wants their time wasted. It's our most precious resource. And as part of my writing process, I will, I will, I will rehearse as I'm writing. I tell the writers, I even tell our business team when they're putting together sponsor talking points. I'm like, if you haven't read it out loud, you haven't done the work because that's what it's ultimately destined for. It's not destined to be words on a page. It's destined to be read. And it's destined to be heard. Go stand in front of a mirror. I don't care if you're on screen talent or not. Do it with inflection because you'll catch all kinds of errors that way. Like, oh, man, sometimes you'll end up with a paragraph that is so full of 13900K running at 4.8 gigahertz with 256 kilobytes of level one cash and blah, blah, blah, where it becomes incomprehensible. comprehensible. You read that easily. But listening to it is like painful. And so the the spoken past, the voice pass or the or the reading it rehearsal to yourself is a way that you can catch things like that before they ever make it to the teleprompter. You read something like that and you go, this is awful. Why don't we just say it's a really fast CPU and show all the numbers on screen? We're creating for video for crying out loud. We don't have to say everything. That's so, you know, it's so interesting hearing you say that reminds me my interview with Eric where he bought all his editors, web cams and mics. So when they do temp audio, they're performing it like I am instead of writing it as a placeholder before, you know, Eric comes in because it'll help with the pacing. Yeah, help with the pacing. Yeah. So it's interesting to hear you like voice passes. Yeah, I feel like not too many creators like do that at all. Uh, you know, I'm not to like 10,000 videos now or something like that. So this is what this is what 10,000 videos look like if you start being complete ass. So anyone can do it just takes so much, so much practice. Yeah, I saw this graph that you recently put out about how you guys make money. Yeah. I was wondering if you could break this down and talk about how you think about the money that comes in the Linus Media Group. Um, I think about it in terms of sustainability, right? So every one of these revenue streams, you know, you, they have different characteristics, right? So some of them are more profitable than others. Like this is just revenue. This is dollars coming in. Yeah. I could have $100 million revenue tomorrow if I sold screwdrivers for $10 and I sold 10 million of them. That would be $100 million revenue, but I would have lost tens of millions of dollars. So that's not that's not profitability. That doesn't help me pay my employees. It doesn't help me buy equipment. It doesn't help me keep the lights on, right? So you break this revenue down and you look at it in terms of like, okay, how profitable is it? How predictable is it? Uh, flow plane, for instance, is only 7.2% of our revenue. That's your membership. That's our membership content. Yeah. But that's a subscription. That's recurring. Those are from our incredible like shout out my floaters. Those are from our incredible supporters who are giving us anywhere from three to $10 a month to, you know, sometimes behind the scenes, early access. Yeah. Um, just to support the channel. And we have over 40,000 of them right now. Wow. And they're awesome. And I can count on that. So when I'm planning, you know, when I'm going, okay, you know, yeah, can we, can we have a dedicated person whose job it is is to just go around and make behind the scenes for them? I go, well, yeah, of course we can, because we can count on them, right? Whereas if I were to look at, um, YouTube AdSense, I can count on that to a degree, but it's more volatile. If we have a rough month for uploads, AdSense goes way down. And then if we have a really great month, AdSense goes way up. Float plane doesn't have that. It never has a spike, but it never has really a big dip. It's been pretty consistent growth overall, you know, side of scandals or whatever. And then, okay, in video sponsor spots and sponsored projects, uh, these are quite predictable because world class team, our business team is outstanding. We brought business in house over 10 years ago. We don't use outside, uh, like agents. We do work with agencies and some of them are really great. Some of them are not great. And that's why we brought it in house, but our team is outstanding and they are a big part of why we can weather a storm in our AdSense because if you look at it in video sponsor spots and fully sponsored videos are each about as much as AdSense overall. So where one channel that doesn't have those might have their AdSense dropped by a third, which drops their revenue by a third. Our revenue will drop by one, one ninth, which is a lot more sustainable. Yeah, right? Um, and just to differentiate those, uh, in video sponsorships are like a 60-second integration. Yeah, sponsored projects are like entire video is about the product. Yeah. Yeah. YouTube AdSense is like pure profit. I don't have any head count that's directly associated with YouTube AdSense. Whereas sponsored projects and in video sponsor spots, there are a lot of work. They're a heavy lift, right? We could just upload the video and we would get ads. Well, I mean, there's a ton of editing costs and production costs. Sure. But that that's kind of shared across, but it's shared across everything. Yeah. Whereas, you know, directly, there's people who create flow plane to double click on sponsorships. Like do you have any like tips or like how do you guys pitch like sponsors or like like how do you like landed a deal? Because I think bringing in in-house is such an interesting move. We've done the same thing and I find that we've been far more effective. I'm wondering like how have you been able to land big sponsors or what do you do in-house that kind of differentiates you guys? I would say, um, you know, a big part of it is understanding who you're talking to. And for us, a really important thing is treating every brand deal like it could be a long-term relationship. And sometimes that means not charging as much. Someone might come to you with an offer and you go, that's too much. I cannot give you ROI on that. Because I want them to come back. I want repeat customers. I want, because that's part of having a diverse predictable, right? Predictible. Yeah. I want a