Game Theory: This is Not My Channel

So the other day I stumbled across this video. It is probably one of the most massively important videos on this website, but I don't think most of us have ever actually seen it. Here, Here's a clip. So that right there, my friends, is Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and I believe behind the camera is Jawed Karim, the three co-founders of YouTube, announcing that they had just sold their company to Google. I mean, sure, we all are at least passingly familiar with the day at the Zoo, which is officially

the first video uploaded to YouTube. But this one right here, a message from Chad and Steve is arguably more important. Watching this video nowadays, it is shocking how YouTube-y it felt back, what, 16 years ago? I mean, this thing was uploaded in 2006. But listen to it. They laugh, they joke, they go off script, they get meta by talking about what bloopers they're going to keep in. I mean, towards the end, they even make a Burger King joke. This video where a group of three friends announce tha

t they have just made the biggest business deal of their life, set the tone for what a YouTube video would look and feel like before the concept of a YouTube video even existed. That's crazy. But this video is also noteworthy because of what it did for the future of online video. Sure, these three had a grand vision of how great their website could be and just how much greater it could become. But they were just three dudes and the team that they had managed to assemble, they needed help, they n

eeded expertise and a lot of extra hands to help make it realize its fullest potential. By selling YouTube to Google, these three took a successful idea and they supercharged it. YouTube is now the second most visited website in the world, and it's created a home and a job for everything from like Funny Cats and V-Tubers and Walmart yodeler as both gamers and “gamers” alike. Artists, editors, animators, soap carvers. I mean, you name it, any other creator out there who has something to say, they

can find a job here on YouTube. All of our lives would look substantially different had it not been for that one video. So why am I telling you that? Well. Because Steph and I just sold Theorists. We sold this business. This channel is no longer only my channel. This logo that has been beside my face for the last 12 years is no longer just my logo. These colors clickbait green, no longer my clickbait green. And I know that sounds scary when I just say those words. Change is always going to be a

little bit scary. But by making this move now, it ensures that this place, this, this channel, this awesome thing that you've been a part of helping me build for the last 12 years, it stays protected and it stays healthy and it continues to thrive for years of Theorists yet to come. Together we have done some incredible and amazing and also cringe worthy and meme worthy things over the last 12 years. We've made video games come to real life. We have given Undertale to the Pope. That's more the

meme worthy side. We've raised millions of dollars for charity, for children in hospitals, but we've also simultaneously whipped and nay-nayed. So really we've ran a huge gamut here. Through it all, though, we have spent way too long talking and thinking about murderous animatronics. But the thing is now those adventures are just the beginning. Just like Chad and Steve inside that video, Steph and I realized that we were holding ourselves and our team and also this community back, and that with

partners, with the right partners who respected us and also respected you, that we could finally do all the cool projects that we've wanted to roll out for just the longest time. I mean, case in point here, do you know how long it took us to finally launch Food Theory? Three years. Three years for a single channel. We knew that we wanted to do Food Theory way back in 2017, and I can even prove it to you. Here's a video from the top of 2018 where I drop a reference to it publicly for the first ev

er time. Ro didn’t know it at the time, but this was definitely something that was coming. We just assumed that it was going to happen much, much sooner than it actually did. You see, we wanted to launch Food Theory in 2018, then it rolled over into 2019 and it took us until mid 2020 to actually get the channel fully operational. It took us two full years to hire and train new editors, to find more food centric researchers, to work on hundreds of different versions of the logo until we created t

he perfect one. Why did it take so long? Because time is our most limited resource. All of us on the team were already working on all the regular videos, which includes notes and thumbnails and filming. We were also doing St Jude at the time and Steph and I were consulting. We were traveling to conventions to hang out with you guys and that's all about fun stuff that isn't even mentioning all the unsexy stuff of actually running a responsible business. All the things you don't want to think abou

t, like taxes and payroll and contract review and meetings. So many meetings. I cannot tell you how much of my life is wasted in meetings. Oh, wait. Yeah. I actually can tell you how much my life is wasted in meetings. Google Calendar actually has a feature that breaks down how your time is scheduled on a month to month basis. You know and I was curious. I'm a data guy. I'm like, Oh, I wonder if my time is breaking down. 80 hours of meetings last month alone. Four full days in meetings. That is

crazy. That hit hard. Don't get me wrong, I love our team. I love Tom, I love Amy, I love Ash, I love Jason. Less so Jason. Spending that time with Jason was taking me away from the thing that I fell in love with doing. Working on new, cool, silly, thoughtful, wacky projects for you guys. You know what else hit me hard recently? The realization that over the last ten years, I have never once left for vacation without packing my video recording set up. This thing, this thing, it. If I ever go on

