HIBT Lab! Nas Company: Nuseir Yassin

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So first of all, this is a background I do not recommend to my worst enemy. Part of me wishes I was born in Denmark, Yeah, great country, but boringly great, right? Um, so not many people know this, but 20% of Israel is not Jewish. And I think this shows how complex the situation is. This isn't Jews versus Arabs. This is Jews and Arabs versus Arabs, Muslims, and Christians. I mean, it is a complete mess. And ethnically, I'm Palestinian, father, mother Arab speakers, Muslim, but, but, but nationality is Israeli, which means You grow up without a flag.

Yeah.

You know, if you can wave a flag and you're proud of it, like you should feel lucky. I can't wave the Israeli flag and neither can I wave the Palestinian flag cuz I never lived in Palestine and I don't feel that belonging that a Jewish person feels to Israel. So it's quite complicated to say the least.

Yeah. You grew up in an, in pretty much an entirely Arab environment, right?

Yeah. So for the first 19 years of my life living in Israel, I had zero Jewish friends.

None.

Like I had. None. Zero.

How does that happen? Just explain. I mean, just because of where you grew up or where you lived, like everybody around you was of Palestinian descent?

You know, we talk a lot about forced segregation and, you know, that is a real problem between Israel and Palestine, but there's also self-segregation that we don't talk enough about, in which, you know, Arabs choose to live by themselves and they don't want a Jewish neighbor, and a Jewish person doesn't want an Arab neighbor, a Muslim neighbor. Because we don't have a shared history in a way. We don't have a shared background and experiences. And so now you end up with Israel, you know, entire towns that are 30,000 people that are of the same ethnicity. And then next to us, there's a town that's Jewish, 100% Jewish. And it's just, it's crazy that this is the world we live in.

So you grew up in this village and, you know, that was the world you knew. And I guess when you grew up, you really had a dream of being an astronaut.

Yeah, I wanted to be an astronaut. I thought the only worthy thing to do is to do space.

Yeah, still, it still might be.

Then reality hits, you know. I was a Muslim. You needed physical traits that you can't control, like perfect eyesight, but also you need like religious traits, unfortunately, at least in Israel. And I didn't have that, so that, that dream quickly dissipated.

You couldn't become an astronaut, presumably because one of the criteria is you have to go to the military and most Palestinian Israelis do not.

And if I did, I would lose my family, basically. I would be called a traitor.

It would be like a betrayal, right? It seems like already in high school, you knew that if you wanted to sort of have any agency over your future, it was not gonna be in Israel.

It was not a glass ceiling that you can see through. It was a concrete ceiling. Like, there's just no way from here. Like, you can't be prime minister. Or it's impossible. You can't be in the broadcasting, but it's not because there are laws against it, to be clear. To be clear, I like Israel and I support Israel's existence and I want to make Israel better. It's just for me as a 17-year-old nobody kid, I knew that I needed to immigrate to get the opportunities and the credentials then to come back and fix this stuff.

I mean, not only did you decide to come to the US, but you decided to apply to Harvard and you got in and on a scholarship to go there. So you get to Harvard and you're studying economics and I think you're also doing computer science, right?

Yeah.

And so were you thinking, all right, I'll graduate and move to Silicon Valley and get a job at a tech company?

Yeah. So the question is, why did I need to be at a tech company? Yeah, because I thought tech was the ultimate equalizer. You could be a Muslim Arab Israeli and still build a nice app, and people could use it because they'll never know who you are and how you look like, right? Right. So I thought tech could hide my identity because my identity is a big problem for me growing up. Let me hide my identity. If my product is good, you will use it and download it and give me money. While in other industries like finance, right, you have to be the culture, you have to be a bro culture, you have to be that, you have to be tall, you dress nice and I just couldn't compete. But in tech I could compete. That's why I went to tech.

Yeah, I guess while you were a student, you started or you like built your own search engine that was like designed to do like internal searches in like Facebook and Twitter. Like, yeah. Did you— did it go anywhere? Did you like— was it just a fun side project or did you actually turn that into something bigger?

So, you know, when I was at Harvard, The Social Network movie came out, and, you know, I think everybody was inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of a fellow Harvard alumni or Harvard dropout. Yeah, we can build technology products, we can create something meaningful in this world. So I tried roughly 10 times every semester I was building a company, and almost all of them failed. Um, but here we are.

