Why Human Creativity Matters More Than Ever in the Age of AI | Nic Taylor

Vimeo has been kind of been in a bit of a decline now for around about 2 years. They have never been in a position whereby they have actually been profitable. And they, at the end of last year, they ended up being acquired. So they were acquired by a company called Bending Spoons, which to most people will be meaningless. Most people think of Bending Spoons and just think of The Matrix, all the way to how—

yes. Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Gosport, Hampshire. Hampshire?

Uh, Hampshire was correct, yes.

It's not Gosport though.

It's close. It is Gosport.

Gosport. Gosport. Gosport.

Gosport. Gosport. Yeah, Gosport.

Sorry, I butchered it. I'm so sorry, person in Gosport. Thank you for listening. Joining me, my translator, Nick Taylor with Livid. Nick, welcome to the program.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Well, you were calling in from across the pond, and I thought it appropriate to shout out somebody that listened across the pond. It's actually interesting, Great Britain is my second highest listenership outside the United States, which I find odd. I don't know why, it shouldn't be odd, but anyway. That sounds plausible, yeah. Yeah, well, it's reality, whether I want to accept it or not. Nick, tell us about Livid, because I was reading some of your website and your posts, and I'm very intrigued with what you have cooking.

Awesome. Yeah. So Livid is a relatively new ad-free video hosting service. We are closely aligned with Vimeo in terms of the features which we have built or are building, and we are aiming directly at the individuals and small businesses across multiple industries who are currently using Vimeo. And may for various reasons, either currently or in the near future, be looking for a new place to host their videos. Our branding is very direct, I would say, in terms of what we are looking to achieve. We are aiming to be the brand new Vimeo alternative.

Okay, so I'm going to plead ignorance here. I, why is it that people choose Vimeo over say YouTube? Like, as it seems like it's create, it's the creator driven, it's not like the consumer driven, but maybe I'm wrong about that. So let's set up, why did Vimeo come into being in the first place?

Yeah, so Vimeo and YouTube kind of work these days in very sort of opposite ways around. Vimeo is, as you said, is very much kind of driven by the actual creator of the content. So the person who pays for Vimeo is the person who chooses to host videos on Vimeo. I'll just add now, actually, because at some point it's going to slip me up. I do actually have a stammer and there's going to be at some point in this conversation where I'll have some long pauses or I'll say the same word over and over again, but just ignore me and eventually I'll spit it out.

Well, I'll pause and tell you that I had a guest on the show that actually had Tourette's, and I didn't know that until the middle of the interview. And I'm like, oh, okay. So no, you're fine.

Thank you. Thank you. So yes. So for Vimeo, of course, it's the person who hosts the video is the— is ultimately the person who is going to pay. Now, when it comes to YouTube, it's backwards. People upload their videos for free and then effectively the people who pay are the people who are going to view those videos either through paying for YouTube Premium or through ads. So what that means is for people who choose Vimeo, and it's not necessarily a choice whereby they say that they're either going to host on YouTube or Vimeo, there's absolutely scenarios where Basically using both is completely viable. But essentially if you're going to host on Vimeo, you're saying that you want full control over what happens to your video. You'd like to control how people find your video and you also then want to control what, what happens afterwards. Because of course with YouTube, the most common example to kind of give to people is absolutely if you've got a website and you want to host a video on that website, you can absolutely go to YouTube and upload that and then look to look to add that video to your website. However, the moment that that plays, you lose control over what happens in terms of their, their, their, their— could be ads which play. But then also once that video ends, the complete motivation for YouTube at that point is they want to take your potential customer or your client. They want to take them into YouTube and they want to get them to be watching the next top 10 cats on YouTube. They don't want that, that person to stay on your site. So this is why services like Vimeo exist, basically to give you a place where you can host your videos, share them very specifically, and then also be able to embed those in your website with your own branding and styling.

Okay, so what is Livid solving that Vimeo doesn't do?