a romantic vacation with Steph, this is the third wheel, it is always with me. Now that I think about it there was one time when I didn't bring this with me. It was Steph and my final vacation before we had a child. No joke. That is the only time in my life that I have ever left, ever packed a bag without bringing this along with me. But then when you stop and look at what work needs to get done in a given week, you can start to understand why this thing is permanently grafted onto my arm. Every

week we produce anywhere between seven and ten videos. That is insane. I mean, sure, some of them are me just sitting on this couch and being bad at video games. Those are the easy ones. But more often than not, those videos require tons of research, way too much editing. It requires this constant need to execute, execute, execute every hour of every week of every year. We have never taken a break. And, you know, we could hire more people. Yes, absolutely. We have taken an effort to hire amazin

g people like Ash behind the camera right now, Sam and Josiah in the room behind me, the rest of the team who lives all across the world. But it took a long time to find them. And it's important to remember that when you hire new people, it takes time, attention. You have to give those people feedback, you have to train them, coordinate with them. Also means more taxes and contracts and paperwork for Steph and Jason and I. And all of this is without getting into YouTube in 2022 my friends, YouTu

be in 2022 is also starting to require us to do shorts to be relevant, which, you know, I have my thoughts on. But that is just the way of the system. All of us on the team were excited about those doing something short form. Oh, it's going to be like a breath of fresh air for us, it's going to be amazing. But it also means that there's even more stuff on our plates. And honestly, that's a shame because this team has so many good ideas. Lee over on Film Theory, he's an incredible storyteller. He

ad Editor Dan, you might have seen him sitting on the couch here, he is hilarious on camera. Sedge, he's one of our editors, he is constantly looking for new challenges to overcome. And Jason, he's got good ideas, too. Don't tell him I said that, though. I'll never live it down. Everyone on this team is so talented and I cannot tell you what an honor it is to get to work with them day in and day out and share in that creativity. And there are so many awesome ideas that just float around between

us, the ARGs that we want to do for you guys. This scary mystery podcast that'll have you re-listening to search for clues, the indie game that will get you questioning everything that you just played, the Netflix show that will prove to the world that anyone with a love and a passion can be a theorist. But in order to do any of that, any of it, before the heat death of the universe, we just needed more help. You guys all know that we try to keep you aware of trends in the digital video space. R

ight? We were the first to shine a light on the algorithms that decide what videos get popular and which ones don't. We predicted that PewDiePie would become the number one channel, and then we predicted when he would lose that crown.We defined the generations of YouTube and codified this massive sprawl of online content into discrete packets, little digestible moments in time. So you could track the history of online video. And most recently of all, it was on this couch and I talk to you about

this new era of YouTube, this era of entrepreneurs, business owners, creators who are content not just to do video, but who want to use this platform to launch into other successful industry shaping businesses. Here is the full story. There's been another trend that's happening parallel to that one, one where businesses recognize the value of trusted online brands and want to help them achieve their full potential. Over the last two years, we've been approached by no less than ten of those sorts

of companies, which honestly, it's flattering. I can't tell you exactly who they were for confidentiality reasons, but let's just say that the range was massive. You had everything from like small startups to some of the largest TV producers and distributors in the world as one of the most consistent and successful content brands online and also one of the most diverse video brands online. There was just a lot of interest in us. Not many people have channels that exist at the top of like three

separate and very distinct verticals, or has an audience that's so willing to listen to us ramble about everything from like Marvel to small indie titles that you've never heard of to, Hey, this is how you can eat your own Christmas tree. All of that is a credit to you guys. There's a lot of people who wanted to talk to us about being in the business of you. But as more and more of these requests came in, Steph and I started to ask ourselves, Well, what would a good partnership look like? What c

ould it deliver to us and to you? Steph was on the front lines of all of these conversations and for the last year has basically had to give herself a crash course in everything from investment banking, M&A lawyering to international business law. I'm your one stop shop for all your acquisition needs. These conversations would sometimes take months. Hopefully one day she gets to tell all the wild stories that she has from it all because the work was intense and honestly largely thankless. In the

end, Steph and I did ultimately settle on what our criteria looked like. The perfect partner would have to respect us and our team. They'd have to trust us to do what we do best: YouTube, theorizing, making videos. They'd have to be able to maintain our level of quality or be able to better it. They'd have to be good at dealing with all the stuff that we can't or don't want to deal with: business pipelines, hiring stuff, social media. And most importantly of all, they'd have to respect you. Ult

imately, we wanted to find a partner who could get us out of all those boring contract review meetings and put us back into doing what we love to do, creating cool stuff for you. And eventually we found people who got it who ultimately passed the vibe check. They're an investment partner and production support company called Lunar X. Look, even their title and logo, nerdy. And honestly, these guys are great. Over the past couple of weeks, they've been spending a lot of quality time with us here

in North Carolina, hanging out with the team, doing all the nerdy stuff that we like to do together: escape rooms, Dungeons and Dragons, movie nights, being terrible at golf together, trying to understand the sport of hockey. But most importantly of all, they've already started to have a positive impact with us. They've enabled us to do something that we've wanted to do for the past year. Launch the next theorist channel. You might have noticed that the channel banners have updated a little bit.