Wow. So I guess while you were there, you started to make videos just for fun. And tell me about how you got into that.

I was, I was just fascinated with not forgetting things. I thought that if you don't record it, it's forgotten. And so, so I really started to get into videos because I thought there's something there with creating a video that could last for generations. So I dabbled with it, but, but nothing too serious. We made one video, it did well. But it didn't feel like you could build a career out of content.

This is a video that you basically sent a hamburger on a weather balloon, right? Up into the stratosphere.

Yeah.

And you, you videoed it and then you put that on YouTube and it was, what was it? It was like, hey, I'm gonna send a hamburger into space.

Basically. Me and my friends were one of the first to send a hamburger to see the curvature of Earth. Yeah. Not really space curvature of Earth. We called it space because it's more fun. And, and it did really well. It got a million views. It made us famous for 15 seconds exactly. And then it died.

Yeah.

Then we're back to computer science.

So you graduate and you go into the world of tech. You go work for Venmo in New York, right? As a software developer. What were you doing there?

Honestly, nothing. You want the truth? Nothing. I was overpaid, underworked. $120,000 a year. That opened my eyes to like what an effective organization looked like and what an ineffective organization looks like.

Yeah. Did you set out to become an entrepreneur? Was that your idea? I mean, did you think, I want to be an entrepreneur, I'm going to start here at Venmo, and then I'm going to figure out what that means?

You know, everything I do in life is motivated by one thing. It's not the love for money. It's not the love for fame, and it's not the love for entrepreneurship. It's anger. I'm so angry at the way the world is structured. I can't believe that we are okay with living in it. Are you okay with living in Israel where like one village is 100% Muslim and another village is 100% Jewish where there's literally self-segregation? How do you live in America where I was begging the United States to give me an H-1B visa and then I have win it by a lottery? Like the visa system sucked, the New York Metro subway system, like I was angry about, I was angry at so many things. I was like, I couldn't contain it.

Wow. I mean, it's interesting because anger is a very powerful motivator. And I think anybody who's being honest about themselves and their lives will recognize that there are moments in their life when anger did actually have a huge impact on decisions they took. And for me, for sure, many times. But it's funny because you are certainly in your videos like such an optimistic, positive person. And so, Like I wouldn't think, oh, there's Nas Daily, that guy's angry.

Well, you know, anger could be utilized in both ways, right? One, you can do it to destroy, but another is could be to like show what the opposite can be. And so for me, Nas Daily is building what I want media to be like. Yeah. Now it's a lot more positive, but you know, media today is incredibly negative and it focuses on twisting narratives and there's too much power in the hands of the few and And I think Nas Daily is my angry statement towards it.

Yeah. All right. You're doing this job, this desk job in New York. A lot of people probably in your village are like, yeah, he's in New York. He's like living the dream. Meanwhile, you're kind of figuring out how to get out of what you see as kind of a nightmare. So what did you start to think about doing?

So, you know, you're at Venmo, you're like, okay, I'm an engineer. I could go to another company, but I'll do the same goddamn engineering. And it's like, it's not for me. And I wasn't the best at, and I wanted to find something I'm good at. And my idea was, let me just quit and let me just figure out something to do. And I found travel to be incredibly meaningful. And I thought, if I travel around the world, I should document my journey. And if I, if I have no job, I should not take a single day off, right? Taking a weekend off when you have no career, I mean, that's ultimately irresponsible.

Yeah.

So I said If I'm jobless, I have to work every single day for the next 1,000 days. So I, I came up with this idea. Let me make a video every day that's 1 minute long and put it on the internet.

And by the way, were you at like kind of experimenting with this stuff for a while before you decided to do this? Like clearly you were proficient with a drone, cuz I've tried a drone and I've crashed them many times. I'm useless. But clearly you, you started, you were playing around with this stuff for a while.

Uh, no. So actually I was like, I had like 2 days of training.

Wow.

I was like April 6th, I started, downloaded Final Cut Pro, learned it for 2 days. April 8th I quit. And then April 9th I started. Um, quick, quick, quick jump from the deep end of the pool. Like that's how I think things should be done.

And so the idea was I'm going to travel. You save money obviously from this job. I'm going to travel and I'm going to do a 1-minute video every day and post it. On the internet, and was there like a bigger sort of thought around this? Like maybe this will catch on, maybe I can like turn this into like a thing, maybe I can become influential?