Yeah, so we are not trying to change anything here drastically. What we are looking to do is basically to almost take video hosting back to the roots and basics of what it needs to be. Vimeo has kind of been in a bit of a decline now for around about 2 years. They have never been in a position whereby they have actually been profitable. And at the end of last year, they ended up being acquired. So they were acquired by a company called Bending Spoons, which to most people will be meaningless. Most people think of Bending Spoons and just think of The Matrix. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And so that acquisition means only one thing is going to happen next at Vimeo. Everyone at Vimeo is going to end up probably paying at least 100% more. For the same or less service. And the reason I know this is because the whole reason we started Livid is because that same company, Bending Spoons, acquired a previous company called StreamYard, which is a place which I worked at alongside most of the team at Livid. And we saw the opportunity then when we found out at the end of last year that Vimeo was about to about to get acquired by, by Bendy Experience that we knew what will happen next. They're going to—

You've seen this movie before.

Exactly. Exactly. We know how it ends. The details of how they get there changes. But the one thing we are very certain on and we kind of now have the details on is that everyone who's got a paid account now at Vimeo is going to pay a lot more money. So we want to provide them with the tooling to be able to get out of Vimeo very easily because that's the whole second part to it is actually leaving Vimeo is really hard and provide them with then what, what is to us what we feel is great value and a great product then to switch to.

Okay, so the obvious question to me is if Vimeo couldn't make money at it, how are you going to make money at it?

Very good question. Yeah. So the history of, the history of Vimeo is really, really fascinating. They have pivoted many a time now. They have absolutely started off in like the grassroots of being like, hey, we are here for creators, we are here for artists. And that worked okay for them for a while when they were pre-revenue. And then of course, when they started to actually look at how to how to actually build revenues from that, they then created a kind of like freemium tier and that gave them some growth but not a huge amount. So eventually they started to understand that they needed to get into a lot of, lots of different areas and they basically chased, they looked to chase growth, but they chased it basically at huge, huge cost. Would you care to guess how many people up until very recently worked at Vimeo?

I'm guessing it's probably not many. Or is it a lot? Which direction?

Yeah. So Vimeo, this was all learned basically when Benning Spoons took over. Then of course, one of the first steps they do is they fire everyone. And so at that point, we all learned how big they were. They had 2,000 staff.

Seems a little excessive.

Yeah, yeah, very excessive. Now to contrast that, at StreamYard, we were in the realms there where of course StreamYard is smaller than—

And it was podcasting? StreamYard?

StreamYard. Yeah. StreamYard did both live streaming and podcasting.

Okay.

And it was, that was basically a product that, that could be happily and healthily run on 20 people. And that is a product which the level of complexity in that product is higher than in Livid. So we are very confident with the team that we've got, we could scale to the self-serve size of Vimeo. Bear in mind for Vimeo, they also had they had self-serve stuff, but they also then had enterprise. And to serve enterprise, you do need a lot, like lots of people. We have zero interest in enterprise. We want to serve the individuals and the smaller businesses. And we believe that we can do that at scale with the skill set that we have because of the background at StreamYard.

Yeah. And I don't know anything about Vimeo other than I've used it occasionally, but What you just said makes me think that it was probably VC-backed. And I mean, is that correct?

Yeah. So they spent a bit of time basically being spun off from a larger entity, which it's a 3-letter acronym. So forgive me whilst I can't remember it off the top of my head.

We need to ask our producer. Producer, can you look that up?

And it got spun off, I think it was 2016, 2017. And so they absolutely had like really crazy growth during the 2020s because of COVID Everything like StreamYard, everything like things like StreamYard, things like Vimeo did really, really well in COVID. Crazy, crazy, crazy growth. But it was always post-COVID what happened next, which really kind of informed if those businesses really were viable. And at that point, lots of companies had to cut back drastically. Vimeo just didn't really do huge cutbacks compared to elsewhere. They continued to invest into enterprise, continue to hire loads of of extra people then to actually to, to support that. Um, but ultimately we're quite stagnant.

Well, the reason why I bring that up is because I think that, not that a lot of our listeners are involved in that space, but I think VC funding of any business fundamentally changes it. And even though the underlying business and business model might make sense under other circumstances, the expectation of a venture capital investment changes the paradigm, and it's growth at all costs, um, which, which, you know, may make sense in certain circumstances like Uber, but the, the flip side of it is that it destroys a lot of businesses along the way that could have been viable if they didn't have that growth expectation on it. Right. And it kind of sounds like that that's maybe what you're discovering is like this model actually would make money if you weren't trying to build something else.

