The Real Reason Veritasium Sold His Channel

Jon Youshaei interviews Veritasium about selling his channel, early struggles, sponsorships, and future plans.

Key Takeaways

Selling a successful YouTube channel involves uncertainty and potential regrets.
Early YouTube success often requires experimentation and persistence despite low initial income.
Sponsorships must be carefully chosen to maintain credibility, especially for educational content.
Audience perception of sponsored content can impact creator reputation and trust.
Creators may evolve from hands-on roles to managerial or advisory positions as their channels grow.

What the video covers

Veritasium discusses the uncertainty and challenges of selling his YouTube channel and the mistakes he made during the process.
He shares the early days of the channel, including low initial earnings and creative attempts like science-themed songs.
A viral moment involved asking people science literacy questions to reveal common misconceptions.
Veritasium transitioned to full-time YouTube after earnings covered basic living expenses.
Revenue initially came mostly from YouTube AdSense, with sponsorships gradually becoming significant.
He explains his cautious approach to sponsorships, preferring those aligned with his values and keeping ads separate from content.
The Whimo sponsorship video caused controversy, highlighting the challenges of perceived bias in sponsored content.
Veritasium reflects on the growth of his channel, team size, video production costs, and his evolving role.
He expresses a desire to keep videos free for viewers and prefers corporate sponsorship over audience funding.
The interview touches on the future of the channel and his plans to take a more backseat role.

Chapters

Why did Veritasium decide to sell his YouTube channel?

Veritasium sold the majority of his channel due to the natural uncertainty of a YouTube career and after making many mistakes in the process. He felt it was time to take a step back and let others manage the channel.

How did Veritasium start his YouTube career and what were the early challenges?

Veritasium began with low earnings, making about $840 in his first year, creating videos alone, and experimenting with ideas like science-themed songs. He gradually grew the channel by focusing on engaging science content and viral moments.

How does Veritasium approach sponsorships on his educational channel?

He prefers sponsorships that align with his values and keeps them separate from the content to avoid bias. He chooses deals he believes in and tries to maintain transparency to preserve audience trust.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

You don't know when your channel's going to end. You've sold the majority of your channel until the deal was signed. I was like, there's no way this is going to go through. Do you wish you asked for more money? I don't know if I made peace with it. I made almost every mistake possible.

Speaker A

Now you have over 20 million subscribers, over 20 team members. What is like an average video cost? We're spending millions. It's the kind of money that I could have lived off easily. There's a lot of videos made in response to your video about Whimo. One of the most disliked videos on the channel. Do you feel like you're held to a different standard? As somebody who literally has the word truth in your channel name as a scientist, I am happy to receive criticism. That's literally not what happened. You make some of the best thumbnails on YouTube. This title and thumbnail were basically given to me by Mr. Beast. He looked at it and he was like, "That's a banger." I feel like you're pioneering new ground. The most successful the channel's ever been is with me less involved. Do you ever see a day where you're not involved in the channel at all? Can I reveal something?

Speaker A

Derek, thank you for coming all the way from Australia. Man, I'm so excited about this.

Speaker A

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I feel like I've been preparing for this interview for 10 years just watching your stuff. And I wanted to rewind back because now you have over 20 million subscribers. You have over 20 team members who work on your YouTube channel. But take me through the early days. Like I heard in your first year on YouTube, you were making $840 in the whole year.

Speaker A

In the whole year combined. Yeah. In the second year on YouTube, you made 12,500.

Speaker A

That's correct. Yeah. And then things started escalating from there. But take me through some of the big turning points.

Speaker A

The beginning years where it was just me and a camera and me editing. And I remember something I thought was going to make me viral was songs about science. So I would rewrite songs like John Mayer's Gravity. I rewrote it to be actually about gravity.

Speaker A

[laughter] And then I would film and edit these things. Are you going to give us a little sample?

Speaker A

Um, [laughter] I feel like you should just use a clip.

Speaker A

Okay. I'm going to try for you because no pressure.

Speaker A

Gravity is working with me. Gravity keeps me on the ground.

Speaker A

Okay. Oh my God, that was amazing. Wow.

Speaker A

That was wow. That was... I didn't know you're a good singer, man.