That ring is about to become complete, my friends, in the coming month or so, and it's largely thanks to all the added resources that they're able to provide us. No more waiting around until the heat death of the universe to finally launch a single channel. And you see, that is the biggest change that's going to happen here. More resources so finally we can move just a little bit quicker. Everything else largely stays the same. I am still host of the show and CEO of Theorists. Steph is still CO

O, Dan still controls the editing dungeon and Jason still controls my life. And all the rest of the team; totally intact. Steph and I made sure of it and Luner honestly wouldn't have it any other way. Their goal is to make us stronger, to provide us resources so we can all feel a little less pressure to execute without having to actually slow down. Bit by bit, day by day, which allows us to be healthier humans first and foremost, rather than just mindless content machines every day. Other change

s? Well, you know, you'll probably start to see more videos rolling out across the channels. I already talked about shorts. There's Tik Tok, at least until it gets banned, woohoo data privacy. And hey, who knows? We might finally get a chance to talk to Netflix about that show that I talked about earlier. But overall, the thing to remember across all of this is that you guys, these Theory channels, this will always be our home. This is our number one priority, the center of our universe, as it w

ere. Get it? That space pun, because, you know, our new company is lunar. It's a terrible joke. This is the year that they bought us for. So sorry. Anyway, TL;DR This is and will always be our home. And as we roll out more stuff, you'll finally start getting to see more members of the team. In fact, if you've been watching on the channels, you've started to see more members of the team. I know I mentioned before, but they are a wonderful group of people and we've been lucky to have them with us.

And finally, with resources to be able to expand a little bit, breathe a little bit, it'll finally give them a chance to have a greater voice on the channels. They're starting to have a greater voice on the channels. They've been voicing more characters in the theories. They've been appearing on the couch here, and we've been having a great time. Instead of always having to funnel through my creativity, they'll finally have a chance to stand on their own and have voices, something that they've

deserved for a long time now. And for me, in this new phase of our business, of our growth, it's my goal to give a spotlight to new and upcoming creators. Yeah, the ones on the team, but also ones off the team to pay forward this platform, this voice that you've given me. In the end, I'm just interested in building communities, not empires. I want to be creative. I'm not really interested in being corporate. And with Lunar X, we found a like minded group of individuals who could let us expand wi

thout losing the soul of what got us here in the first place. I got onto YouTube at a time when no one else was being nerdy in the way that I wanted to be nerdy. No one else believed that I could add value to their company. No one wanted to hire me, so I had to create something that would show them. I started my YouTube channel just to get hired by someone, literally anyone to be a cog in their bigger wheel, not to suddenly become the owner of the next Fortune 500 company. Steph and I are probab

ly best described as accidental entrepreneurs. We built all of this structure around us because we were excited to create a place where it was safe to be an overthinker. But at a certain point we became business owners first and creators second. The serious stuff started to take us away from what we loved most, which was you, creating stuff for you. And now finally, with the help of Lunar, it looks like we're going to be able to get back to that. And you know what? I am so excited for that. Sinc

e you know me and since this is the Theory channel, you know that I can't just leave the couch without making some sort of larger commentary about the state of YouTube and digital video. So here's what I got for you today, friends. Over the next few years, I think you're going to be seeing a lot of this. We know a lot of channels who are in the same boat as us. Some have been public about looking for acquisition, others not. But I would expect to see a lot of these sorts of videos happening in t

he future. Change is scary. It can feel very upsetting. What this means is just good things. Online creators are finally getting the respect, attention, and most importantly, the resources that they need to get back to creating to get back to what they loved in the first place. It means a healthier balance for everyone and more of a focus back on the creativity that made digital videos so exciting and so special to begin with. 16 years ago, in that one video with Chad and Steve, YouTube started

to pave the way forward for more independent voices to be heard. Over the years, a lot of those independent voices have gotten lost as being business owners has taken over their lives. But I think this, this is the next big inflection point that brings that all back. And personally, I'm excited to be taking this adventure with you. And as always, my friends. It's just a theory. A GA.. well, it's not actually a game theory. It's a theory about a lot of stuff. Anyway, onward to the next chapter, m

y friends. Thanks as always for watching.