shownotes

Created Briefs - July 23, 2021

A summary of the top creator news from the week.

Gregarious Narain

Jul 28, 2021 • 49 min read

Hosts

Gregarious Narain (@gregarious)
Ken Yeung (@thekenyeung)

Guests

Arnold C. (@HanglydeCEO)

News Topics

https://www.engadget.com/elgato-stream-deck-mk2-trailer-details-faceplates-235437088.html

1/ Investing in creators is a fascinating, though nascent idea - but quickly evolving. From funds to co-ops to dedicated investors there is a lot of attention being paid to this domain for good reason.

A thread looking at the options creators have for investment today.. pic.twitter.com/C5G0Lhm1uP
— 🟣 Gregarious Narain (@gregarious) May 27, 2021

The #CreatorEconomy is growing at the feet of failings of the status quo. I believe that fast-changing norms, expectations, and business models is leading us to a conundrum. 🧵👇
— 🟣 Gregarious Narain (@gregarious) July 23, 2021

Transcript

Gregarious Narain 0:48
It's like our first time doing this...

Ken Yeung 0:51
I mean, we're... it's early in the morning. What do you expect when you know we're in the upside down? What do you you know, go figure?

Gregarious Narain 1:00
I even forgot to start the classroom so give me a second.

Ken Yeung 1:04
Give us some time, Matt. All right, we're getting around to it. All right, it says we're usually used to a two o'clock Pacific show and now this is our first episode at eight. Okay.

Gregarious Narain 1:18
Without a doubt.

Ken Yeung 1:18
Yeah. And yes, you know, look at these guys I've been working out so relax, Matt. Okay, just chill.

Gregarious Narain 1:28
All right. Well, welcome back. Welcome to the first episode of creative briefs is our weekly recap of the top news. From the creator economy. This is a ready our first what do they call those spin-offs from our original show the Created Economy, which we do on Wednesdays. So every week, we're gonna be bringing you a round-up of the latest news, commentary, interviews, and maybe some deep dives on key topics from the creator economy itself. We do go live on Fridays at 8 am. Pacific time. 10 am. One, that's 11 am, what is it?

Ken Yeung 2:01
8 am Pacific, 9 am.

Gregarious Narain 2:02
I've been up since two o'clock, so...

Ken Yeung 2:04
Well, that's you normally, okay, that's your own problem. Like why do you even bother sleeping? Right? I mean,

Gregarious Narain 2:10
But yes, you can. If you do want to find out more we do live stream currently right now on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Clubhouse, and Twitter Spaces. So feel free to join us at any one of those places. If you prefer listening or viewing. We also do our longer-form post over a CreatedEconomy.com. We'll also have the show notes and transcripts up as well. So very excited to be here today. We have a lot of news to get through. We only have an hour. So we're going to dive right into it. So, Ken, I'm going to bring the slides up, and let's run with it. So as we said, welcome back to

Created Briefs. Oh, man, what I just do, I don't know.

Can you still see my screen?

Ken Yeung 2:54
Yes, yes.

Gregarious Narain 2:56
All right. Great. So yeah, July is right, there been a big, big week. By the way, you should follow us in real-time, because we do tweet out the links to all the articles that we do cover over at @CreatedEconomy Twitter. And of course, you can follow us on any of these other places as well. On Facebook, Flipboard, Twitch, and YouTube, we do appreciate your follow for sure. So let's get into the briefs. We've got some YouTube news. And by the way, just a little for background, I guess, on the format. And what we're hoping to accomplish here ultimately, is we want what we saw was that there's just too much news every week. And we were rushing to get through it all. And then, more importantly, I think is that we weren't giving those stories necessarily enough time to breathe, right? So we wanted to make sure we had some time to actually provide a little context and color on it. There are a lot of places to get links doesn't mean there's necessarily a lot of ways to get the context. Yeah, and the other information that goes with it. So we're trying to make sure we can do more of that.

So this is an old news article. But you know, this is one of the artifacts of like, what happens when the show was on Wednesday. But you know, I think what we've seen like sort of this horizontal escalation of features or you know, for like monetization and other things happening in the ecosystem. And I think that's likely coming as well like to the live streaming toolkit, right, so we saw tipping sort of making its way horizontally, we see audio rooms make its way horizontally. Now we see folks starting to borrow more and more from the twitch ecosystem because I think Twitch did a great job of building and fostering sort of community and also natively blending monetization and so YouTube is working on this, we've been talking about it, the new they have like several new features that are there sort of basically aping from the Twitch universe. I believe in this release, it was um, clipping of videos or smaller pieces. There was a new also, I should remember this, you know what, Ken, we what we're going to do next week is we're going to start we're going to just start opening the tab I was going to mention is we should just open all the tabs and like scroll through the articles.

But um, yeah, they do. To introduce, um, they're basically taking a few more of the tools out of the toolkit that twitch was already offering.

Ken Yeung 5:08
Yeah, so they're doing super chats, are doing super stickers, subscriptions, and now with super thanks. I mean, everything is just super. Right and but I mean, is it really that surprising though, I mean to see YouTube copying Twitch, I mean, to your point here in this caption anything you can do I can do and it's very much like how Twitter, a Clubhouse comes out with social audio and now Twitter Spaces and Facebook and things like that yet.

Gregarious Narain 5:39
The subscriber-only chats, VOD clips, and polls. That was the three.

Ken Yeung 5:42
Oh, right. Right,

Gregarious Narain 5:43
...that that was brought in this week. There is also the thing you just mentioned. They also have now added What do they call it? Super Thanks?

Ken Yeung 5:50
Super thanks, yes.

Gregarious Narain 5:51
So previously, in case you didn't know, they had super chats and super stickers, but these were tools, monetization tools that only exist during live streams. So if you were like, say, a video producer who produced static content, you couldn't actually participate or benefit from that revenue. And so super thanks is actually a way to tip for static videos, not live streams. So you know, very interesting, but you're right, Ken, I mean, what works, right. And, you know, I think like, number one, it shows that there's a powerful engagement model for the fan. And then also, to the extent that platforms want to keep these creators, they don't want to lose someone because like, they don't have a feature. So feature parities, it becomes an arms race pretty quickly, I think. And we're seeing that, that now that their eyes are open that, you know, one, potentially, their platform-based earnings are maybe like, under pressure, but also that there are tons of upstarts. And there's a growing inherent intent and demand from the creator to have more self-control and independence, that they're starting to offer these tools and so they're all racing, to sort of out creator, you know, each other.