No, none of that. People that look like me, people that have my upbringing do not believe they'll ever be influential. People that look like me do not belong in front of the camera, maybe behind the camera, if around the camera at all. But I didn't know this would be this big. I just was frustrated and I just wanted to see the world and tell the world what I see without filters.

We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, how Nuseir Yassin embarks on a 1,000-day journey to show the world from his perspective and turns that into Nas Daily. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab. When I started How I Built This, there were so many early-stage decisions to make. It was super overwhelming and Every day seemed to introduce another question that needed an answer. When you're starting something new, finding the right tool that simplifies everything can be such a game changer. And for millions of new businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is your commerce expert in everything from managing inventory to international shipping and beyond. Shopify can easily create email and social media campaigns and is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing— Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/built. Go to shopify.com/built. That's shopify.com/built. You know, I think about this a lot. Every great founder story begins with a simple belief that things can be done better, more honestly, more securely. And that belief is exactly what drove the scientists at CERN to build ProtonMail. Here's something I find remarkable: your last 100 emails are more unique than your fingerprint. Think about that. Your inbox holds your bank, your work, your travel, your identity. And yet most email services were built to extract that data, not protected. Scanning your messages, tracking when you open them, building a profile you never agreed to. Most people didn't choose this system. They inherited it. ProtonMail changes that default. End-to-end encryption so only you and your recipient can read your messages. Not advertisers, not Big Tech, not even Proton. No ads, no tracking, no surveillance. Go to proton.me/howibuiltthis to get started for free. ProtonMail: privacy by default. About a year ago, I got these really cool hooded sweatshirts for everyone on the How I Built This team, and I got them custom embroidered with the show's logo. Whenever I wear it, people are constantly asking, "Where can I buy that?" And, well, sorry, you can't get them because I had them custom made. But if you want something just as cool for your team, Vistaprint offers everything you need to confidently and effortlessly create branded apparel. Choose from a range of options that fit your style, business, and budget because your team deserves the best. Whether you're looking for branded merch for giveaways or for team uniforms, get the best apparel for your business at Vistaprint. You can also get lots of other custom products like drinkware, stickers, notebooks, pens, t-shirts, so much more to help you market your business your way. Vistaprint. Print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at vistaprint.com. Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest is Nuseir Yassin, the creator behind the NAS Daily concept. Which has millions of followers from all around the world. So you post your first Nas Daily video in New York, April 9th, 2016.

I have no clue why I'm doing this, but I think it'll be fun. Here's the idea. Once a day, I'm gonna make one video that's one minute long. That's it. In New York City, off to Egypt today, Kenya, Ethiopia, India, then Nepal, then Japan, then all the way to Man San Francisco, and then back home to New York City.

I'm assuming like you, you put this out there and like what, 5 people see it, maybe your mom and your dad. Like this is not like on the evening news that, that night. It's not on the NBC News.

Like, yes, yes. Uh, I got 75 new followers on this new page I started, and that meant the world to me. 75 people said, click, I'm gonna follow your journey, my friend.

All right. So did any of your friends say, you know, like, are you really going to do this? A video a day? Like, that's a lot of work. Like, or I mean, your parents, did they say, wait, we sent— you got sent to Harvard, you left the village, you're in this tech company in America, and you're doing what?

I was making more money than my parents combined at Venmo. And I was like, I was doing nothing. And I could, I could watch Netflix every day. But, but that's not why we are born.

Yeah.

So they didn't like it. They didn't like it. But, but this is why I'm so lucky because they were like, you control your life, go whatever you want. But my parents want the least risky way for me to live. I want the riskiest way for me to live. And that's where you get the clash. But luckily they were supportive and they just watched the videos. All I wanted from them was to watch the video, click like, click share. That's it. All right.

So you go embark on this journey. And when you decided to launch this 1-minute video a day, you called it Nas Daily.

Yeah. Nas means people in Arabic. So People Daily.

Did you think that maybe you could make this into your job? Because you would eventually have to sustain yourself. So when you embarked on the journey, did you think, okay, I got to figure out how to make this thing into a business?