predictable revenue stream. So we like to work with brands on at least a quarterly, ideally an annual basis in terms of their upfront commitments for what we're going to do for the year. And we like to make sure that they are getting taken care of and make sure that they're getting a return on that. So like, okay, we had a collab product a little while ago that was like a co-branded one. I'm not going to name it because it flopped. And, you know, that was impacting their willingness to spend with us. And I basically went to the business team and I said, fucking find a way to sell it. It's to be clear, it didn't flop because it's like bad. It's not harmful to the user. The product is perfectly the product. It's just it was kind of expensive and it's kind of a niche product and whatever, right? But it's fine. It's good product. No such thing as a bad product, just a bad price. The point is, I went to them, I was like, hey, we need to do what it takes. We need to promote this, you know, buy the inventory from them and then sell it at a loss on our store. I don't care, but we have to do right because at the end of the day, you know, I take the word partner extremely seriously, right? And brands are not just brands like their partners. They give us something. We give them something in return. You know, tech companies. I see them as a partner too. They give us the product to review. We give them our honest feedback. The deal has to be clear. It has to be upfront. So in the case of a brand sponsor, right? They are expecting some kind of ROI. But we'll find out what it is. What are their KPIs for this campaign? Do they want people to sign up for their giveaway? Do they want sales? Do they want awareness? What are they after? And how do we make sure that we are not taking such a ridiculous amount of money that it's going to leave a bad taste in their mouth? And we don't always get it right. Nobody does. But in general, we try to, I like to stack W's is what I tell the team. And the more W's, we can stack the better. So one of my best examples, this is like probably my best idea ever, was our tech upgrade series, which at first we had sponsored by Intel. And then they dropped the ball. And now it's sponsored by AMD. And we take it member of our team and it's drawn by lottery system. And they get a $5,000 US dollar budget to do a tech dream overhaul of whatever it has to incorporate something from the sponsor brand, just to make sure they're like getting some on camera time in the video. But beyond that, it's up to you. We've had people buy things as diverse as neck massagers, to controllers for their meat smoker, to freaking model trains, like anything you imagine it. And someone on our team has an interest in it and they want to spend money on it. And that's one of my favorite examples of stacking W's because the company wins because we get the sponsorship revenue. The sponsor wins because they get this incredible positive brand association that is deeply integrated to your point before into content that is just for tech lovers, by tech lovers, it creates all the good vibes that you want from naturally sponsored content that's not shoehorned in there. It's not unnatural, right? The audience wins because they love it. And they get an opportunity to meet members of our team that they otherwise would never get a chance to meet. They get to see behind the curtain that way. And they freaking love it. They also get a lot of practical inspiration from these because we're making very different decisions, very personal decisions when someone is spending their own $5,000 budget versus when we're trying to imagine a hypothetical person and design a gaming PC for them, right? And then the fourth W is for the person who gets the upgrade. They get a $5,000 upgrade. Yeah. Everybody wins. What else in this pie chart? Creator warehouse. Okay. That is greater than half of our total revenue now. Give context for people who don't know what it is. So that's our merch brand, our merch development company essentially now. I mean, it's got like 20 people who work for it or something like that. Plus 3PL logistics plus contractors and whatnot. And it's a huge sort of revenue for us now. But it has sort of the worst things of all the others all piled into it, right? Like it has lower margin compared to just uploading a video and getting ad sense money, much, much higher overhead. It is, it is, I guess these are all just money. Like it's, it's so expensive to run a physical goods business. It has a ton of potential brand damage exposure, right? Like all it takes is, you know, one customer service representative to miss one stupid email and someone's on Reddit being like so much for Linus's Trust Me Bro guarantee. It's like, dude, if I'd seen the email, I'd have been happy to respond to it. But, you know, stuff happens, right? And, and to be clear, you know, I'm not upset with them for airing their grievances. It's a, it's a real valid grievance. But it is also frustrating for me because no, I literally cannot like reply to every customer support ticket. And sometimes there are things beyond our control. Like the whole situation with tariffs in the US right now led to a lot of confusion in the logistics industry that led to a lot of packages being failed to deliver and just ultimately destroyed. And so people would order like a limited edition product. And we only printed it limited edition because we're not going to lie to you and say it's limited edition, but actually we're just going to make it forever. And then your, your package gets destroyed because it got lost in the tariff confusion and then we can't send you another one. Like I didn't ask you to cancel the order I just wanted my order. It's like, I don't have one. I don't have one to send you, right? And so it creates a lot of, it's a huge surface that your brand is exposed over and the lead times are horrible. Like I mean, we famously took three years to develop our screwdriver. That's just R&D, R&D, R&D, R&D for maybe a return, right? And so yeah, it looks really impressive, right? It's that big piece of the pie, but it's the kind of thing that I wouldn't encourage every small creator to go chasing right away because there's other lower hanging fruit, you know, more profitable, easier to scale, things. More predictable. More predictable. And but this is, I mean, this is how you turn yourself from an online influencer into a