Speaker A

[clears throat] I'm not a great singer, man. I'm just surviving.

Speaker A

You got some pipes.

Speaker A

Yeah. Anyway, that was a crazy start to the channel.

Speaker A

So, this was the first era of Veritasium.

Speaker A

Yeah, that was the first era. When did you iterate to the thing that finally took off and changed the trajectory of the channel?

Speaker A

It's interesting. There were a few viral moments early on. So, I had a friend who, sort of six months before I really started going full-time on the channel, showed me this newspaper article which was about all these science literacy questions that people got wrong. And they were like crazy stuff like, you know, how long does it take for the Earth to go around the sun?

Speaker A

People would say like 30% of people would say a day rather than a year. And I was like, well, that's weird. And so we took the camera out and we just walked around. We just asked people these questions. And I feel like that's a great place to start because a lot of people, you can kind of fool yourself into thinking, you know, as a teacher or whatever, you can fool yourself into thinking your students know a lot more than they do. So, it's really good to ask them, get the actual truth of like what are they thinking first because it's often much weirder than you might think and build from there.

Speaker A

Do you remember how much you were making on YouTube when you decided to go full-time? Like what was that number for you?

Speaker A

It's interesting. So, my first year I made 800 bucks. My second year 12,500. My third year, I'd hit a million subscribers and I don't know what the money was. I certainly don't know what the money was going to be for the year.

Speaker A

But I just quit teaching because I could see that what was coming in month over month was about enough to cover my rent, which was, you know, I had low carrying costs at that point. One or two grand a month, you know, in terms of rent and food and stuff. If I could get three or four grand a month, like I would have been fine.

Speaker A

So that is when I stopped working any other job and I was just YouTube only. What did the business look like back then? Like if you had to do a pie chart of how Veritasium makes money, what did that look like in those first few years? YouTube AdSense was most of the pie and gradually probably around year three some small sponsors started coming in like Audible was, I think, my first sponsor and they were a significant sponsor for 2013, 2014 and they would have grown to be maybe half the pie. I think for a lot of Veritasium's history the sponsor revenue and the YouTube AdSense has been pretty similar.

Speaker A

How do you think about sponsorships as an educational channel? I've talked to other creators like Johnny Harris who's covering the news and has certain rules for sponsors he will and won't take. How do you think about that as somebody who's trying to educate people about certain topics but there's obviously big businesses, money's involved? How do you think about sponsorships?

Speaker A

Yeah, initially I was quite haphazard with regard to how I would approach sponsorships of like, okay, well if it seems like a decent product, it's something I would use or, you know, something I do use then I'm happy to do it. I also would want it to be divorced from the content. So I was much more concerned when people wanted a tighter integration with the content because I thought that feels icky. I remember Bounty Paper Towels approached me and they just wanted to do something about paper towels and I didn't really want to do anything paper towel related, but I had long wanted to do a video about the longest running evolution experiment which is on bacteria and so I got them to fund that one and at the end we just talk about you can wipe stuff up with a paper towel and, you know, so it's a bit more removed.

Speaker A

Yeah, I tried to make it as removed as possible. So, it's like guys, clearly this is a video I'm just passionate about making this video about bacteria and Bounty is footing the bill here.

Speaker A

In a lot of ways, I'm happier taking money from a corporation than I am from the audience. I would like for the videos to be free for everyone. Probably the biggest challenge for me in terms of sponsorship was a video I did with Whimo. And I made the decision to do that video because I believed in what they're doing, right? Like my background is in engineering and in science and trying to design a machine which drives itself, you know, safely on roads is, I think, an incredible undertaking. And I think Whimo was doing a good job of it. I think they were at the time as well. But when people saw that video, they didn't know what to think. They didn't know like, hang on, is he telling us this because he actually thinks this or is he telling this because they paid him to say this?

Speaker A

And that put me, that made me realize something really important which was to me I see that there are literally hundreds of deals coming across my plate and I'm rejecting the vast majority of them and I will pick only the ones that I think are good or the ones that I already agree with. So when it came to Whimo, I did that video because I like their mission. I like what they're doing and I think that already one of their cars is safer than the average human driver. So I'm supportive of the mission and I'm also impressed at the engineering and I'm sort of interested in the science and the engineering.