So I was using my savings for the first 2 years because I wasn't making money from this, but I had a belief. I had a belief that if I could find one person to like my video, I'm pretty damn sure I could find 100. If I could find 100, I'm pretty damn sure I could find a million. And if I can find a million, I'm pretty damn sure I can find 100 million. Now, that was my first belief. My second belief was if I can get the attention of a million people, it is very easy to make a million dollars. I just need the attention of a million people, views as a currency. Is more powerful than dollars.

Hmm. I'm curious about the logistics of this. Like, filming a 1-minute video is not just turning your camera on for a minute. Like, how did you structure your day on the road? I mean, you, you would get up and you would sketch out an idea and then you would pursue it and then you would start to film.

It's 14 hours of daily work. It's not 2 minutes. It's not 2 hours, not 5 hours, 14 hours. It's very well structured day. Okay. Wake up at 8, upload yesterday's video, respond to comments for the first 2 hours, start the day at 10 or 11. 11 until 2 PM, start thinking of a video idea. I need a video idea today. I need to think of something. I need to script it. I need to find the person to make a video about. 2 to 6, that's when sunset is. I film it 4 hours. Film, film, film. 6 to 7 to 8, I go back to the hotel and I dinner and all that stuff. 8 to midnight, I edit and I, and I get the video ready. 4 hours to edit. and then I sleep and do this for 2.7 years every single day, no matter if it's a weekend, if it's Christmas, if it's your birthday, if your mom was in surgery, if your dad went to, to the hospital, it did not matter. A video had to be made.

If you were sick.

Oh yeah, completely. That's the least thing that mattered. And I was sick.

Yeah. And, and were there days where you just like pointed the camera at yourself and said, this is my 1-minute video today. I'm in bed. I mean, were there ever days where you just kind of did that?

Maybe like 3, 4, like less than 1%.

Wow.

All right.

Well, let's, let's start with, with how you got the attention, right? As you start to post videos on Facebook, but when you just put a video up, I mean, there you go on YouTube today, there are tens of millions of YouTubers who, you know, who, who, who make good videos with like 50 views. So how did you get an audience?

So first of all, I traveled around the world, so I tried to get local audience wherever I went. But my first 270 videos didn't really work. I was averaging like 10,000 views.

It's pretty good. It's not bad.

No, but it's, but it's 10,000 Facebook views. So it's 10,000 3-second views, which honestly means it's like 4,000 real views and 2,000 real people that care. So it's, it's not enough to sustain anything and make any money. But for me, I was on a learning journey, so I needed to iterate as fast as possible. So I gave myself 24 hours to make a mistake. If I made a mistake on day 68, I could fix it on day 69, you know. And so I was creating, improving every single day until I became really good at telling a story in 1 minute and telling it energetically and making it in 24 hours.

Yeah.

And that's when I hit the jackpot on day 270.

That was a Facebook video about how inexpensive it is to travel in Thailand.

So today's mission is to go with my local Thai friend Smooky and my actual cousin Thabit to go find the cheapest noodle in all of Bangkok. This noodle cup, 12 baht, which is $0.35, 35 cents for one meal. That noodle cup is so cheap you can buy 60 of it without without breaking the bank.

That video got 25 million views, I think, and kind of blew up.

Yes, I don't like the fact that this is the video that went viral, but yes, how affordable Thailand is.

So part of your journey, I think it was around day 320, was when you went back to Israel where you grew up and you started to make videos, and that really created some tension. I mean, on the one hand, I think the majority of people loved your videos. Muslims, Jews, Christians, Arabs, Israelis liked them, but there were a lot of people who didn't like them because you would do videos that seemed counterintuitive. Like, for example, you made videos about Arab doctors in Israel, and you made videos about Israelis and Palestinians playing backgammon together, or just a video about how expensive Tel Aviv is. You weren't doing videos that maybe some Palestinians would want you to make, or people in the Arab world would want you to make about Israel that were negative. Like, I mean, there were a lot of people, particularly in the Arab world, who didn't like what you were doing and were telling you that online.