brand. And that's something that I can't take any credit for pioneering. But it's definitely something that I recognize over time because we ask ourselves, you know, what value are we adding? And when it came to just like putting our logo on T-shirts and hats, I wasn't convinced there was a ton of value. But if we had an idea, you know, whether it's a folding clothes hanger or whether it's a really amazing everyday carry knife, you know, to call out a couple of other really cool creator products or whether it's just a better balanced screwdriver. Then yeah, I think using the resources that you gain on the influence side to make a product that people are really going to love is as far as I can tell the current end game. Yeah, how many products do you guys have, like, how many have you built in house? Oh, at least a hundred, I don't know. Lots, like everything I'm wearing right now, this hoodie, the zippers, everything else is T-shirt, wow. No, the zippers YKK, but I mean, you guys have like put this all together. Oh, yeah, yeah, these are for the cargo pants I'm wearing or fully custom, the lanyard, my keys are on, this custom, my underwear is LTT. Well, the only thing that I'm wearing that is not LTT, other than the Vessie shoes from our sponsor Vessie, are these socks that I got at creator summit? YouTube socks got it. Linus, can you share what, like, top line revenue is like, how much is Linus Tech Tips worth today? Linus Media Group? Ooh, that's a good question. I try not to, like, I had to look this up. I don't actually get, like, a quarterly breakdown of this stuff. I like to be really focused on the creative side of things, as long as, you know, the lights are on and everybody's being paid on time, and I can have a budget for Wacadoodle projects. Like, I bought a $30,000 CPU cooler recently, which is like insane. We bought, we spent 15 grand on a display wall, you know, like LED display wall on Craigslist. Yeah, sight unseen, but our viewers love that stuff. You know, they want to see us be the one to, who would possibly buy this on Craigslist? I'll be the guest. I'll do it. Let's all, and let's all experience what that's like together, right? So as long as I have that, I don't worry too much about that. What I will say is that if someone were to offer for our company today, it wouldn't be as much as the offer that I've talked about in the past, which was 100 million. I would be surprised if it was less than 50. You would sell for less than 50. No, no, I'd be surprised if someone offered less than 50. I would laugh at them if it was less than 50. Why would the value or the offer of Linus Minigroup go down? We had more viewership two years ago than we do today. And so I would say that there's some weakening in the brand there. With that said, even though viewership is maybe half of what it was then, I wouldn't say that the valuation would be half. And the reason for that is that the physical goods business has picked up in a big way. The creator economy has generally matured over that time. So sponsorship rates are always kind of going up for us as more and more dollars come flooding into this space. We are less dependent than ever on those sponsor dollars thanks to our in-house developed merch and our wonderful supporters on Flowplane. So for that reason, I would say it would probably be somewhere between where our viewership is and where the previous valuation was. Is there a number you'd sell Linus Minigroup for now? A hundred mill was a lot. And what I asked myself was how would this change my life? And the answer was it wouldn't. I have been extremely lucky. I've worked hard to be clear, but I have been extremely lucky. I was in the right place at the right time with an incredible team, a supportive partner, and I have, and I'm like, I have a fancy car now, but it was like, I bought it when it was not just affordable. You know, I went straight from, I went from my old Civic that we would jokingly call the Lamborghini, just like Ramshackle Civic, manual transmission, you know, to, I got like a Chevy Volt, and that was when, that was only really because we were, we put my Civic on the show floor at one of our conventions, and we put out pens and like, glitter and stuff, and we let the community decorate it, and they trashed it. Unfortunately, it was not a proud moment for our community. They like put glue all over the windscreen and stuff. So I had to get a new car, and we'd also been thinking about doing more car content. So I was like, okay, maybe we'd do this. Would be, I like daily drive them, and that's, so I bought a Chevy Volt, because it seemed like a super practical car, and then went straight from there to like the Porsche I can. There's definitely cool stuff that I could do, but the big dreams that I had at that time were either within my reach without selling, or they were dreams that I could only really achieve by staying as the head of the company. So the ones that I needed to stay with the company for were, I think what we're doing with labs is really important. We have had some missteps along the way, but I think that in time someone has to do something about the inshitification of trying to buy stuff. Like, listicles that are written by people or realistically AI bots that have never actually touched the product, right? Storefronts like Amazon that are just full of, you know, random brand name that's just a bunch of consonants who paid the most to be at the top of the search result, right? Like, I want us to go back to what I tried to do at NCIX where we educate people on their purchases in hopes that we will create less waste that way, because I am such a buy once, cry once person. I'm not saying that you shouldn't, you know, engage in consumerism, right? You shouldn't like buy a fancy thing that appeals to you, but by all means, you know, whatever. I'm not here to judge. I just want you to make a wise decision that you're happy with. Yeah. I don't want you to be misled into buying the wrong thing. So our lab's team is working on just, you know, testing and making sure that people are ending up with the right product. And we weren't done yet. We're still not done. We have a ton of work to do and I need to be in charge because I need to know that it's not just going to get cut when times are tough. That team is a resource sink and doesn't have revenue directly attached to it. And so I see the value, but if we were to sell