Ken Yeung 7:06
But I mean, are these tools actually going to be a differentiator between, you know, you're getting people from Twitch to switch over to YouTube, right? Or to, you know, to jump over to Facebook or anything like that, it's only a matter of time I imagined before Facebook starts saying, okay, we see everything that feeds YouTube and Twitch does and we're going to roll it out ourselves for creators, you know, whether you're on Instagram or whether you're on Facebook or anything like that. And to a certain degree Instagrams already doing that, which we will talk about a little bit later on in the show. But I remember something that Nicholena Moon brought, mentioned to us when she was on our guest on our show two weeks ago, what she's saying, like, when we asked her like, what's a key differentiator to get you to switch to another platform, or even try out a new platform, a new tech service or anything like that. And it wasn't there, you know, low hanging fruit type of features, you know, like, oh, super thanks, or subscriptions, or stickers, or whatever, it was basically, which platform is actually going to be able to help you drive an audience, right, that would that will help you connect with your community, your fans, and your followers, and I guess in a more strategic fashion, that will actually, you know, drive growth as opposed to offering you just, you know, these tools, right, it's like, oh, here's a fishing pole, right is to go fish, right? It's like, oh, but if you don't actually, but that's only part of the puzzle, like you actually have to teach these people how to actually fish in order to, to, to get the food to get the sustenance that they need. And, you know, this is this is just like, I feel like this is table scraps right now that what you what YouTube and Twitch are offering versus something a little bit more.

Gregarious Narain 8:58
I mean, I think YouTube is still the clear leader to pay the most out to everybody.

Ken Yeung 9:04
But it depends on what you're doing on YouTube. Right? If you're talking about streaming a game, like live streaming, I think Twitch still has an edge over YouTube versus but if you're doing just anything else on video, perhaps then that's probably going to be better off with YouTube. Right? And to the point you actually you shared with me this video that somebody posted on YouTube, I believe earlier this week, where they're saying, like, look that YouTube has to change their algorithm, right? Because it's like you have to do and we can put that up on the screen later on. Where people are just, you know, they feel like they can't just do shorts, YouTube shorts. They can't just do YouTube videos, or they can't do just do live streaming because the algorithm just wants creators to do all of it right? And basically, it's like YouTube's like, Hey, be the jack of all trades, but you're not really helping someone be a master of one particular thing, right, in order to dominate on YouTube.

Gregarious Narain 10:16
I don't know. I mean, look, I don't I don't know if it's their responsibility either. Right, like you should choose the tools that make sense for you. And, you know, I think EposVox was saying I saw a short he did the other day that one of the things that he thinks YouTube needs to change is that the requirements for the partner program?

Ken Yeung 10:35
Yeah, that's the one I was talking about...

Gregarious Narain 10:36
...tend to be highly driven by sort of the video business, the static video business, but you know, if you're encouraging shorts, or if you're encouraging live streams, the credit and the amount of time and energy that the threshold or maybe not quite, you know, feasible for everyone to achieve. But let's keep going. We do have a lot more to get through. There was some Clubhouse news, I think this one's yours, Ken,

Ken Yeung 11:01
It is. And as we're talking about Clubhouse earlier, you know,

Gregarious Narain 11:04
When did they get this new ugly logo?

Ken Yeung 11:06
Well, dude, that's all part of the brand, right? It's there you know, you know, somebody refers to it in a much more explicit manner. You can probably guess what that would be but here's the gist of the news is like Clubhouse no longer requires invites to access the audio-based. I guess we're calling it still a social network of sorts. This comes months, probably more than, nearly a year since it kind of really debuted in beta, months after it launched an Android app. Finally, thankfully, for me, so now since I'm on an Android phone, I can use it without resorting to lugging around my iPad, like I have an old 80s style boombox.

Gregarious Narain 11:59
Stopped being cool probably when they let you in.

Ken Yeung 12:01
Wow. Wow. Thank you. You're getting your digs in early. I mean, did you...

Gregarious Narain 12:09
You got to start the day on the right foot.

Ken Yeung 12:11
Were you up at 3 am working on those pot shots?

Gregarious Narain 12:14
I was writing them in the sauna at 4:30.

Ken Yeung 12:16
Oh, yeah, with your protein shake. I see. Right?

Gregarious Narain 12:23
Was it a 10 million waitlist? Or was it 10 million people were using it so far?

Ken Yeung 12:28
You know that's not...so they haven't clubhouse as it hasn't actually released official numbers per se, like, well, Oh, actually, sorry. I should backtrack. So 10 million downloads on Android in just the past two months. Right. So that's coming from Clubhouse, but in terms of the overall usage, and installs a lot of that's coming from third party tracker center tower, right. But yeah, I mean, think about it, like, this is probably 10 million people that are a combination of the waitlist, and also those that may have just like weren't on the waitlist and like, oh, you're on Android now. Okay, let me download it. Right. Some people are like, I'll just wait for it to come out on a new platform or on Android or iOS, wherever and they'll just sit on it and wait. And then once they hear news like this, they're like, oh, let me go to Clubhouse and download it. Right. But if you remember when there was kind of like this invite-only this gated system, you know, people were selling their invites on Clubhouse, and they were going for hundreds if not maybe thousands of dollars. Right.

Gregarious Narain 13:33
I still have some that I'm going to sell.

Ken Yeung 13:35
Yeah, I mean, go ahead and see how much you can get for it.

Gregarious Narain 13:37
I'm going to NFT my Clubhouse invites and then sell those.

Ken Yeung 13:43
So you're gonna NFT your Clubhouse invites and then you're going to auction them off, and people are gonna pay for it using a Rally coin, using your $AMA Rally coin?

Gregarious Narain 13:53
That makes sense.

Ken Yeung 13:54
Yeah, I mean, totally. It's like, sure why not.

Gregarious Narain 13:56
There's no risk of money laundering.

Ken Yeung 14:01
But I mean, the thing that's like, Clubhouses coming out now and it's open to the public. Pretty new rebrand. Is it too late for the platform? I mean, there's certainly a need for it. I mean, you look at there's a lot of these interesting programs that are coming on. There's a lot of good creators, a lot of creators coming up with rooms, if you will, creative rooms on there. But you look at what Twitter Spaces and with Facebook. I mean, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft rolls out something for LinkedIn. I mean, it could be LinkedIn rooms. I mean, good lord. I mean, they might as well I mean, they already have stories. Slack already has some sort of social audio and we've been harping on this for many weeks in terms of, is this a defendable platform or is it more like a feature? And I think now time will tell in terms of what Clubhouse is doing. Now. There They're, they're, they're open to the public. You know, it's like game on, let's see how you stack up against the Big Tech folks and prove that, you know, this is more than just a shiny object, that that's part of your arsenal of tools. Like this is a sustainable business and platform on its own.

Gregarious Narain 15:20
So I just did share a link also to Ed Zitron.

Ken Yeung 15:25
Zitron, yep.