Yeah. So like all media companies, for as far as I can remember, is only doing critical videos about Israel. It's making Israel look like it is the worst place on planet Earth, worse than North Korea. And my personal experience was the opposite of that. I mean, it wasn't rosy, but it wasn't as dark as they make it sound. So I felt like there's a need to balance the public view. There is a need to call for peace as opposed to instigate for more hatred and war. And so that's where I started to see what the role of Nas Daily is. My role is to calm people down, not to go and attack Israeli governments or Jews or whatever for what they're doing. And I'm also critical of Israel, to be clear, but that's not the role of Nas Daily. And if you want to change something, you must get resistance. You must. If you're not getting resistance, if you are pleasing everybody, then you are no more but a clown. Clowns please everybody. You cannot do any meaningful change on planet Earth without hate. If you don't receive hate, you're doing something wrong. Hmm.

All right. By 2017, you know, this is like 700 days in. You've got like 5 million followers. You're getting millions of views on these videos. I mean, this is your business. You have significant income coming in. Like, now you've got even more income coming in than you got when you worked at Venmo. So this was clearly— I mean, once you're like 700 days in, you can start to see the light. You know, you've got a year left. You're like, I've got a little less than a year left. 700 videos. It's getting an audience and you are building something real. Was it still just you with your camera, your drone traveling around the world?

So I started to build a crew. So, so at day 400, I started traveling with my girlfriend. I found love through these videos and best thing that ever happened. And then at day 750, I found an editor to travel with me. And so the first 750 videos I edited by myself. But after 750, I was like, okay, I'm going to focus on what matters, the script. And I'm gonna get somebody to help me with the editing and the equipment. So that's 3 of us traveling around the world. And the last year truly became exponential, right? Things start slow, slow, slow, slow, then you get the right help, then it becomes exponential. You know, I was going from $10K a month in revenue and like, I don't know, day 600 or so, by day 900 or 1,000, I was making, you know, $50K a month and $70K a month in revenue. And so that's 7 times more than I was paid in my job.

And that was at that time, that was mainly from ads.

Ads and some brand deals.

Okay. So now, you know, you're approaching day 1,000 and you're going to be done. But the business model at this point was you making videos, Facebook putting ads, or, you know, eventually go to YouTube, but Facebook putting ads against them and then sending you a cut of that, doing some brand deals when you could because you still had to make videos.

Right.

But when did you start to think, okay, I need to think about this in a bigger way beyond me because I can't, you know, Nuseir Yassin can't be the brand and scale that and make that into the business because one person isn't scalable.

Yeah.

When did you start to think about, all right, I got to, I got to turn this into something else?

So actually at the early beginning of the first year of the journey, I knew two things. One, you cannot build a company reliant on your face because creators come and go every 5 years. Every 5 years somebody's hot, somebody's not.

Yeah.

So my face is temporary. I must migrate from my face to a company. The second thing I knew is that you cannot build a business on top of social media. Impossible. And so, so this idea that Facebook will be my livelihood and I can build an empire for the next 30 years thanks to Facebook's algorithm is a dream that will never materialize. And so, that's what I knew. So, once I finished 1,000-day traveling, my number one goal is I must institutionalize what I've built and I must build it as a 30-year company, not a 3-year acquire me, retire kind of company.

But what was that idea going to be? I mean, you were a guy making daily videos. Now you're saying, I'm going to build a company. Right? So it could be a variety of things. Yeah. You could write a book, which you did. You could have a TV show. You could, it could still be about you, but that wasn't what you were thinking about. You were thinking about something else. So how did you come up with the idea of what that company would be and what it would do?

So first of all, why should it not be about me? Not only because it's not longevity, but also because of my insecurities, right? Again, it goes back to your childhood full of insecurities as, people like me are not worthy. They're not worthy. So, so, so we're— I, if I was born and raised in Los Angeles, I could very easily have built this about me and made a Nuseir Yassin brand, do a Hollywood route, become an influencer, have a burger joint, put my face on top of that burger, and let's go baby, give me your money, right? But, but I'm not worthy, so I need to build an organization and I need the impact of 100 people to come and help me build this. Now, It took me 3 years, and I kid you not, after I finished making videos, it took me 3 years to understand what kind of company I need to build and what the point of the company is other than making money, you know, 3 years of daily thinking. And so when a lot of people build companies, they look at problems and they try to fix them. But I didn't want to fix a small problem because small problems build small companies. Small companies vary like 5 years, 10 years, and then they're changed. So I needed a big problem, right? And I needed a big problem that is fixable, but also unfixable at the same time. And so for me, the problem is division between humans. So Israelis, Palestinians, my whole life division. So it seems like one of the biggest problems in the world is there's not enough communities in the world that are tolerant and inclusive. So, and I felt that we could bring people together as a company, and I felt as a company that is a mission worth pursuing.