to some private equity firm or something like that, I don't know that they would see the value. I also don't know that they would properly recognize the value of our team on an ongoing basis. So that was a big part of why I didn't take it from that standpoint. And then in terms of like the financial goals that I still had, I'm looking at it going, well, like I wouldn't get a hundred million dollar offer if I wasn't making money at this company, right? So I wanted to start a badminton club, but I was like, can I save up for a couple of years and do it then? I can wait. You know? Yeah. So to be clear, do you regret not selling your channel for a hundred million dollars? I mean, I don't think anyone could look you in the eye across this table and say, I've never thought what that might have been like, but regret. No. Yeah. I want to rewind to when you almost went broke. Which time? Well, I want to talk about this because I watch all all your past podcasts and I feel like this is a moment you don't talk about enough. Can you take me through like when you were getting started and you know you're getting the channel up and running and that bank account is going to zero like what was happening because I think it's something that a lot of creators like relate to it. Okay. How deep do you want to go as deep as possible? Okay. Let's start then when I was working at the computer store. So I was still there. I was doing my day job. I was watching the revenue pour in from AdSense at the time and this is NCIX. That's right. Yes. Yeah. And I was going, okay, wow. This could be sustainable. Yeah. Right. This could be could be enough. It's not enough enough. I mean, we had 117,000 subscribers, I think, when I went indie. So, you know, you do the math. That's not enough for a team of three people right at the gate. It was me to employees and then my wife was helping with a lot of things behind the scenes. But she also had her day job as a pharmacist. Now we didn't have a huge nest egg. We had just purchased a home and we had just had our first kid. So that was eight months before we started the YouTube company. So everything was just the worst possible timing, really. And but I was still I was looking at those numbers. I was going, okay, this could be doable. I went to my boss and said, okay, I want to leave. I want to negotiate a deal where I take this Linus Tech Tips channel. You keep the NCIX Tech Tips channel. I help you run that channel. I help you with a succession plan, but I want to buy the Linus Tech Tips channel for a dollar. We ultimately did reach a deal and I didn't have to pay for the channel. So that was huge, but that didn't mean that I had startup capital. That didn't mean that I had a huge runway. All I really had was a small nest egg that my wife and I had started to build up around the time that we decided to do it. So that was in August, you know, and we split in the end of December. So not a ton. And then we also had my wife's income, but even that was reduced because she was on maternity leave at the time. So looking back, it's insane. I don't know what the heck we were possibly thinking, but the trick was doing it. And what I learned is that in business, you make a lot of friends. You make a lot of people who you think can well, have your back, you know, if you were to ever lose your job or shift positions or need help in some way. And what you discover is that once you're not in a position where they kind of need you to buy their product or market their product or whatever else, a lot of those friendships evaporate. And so what happened was I looked at it going, okay, well, here's all these brands that I have really good contacts at. If even a fraction of them will sponsor us, then we can make this work. And that's exactly what I ended up with. I ended up with just a fraction of them are very first CES, basically the only reason we were able to do it. And that was a really make a break moment for us. So CES is the consumer electronics show that's where every tech brand goes. And I knew we needed to be there because we needed a bunch of content. And I needed contacts both to get our hands on products so that we could review it. And also to try to make inroads with the marketing folks so that we could sustain our business. And this year for CES as an independent user. That's right. So we got enough sponsorship. I believe our gold sponsor was $5,000. And that covered we uploaded, I think, somewhere between 30 and 40 videos. That was our gold sponsor for those videos. And our silver sponsors, I believe were $2,500 each. We got $10,000, which was a ton of money at the time and still a lot of money. But a week long trip to Vegas for four people, right? It was me. I had Luke. I had Edsel. And then we actually had another guy who was there with us to kind of help us out. And that's where the magic kind of comes in because you're probably looking at it going okay hotel and flights for three to four people for $10,000 that's how could you possibly make any money on it? So the fourth guy was just a buddy of Luke's whose dad wanted him to make inroads in the tech industry. So he was a tag along and his dad covered our hotels if I recall correctly. So that was the only way we were able to get there. And when we got there, we were able to make some connections that ultimately led to our first brand deals. They were really small, but what they allowed us to do was survive because the first six months we were burning like any startup business we were burning cash payroll goes out. Ad sense comes in, but it's not enough. And right the week literally the week that we ran out of the nest egg and Ivon's income. And we reached that inflection point where we were not going to have payroll. The first sponsor check arrived from those connections we made at CES, but that's how close it was and that was what it took. So that week we did over 30 videos, plus I was having meetings with any brand manager that would even take a phone call or text message or an email for five minutes. Just please let me talk to you about what we're doing. I had this cringe pitch deck. This is the pitch deck you use to get your first sponsors. Yeah. Wow. I like pretty much did it myself. Ed cleaned it up a little bit. I did all the copy and it's not very good, but I got the job done. I'm wondering when you were at your like old job at NCIX, like were there things that you were learning