Gregarious Narain 15:27
We're gonna have some words for him in a bit. But, but he did have this other article that I had opened that I actually hadn't even gotten to finish reading. I got through about halfway, but he's his clubhouse, the big stinker. Nobody wants to talk about I think it hits on the points that you're mentioning. Someone anecdotally yesterday or two days ago, I was at something in here in Denver. someone's like, is Clubhouse gonna survive. I was like, all right. And you know, it's just someone who wasn't even like that active of a user. Right? So you know, I think there are a lot of real reasonable questions to be asked here. We have a podcast article, is this yours?

Ken Yeung 16:00
Yep. So kind of harping on, kind of go back with the Clubhouse news. Now, we have talked about the verge that came out with this article, earlier this week, about, you know, the next social audio social network trend is, you know, short-form audio, right. it's digestible, it's, I mean, it's not unexpected. To see this kind of a trend, you know, with the everything while the post going from long, we're used to long-form content, our abbreviated to now, super, like if you can't understand it in 15 seconds or less, you know, forget it, move on, you know, we're with like Reels and Shorts and everything like that. And so now we're doing this with audio as well. You have all these other services coming on? So who knows? Could we see Clubhouse and Twitter and all these other guys competing with Racket? with a bunch of these companies? Yeah, exactly. And when I hear about these type of audio, like, Oh, this audio renaissance of sorts, it kind of reminds me back into I guess, the early 2000s when there was a service called Utterli right and that was kind of you know, we're like, why would you post audio caught like your voice out there as a kind of like a note to yourself? And it seems like it's certainly taken off. So certainly an area to watch in terms of short-form audio.

Gregarious Narain 17:17
Yes. It'll be interesting to see. I've talked many times about what I call accessorized audio. And I think this is sort of somewhat speaking to that. By the way, you know, like WhatsApp usage, like say, for example, like in Brazil, it's almost all voice. It's just small, short voice notes that people send to each other. They don't actually write. I know because I've seen my taxi driver going 90 miles an hour in Brazil sending audio notes to his friends.

Right, what do we have here?

Ken Yeung 17:43
And you live to survive? That's, that's impressive.

Gregarious Narain 17:45
Yeah. This is yours. Interesting news from Tumblr.

Ken Yeung 17:47
Yeah. So Tumblr's not dead. Breaking News. Well, not really breaking news.

Gregarious Narain 17:51
They're adding the 'e' back.

Ken Yeung 17:55
So the thing with Tumblr, I mean, they are there they were owned by Verizon and Oh, actually, they got bought by Yahoo for like a billion dollars a few years back, they slash Yahoo got bought by Verizon and now Verizon's like, forget, we're done with it. And word the Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, bought Tumblr to save it. And so this is kind of a revival to kind of see, Hey, can we do something with Tumblr? And so Tumblr is now saying, Okay, well, we're gonna allow people to make money off of their posts. I mean, I, I don't know, necessarily. I mean, for me, I'm not seeing a lot of people post on Tumblr saying, hey, come to my Tumblr site. And

Gregarious Narain 18:33
I haven't seen a Tumblr blog in I don't know how long.

Ken Yeung 18:36
Well, yeah, I mean, so. But I think you look at this article from TechCrunch. And they're like, Oh, it's specifically, you know, they've specifically mentioned Gen Z. And, of course, that just means we're old, dude. I mean, you're Well, some people on here are a lot older than the others. So

Gregarious Narain 18:51
Definitely, the people in the earlier time zones are way older.

Ken Yeung 18:56
So this is I think, this is good, a good step for Tumblr. I mean, Automattic needs to make money off of Tumblr. And it could, you know, this could be an interesting pivot for the site to see if it does have a revival,

Gregarious Narain 19:11
Just do what you were pointing out earlier, just for this horizontals sort of nature, you know, that everyone's getting something, right, like in this arena. So yeah, I mean, I hope... I remember sitting on a flight once back to New York with David was sitting like two rows back to me. And like he did not sleep the entire flight which was pretty awesome.

Ken Yeung 19:32
Why are you stalking people and just observing them on a plane?

Gregarious Narain 19:35
It's funny like you just want a random you know, like, I took a red-eye back and you know, I was trying to sleep but then he was typing on his keyboard the whole time.

Ken Yeung 19:42
Oh, he was sitting, he was sitting next to you.

Gregarious Narain 19:45
He's like, like, in like, I could see him from my seat and he was in the other aisle.

Ken Yeung 19:49
Oh, you weren't you weren't just like creepily looking back...

Gregarious Narain 19:52
I would love to have talked to him at least if he was right next to me.to release. But no...

Ken Yeung 19:56
That was probably because he had just got like a billion dollars from Marissa Mayer at the time. But speaking of viral sightings here. So, Greg, this is this is something I think we've talked about, or at least you brought up in the past. This is not necessarily hard news, but it's a, it highlights the, I guess the concern or an issue that impacts the creator economy that especially those that are posting on to YouTube or Facebook or TikTok or any like that.

Gregarious Narain 20:27
This post is about Kevin Perry.

Ken Yeung 20:28
Yeah, Kevin Perry.

Gregarious Narain 20:30
Goes behind the scenes on what what do you say for those curious about the internet economy? "This vid got 15 million views here, 28 million on TikTok, 30 million on an IG meme account. But I didn't make a penny from any of it."

Ken Yeung 20:40
Yeah. But of course, he's in Canada. So as the article points out that I think he's like, TikTok Canada doesn't have a partner program there. Right. So a lot of the work that he's doing is on his own. So we got to do a lot of self-promotion. So, I mean, I think there's a lot of nuance and complexity in terms of like, Oh, I mean, I this headline is kind of like shouldn't necessarily be taken as a universal thing is like, Oh, you rack like this show could rack up like a billion views. God willing, but we're not, you know, we don't make a cent out of it. I mean, that's not necessarily the case. It could be based on the content, it could be based off of the circumstances in terms of the, you know, how you monetize or whatever, like, Do you get any support from the platform like that, but any, I think the reality that impact that creators face is that you're not guaranteed a payday for anything, right? It's like, even if you like something can blow up and...

Gregarious Narain 21:40
All that glitters is not gold, huh?

Ken Yeung 21:41
Exactly. Right. And so, you know, it's it. So I think, but that's also something that may be platform should be aware of these tech companies to be aware of, like, how do you be more transparent and helping creators better understand when and how could they make money not necessarily how to game the algorithm, but under help them understand like, Well, one thing is that these things aren't sinking. How do we figure this out? So they are also not impacted mentally as well? Yeah. Moving along, man, I keep getting all of this man it's like,

Gregarious Narain 22:12
I mean, you put the...you put all of yours together.

Ken Yeung 22:16
I just want to keep talking. Right? Yeah.