Yeah, it is. It is. There is some points within there which are quite interesting from, from the point of view of saying there is a choice that we've had to make, of course, in terms of what segments of the market to actually look to cater for. Because of course, if we go too small and we go too niche, then in terms of how viable that is, it does start to drop. But of course, if we go too wide, then of course we don't necessarily then build out the feature sets then for those, those, those niches. So we've, we've gone for a balance in there whereby we are, we are saying that we are going for it for the individuals and small businesses across lots of industries. And that includes industries that are creative, but also ones that aren't. But the good thing is, is that there's a lot of crossover on both of those. There are absolutely some features which we have to build, which are, which are definitely which will lean slightly more towards the sort of creative end rather than the business end. But we feel like in order to address that market, and this has been proven by Vimeo, effectively, you need to have it large enough to make sure that it's something that can be sustainable.

Yes. Kind of like Goldilocks. You want it not too small, not too big, just the right size.

Yes. Yes, absolutely.

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Okay, so I'm going to pivot my conversation here. Is your background— what is your background? Were you a developer, a programmer?

What's your CV? Yeah, so I sit in the world of what is officially called product. Which can then be interpreted in every single job that I've ever been in completely differently. So officially, I am the head of, the head of product and growth, which apparently I find really hard to say. But my entire history is very much in startups. I have worked in, at this point, maybe 5 or 6 across lots of different industries. Some of them have been the fastest growing X in Y, and some of them have been the X of this, and so on and so on. So, yeah, I've had a very mixed background within kind of high growth, high intensity worlds.

But always in tech.

Always in tech.

And your background was not as a developer, or was it?

No.

Okay. Nope. Any— okay, so I'm going to ask the question because I'm really curious. And I think you might have some insight, but you may not. So when you look at the market of creatives, and specifically around content, video content, what do you see, I mean, there's a lot of disruption. And I'm not even really talking about like people using AI to make videos instead of using a videographer or an agency. You know, I think what I'm, you know, a lot of video content ends up in some type of marketing function. So, so not like— I'm not talking about video that I would classify as cinematography, so like you're creating content to sell, but really more in, in support of other marketing functions. So I don't know if I've clearly defined that. What do you, what do you see in in that space from where you sit. Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now.

So I see video has become more and more and more important there. I don't, I don't think we've been in a time where there's been, where there has been more video available than there ever has, like has been now. And again, I would also include from that, I would put aside AI from that because of the fact that I actually think that Very recently, I've kind of felt like people's jobs within video have maybe got a bit safer because actually with the fact that Sora 2 got shut down kind of showed that actually the kind of slop that is created is nowhere near good enough. So even outside of that, we've got more content now, short form and long form, and The thing that I'm seeing is that the actual need for decent, easy, straightforward hosting— God, this just sounds like an advert now— is just at first I thought it was something that was kind of dying away. But the more I looked into the industry and the more I started to understand what was going on for Vimeo, the more I was just like, wow, this really hasn't— like, the basics of what people want from this hasn't actually changed a lot in the time that Vimeo has been around. In terms of it, it hasn't— all of the tooling that Vimeo have created in recent years around AI in order to help people with their videos hasn't really been popular. So they've built a whole load of features recently, but everyone's just been like, meh. Right. Any users I've spoken to have just been like, I just want the basics done really, really, really well. And that part of it I've just found really interesting because it just means that actually the amount of people looking to invest within this tech around it is not that strong. But the amount of people looking to invest their time and energy within to the actual, the actual, the actual, the actual— sorry, this is where it kicks in on certain words that start with M— into the actual medium. Has seemingly grown. And the ones that I speak to, whilst times really are tough, it seems, but it seems to be very much a kind of a reflection as well around the amount of spending power available for people to actually hire these agencies. You know, I've had a chat recently with 2 or 3, and they both said to me, look, we, we're doing okay, but how much is available for people to spend is shrinking. So we're adapting and we're just creating shorter content for people and just, and changing the approach for it. So it seems, yeah, it seems—

So let me, let me ask you a question. So you talk to agencies, is that like one of your prime targets are agencies or no?