before you went independent that you now apply today or that helped you make that jump? I'll tell you the last thing that I learned there first. The most important one is time management. So my boss calls me to his office. He goes, our competitors are making these videos. I think online video is the future. I'm like, okay, I've always been more of a text guy. I like reading, I like writing, I had no background in video whatsoever in front of behind a camera on a timeline, nothing. So he calls me to his office. He goes, well, I want you to make these videos so that we have videos too because I don't really seem presentable enough and you care about what a ram timing is, so go make videos. Like many of his assignments, I treated it like it was a passing thought of his that he'd forget about. So I ignored it. And then he brought me in a few weeks later and he goes, well, I haven't you done this in much more colorful language, basically, where the fuck are these videos? I kind of go, well, I didn't want to tell him. I didn't do it because I thought you weren't serious about it. The same way that I did things with my father, my dad when I was growing up, he would ask me to do something. And the only way to know if he actually cared or not was to not do it and then wait to see if he followed it up, right? Because he'd ask all kinds of random stuff. So I was like, I didn't want to say, well, Jack, I didn't do it because I thought that you probably would forget. So I kind of went, oh, yeah, well, I've just been really busy. And he goes, well, no more excuses. And he literally goes to the president of the company's office. He takes the camera that he bought for his son for Christmas that apparently he didn't use. He brings it over. He hands it to me. He assigns me someone from our graphic design department who is the original, the cameraman, to operate the camera and to edit the videos and he goes, okay, no more excuses. Do it. I kind of went, okay. So that very first one was, I basically had no idea what I was doing and I was trying to find something bite-sized, something I didn't have to do a ton of research for because time management. I already had multiple jobs. So I picked a heatsink. Very simple, easy story. I decided very early on to make a review video about. Well, I wouldn't necessarily describe it as a review and I'll get to that because very early on, I felt that the worst thing that you could do as a company was sell. Salesman is gross. Think about a salesman trope. Do you like it? Whether it's an extended warranty upsell or whether it's going to check with my manager to see if they can do that price. Do you like anything about salesmanship? No, I mean, definitely has a stigma around it. Right. And so I decided very early on that if we were going to build an authentic relationship with our customers, who ultimately we wanted to sell them computer hardware, it had to be through education. So that very first video was not intended to be a review. It was intended to simply impart some knowledge that would help people make an informed decision when they were shopping. So I got this heatsink that I felt was a really good value, the sunbeam tech tunic tower. And I did a simple tutorial of how to install it. And I got a lot of pushback for that approach because upper management wanted me to sell. Sell, sell, sell. Do a segment on our weekly special and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, we should create a more informed customer base. And then naturally, if you do a good job of the weekly sale, they'll see products that they recognize are good and they'll buy them. And that's a much healthier relationship. But where we had a fundamental disagreement was where he said our primary goal as a company is to stock less is to buy less inventory. And I said, I don't think that's a good guiding star. I think our primary goal as a company should be to sell more. Not by less because buying less is a is a shrinking company mindset. Selling more is a growth mindset. And we argued about it. Sort of back and forth for a while you know or yeah, and he ultimately said Look I don't want to argue about this anymore. This is the direction I've set And if you can't get behind it then maybe you should just make videos Well, obviously he meant for him but I mean the numbers had been going up You know the the first time I could buy coffee with an ad sense check was well in the rearview mirror The first time I could buy a meal was also well in the rearview mirror It had been growing and growing and growing and I kind of went Yeah, maybe I should just make videos And that was when I started to kind of lay the groundwork for what a plan would look like to to separate What a negotiation with him might look like to be able to retain the channel and so I basically Came to them with two offers. I'm leaving Offer number one is I buy the Linus Tech Tips channel for one dollar You have no equity. I own it and I own the IP I own Linus Tech Tips.com the domain which currently you own But then I will own and I will in return give you Two years of a very reasonable deal for me to continue to host NCI X Tech Tips on what will still be your channel During that time I will come in once a week. I will Host the videos and I will also do some mentorship to help you build out an internal team that will continue to run those videos for you Also, I will give you a perpetual license for any Linus Tech Tips content to continue to use it as rich video merchandising on your site Well, because if you recall that's how they were using it. Yeah, any product that they sold it was nice to have a video on the page. So you guys Forever license fee free will use Linus Tech Tips content on your website Number three I will sign a non-compete where I will not take sponsorships for a period of I think I gave them two years Or three something like that with competing retail entities and I had some stipulations for what made something competing But we agreed with a handshake that new egg was competing and Amazon was competing and like tech retailers were competing But if I was to do something for say Home Depot that that would not be competing. It wasn't just a blanket. Anything that's a retailer is competing. Yeah, that was my offer Offer number two I'm leaving and I have no prospects. So I'm going to go work for new egg Their biggest competitor. Yes Because I don't want to be here anymore. Wow, and