Gregarious Narain 22:17
Let's just be clear. The goal of the show is not to have more news articles. We have more time to talk.

Ken Yeung 22:22
Hey, this is the same as before we decided to break things up. Okay.

Gregarious Narain 22:26
My guess is we should reduce the number of things we cover.

Ken Yeung 22:29
Well...

Gregarious Narain 22:30
What, we're still good on time. It's 9:25.

Ken Yeung 22:32
Yeah, I mean, so this is one you know, Greg, you are an Elgato fanboy. I mean, this is your post and you're texting me are basically...

Gregarious Narain 22:43
My toilet seat is an Elgato cover.

Ken Yeung 22:45
I'm pretty sure you have like lighting and everything on there. Right. But you know, oh, god, oh, just announced a bunch of new features on coming out or that the products that are coming out that are available now that they are this new stream deck, but also, what's I guess what's more important here is that they have a new webcam, right? So those that don't want to shell out, you know, hundreds, or nearly thousands of dollars for a DSLR to get the kind of quality that, you know, I have, unlike Greg, so you might as well, you know, you can spend just 200 bucks for it. And then

Gregarious Narain 23:18
Mine is on the way, by the way. So we will see what the Elgato face cam looks like.

Ken Yeung 23:23
Yeah, I mean, but it'd be great to that point. He's like, you didn't want us? I mean, you already have a DSLR we're looking at you. But you don't want

$1,000.

Yeah, and of course, you can get like a standard a, you know, webcam like this, but it's not going to have the same quality as others. And I think for those that are on Twitch and YouTube and video streamers, that want to have that quality.

Gregarious Narain 23:43
I think that Elgato is growth and the evolution of these products, I think, you know, obviously, I think COVID point two is up. But like, for example, this camera is designed for streamers, right? It's not designed for like people who want to do Zooms per se.

Ken Yeung 23:59
Oh, yeah.

Gregarious Narain 24:00
Right. And I do think like that, that the fact that we can see hardware companies being able to respond to this space is probably an important signal like for what's going on, I think in general.

Um, let's see what else. Okay, so here's an article from The Information...

using

Ken Yeung 24:16
Is it yours?

Gregarious Narain 24:19
And you know, there's some backlash, right. I think a lot of people the title, the article is why advertiser spending on influencers will reach $4 billion from The Information's Kaya..how do you say Kaya's last name?

Ken Yeung 24:30
Yurieff

Gregarious Narain 24:31
Yurieff.

Ken Yeung 24:32
Yep. And so, you know, she's, she's talking about sort of some of the expectations and the growth of the influencer economy. And I think you know, what happened? What's happened is, unfortunately, there's there is, um, some resentment, I guess, around the idea of being an influencer. And even some of the posts that we're going to cover later sort of speak to, you know, somehow this move away from influence, I think influences on the spectrum of services or capabilities that a creator has to offer and you know, you may Sleep on it. But yeah, there's another $4 billion going out on influencers, on influencer advertising, you know, and what is that that's supposed to be by this year? Right?

I think so, yeah.

Gregarious Narain 25:10
Yeah. So it says influencer marketing...

Ken Yeung 25:12
by 2020...$4 billion, well it depends because like, it's over 4 billion is estimated, be over 4 billion by 2023. I think.

Gregarious Narain 25:20
It says that by 2023, spending should rise to $4.6 billion. Yeah. Now, here's the interesting thing. And I've been working on is a longer thread, and I just haven't had the time to focus on it. But, but when you put some of these numbers in context, right, there's $4 billion on influencer advertising specifically, right? There's something like $56 or $57 billion spent on social advertising, which is around our content. There's at least $6 billion that has been paid in by fans for in direct support of the creator and that's a lowball number, I'm sure that's literally just like subs on only fans, Patreon. And Twitch basically, right that I'm adding up there. So but that number is probably much greater than $6 billion. You start to see how this economy is falling out. But also you see what's left to pull. Right. And so if we are transitioning, I think like there's an opportunity here to reimagine how that $58, $59 million that gets deployed against Facebook and other places. And reimagining how it could be spent more directly in the creator economy. So I think like, there's been a hard push to look at how creators can directly monetize, but not always necessarily looking at how they can monetize advertising or some of the other dollars that are actually out there. Because a lot of that push has been around, how do I monetize the dollars for my fans, right? So still a tremendous amount of room in this ecosystem. But it's good to see some updated data on sort of where the spending is because the older numbers were estimates up until like, current year, so some of this number, this, by the way, the stats are from eMarketer. So you can find that over on the eMarketer website as well. But yeah, keep an eye on it, don't sleep, I guess, like, we need to stop having this, like, you know, us versus them influencer versus creator sort of mindset and just understand that there's a shared value between both of them.

And another one, our friend Hugo, over at "Arm the Creators" has a great pose very in-depth on how to invest in creators. So I highly recommend giving that a read, he talks about some of the struggles that are faced by creators, ultimately, I think, as founders. And so you know, and, Ken, we have this question coming up in a bit, but, you know, I think he goes post is really good. I actually had done a tweetstorm earlier called investing in creators. I think Ken has a link to it as well. But we'll provide a link to that. And I outlined a number of different approaches, you know, like on different ways that creators can raise money today, Hugo was a little bit further, actually. And it's also a long-form post, I highly recommend it, it's a great read, and has a lot of great information in there as well. So I think, but the idea of investing in creators is going to is an important part of the ecosystem and the changes that we hope to see happen for creators and I think ultimately for the startup landscape and for the ecosystem at large. So highly recommend taking a read it, Hugo's post, and Ken shared that out already.

Now, this is probably the meatier part and I'm glad we have some time because I just did a long, I think it was like 15 or 20 thread, tweet thread this morning, literally this morning, like at five in the morning was posting it. There were two articles that came out. So you want to provide some context here, and then I'll respond.

Ken Yeung 28:36
So there's this New Yorker article that in a weird way, and it's kind of it's a very short post, it's like, what they're in summary, they're basically equating they're asking our creators, the equivalent of gig workers, right? Are you know, the are the people that are, you know, selling whatever online on YouTube or on Instagram or trying to make a living? Are they basically the equivalent of an Uber driver, a DoorDash delivery person, you know, your TaskRabbit, or anything like that. And then follow up, later on, was Ed Zitron, who Greg mentioned earlier, who's writing these prolific pieces on his newsletter, you know, whether it's on burnout or anything like that, but kind of responds to this. And you can see this in the headline on the left, "Most creative economy companies just want to become the Amazon of creators content and convince you that your creativity isn't labor." You know, this is it's an interesting take

Gregarious Narain 29:47
It's a bunch of nonsense.