So agencies, absolutely. For the use case that they will be looking to host videos on Livid that they would either look to embed on their website and they want to make sure that they have complete, complete control over how that looks. And then their second use case is when they create an edit they may want to then share that directly with a client and they want to make that really simple for that client to be able to access that content securely, which they're able to do with a password and then also being able to add comments to that video at specific timestamps to be able to say, oh, actually, yeah, at that specific part it's a bit too long, bit too short, and so on. So for them, it's very much a layer of presentation alongside having the ability to have their content reviewed.

So you, you said something that I've heard talking to our clients, um, the, the trend that budgets are shrinking. And I find that fascinating, uh, because I— well, I I'll just leave my opinion out. I want to hear yours. Why do you think budgets are shrinking?

Well, there's always risk. So if you are, if you're going to look at getting a piece of content created. So this is something for us that we've been looking at. We want to potentially create a higher level of professional kind of content to support Livid. And when I, at that point, me being a client, then it's quite interesting then to have that side of the conversation where I'm understanding the costs involved and trying to then see what's going to be our kind of most where's the point of impact for me? Like, how much do I need to spend before spending more is going to give me a questionable return? So at the moment, we're putting more time into the upfront of it in order to basically understand exactly what we would achieve by it, and then looking at then what are the various mediums within video of something that could be created in order to achieve that. And it feels like from speaking to, from speaking, speaking to agencies, that's the process that everyone is focused on is basically how can I get the biggest bang for buck? Because everything is competing for that same dollar. If you are working in a company, you've got a budget for marketing and this will probably be one of the most expensive and also risky things because you just don't know what the outcome of that will be and how much you can actually measure all of the variables in that.

Okay, I'm going to give you my opinion and then I want to hear your response to it. So I, I see a convergence of, of three things. Uh, one is just a general economic cycle, right? Like when, when business owners perceive more risk of, of a downturn, they, uh, you know, spend less money. Okay, that's probably the biggest macro. The second thing is I think that there has been a technology disruption in the agency model that has caused a lot of business owners to question the results. Um, that, that I had one agency owner, uh, admit on this show that like there's a there's a huge deficit of trust between business owners and agencies that, you know, they're, they're, they're questioning the— they're questioning their ability to actually deliver on what they say they can deliver, right? And then the third thing is, is just the technological application, I think, like, of— it's causing confusion out there. I was having a conversation with a couple of content— I don't say— it's kind of even hard to name what people do anymore. I would call them like miniature production houses. Where they started in video, but now they're ending up doing, you know, like the whole thing that an agency would have done. And the comment that they said, there's like, these businesses or even agencies are using AI to like produce scripts or produce production schedules. And like there's just this huge gap between reality and what the AI is coming up with, right? Like, my favorite was like, it was supposed to be a 30-second spot and the script was like 4 pages. And it's like, well, no, that doesn't work. And like, that technology disconnect is kind of the third thing. Okay, so all of this is people are like puckered up and they're just not spending as much money. But the flip side of it is, I see that you said like video is increasing, like the demand for video is increasing, and I'm having a hard time reconciling those two things. Like the demand for video is going up, but the budgets are shrinking. How How do you perceive that?

