VidCon 2023 Takeaways · Synthesizer School

Jun '23 (edited) in Other

VidCon 2023 Takeaways

It was electric to be at VidCon. Not just meeting big creators (I met Mark Manson and probably convinced him to hire me as his attorney but we are supposed to talk soon so we will see) but there are so many experts in this space and so many businesses being built around the creators in the creator economy. These following takeaways are going to be personal to me and might not apply to everybody.

1) There is a lot of money in the space, a lot of VCs and financiers present and ready to invest in creators. I was not able to attend every panel and discussion and maybe after the recordings are posted, I will watch more of them and report back but the one panel that I listen to that was super interesting was from the founder of Lunar X, who purchased Game Theory. MatPat and Stephanie spoke with Lucas Kollmann, CEO and Co-Founder of Lunar X and it was insightful to hear about the acquisition and although not a lot of details were shared, it was clearly a large number to buy the YouTube production house, Theorist Media, along with its popular channels: Theorist Media is responsible for the channels, Game Theory, or The Game Theorists (16.4 million subscribers), The Film Theorists (11.4 million), The Food Theorists (4.1 million), as well as GTLive (2.96 million). I have no idea how much the acquisition was for, but I would not be surprised if this was 8 or even 9- figures. If anyone in the group has more insight, I would love to hear it. Remember, MrBeast has said that his purchase price for his channels and business would be close $20B but I’ve heard that $10B is probably a more accurate valuation.

***Going to keep adding to this post and let’s make it interactive as I go along. It’s going to be a long post. These are not going to be in order of importance, just as they occurred or happened to me.

2) LinkedIn is IN! Lots of panels and panelists talking about LinkedIn. Get active on your LinkedIn. Create content there. Connect on there. Creators are getting active on LinkedIn and businesses looking for creators are using LinkedIn. Twitter is still important but LinkedIn more so.

3) Write a newsletter and make sure you’re collecting emails. Platforms can die or get banned, the only thing you have to count on from your audience is getting their emails. Colin and Samir’s big surprise at Vidcon was printing out their newsletters in a newspaper form! We are going back to printed newspapers?! And yes, this is going to be the first issue of my newsletter. You’re seeing it first.

4) I was wrong! When I started my law firm just a few weeks ago, I thought I would be helping creators with their brand deals, but I already have two clients, one of very famous food channel with over 1 million subs and another very strong channel with 100,000 subs but only 10 videos and they are both building out 8-figure courses and websites. The real support that creators need right now from people like me (an attorney) is help with building out their business, their teams and courses/products with employment agreements and NDAs (and many other agreements) to make sure their IP is protected.

5) Most creators are just winging it and do not have a team supporting them like traditional Hollywood talent. I used to be on Tom Hank’s team, so I know how many people are there to protect talent in Hollywood. I met one of my favorite creators and I totally Fangirled myself all over her but she has been on YouTube for over 10 years and she’s only 25. I won’t mention who she is yet because it’s very likely that she is going to hire me as her attorney, but she launched a product two years ago and made $50 million (that’s my guess because I know how much the product was, I bought two and she shared how many people bought it. It might actually be more by now two years later). It was the world’s simplest product but because she’s been creating and providing free valuable content on YouTube for 10 years, her loyal, deeply loyal community were so ready to buy whatever she launched. So I spoke to her and because I was a true fan I knew so many details about her life and her videos and her product that by the end of the conversation, she basically said that she needed a lawyer, and if she was going to hire a lawyer, why not let it be someone who was the creator and a female creator, like herself.

In Hollywood, you don’t pick up a big star to be your client without deep vetting and referrals. Look, I’m not trying to discount myself because I have been an attorney in Hollywood for 15 years but I think those creators are looking for people they can trust and I think having the relatability of also being a creator of myself opens a lot of doors. Just like our communities need to trust us, the main currency in the creator world is trust and authenticity. I do have a real drive to help other creators. I’ve given free consultations and time to many creators, including to some in this group. I haven’t charged some of you anything because I just want to protect creators. I am already getting too busy with too much work and clients because traditional lawyers are not looking at the space and that’s a mistake.