what happened from there? Was there a response? So it took them actually almost four months To sign the deal and I have to take part of the responsibility for that because the way that I departed was in retrospect not great On the one hand I did graciously give them four months notice Which is a long time. I now recognize especially a very long time and to go back I would not do that and I wouldn't ask anyone for that much notice because realistically once someone has Given the resignation they're done. They're like they're done. They're out and and no amount of Of self will power can make you care about something that you literally are not invested in anymore, right? um So I gave them four months notice but Without talking to them about it. I tried to poach the cameraman And when they found out Our deal that we had they wanted to rip it up. They came back. They said And it was emotional But it was a valid emotion. They were really angry that I would without even talking to them These are people that we kind of remember right business is business, but Relationships are relationships. These are people that I've I've stood in the trenches with and and we've done Store grand openings with and we've we've worked hard together and yeah it was work And yeah, I was paid and and they were paid and everything right but I'd like to think that it's a little deeper than just an exchange of money goods and services right and so yeah I agree that that was a betrayal of of trust to not talk about it with them say hey before you tried to poach I'd like to bring him with me. Yeah, because my intention From the start was to bring him with me as as our shooter editor and and business partner because you really you need to date staff Yeah, like to go independent and I wanted him. I wanted him to be the one. He was there from day zero. Yeah, and Not realizing that could hurt like NCIX the company that you were leaving with there. Oh, I knew it would hurt them He was very important there by that time. He was not just a graphic designer He was pretty senior in the leadership team as well And so I I should have known better. I should have I should have talked through it Um, I should have given that up them that opportunity to at least consider the entire scope of what they were agreeing to So when he found out he wanted to completely cancel the deal And I wondered yeah, and basically What happened then was I was there. I was still working there things are a little tense as you can imagine I don't have a signed deal for the ownership of the Linus Tech Tips channel But I'm still plugging away day-to-day on the PC systems and product management training my replacements uploading YouTube videos Trying to you know move forward in good faith and he basically comes to me and he says okay new deal He doesn't go with you and number two is I want equity. Yeah, and I kind of went Okay, I'm not giving tag-along equity to someone who knows absolutely nothing about this business I don't think that that makes sense. I wanted to bootstrap it because I wanted to have the control to never have someone tell me again You know, you have to sell It can't be about the education you have to do this you have to do that the whole point was that I wanted to build a team The way that I wanted to do it and I wanted to build a company the way that I wanted to do it And so I ultimately you know, I talked to the cameraman. He's like yeah, I mean my job here is realistically not that bad and this isn't gonna be a guarantee Anyway, so you do what you got to do and and I respect him a lot for that For making it possible for us to even come back to the negotiating table, but I said no equity So okay New deal but no equity and it wasn't until Literally December 31st with the incorporation of Linus Media Group being January 1 of the following year December 31st he was actually in China and I was like hey, we still don't have a deal My payroll starts tomorrow. Do I have a channel or not because I'm not coming to work. You're like talking to the owner Yeah, yeah, and I was hard to get in touch with him He was like I'm overseas. I don't want to talk about this right now. I'm like dude We've had four months to talk about this. Are we doing this or not? And he says yes And so it like came down to the line with my team too having no idea how I'm gonna pay them like they Walked away one walked away from school and the other walked away from Well school and potential job opportunities to come and do this with me It was the whole thing was crazy. We didn't even have a channel yet So that was probably one of the most tense moments in my life right because I remember walking around in the family room at my old house Pacing pacing on the phone like will he won't he will he won't he and I've had conversations with With the team members like do you guys think we can do this if we have to start a channel fresh I don't know Turns out we wouldn't have been able to because we almost ran out of money even as it was even with an established channel Wait, so you were gonna start your own YouTube channel regardless Well, that's what they had signed up for the two employees. I told them we'd try So wow, you were ready to go like you're gonna start like another channel Did you have a name if it wasn't gonna be like it? No, no Because we were counting on getting the deal done. Yeah, but if you didn't get the deal done You would have started YouTube channel had those two employees with you But been starting with zero subscribers as opposed to the hundred or two hundred thousand you had that was the plan And I I don't think we would have made it What what gave you that conviction line is to go like all in even if you Didn't acquire the team line of trust that I have They walked away from other opportunities to do this And you had already promised some salaries and jobs. Yeah, but it's that that's fascinating on day one of you being an independent creator You already had two hires. Yeah, which is actually very different than most creators who they're gonna go on their own solo Oh, yeah until they make enough money Um like what gave you the clarity to hire two people on day one because I actually did the same thing like I want I worked at Instagram and YouTube. I built up enough savings I was like I'm going to this as as a business and made my first hire Shortly after like leaving my day job to just grow and scale but I find it's