Ken Yeung 29:49
So but Greg, are you I think there's there's he, the The New Yorker article is what Ed kind of takes the leap off of but then it kind of dives into, he kind of expands and goes off on something slightly different, right? I mean, it's still on the same vibe of, you know, this creator versus, you know, creator and gig work, you know, are creators and gig workers the same? But as you read down through Ed's piece, he's talking more about the platforms themselves as opposed to the professions. Right? Of course, you have strong opinions about both. So what are your thoughts on that? Well, what are your thoughts about the New Yorker article? And then what do you take issue with on on EDS?

Gregarious Narain 30:31
So, and by the way, if you're listening, and you want to chime in, or have any thoughts for the conversation, by all means, be just raise your hand or and let us know. Happy to have you. But so Alright, so first, with the New Yorker article, there's nothing wrong. For starters, there's nothing wrong with gig work. All right. What I think fundamentally, though, what I have a problem with with sort of The New Yorker article is the framing, that there's a difference between lack of access to real or meaningful or well paying work, and choosing the freedom of working when you want, right like and now some times those things are the same, like some people are in both situate like are in a Oh, those two things are overlapping. However, if you are choosing to work in this manner, because that gives you the flexibility and the freedom to do other things in your life that you choose to do. It is not a negative per se, right? Like it is it is giving you and affording you the flexibility to do the things that you enjoy the most, right? If the reason that you are doing this work is because you literally cannot find other work that reflects larger systemic problems, right, like in our society and in our culture, where we haven't allowed the created those opportunities or safety net or a baseline for people right. Now. One of the problems I have, for example, right, like I think was the Fiverr...was Fiverr in Ed's post?

Ken Yeung 32:01
I think Fiverr was Ed's post.

Gregarious Narain 32:02
Okay, so I'll get to that in a sec. But let's use the Fiverr example. He sort of bemoans that Fiverr offered like a $5 plan, what I would argue is, number one, it made the number of people who would normally spend zero on something, significantly greater, right, like now, everything on Fiverr is not five bucks. I don't know like if you unless you've got just literally read the name of it, when you until you get in there, it may start at five, but the thing you're likely to buy is 25, 50 100. Right? Whether or not those people are actually always doing discrete bespoke work for that amount of money also is not necessarily clear, either all the time, right? There are people all over the world who are actually making way more money than they could in their local economies doing this kind of work. I think that's a great thing, right? Also, the existence of Fiverr did not eliminate or suppress the rates that anyone could earn doing their trade, right? Like, it's not like suddenly there weren't designers who didn't make $100 an hour because Fiverr exists, right? So in the ecosystem, if someone chooses a Fiverr, they do that for the convenience, for access to a clientele that they can't naturally reach, right. And they are negotiating their rates, and someone is paying a fee. Right? And in Fiverr, I believe the buyer pays the fee. Right? But you know, in different platforms, it's different ways, right? So so there's nothing wrong with being in the gig economy, right? Like I now I do think like, some people look down their nose like they are in the creator space because they think that somehow doing gig work is also a negative, right? Like, because what you should be doing is aspiring and building an audience. I'm not of that mind, I believe like that a founder, creator wanting to succeed, I would love to be paid to be doing things closer to the thing I want to be doing than things that are in the opposite direction, right? So I'm building a startup, I bootstrap it by consulting, but I consult for other companies in my space, because I have the luxury of choosing, right. I could also like be driving an Uber to fund my startup. Now, do I be grown like Uber for existing because it's helping me fund this business that I because I want to spend time the way I want to spend it? No, that's not reasonable for me.

Now. Ed's article covers a different part of it, some overlaps a little bit, but covers some other things that I think are important, right? He sort of speaks to the problems and the challenges of platforms themselves. And there's a line he has in there like he's like, there's nothing wrong with charging a fee except he never makes the case for why you should charge the fee. And if I were to summarize, what I think he was getting at, is that most platforms don't provide a tremendous amount of value. From his point of view. They are not providing enough value for the take rate that they are charging, right? And that's a reasonable fair point of view. Right? The argument I would make, however, is that, to understand the value of take rates, you have to actually do a holistic look at what you're getting for that dollar amount. Right now, we're talking about this yesterday. To give you an example. Everyone says, oh, Twitch's take great, I think is very high, right? Like, you know, now most people from I understand, you know, it starts at 50, you can negotiate down usually to like maybe 30%, right? Either way, it's a third of your revenue, right? If I was a startup, and I wanted to acquire customers, right, what I would have to do is run advertising for doing organic marketing and find other ways to acquire those customers or bring them in the door, right? I would have to deal with supporting those customers with their credit card issues, I would have to deal with chargebacks that have to do with churn, right, I would also still have to deliver the product, right? And so when you look at all of the costs that I always, by the way, also have to deal with hosting and streaming costs. And you know, all the other pieces that Twitch takes care of.

Now, I'm not saying Twitch is right. All I'm saying is that for us to fairly judge is Twitch charging too much or too little. If we would have to look at it from the point of view of what does it cost to recreate for me what Twitch is offering, right? And any startup founder trying to get 100 customers at $5 a month. That's like the dream that every one of us has, right? Like a 100 $5 a month customer is amazing and more successful than 99% of most startups out there, right? Like, so creators are winning at being entrepreneurs, relatively speaking, right? And the cost is 30%. Well, guess what? If I sell equity in my company, what's the cost? It's like 50% of the upside, right? If I pay providers and out of pocket for all these discrete pieces, my costs also go down right? Now, if I have to have more employees to handle or service all these other things, right? Suddenly, my costs are going down also. So I guess my point is that, and the thread I wrote was it was not a defense of platforms, per se. But I tried to unpack what goes into how a platform originator may think, and I also don't like the idea being lambasted and rolled up with, you know, we're just trying to convince creators that your creativity isn't labor. No, it is labor, but is a labor of love, like you are getting the job of being a founder and an entrepreneur and doing what you love. Right? No one is saying that it is worth nothing. Right? What we are, what I believe most cloud is certainly the platforms in my generation of the creator economy, maybe not like the Cameos and some of the others, right, but or the more established ones, right? But either way, we are trying to help creators succeed, right? Like, we are actually trying to find a good balance between the value we can offer them and also building something that is sustainable. Like, it doesn't help for me to give everything away if I then can't pay my team or the bills to support the service I'm giving away. Right?

And so the question of like, are creators gig workers, far less so in my mind, we should take the kid gloves off and start treating creators like founders. And guess what, no one has any sympathy for founders anywhere, right? Like, no one's saying that, like, as a founder, I deserve like a paycheck just because I'm a founder, right? Like, no one is saying that ever, right? No one is saying I deserve funding. No one is saying I deserve access to the press and free coverage. Notice saying I deserve reach, right? Like I deserve distribution. These are all hard decisions. Everyone who goes to work as a creator has to work just as hard as someone who does a startup trying to figure out how do I find my first customer? Right? So I think it's more healthy for us to look at creators as entrepreneurs than it is for us to look as creators, as gig workers are some special entitlement, right? That somehow is different than everyone else who wants to do what they love has to do and suffer through to succeed.