We're going to take another quick break, but when we come back, more from Nuseir Yassin, founder and CEO of Nas Company. Stay with us. You're listening to How I Built This Lab. Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Nuseir Yassin, founder and CEO of Nas Company. Okay, so you make it through 1,000 days of Nas Daily, and at that point you decide to start a company with a mission of bringing people together. But I want to talk specifics. What are the products and services, right? Because you've got to sell something.

Yeah. So first of all, media brings people together. So we decided to build a production house that creates stories and tells stories. This production house helps nonprofits, helps governments, helps big corporations to create content that brings people together, not Coca-Cola ads, but like deep storytelling. And I felt there's money in that. We could charge, you know, $50K to $100K for every video or every campaign. That's a lot of money.

You could do like a brand studio with a mission.

Exactly. And for me, scale is really important. Hundreds of millions of views are important because the more people that use your product, the better the world is. And that's what we believe. So now we need to figure out what scales, right? Technology brings people together and it scales. That's why we decided to build a technology company over the last 2 years and go back to my engineering routes. And build Nus.io, which is a community management software. It's basically the infrastructure for communities. It allows you to start a community on the internet and monetize it and run it very, very easy. It's everything I've been doing for the last 7 years, all the meetups and the communities I've built over the last 7 years. I built the software to enable it, and we think technology and media Both can scale and bring people together, and that could be a thing for the next 30 years.

So that was this thing that you built, Nasio, which was sort of like Salesforce for people who wanna build a social media community, um, like a customer relationship management tool.

Exactly. So we've built monetization features to help you monetize your community, and we take a 10% cut from, from anything you, you do in the community. Simple.

And did you bootstrap that? Did you just use the money that you had from, from Nas Daily, or did you raise money to build that?

So at the beginning it was self-funded, so we— seed funding was done by myself. But then I decided that, okay, this is going to get really expensive, I need investor money. So one year in, we went and raised $23 million total to achieve this vision.

Got it. Okay, so you've got that business. Meantime, There's another part of the business called Nas Academy.

Yes.

Which is like a, we will train you to do what we do. We will teach you everything soup to nuts about how to make viral videos.

Yeah. So, so Nas Academy is, is the same business as Nas.io. It's just two products. Nas Academy is basically cohort-based education of how to become a creator. It runs all on top of the Nas.io software. And it's 5 months long. And basically from when you join until 5 months, we teach you everything that we know, right? Me and 10 other teachers, every person teaches you their specialty. They're all creators. And then you graduate and then, you know, you, you go on to get a job in the media space or to become a creator yourself. And what we think is gonna happen is that there's going to be a need for digital universities to complement traditional universities. To teach engineering, content creation, and, you know, maybe entrepreneurship. Those are the only 3 things we want to teach. So it is an education arm. It's a profitable business unit, but it's still community-driven. It brings people together.

And having these different arms of the business, can you just kind of break down where your revenue comes from?

So last year's revenue for all of Nas Company is $11 million. $7 million was for of the production, the Nas Daily. Then the $4 million, uh, majority of it comes from Nas Academy. And then now Nas.io is the newest one. It's 2 months old, so it's still starting, right? But I think by the end of the year it'll be like a major revenue driver. And the reason why I like Nas.io is it's a scalable model. It's something that could get 10x bigger in a month, which is very different from Nas Daily and Nas Academy.

All right, let me ask you about where you draw the line. Traditional media organizations have very strict rules about how they cover things. And you're right, I think you open up the daily paper and a lot of the news is negative and a lot of the spin is negative for sure. And you were trying to do something different. But when you're working with a government, for example, where do you draw the line? I mean, You look at a country like Russia, for example, okay? And Russia has invaded Ukraine and it imprisons dissidents, but it also has a thriving art and fashion scene and an incredible culinary scene. So if the Russian government came to you and they said, "Hey, we don't want people to think about us as the invaders of Ukraine. We want people to think about us as This incredible, vibrant culture where we have great food and fashion and art. Can you make a video for us or help us make a video that does that? What would you do?

To be clear, we've had people from China CCTV tell us to go to Xinjiang and talk about the culture and the food.

And not to talk about the people who are imprisoned, the Muslim Uyghurs.

