Why Hank Green Can T Quit Youtube For Tiktok

The affiliate program essentially started the creator economy as we know it today, and YouTube is the gold standard for creators. It’s something we’ve heard in every creator-focused episode of Decoder we’ve ever done: if you can make it big on YouTube, you can make it a career. This does not happen on other platforms. There is no revenue sharing on Instagram. There is no revenue sharing on Twitter. There is no revenue at all on Twitter, really. And most importantly, there is no revenue share on TikTok. Instead, there is something called a creator pool, which shares a fixed amount of money, roughly a billion dollars, divided among all creators on the platform. This means that as more creators join TikTok, the money is shared more ways and each individual creator can make less. In this episode, I talk to Hank Green. Now, as you’d expect from one of the original and most successful YouTubers and creators out there, Hank has very strong opinions about platforms and how they pay creators. In addition to being an individual creator, he is also the CEO of Complexly, a 50-person company that produces educational content about science, history, and art on about 20 YouTube channels and podcasts. And if it weren’t for YouTube ad money, none of these shows would exist. So in February, Hank made a video about how TikTok’s “creator fund” is a really bad deal for creators and said that YouTube’s model is still superior. As it happens, this was right around the time I was talking to YouTube’s head of product, Neal Mohan. After that episode with Neil came out, one of Hank’s friends tweeted it to him and told him he should go on Decoder and talk about it. So Hank invited himself on the show — of course we said yes. it’s hank green! This episode goes pretty deep into our feelings about participating in the economy of online culture and the relationship between massive platform companies and the communities that rely on them. But it’s good, and it’s not something we talk about enough. All right, Hank Green. Creator and CEO of Complexly. Here you go. Hank Green is the CEO of Complexly and a very popular internet creator. Welcome to Decoder. Thanks. I keep listening and learning a lot from the conversations you have, so thank you for having them. Get ready for the org chart questions, my friend. They are coming. I’ve thought about it like, “I don’t feel satisfied with my own answer.” You’re also our first guest to actually invite himself onto the show with a tweet. I appreciate the fact that. Throughout history? Yes. A friend of mine asked me, “Hank, why weren’t you at the decoder?” I was saying “Please” and it worked. “Don’t mind if I do!” We’ve interviewed Neal Mohan, who is YouTube’s Head of Product. He talked about his creator fund for YouTube Shorts. TikTok also has a creator fund. You are very opinionated about creators’ funds. I hate them. There it is. This is the whole show, everyone. It’s been two minutes and we’re going to show about five ads now. Not only do I hate them, but they are very bad and everyone should hate them with me. Okay, great. That’s how Twitter works, right? Yes. Promo code is a decoder. I’ll see you next week. So, you are an entrepreneur. You’ve built a long-standing, stable business in the shifting sands of the internet of creators for over 15 years. I want to talk about it. Get started with Complexly. What is this? What are your goals with the company? Complexly is an educational media company focused on making things online that are free and available to everyone and as good as what you might see on TV or sold to schools by larger educational media companies. It’s hard. There are definitely things that these big companies do that we don’t. It seemed like the only way we could compete in this world was to just make it and get it out there. If students and teachers like it, they will use it. If they don’t, then they won’t. It’s a hard business to put together and it’s very diverse — which is a nice way of saying we can’t make it work without trying like eight different things at once. He has some really great YouTube channels and podcasts, which is the bulk of what we do, and then some other social media stuff. It’s been 10 years now and we make it work. Sure there are days when I feel like someone should come out of the woodwork and give me $10 million so I don’t have to worry all the time, but that’s not work, I guess. They have to listen to this podcast, right? I mean, that’s the whole idea. They listen and then they want to be in it to talk about their organizational charts. The whole podcast is bait. You’ve really turned a company around before. You started VidCon with your brother — which was the conference for creators — and then you took it to Viacom. How was that process for you? Is it something you would do again? I mean, strangely enough it was the second company I sold. The first was Subbable, which we sold to Patreon. It was basically the exact same thing that Patreon did, except we didn’t have the technology. To sign up, you had to email someone to ask, “Can I be on your platform?” It was a wonderful, easy task to merge these two companies. I’m glad we did. The Viacom thing was much bigger and more complicated, and I had to think about it a lot. It’s always been something I remain ambivalent about, though less so now that we’ve seen two years of the pandemic. We would have gone bankrupt eight times during that time if we hadn’t had a bigger company behind us. One of the reasons we wanted to do it so much was because we felt very vulnerable in the world. I wasn’t specifically thinking about a pandemic, but any volatility is scary when you base your entire business on three days in the summer. I originally thought we were going to sell to a conference company. I thought, “Some conference company is going to run this conference.” I realized that if we did this, the company would try to make as much profit as possible. Whereas a media company would try to make it as cool as possible so they look cool. We’re not a big part of Viacom’s budget at VidCon. This is the game for media company events. That’s why they do it. It seemed like a much better outcome than trying to squeeze every penny. Make a conference great by creating a cool event that can also make you look good and help you make connections, this way you can get your executives on stage. Your real goal should be to make a good conference, rather than a profitable one. You just said, “I hope somebody gives me $10 million.” Having gone on to sell two companies, do you say, “I have to sell at some point and ride off into the sunset”? No, I don’t like the sunset. The sunsets are awesome. Have you ever actually looked at one? So ugly. But yes, I am a worker and I like to do things. I often wish I had time to do other work. I think, “How can I build these businesses to have great leadership? Am I doing enough coaching or enough systematization of my brain?’ It’s better than thinking, “It would be so much easier if I just do my job and don’t have to help other people.” I really like what both of my companies are doing right now and feel really good about them. It’s tough, but I’m definitely not thinking about a buyout for these companies. I think, “How can I be supported by great leadership?” Here comes the decoder questions. How many people are in these companies? DFTBA — a company that helps creators make great products and sell those products to their communities — is about 50. There’s product development and customer support, but the majority is on the warehouse side. Complexly is also about 50 people, most of whom focus on individual performances, although there are a few who jump between groups. Let’s focus on Complexly. We could do a whole episode on merchandise, logistics, and print-on-demand shipping. Why do I know so much about all this? That was not my intention. I think I should disclose that our store is DFTBA. Vox works with us. Yeah, so go buy an EMAILS t-shirt. It will help us both. Promo code is a decoder. It’s the best shirt we all make together, to be honest with you. But let’s focus on Complexly. You said that most people focus on individual shows. How is it structured overall? A lot of our editorial – the words that come out of people’s mouths – is contract based. With Crash Course specifically, we’re going to teach a lesson about chemistry. We don’t want to hire a chemistry writer only to fire him after completing a year’s coursework, so we have multiple specialist contractors who do the data checking, syllabus, course design and actual writing. We also have the kind of editorial team that knows how to turn the words of smart people into Crash Courses. It’s similar to how it works on SciShow or again on Eons, which is our prehistoric world podcast and YouTube show. These shows live in their own world. They usually have a person who’s in charge of editorial, who doesn’t necessarily write most of these things, but does contract management. Then there’s a production team tasked with turning it into…