Ken Yeung 39:07
Cool. Anything else you want to say? I feel like, I feel like you don't have a strong opinion on this. I'm not really sure what it is, I guess.

Gregarious Narain 39:18
Yeah, you know, it really got me that the article, I couldn't put my finger on it. Like after I read it. I read it a couple of times. And it just got to me that that the blame here is one-sided. It's like blaming the platforms for taking advantage of the creators, but not saying hey, creators, you are business owners. Where is your responsibility in the process of getting to where you want to go? Right now I get like if someone's got their boot on your throat, and they're forcibly preventing you from getting there, I understand that like I'm pro reducing these rates and getting to a healthier place, right. But not blindly like, you know, Apples 30% It feels agree just because it's on top of every all the other company who's trying to offer you value. And we know for example, that 30% could be like 3%, like Stripe offers it at, right for the exact same processing, etc. Right. So we clearly know Apple is just got it fully padded. However Apple does -- and like I said, definitely not defending Apple -- but they do pay a tremendous workforce to like, approve applications, review code, do all these other processes, right? That doesn't just happen for free, right. And if we were instead having to buy every download, we feel very differently, right, then because then the fact that we get them for free. And the thing I point out in the thread is that most creators that like haven't reached a maturity level, per se, some of you know, they nibble around the edges here, but where they're like, I should be actively investing in growing this, not relying on the networks to do it, and then complaining and the networks are charging something for helping me do it. Right. You know, there's never gonna be a perfect solution here, per se. But I think everyone needs to come to the table to try to deliver better solutions here.

Ken Yeung 41:10
Cool. And it'd be very interesting to hear what other people have to say, I know, Greg, you've posted this on on the Creator of Means Discord as well, you've put out your put this out as a Twitter thread. But those that are watching those that are listening, let us know what you think. You know, do you agree with the New Yorker article Do you agree with as a trans post? Do you agree with Greg's opinion overall? Or do you just want you know, Greg to continue to riff and pontificate about stuff and wave his hands wildly in the air? You know, I probably would want to opt for the latter. But let us know, put it in.

Gregarious Narain 41:51
We just shared the link, if you want to join us on the show. I shared the invite link. So feel free to come on. Join the conversation with us. I know Arnold, you're awake and watching.

Ken Yeung 42:01
Absolutely. Yeah, I know. Arnold had a comment earlier on about YouTube. But yeah, Arnold, come on, come on board. You know,

Gregarious Narain 42:08
What's your opinion, Ken? Like, where are you in the spectrum?

Ken Yeung 42:11
So I think I think this is kind of like this is a bigger issue overall. I think there's there's certainly a lot of blame on the platform speak for many, many other reasons, especially with the with their developer tax or just their tax in general on users. Do I begrudge them for making money? No, but when you look at it, then let's keep in mind right now we are in earnings season. And you look at like, oh, Twitter made like, you know, x billion dollars or Snap made, you know, this much, you know, Apple will rake in, you know, there'll be articles about Apple's earnings, where they say, oh, Apple now has x billion dollars in, you know, in cash, excess cash, right. I mean, it's like, they're just raking it. They're, they're, they're basically Scrooge McDuck, right, you know, DuckTails, where, you know, they dive into this pile of gold

Gregarious Narain 43:04
I'm old? You're the one bringing up Scrooge McDuck.

Ken Yeung 43:05
your, you know, Scrooge McDuck. Wow, really, like, you don't have to be all for that. And plus, let me remind you DuckTales has been revived or rebooted or whatever, modernize it on TV now. And it's very weird compared to days of old I mean, back after you left, when you came home from school, you watched afternoon cartoons anyways. But, you know, it's like these, they're, they're raking in the dough, that, you know, they're not reinvesting into the things. So it'd be very interesting to see, like, I think there has to be, you know, it's like, who's standing up for creators? I am not of the mindset of, hey, give the creators you know, like, carte blanche and you know, Power to the People type of thing, right? Because this is not like a socialist type of thing. They don't deserve ahead. I completely agree. No, no universal creator, basic creator income, whatever, we're, you know, that that phrasing is is now. And I agree that creators should be entrepreneurs. I don't know about the I think it's just this whole labeling thing, because we're talking about like, Oh, do you want to be you know, are you an influencer? Are you a creator, and I know that I think was a Neil earlier on who's helped us identify like, what the difference is between the two, like, entrepreneurs frowned upon, you know, influencers and influencers and frown upon creators and creators. Everyone frowns upon on gig workers. And, you know, it's like this. It's like this, this, this divisive nature in us as opposed to like, can't we all just be considered entrepreneurs and some right and we were all trying to make a living beyond conventional means right before on traditional, like, I'm thankful, I mean, for me, I'm on the traditional route, but you know, it's like, I'm also you know, in a way having a debit have my foot into this entrepreneur route with joining you on this show, right? And who knows where this goes, You know, I consider myself a creator, and entrepreneur to kind of help this does blossom. But you know, am I going to be like, Greg, like, Oh, I look down on you, because why don't you join a traditional company and make you, you know, make a solid salary and, you know, have an easier job. But I also envy what you're doing, because you're taking, you have this idea and you have this and you're taking it to fruition, right? You're you have this idea of how to help people, and to build a product that will change the world or impact an entire industry. And it's like, those that don't teach. Right. And it's like that adage. So it's like, how can we how can I hate on you as a creator? When I'm not willing to do it myself? Right. So it's like, Yeah, go ahead.

Gregarious Narain 45:51
I just said Arnold joined us also.

Ken Yeung 45:53
Yep. Arnold, are you there? There you are. Hey, Arnold. What's going on?

Arnold C. 45:59
Nothing much. Good morning.

Ken Yeung 46:00
Good morning.

Gregarious Narain 46:01
Hey, get the blood flowing early in the morning. But did you have any thoughts or did you want to chime in? And Arnold here is the founder of Hand Glide, by the way, in case folks haven't had a chance to meet Arnold yet.

Arnold C. 46:18
Yeah. Hi, everybody. Yeah, no.

Gregarious Narain 46:19
Not as good as Zealous, obviously.

Ken Yeung 46:23
We're talking about like creators and entrepreneurs. Now you're just talking about like, you know, entrepreneur /creators just butting heads, like, let's get it on!

Arnold C. 46:31
what? No candidates, it's entrepreneurs fighting each other to help creators. That's what they're here.

Ken Yeung 46:37
We need creator deathmatch, bring that back. Claymation that thing

Gregarious Narain 46:40
Do we already have the boxing match to deal with first?