Yes. For me, that was a step too far. So I said, I said no, but we also had people from the State Department tell us, hey, why don't you make videos about China and how bad it is? In my opinion, first of all, we have one rule, which is we don't really discuss politics. We promote tourism, we promote nations, and we promote things that are a little bit not like geopolitical in nature. Second of all, with Russia, it's a little bit tricky. Don't forget that I'm from Israel, and for at least a billion people on the planet, working with Israel is like a big no-no. So, and we've never worked with the Israeli government, to be clear. But one thing I've realized is that this whole what's taboo and what's not is very relative. For you, Russia is a big no-no, but for people in Saudi Arabia, they're like, Russia is our friend. Or people in Syria, Russia is our friend. And so for a creator in Syria, they're much more willing to work with Russia. It's all relative to what you think is a no-no and what you think is an acceptable thing. So I have to make my own little sort of compass, what's acceptable and what's not. My compass is very different from an American perspective compass.

Mm-hmm.

And that's what many Americans need to realize is that the world does not center around America and American interests. And then my compass, I just follow that.

In, in general, I'm wondering how you, you know, you say you've got your compass and I believe that you have a strong compass. But there's still— it's tricky. I guess, and again, I'm not knocking or criticizing you. I'm trying to kind of break it down because I think it's really interesting. And I think it's— look, as somebody who was a journalist my whole career, you deal with all kinds of dilemmas as a reporter. But I wonder whether it is necessary to work with governments. In other words, let's say you decided, I'm not going to work with governments. But if a Russian tech company or a Saudi business wants me to work with them, great, happy to do it, especially if what they're doing is innovative and interesting. And there you're dealing with a company that might be from a country that is in the middle of a geopolitical conflict, but you're not focused on the government of that country. You're focused on the business in that country and what they're doing. I mean, wouldn't that be a cleaner kind of approach?

Yeah. So that is, that is an amazing American dream. System in which private sector and public sector are separate entities.

Yeah.

But that doesn't exist in Singapore, in the UAE. They're so intertwined. Like, you— I have a business in Singapore. We all love Singapore, right? But the government knows everything about every business and works with every business, right? And so like, yes, you can do that separation in America, but you really can't do that separation in many countries around the world because they're just so intertwined. Yeah, that business in Saudi Arabia is half of it is state-owned. Now what do you do? Do you work with it or not?

Let me, let me ask you about this world of content creators. I mean, obviously today it seems like everybody is a content creator and you have this academy that really helps people build out their brands and their platforms and to monetize it. But can we have a world where everybody is a content creator and that and for that world to be productive and harmonious and sustainable. I mean, part of me is like, I kind of worry that so many people want to become YouTubers, so many young people, my kids, you know, their friends. And again, I might just be like, I have the worst, stupidest perspective about this. I concede. But a part of me is like, I don't— I'm not sure that's sustainable, that we can all become content creators.

So first of all, we are at 1% of the way there with how many content creators we need, similar to how many software engineers we need. We are at 1% of the way there because monetizing videos has been very, very new. So we're just at the beginning. Okay. We're not at the end. Second of all, when you say content creator, you think a guy with a model on a beach saying, hey guys, I'm here. Come to visit this beach with my girlfriend. That is not what a content creator is. For every content creator can be in front of the camera, but there's 10 people that can be behind the camera. A video editor is a content creator, a scriptwriter, a researcher, a producer, right? A Discord community manager, a NASIO community manager. Why shouldn't we create those jobs? The world needs those jobs.

I mean, when you say it's not somebody on a beach saying, hey, come check out this awesome beach and my hot girlfriend, right? That's not what you're hoping to build. What do you want those content creators to do? Do you want them to do videos like you did at Nas Daily?

Right. So when it comes to content creators, I mean, the average person has 11 or 10 different hobbies, right? You can create content about swimming and how much you love swimming. You can make educational content about running, how much you love running, painting, you know, your country. You can make travel. I mean, here's the thing for the majority of the internet. Media has been created in Los Angeles and consumed globally. Yeah. But there is no Nas Daily in Libya. There is no Nas Daily in Morocco. There's no MrBeast in Egypt. There's no MrBeast in, in, in Denmark. So these are all opportunities for local content to be created in the future. There is a room for 195 more Hollywoods to be created. The days in which the whole world is watching Will Smith on TV and Tom Cruise for the 55th movie, are done. Yeah, that's why we need content creators.

