The Secret Agenda of Billionaire Content Creators | Ep. 2621

All right, so we're going to talk about why millionaires and billionaires are becoming content creators. So let me set the stage for this one. So what's interesting to me is that Chamath Palihapitiya, he is creating a paid subscriber list. So he has paid subscriptions turned on for Twitter now, or X, and I believe he has a paid Substack too, where he's going to share research with his fans and say, hey, look, I'm going to use the proceeds from this and we're going to use the proceeds to basically get even better research for you all. And so I want to share this with you all because you all enjoy what I read. And I actually subscribed to one of his Substacks where it just shows the stuff that he's read for the week. And so I can kind of get into his head, right? And then the other interesting thing is that Andrew Wilkinson, who founded Tiny— so Tiny, they own a handful of companies that they own MetaLab and they have Dribbble. What else do they have? They have Thrive Market. So, they have a handful of companies and I think, what is it, WooCommerce? Maybe they took that company public. So, WooCommerce, they took it public. But anyway, so you have both these people that are maybe worth $100 million plus or so. Chamath is maybe close to a billionaire, if not more. And they are turning on— so, Andrew Wilkinson, sorry, let me back up a second. He also turned on a $29 a month Twitter or X subscription and he has to basically contribute to the community once a month.

Yeah.

or else people are going to be upset, right? And that maybe makes him like, you know, $10,000, $15,000, $25,000 a month or something like that. So I find it interesting that millionaires, billionaires, more and more people are getting into the content creation game. It's not just the MrBeasts of the world.

But it also helps him too. Like if you look at Chamath, his following creating content also helped more people learn about the SPACs that he produced, which in theory, I bet you there's at least one person who follows him who I don't know if he wants to talk about the SPACs anymore. I know, but because of all the content he's pushed out and all the followers he created, there's people who bought at least— there's at least one person who bought one share because of knowing him and following him from Twitter. And that of course helped him make money. There's a big exposé. I don't know if you ended up seeing it on—

No, I saw it. None of the— I don't think many of them worked. No. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a Chamath fan, right? I generally like what he says. I think, you know, so, but, you know, unfortunately the SPACs didn't work out. Here's the other things. People are like, did you— one of the tweets was like, did you repent for all the losses that you incurred? And like, you know, and he's like, well, did you get out when I got out? So that was his response to them. But not, you know, we digress. The point being here is that I think even the investors, the top investors in the world, people that are popular, they understand the value of an audience, right? And I think more and more people understand that the one thing that you can separate yourself from the rest of the crowd is having an audience. One of our video editors sent me a text the other day. So, when we record, Brad, and he's like, should I build an audience? Right? And I was like, absolutely, you should build an audience. If you're willing to put the time and effort and eat poo-poo for 3 years, then you should build an audience. And look, more and more people are doing it. There's a reason why Oprah became so successful, why Tim Ferriss became so successful, right? They all came up with their own, their own angle, and then they just continued to do it for decades.

Dude, totally. And oh, by the way, speaking of Ferriss, dude, look how much money he made from things like Shopify, Uber. Building an audience is more than just making money from something as simple as charging for information and having a subscription. You can make a ton of money from other things as well, such as you know, the audience investing in a company or following you or helping you get business deals. Like there's so much to be made by building a brand and, you know, becoming a content creator.

Let me give you 2 examples here. So you sparked a— we just made an idea, baby. So for example, Jason Lemkin. So he had a company called EchoSign and he sold it to Adobe and now it's just called Adobe Sign. And he did well with it, right? But what he did afterwards was he was just answering questions about SaaS, software as a service, on Quora, which is a question and answer website. And that's how he started to build his audience. And eventually, he parlayed that into SaaStr, which is probably the largest SaaS conference in the world. And that does probably $20, $25 million a year or so. So it's a great business. And that's an example of not only did he build a conference from it, but he gets a lot of deal flow from the SaaS world where he He also continues to invest as a venture capitalist. Now, another example here would be Harry Stebbings from 20 Minute VC. So, 20VC, he's been doing it for about 9 years or so. I think he started it maybe when he was like 18 or 19 years old. But because he's done these VC podcasts for so long, he's gotten access to a ton of deal flow and that's what led to his success, right? I don't think he has any operating experience at all, but it just goes to show you. And by the way, Tim Ferriss, I think he has some operating experience. He's done some ecommerce businesses, but not like to the level of, hey, like, you know, you should be an advisor in my opinion, right? Like of a, like a, I don't think he has, sorry, I don't think he shouldn't be an advisor. My point is he doesn't necessarily have the operating experience of like an Uber or like a Spotify or sorry, Shopify.

What Eric's trying to make a point is Tim's built a great audience similar to Chamath and others. I think Tim's audience is actually bigger, But with Tim's audience specifically, even though he hasn't operated a large company like an Uber or anything like that, he's still doing extremely well from advisor shares and investing deals, et cetera, because of the audience size. Even Chamath, not trying to hate on him, on the SPACs or whatnot, makes a good point. He got out, he made money. If people did at the same time, I don't know if they were able to or not, but if they were, you know, good for them. They would've made a killing as well. The guy's done well from his audience, whether you love him or hate him. You got to give him props for how well he's done building, fostering the audience, and using it to make money.

Yeah. And I think there's something interesting about being a creator because it shows in public whether you're actually a good creator or not. Now, the Chamath thing, interestingly enough, I did buy into the SPACs when he did it. And I got out pretty early too, because I was like, I don't think that these are going anywhere. Right?

And you made money?

Yeah. So none of us, we made money. None of us, by the way, like none of us are hating on Chamath, Andrew Wilkinson, Tim Ferriss, or anything like that. They've all done great for themselves. We're just saying like everyone has their own angle. It doesn't, like just because you don't have operating experience doesn't mean we think any less of you or anything like that, so.

Yeah, and at the end of the day, building, like I look at Chamath, Wilkinson, Tim Ferriss, et cetera. I look at them as smart for doing this. It's not about hate. It's actually, it's a smart thing to do. You know, how people leverage it, that's up to them. There's no right or wrong way. But at the end of the day, if you build an audience, you're going to be better off versus if you didn't build an audience. It's that simple.

Let's give some numbers here, Neil, because you've— okay, I think you've probably been creating content for about 20 years or so. I've been creating content maybe for about 10 years or so, something like that, right?

Sure. I'm a little less than 20, but yeah.

Yeah. Point is, like, this stuff takes time. So anyway, that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, rate, subscribe, and check out this video over here. And we'll see you tomorrow.