Ken Yeung 46:42
Hey, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Gregarious Narain 46:44
But Arnold, so you know, you're building a platform, you're doing it, you have a you know, obviously, you're doing a transactional kind of take rate.

Arnold C. 46:52
Yeah...

Gregarious Narain 46:52
during the process, we talked about when we chatted the first time. I know, from my point of view, I would do a SaaS if I believed that the market would bear it. Right. But having enough sophisticated users who understand and are willing to invest in these things now, if he was like, you know, I was telling Matt, this yesterday, if the more we all of us go towards SaaS, we all end up chasing the same, you know, 250,000 people, right, as opposed to like 50 million that are out there that are trying to grow.

Arnold C. 47:24
No. So I think the first point is, I completely agree with you, I guess your thought process, and creators are founders too, right, even if they don't realize it, you know, so I get to talk to a lot of creators, you know, all the time just kind of talking about, you know, what we do and how we can help them and just the business overall, right. And, you know, we do talk through some of that, like, you know, obviously, we are a platform, and we have to have a take rate to just to keep the business running. But you know, another piece of that, though, is that we're not running ads, right? It's about creators and fans, and so we have to, you know, make money to, to keep the lights on. And so it's a lot of sort of helping creators understand, to some degree, why we need to take the percentage that we need to take it and basically explain where it's going. Right. I think that's a part of it as well. I think there's a lot more, I guess, comfort around knowing where that cash is going. And specifically having it, you know, very transparently laid out, like, you know, what you're paying for, right. And I think it's easier for them to understand, well, if I did this myself, then it would be effectively the same cost, right, if not more,

Gregarious Narain 48:30
I think it's way more, right. Yeah, look, look like you've got a team of two working for, you know, a year building software, managing services, supporting like, all these pieces, for your individual creator to try to replicate, especially like just starting out, like, there. That's, that's the ladder that we can provide. Right?

Arnold C. 48:56
Right. Yeah. And it doesn't, it's not like you build it, and then it just works, right? Like, every day, we're pushing new stuff, where we're talking about new ideas to actually, you know, better support creators and help them to earn even more, right. So it's, it's a song, it's a business, it's an ongoing thing, and it costs a lot of money. And so I guess at the end of the day, the idea is you can either replicate that yourself and basically fund that or you can, you know, you can pay somebody they're effectively paying us as an almost like as a consultant, right to do that work for you. Right. So I think, again, maybe it's just maybe a matter of more transparency and where these fees are going. You know, I will say and I want to, you know, just on the apple point that you brought up, I think I think that's one that is a bit tougher, because maybe some of that transparency is not exactly there, which is why it's hard to see where's the 30% going and why is that so high? Right. So I think that's maybe more why that gets picked on certainly.

Gregarious Narain 49:56
Well, I think it's also because, um, there's an analog right like for Apple, we know what the analog is right? Like we can see what credit cards like stripe charges. Yeah, right for essentially the exact same service, right? Like to process a credit card. Apple says it's 30%. And Stripe says it's three. Right? Right. And fine. We're like you run the network or whatever, fine. Like, maybe that's another 10%. But either way, that's still like another three. And I think like, to your point about transparency, we're sort of just like awareness of the business models. It's better if Apple was like, okay, well, if you share your agreements with us with your creator, and then we'll take it out of what you were actually making. Right? Like, that's different, it's a different benefit. Like, I think as a provider, I'm okay to give them a third of what I'm going to charge. But having to take a third off the top, your thing becomes a 40% take rate by default, if you run it in and out, right, because it's 30 for Apple, 10 for you. And then now the creators level 60%?

Arnold C. 50:59
Well, no, and I think you see this across several models, right. I know, there are several other startups that have run into this now from FanHouse, even up to Cameo, right? Like, this is just the this is the thing, where it's, it's actually hurting creators with that model, right. And I think most founders, pretty much every founder in this space, that is building tools for creators, would gladly take that approach to say, listen, take that money from me, and let our creators have the bigger lion's share, right? We'll offer more value, we'll figure out a way, we'll be okay. Right? We'll get more customers on it, and we'll survive that. But the model doesn't work. Well, to your point, if if you've got somebody taking 30%, and then the platform has to take 10 to 15. I mean, where you know, the value just isn't there? I don't think so. But

Ken Yeung 51:42
the but the, I think, in a weird way, I kind of agree with that New Yorker article about in terms of that gig economy type of analogy

Gregarious Narain 51:51
Where's the mute button? Let's get rid of this guy.

Ken Yeung 51:52
And now this is being hosted by Arnold and Greg, Arnold, you come on the show, and you totally change it up. Once again, thank you very much.

Gregarious Narain 52:01
Okay Ken, tell us about which part you agree with.

Ken Yeung 52:06
I agree with it, the gig workers, when you look at the struggles that Uber drivers, delivery, Postmates, Lyft, doordash, they were all upset about the take that, that these platforms have from a sales, right, like you can order like a $10 meal from like a restaurant, at $10, the actual meal might cost you $7. Right? So that goes to the restaurant. And that remaining three, you as a courier or delivery person might only get maybe like, not even $1 maybe like, you know, you know, a quarter or 50 cents of that right, a fraction of that. And the percentage of that goes, the rest of it will go to the company. Right? So I agree with the analogy of the gig workers in that there's a struggle that that what you guys are talking about with this with the tax from the developer tax, the creator tax whatever this tax is. You know, I think it's all-encompassing tax is the same thing that that what you're doing with delivery drivers and couriers as well. So I don't think that's a that's the that's pretty much the main I don't know, necessarily, if that's the main point that they wanted to get across in the New Yorker article. But I mean, I know that that's they're upset about those that those types of things as well.