surprising a very few creators do that You know savings is obviously a big component, but what what what gave you the clarity to do that? How much money do you get have like saved up because obviously YouTube back then what year was that? 2012 I want to say okay like Even wilder west than it is now. Oh, yeah How much savings if I could ask did you have at this time to be able to hire two people on day one? Got to be honest with you. I don't know, but I doubt it was more than like 10 grand. Wow Like we had regular income coming in from Yvonne's like maternity leave chat on your wife. Yeah, sorry and but like Yeah, I mean, I was just I was just working a job at a computer store Like I had a I had an infant child. I didn't have a ton of money. Oh my god So you're new dad $10,000 is I'm guessing in the bank but there's no way it was a ton It was not nowhere is a ton and then you have two employees on day one. Yeah, maybe I had maybe it was 15 or 20 I don't know it wasn't a lot though, but it's not an amount that I remember. I'll tell you that much Did you get to a point in those early days of Linus Tech tips like you as an independent creator now where you're like oh my god This is gonna end of course every day I mean, what do you think animated me to get up in the morning and do like I said over 30 videos in a week That's insane. Remember there's travel like I was doing this at CES So I was moving from place to place. I would like I would arrive at the booth and be okay. What do you got? Got it. Thank you So we're here at the booth and then we're doing this and here's everything about it And that and then I'd hand it back to them and I'd leave and they'd go how did you do that? I'd go because I have to Because I don't have time to not be able to do that Necessity we had to survive What are some of those other big swings that you took in those early days that helped you make it man Because there's another version of the story where you just go broke. Oh, yeah. Oh 100% um We were pretty slow in steady But there was there was one crazy existential Dread moment So we started out in my garage. Yeah, and that was fine because that cost nothing right you just parked your car in the driveway No biggie Then we actually bought a house to use as a studio. So it turns out The city don't take kindly to using a residential property as a filming studio And once we reached the point where we had I think 10 employees the complaints started rolling in We actually had a group of neighbors come to our door We know what you're doing in here and we're like, I mean, yeah, we weren't really hiding it But sure You know, we've complained and city sent out an inspector and the inspector was super nice. They basically went okay look I'm not going to come in there because like I'm not a cop. I don't have a search warrant You don't have to let me in there But what I am going to do is I'm going to give you notice that I am going to come back And next time I'm going to come in there and there better not be a business in there Like I went Okay, I need a little more time Before you come back But we are making good faith efforts to move We had put a down payment on a studio So it was the plate was about 6,000 square feet And then we were building a tenant improvement in it That was going to be about going to add about another 1500 square feet or so. Yeah, so about 7500 square feet Big yeah, it was a million dollars Right and so the down payment on that was like 200 or 300,000 or something like that It was hard for us to get Financing yeah because nobody took our business seriously back then Like I couldn't even get a credit card for the business for two years I couldn't get a credit card I just had to use my personal credit card and then I had to like reimburse That made the accounting way more complicated for no reason Other than that creator was not a job title So on top of the down payment So we had to like build offices and sets And so that was another like $150,000 like it was a lot of money A lot of money for us, especially at the time And that's where Vessel came in Do you remember Vessel? Yeah, yeah, yeah So people subscribed to Vessel for $3 a month if I recall correctly And then it's early access to all your favorite channels on vessel.com And then the same upload to go to YouTube a week later That was their model And I had said no I'd said, yeah, forget it You know, you cut me open, I bleed red No, but like YouTube red, you know, not just blood I was like YouTube has gotten me to where I've gotten And I'm a firm believer in riding the horse That got you to where you've gotten But they were offering huge signing bonuses Like what? Tens of thousands of dollars Which was a lot of money for us And then Vessel came knocking one more time and I went Yes Yes, I need the money Because otherwise, how am I going to build the tenant improvement in this space? I don't have the money for it Because we had signed the deal for the real studio We were working at a house, we were going to get kicked out of the house So I was stuck in this house that I was not allowed to work in I had a studio space that was just a big empty warehouse That I couldn't afford to build sets in I had to take the Vessel money So that was a wild time, man I don't know if I had ever worked that hard in my life Or if I've ever worked that hard again in my life Just to close here, I'm just curious like where this goes from here Because I think you have a unique perspective Especially as AI, it becomes a bigger deal Like, you know, Sora recently launching Yeah Like that is a wild Like I feel like a step change in like Yeah, I hate to use the D word but disruptive Yeah, you know, for once Yeah Where do you see as a tech expert, like this all going Dischanging your creative process and flow Dischanging YouTube, like I wanted to ask you Because you have a unique perspective on this At the end of the day, none of those things matter What matters is how it's going to change viewer and consumer behavior And then from there we can derive how to engage with that I would like to believe in much the same way That our product development philosophy is You know, don't save 10 cents If 15 cents will last twice as long You know, I came from the Made in China generation of kids Where all of my toys broke in 10 minutes Right? And so, you know, when we were developing our products I went, no, I want to make stuff that's not like