Well, I guess like the tooling around it has changed, right? So it's like how accessible video is has become both on the consumption side, but also the creation side has got significantly higher. So I guess on the creation side, it's the world has changed a bit now where suddenly it used to be that there was a massive difference, right, between what you would even see on TV against the cinema, you'd be like, the quality of production you would see in cinema was always several steps higher than TV. And suddenly, I mean, to me, I believe it was around about the time of like Lost and 24 and Mad Men when suddenly we started to see an age whereby, oh, actually you can get the same kind of production values, put it into a TV series, and then suddenly now this is on a medium where people are able to access that in a much simpler way and it's a lot cheaper. But then it kind of shifted again where suddenly the production values, I feel like, suddenly became less important. Like suddenly shooting something on your phone can then become as popular on the internet for a lot less money. That was purely just basically potentially an idea and time versus then if you're going to hire a full production crew, is like the— what you'll get out of that, you need to be certain. That that's going to elevate your content further, that you're going to get the skills. And that's what you're paying for, is the skills of the people being able to then create you something that is several steps above what you can do yourself, which makes it harder in some ways. But I guess if you are able to combine— and that sounds like, you know, the sort of example you had there in terms of using AI, trying to find those same efficiencies within these jobs to get AI to assist you. So what you're really, really good at on the much more creative side with choosing those right shots, those right angles, can then be the reason why then people don't want to just use their phone. They don't just try and shoot something themselves. And I feel like that's where that change has appeared for me.

This is just an observation. That just came to mind. You tell me what you think. So the ubiquity of AI has got people saying, well, you just need to produce 500 pieces of content a month. It's like, well, the tool is cheaper, so now just pump out the volume, right? And there's that aspect of it. There's the aspect, like you said, like the production value is clearly not the same. So, like, in order to stick out in this increasing sea of sameness, you have to have better production quality, or maybe less production quality, like, to stand out. Like to stand out from the mess in the middle. So, so maybe it's the amateur that is like me, myself, filming something that it's clearly not a professional, and that's not its intent, but the content is good enough to attract attention because it tells a good story, or it's a different angle than you're seeing out there, or you've got to have really great production to stick out from, you know, good storytelling, good script, good writing, good, you know, cameras, good lighting, you know, good post-production, all of that stuff. What do you think? Is that an observation that holds?

Yeah, I think that would be very much what I would agree with. The amount of tooling out there is now so prevalent. You think maybe back 30 years, just being able to go out and find the right kind of camera and equipment would have taken so much research and effort and so on. Whereas now it's like the levels of that people can access just straight away has shot up. And then with AI, it's like even, even being creative now, you can get assistance in, in, in, in, in that process. I think the part I find really fascinating now is basically how people then use that, that tooling to elevate their own skill sets. In terms of the moment, I still don't think of AI as being something yet that has the possibility of being able to replace human beings being creative. And I feel that—

and I don't think it ever will, frankly.

If anything, I think it would place more value on humans being creative because like that cycle of basically just AIs eating AIs for being able to get input on things that are creative just really increases the value of things that are created by humans. So it's really, but you can't ignore that tooling and not look to use those tools to help you elevate your work.

Yeah, no, I think it's going to be the creators that figure out how to use the tools that are going to rise to the top. It's not the tools replacing the creatives. I think that AI in general produces sameness. Like, I mean, it's reductive in nature. Like, that's what it is. It's predicting based upon what has already happened, what goes next. And that produces sameness. I mean, like, it's just the way it's built. So the divergent, the inspiration, the creative, absolutely cannot be made by these models. It's completely impossible. And to your point, like, the more people that are using the tools to produce content of any sort, whether that's, you know, written, audio, or video, it's just going to make the problem worse. It's going to exacerbate it. And like, I don't want to watch this. And you're— I think you're already seeing backlash from a consumer standpoint. Of that, like, no.

Definitely. Definitely. Yeah, it's been— I was so pleased when I saw that Sora 2 was shut down, just knowing that it was a complete waste of time and energy because people don't want to watch slop. They want to actually watch something that someone has put some soul into. And the moment you don't have that soul there, then it's gone completely.

Well, and I even see it with static images. Like if I'm on LinkedIn and I see someone's got a clearly AI-generated image in the post, I'm like, I just scroll past. It does not engage me at all. It's like the filters kicked in.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Like the skill now for using AI is making it seem like AI has not been used.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nick, how do people find out more about Livid if they want to sign up?

So they can go to livid.com. There is also a link which we can add into any, any descriptions for this podcast at all, which if users use that link, they will also get a $15 credit. Which they can then use on any— on either the annual plan or monthly plan.

Perfect. I'm excited to see where you guys take this. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, hit the little envelope button and shoot us a text. Tell us what you'd like to hear and I'll get rid of Nick. Until next time. Tata for now.