Gregarious Narain 53:32
And look, I think that that's absolutely reasonable. Like so. And like I said, it's not a defense of platforms, per se, right. Like, I think like, you know, one of my tweets in here is that I said that platforms can harm creators because they proxy relationships between creator and audience, they hold data secret and captive, they deliver features that benefit their business. First, they build for the least common denominator, they change terms and usage at will, and they may go out of business, right? And like, all of those are reasons that platforms actually can purposefully or inadvertently cause harm. Right. And, but the consumer, right, who wants the convenience of not going to that restaurant is the one making the choice to pay it? Right? Like, so now. I'm like, like, you take an Uber how many times Uber been sued, though, right, like so like the litigation to enable Uber in so many markets and like, I get a lot of people to hate Uber also, right. But the point is that it's not free to run Uber, right, like, like, now they should treat their folks better because they have people working like like actually working for them, right. As a creator, you're not working for YouTube, you do that to say like, Hey, you haven't posted this week. You owe us money, right? Like you're the founder opting into doing that kind of posting is very different than like Uber saying, you only make this money, or you can work 40 hours a week, but we're not going to like basically, we treat you an employee, we add these incentives and stack it so that it's sustainable. Right? Like, if Uber wants to take 50%, and you don't like it, then find the alternative to Uber, right, that operates or less, or go get trained and become a taxi driver and pay 30%, or whatever it's going to be like, there are always alternatives, right? Like, like the market is there. But the market is always moving. Right? What we've seen in our space, right and creator economy is that there's they're shifting here, like take rates are going down, I don't believe it's, it's necessarily reasonable for you to be like a complete race to the bottom, like, here's the thing, if every creator would acknowledge that they should spend money on this software and buy it like enterprises and SMBs buy things, most of us would probably be like, fine, we won't have to take rate, right? Like, you pay the transaction fee. And that's it like now, for example, like the way Spore does it the way we do it, you're building a subscription, your own entity, so on Stripe, so like you connect your Stripe account, and we run through there, right? And then the fee that we charge, right, for example, with Zealous is to provide you the software, and the scale and the streaming is support and the constant development. Now if you think you can just like want to switch to Zoom and just start doing that, like, okay, like that's on you to make that choice. And maybe you reclaim that 10% back, right, you won't have all the other features or benefits that we have because that's what we offer. That's our business, right? I do think as we talked about in the past, some of the interesting things happening are like the the the lifetime limits or annual take annual lifetime, annual limits and stuff like that, I think are all-powerful constructs, you know, for us to potentially leverage, right, like and continue to evolve. But I do think this conversation is only good and useful if both sides are chatting, not one side giving in the right to the whims of the other. And I mean that on both on both from both ends, right.

Arnold C. 56:56
Yeah. But Greg, I think that there are two thoughts that come to mind. One with I think the larger platforms like you mentioned, Uber, right. And I think some of the, again, the challenges that come up there, for me, at least it comes down to transparency, because it's not so much that they don't have the same cost, you know, underlying costs to actually run the service, I think it's more about when the drivers don't feel like they're being properly compensated or taken care of, and the Ubers boasting billions of dollars in revenue, you know, in and that's an excess revenue of what they've already sorted, you know, operating costs and things like that, then I think, you know, people start to feel like, Wow, that's a lot of money. And you guys are not really taking care of us, too. So what's going on? I think the same argument could probably be made about the Apple tax as well, right?

Gregarious Narain 57:38
I'm with you. I actually made a point to Alec, who was commenting on the thread. And Matt has a great comment here as long as you get to one sec. But the common me to Alec is that also if we change the way our businesses are funded, not just a creator side like I said, this is not a one-side thing. If we are not in like raising money from the venture, then the types of moves we make become different, right? Like it is the outcomes of being public, or having venture-backed sort of aspirations, right? Like that actually will drive you to these larger things. So guess what, if you go to try to raise money, and you're like, I'm a SaaS and the creator space, you're gonna get laughed out the room, right? Like, unless you're like a low-value SaaS and already proven that everybody's already buying it. But to Matt's point, what most people don't understand is the majority of creators don't like paying monthly fees for products, right? Just as an entry, he said, right? Yeah, he signs up 36,000 people a day, or isn't an hour or some ridiculous thing like that, right? And like only 5% are paying, right? Like, everyone wants everything for free. And then they don't understand that for us to provide those things for free. We somehow have to make money. Now, if we don't raise venture money, maybe it's less money because it's literally more supportive of a very small team as opposed to like, massive aspirations, right? But either way, like so when you're you're right, like when an Uber is getting hit in the head, why are they getting hit in the head? Because they're posting huge things. They're returning tons of money to investors, or their founders are cashing out dollars, right? Like that's on the backs of creators, I absolutely get that Apple has a trillion dollars in the bank or something ridiculous, right? Like, yes, I get it, right. Like you literally don't need it more, right. But folks like me, and you don't know, like, where we're using our savings, we're bootstrapping to get there. Right. Like, having a small take right now actually means not raising money. Because if we wait for SaaS, we'll never get there. Right? Like, like, it'll just take us too long. Like we either have to raise external money and then bring on the expectations of a third party, right? Or we could work with the founder, with other creators and say, Great, let's partner up and then like, let's work through how to like make this sustainable and something that you can stick with.

Arnold C. 59:42
No, I mean, I completely agree. I mean, it's, again, like there I think even you kind of mentioned like the race to the bottom right. And you know, you've seen that with the think like Facebook recently came out and what some of their features is like $0 until you know, some people it's not zero. Yeah. But, I mean, I think when you have those models, Something's got to give, right? It's either going to be more ads, right to support that or to your point, more venture dollars, which, you know, to some degree can take away from the core mission, right? Because it's just about speed and getting more people on versus the value you're actually providing to the greatest. So really, if you've got a, I don't know, like, you've got to charge something to provide the value that I think you're trying to provide, as you know, as a founder in the space. Yeah. And it's just I think it's just, it's tough to help.

Gregarious Narain 1:00:35
You know, folks, we're all navigating it's... I just, I just found the article a little unfair, because it just lumped everybody together as like, we're just trying to destroy the space to take advantage of creators. And that's like, fundamentally for most of the people I've met in this domain. That is not how I would characterize their intentions and their actions, right.

But in any event, Arnold, thank you for joining us. Always a pleasure. Well, we'll see you next week. I'm sure.

Arnold C. 1:01:01
Thanks for letting me jump on. This was great.

Gregarious Narain 1:01:02
You bet.

Ken Yeung 1:01:03
Nice seeing you!

Gregarious Narain 1:01:04
yeah. All right, Ken. So let's wrap it up here. Up next week, by the way, we do have Antonio, Antonio, Gary Jr. from Spore is going to be joining us. I'm sure it will carry on some parts of this conversation as well with him.

Ken Yeung 1:01:15
Well, he was mentioned in Ed's post.

Gregarious Narain 1:01:18
He's mentioned in the...Spores are mentioned in the post. That's right. Yeah, we've got a number and a lot of great content coming up. We're off the first week of August, by the way, and then Jim Louderback will be our first guest. Shortly after that more and more continued. If you want to be a guest on the show, head over to CreatedEconomy.com there's a link there for you to sign up. And thank you so much for being here with us. Ken, I got to run. I'm late for a call. But...

Ken Yeung 1:01:41
As always...

Gregarious Narain 1:01:42
you know, it was it's a good convo. I hope I hope folks got something out of it. We'd love to hear what you think. Tell us in the comments. Join us next time on stage, whatever it is. We just want to hear more from you. You know, this is a dialogue between all of us, and I appreciate it. So have a great weekend if we don't see you or hear you before then.

Ken Yeung 1:02:03
Take care everyone.

Gregarious Narain 1:02:04
Bye, everybody.

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