And if you’re thinking of working with someone, be very careful of working with agencies or managers, who represent both brands and creators. Try to find an agency that only represents creators and make sure you do not sign an exclusive contract because it’s hard to get out of them. My biggest complaint I hear from talking with creators and those who become my clients is how disillusioned and disappointed they have been with their agencies and managers.

6) I was really delighted to meet a lot of Asian creators. I think Asian creators have a double barrier as a minority, and as a culture that has been taught to work in traditional spaces, like medicine, law, engineering, and finance. I attended the party, hosted by Karat (the first credit card for creators, I’m not clear how they make money to be honest and neither are some other experts I talked with. I think they’re trying to build trust and awareness before they push into other areas. I could be wrong, but I feel like they’re trying to finance creators perhaps like Spotter or Jellysmack) and Fourth Wall and there were so many big, big Asian creators there. There are many of them who are comedians or entertainers. A lot of food creators who are some of my favorite creators to watch on YouTube.

7) The panel by the YouTube Algorithm expert, Todd Beaupré, who has led the Discovery product team at YouTube since 2014 was fascinating and packed! It was the only panel where there was a line, and they would only let people in if someone left. Of course, they are still very bullish on Shorts and they confirmed what we have been here for a while, which is subscriber count matters a lot less now and anyone with a small channel could have viral hits and grow their channels very quickly. I think YouTube understands and knows how hard it has been to grow and they are changing that. For those of you who have not yet hit 1000 subscribers. I hope you know that they just lowered the subscriber count to 500 just last week.

8) The YouTube keynote featuring Colin and Samir announced that AB testing for thumbnails has been beta tested with a few hundred creators and is expected to go wide very soon. Exciting news.

9) If you do not know who Miles Fisher is, look him up. He is most well known for being the Deepfake of Tom Cruise. His company metaphysics is super cool. Basically the AI deepfake technology that his company is creating will bring back dead celebrities. It’s a lot more nuanced and complicated but I won’t go into all of it here. He was super smart and articulate, and I was really impressed by his talk. He’s not just some empty actor who functions as Tom Cruise’s look alike, but he’s actually really quite innovative and well educated in this AI deepfake space.

10) I met the Taiwanese YouTube delegation of the largest YouTubers from Taiwan. As an immigrant from Taiwan I was so tickled and happy to meet them. They were all super nice and very very humble. They each have about 1 million subs which in American standards might not be that big but one of the guys gets millions of use which equals about 6% of the town use population. When you think about that that’s crazy. And they came with their translators and one of the translators actually was a big fan of my channel which is the first time that’s ever happened. I was, so happy to actually meet a fan in real life.

11) The guy who brought the Taiwanese YouTubers is an American VC guy, his name is Clayton Jacobs and he founded this company called creatorsDB.app and it is a fascinating company. Basically he scrubs the entire world of creators and he has 4 million creators of this database and he partners with brands who can look at this database to see what creators they want to work with. When the brand picks a creator, Clayton will reach out to the creator, who to be clearer, is not a client, but he will offer the brand deal and he says 60 to 70% of the time the creators agree to it because why would they turn down a brand deal if it’s being presented by a company who legitimizes the deal. What’s really cool about this company is the fact that it’s really innovative and I’m just blown away by the level of creativity and entrepreneurship of companies in the space right now. I’m realizing I probably only caught like 25% of the panels because so many panels were happening simultaneously and I couldn’t attend all the panels. I almost wish I could be at 10 places at once so I could have met more people.

12) Yes. The main topic on everyone’s minds is AI and there were so many panels on it. Look up DeepMedia, which is a company that specializes in using synthetic media to automatically translate, dub, and lipsync content in any language. Super cool and leads to another topic…dubbing.

13) The reason MrBeast’s videos are so widely watched is because he does dubbing for all of his videos into other languages for almost every huge market on earth. Less than 10% of the world speaks English so that means he understood that over 90% of the world could not watch his videos. And he is able to get the biggest actors of each market to drop them. In Japan, he was able to get the biggest anime actor to dub his voice.

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