That makes sense to me. But I'm not totally convinced that hundreds and maybe billions more people can create sustainable livelihoods as walking billboards, right? Like, if essentially what you're saying, hey, I'm really into running in Libya and I'm going to have a running channel in Libya. And then like there can be 50,000 people who do that in Libya. Like, is there enough advertising to support all of those people? And do we really wanna be inundated with that?

No, there isn't enough advertising. And advertising-based content creation is a flawed model, and I would dare say it's a fraudulent model. This is the model that has been working, but it will not work in the future. So I'm a runner. I start a community for 100 people. I create content for 100 people, and each one of them gives me $10. I'm already making $1,000 a month. So you can create new jobs. And that's where the future is heading, in my opinion.

I'm trying to cut all, all my subscriptions back. I got Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Disney. What else do I have? Peacock. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm up to my ears in, in subscriptions. That's just like the fraction of them. Now you want me to pay my friend who's a runner for to join his Discord?

But Guy, these are not communities. These are streaming content software. But are you part of a, let's say, tech community in San Francisco?

I hear you. I hear you. Right. There, there are clubs. You join them, you pay a fee. And so the idea is that you have these self-sustaining communities of people who are building content that's valuable.

Yes.

Okay. So I know you're about to do another Nas Daily series. You're going to go to a bunch of other countries. I mean, people are still coming for you. So are you still in front of the camera? In 5, 10, 15 years?

No. So I'm getting hosts. So now I have different hosts that get in the videos. I'm taking myself out of the video slowly but surely. My personal ambition is very simple. I want to do things that are life and death. That's it. I don't want to be selling Coca-Cola. I don't want to be creating furniture. I don't want— I want to do things life and death when I'm 50, 60 years old. So what is life and death when you're 50 and 60 years old? Healthcare, right? Hospitals, doctors, medicine, government, politics. That's it. In my opinion, nothing else is important. So the way I see my life is the next 15, 20 years I'll be in the private sector. Great. Then I will have no meaning from the private sector. I'll have somebody to run it. Then I'd like to go and join a government. Any government and try to actually create life and death solutions. I think that's amazing. There's a lot of power in that. There's a lot of influence in that. And that's much better than any YouTube video you can make.

Right, right. So then tell me about the future vision for the NAS universe, right? I mean, you've got the CRM, you've got the academy, you're still doing brand and government partnerships, and you now have over 100 employees. You brought in some investment, right? And your revenue is growing and you have a vision clearly to turn this into a multi-billion-dollar brand, I think, because you're ambitious and smart. Where does it go in 10 or 15 years?

So I'm going to give you a bit of observation. I found out that the American way of building companies is very different than the Asian way of building companies. The American way of building companies tells you build one product make that product really big, go IPO, and just like continue working on that product for the next 10, 20 years. Like Slack. Slack is a one-product company until it got acquired. Perfect, right? That never made sense to me. So I'm much more inspired by the Asian way of building it, which is build an ecosystem, build 20 different companies that all complement and help each other. That's my vision. I think there's an opportunity for the next Virgin Group because Richard Branson built an incredible ecosystem of I'm gonna take a boring business and I'm gonna make it fun. And it's like physical stuff. My ambition is to build similar to Virgin, but I'm gonna build products that bring people together in technology, media, travel. So the way I envision the next 10 years is Nas Daily, Nas Hotel, Nas.io, Nas Summits, Nas Foods, Nas Venture, Nas whatever. I want to build the Nas ecosystem where every business line helps the other. That's my 30-year vision. We're not building something to be acquired and put it on the LinkedIn. I'm building something that I believe has the capacity to live beyond my life.

That's Nuseir Yassin, founder and CEO of Nas Company. Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab. Please do follow us on your podcast app so you always have the latest episode downloaded. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is @HowIBuiltThis, and mine is @GuyRaz. And on Instagram, I'm @Guy.Raz. If you want to contact the team, our email address is hibt@id.wondery.com. This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with editing by John Isabella. Our music was composed by Sam Paulson and Ramtin Arablouei. Our audio engineer was Neil Rouch. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Elaine Coats, JC Howard, Liz Metzger, Carey Thompson, Karla Estevez, and Kira Joaquin. Neva Grant is our supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.