that I want to make stuff that actually lasts And I don't think I'm the only one I don't think I'm the only one my age that goes Yeah, yeah You know, water guns used to actually last for multiple seasons Instead of just immediately leaking right out of the box What the heck happened with that And in the same way, what I'm hoping is that as quality decays Like crazy on online content We're going to reach that point where people who grew up with that go Well, this is garbage. I want something that's more bespoke I want something that's human crafted And we are obviously, you know, aware of generative AI We are obviously looking at ways that it can or can't integrate with our workflows You know, we don't want to completely miss the train But I don't personally believe that an AI can ever be a substitute for a real human opinion Because, you know, let's take let's take my controversial take on the AirPods Pro 3 recently An AI can never put them in its ears It can never know how they feel It can never struggle to take off the ear tip It can never It can never feel And so I think I hope that in time Everything is going to decay to the point where there's going to be a snapback And we're going to go No, what I want is human validated testing of the things I buy Rather than some AI recommending something that it has literally never touched Because it literally isn't a physical entity Well, but I mean, that's specific to your industry Yes, in terms of YouTube I do I do I do worry about some verticals that are more pure entertainment You know, just like I was very stressed for the Hollywood writers Gailed when they were on their most recent strike Where they're trying to push back against AI And they're trying to, you know, make all these demands At a time when, you know, on the studio side They're looking at it going, oh, you guys are like more replaceable than ever And at a time when it feels like, man, like a lot of the stuff that I fire up on Netflix It's just like, yeah, an AI Maybe this was written by a human, but I wouldn't be able to tell Like this intersection of cost cutting on the studio side To cost like earnings expectations on the writing side To just slack draw, slash second screen attention span On the audience side is not good. I'm glad they got a deal done But I it was it was it was it was funny I saw the justification for what was it? One year deal, two year deal Can't remember what it was But the justification from the writer side was we wanted a short deal Because we wanted to see what loopholes they'd find To like work AI in in ways that we couldn't have expected But I'm looking at it going I bet they were happy to sign a short-term deal with you Because it gives them two more years for the stuff to get better And for your negotiating position to deteriorate further I'm not like an AI bowl, you know I'm not invested in any AI companies I'm not sitting here going AI is going to replace everything But I also think that to imagine that it isn't going to have a significant impact On certain industries is just naive at this point in time So the pure entertainment If you make something that people are generally content To have on a second screen or not like really be paying attention to I would be deeply worried right now That's an interesting distinction that's what's at risk versus yeah I don't think the human connection, well I shouldn't even say that I mean you've got your full on AI influencers but even that I kind of look at it and I go like what's the difference between an AI influencer And a team of people behind a real person In terms of like it's still being human crafted in a sense Like yeah there's a difference But the way that some people in particular you know Craft a persona for a real human you know meat sack Right and have a team behind it you know like the way that we would Devisively talk about certain music artists back in the 90s Or the early 2000s or a product you know Eminem diss right there right you ain't nothing but a product You know it doesn't seem that different Yeah, from these AI influencers because they're really just singing the words that like people have written for them or labels or like companies Yeah, yeah, so it's a familiar model. Yeah, interesting. Right. Um, but you're right It's all forms of entertainment versus like maybe more education or like giving an opinion or requires a bit of trust and you know Anything with a real human connection. I think will survive for longer But even that, you know, you look at the kinds of relationships and I use that word That is a that's one kind of our word. Sure Relationships with a eyes and I kind of go yeah, maybe not even Personality's are safe. Yeah, well, I'm sorry to be a bit of a downer on this, but I mean I'm up close and personal with it all the time and it really is getting Better all the time and I just Hopefully we're so deep into this video that most people aren't watching it anymore But most consumers are quite frankly not very discerning Yeah, and the only proof you need of that is the back when we used to have a like dislike ratio on YouTube You know, you look at the like dislike ratio on some of the most just totally Unbelievable apology videos. It's like that ain't even good acting, bro You know, and you'll have you two thirds of the community rallying around this like crocodile tears like fake ass apology And you look at it and you just kind of go Like you realize it's a decision to cry on camera, right? You could do another take where you're not crying live stream. That's one thing. Yeah, you might like break down on a live stream But when you record a take Put it on a timeline Cut it up and export it you made a decision to be crying, right? Um, and so you know, I think that's something that just people are just Ain't that savvy viewers. Yeah, interesting Like where as I look at something I go everything that's in a video is there on purpose and Yeah, I don't buy it, you know Yeah, well line is I I feel like if anybody's gonna navigate like, you know the next five years and whatever holds like I'm I'm passing to see how you're gonna do how you're gonna build a company do our best We'll do I appreciate you just walking through like yeah showing us like so much of the inside of how you built your channel Yeah, those scary early days Man, yeah, I appreciate coming on. I appreciate you having me on thank you very much. Amazing. Thank you. I'm right