Speaker A

the pie. I think for a lot of Veritasium's history the sponsor uh revenue and the YouTube AdSense has been pretty similar.

Speaker A

How do you think about sponsorships as a educational channel? I've talked to other creators like Johnny Harris who's like covering the news and has certain rules for sponsors he will and won't take. How do you think about that as

Speaker A

somebody who's trying to educate people about certain topics but there's obviously big businesses like money's involved like how do you think about sponsorships?

Speaker A

Yeah, initially I was quite haphazard with regard to how I would approach sponsorships of like okay well if it seems like a decent product it's something I would use or you know something I do use then I'm happy to do

Speaker A

it. I also would want it to be divorced from the content. So I was much more concerned when um people wanted a tighter integration with the content cuz I thought that feels icky. Um, I remember uh Bounty Paper towels

Speaker A

approached me uh uh and they just they wanted to do something, you know, about paper towel and [clears throat] I didn't really want to do anything paper towel related, but I had long wanted to do a video about the longest

Speaker A

running evolution experiment which is on bacteria and so I got them to fund that one and at the end we just talk about you can wipe stuff up with a paper towel and you know so it's a bit more removed.

Speaker A

Yeah, I tried to make it as removed as possible. So, it's like guys, clearly like this is a video I'm just passionate about making this video about bacteria and and Bounty is footing the bill here.

Speaker A

Um, in a lot of ways, like I'm happier taking money from a corporation than I am from the audience. I would like for the videos to be free for everyone. Um, probably the biggest challenge for me in terms of sponsorship was a video I did

Speaker A

with Whimo. And I made the decision to do that video because I believed in what they're doing, right? Like my background is in engineering and in science and trying to design a machine which drives itself, you know, safely on roads is I

Speaker A

think it's an incredible undertaking. And I think Whimo was doing a good job of it. I think they were at the time as well. But when people saw that video, they didn't know what to think. They didn't know like hang on is he telling

Speaker A

us this because he actually thinks this or is he telling this because they paid him to to say this?

Speaker A

Um and that put me that made me realize something really important which was to me I see that there are literally hundreds of deals coming across my plate and I'm rejecting the vast majority of them and I will pick only the ones that

Speaker A

I think are good or the ones that I already agree with. So when it came to Whimo, I did that video because I like their mission. I like what they're doing and I think that already one of their

Speaker A

cars is safer than the average human driver. So I'm supportive of the mission and I'm also impressed at the engineering and I'm sort of interested in the science and the engineering that goes goes into it. So I think it makes a

Speaker A

good video. But to someone on the outside, they don't see that I've rejected, you know, six figures from from lots of people uh uh and just selectively picked this one. So they don't know. So it has the appearance of

Speaker A

impropriety even if everything I say in the video I I mean wholeheartedly. Yeah. So that was a big moment for me to to realize that like oh yeah this this can be interpreted in a bad way even if like

Speaker A

I went into it with the best of intentions and with the thought of like yeah I I personally agree with this and that's why I I want to do this video.

Speaker A

Um, but that was a big learning and since then I think we've made the decision internally of like no whatever sponsor we take has to be divorced from the content.

Speaker A

So if we're going to take your money that's fine but we want the topic to be very separate from the sponsor. We never want to have to blur those lines because you know even if we mean it you know

Speaker A

people don't know if we mean it and that's a problem. Yeah. Because there's a lot of videos made in response to your video Whimo especially the one from Tom Nicholas.

Speaker A

Yeah. Uh, and I'm curious like for people to say like was that video a conflict of interest? Like how would you reflect on that? Now it's hard. Um, I would say it definitely appears to be conflicted. You know, I

Speaker A

was like we reveal within the first 30 seconds that this is a sponsored video and the shrug I give in the video is kind of make of that what you will. Yeah. Like you know that there's sort of pay for

Speaker A

play here. Um, but yeah, we we took some serious criticism. It's one of the most disliked videos on the channel. And I know in terms of controversy that we've faced, you know, this is maybe the the biggest of them. All I would say is that

Speaker A

like I would make the same video without the sponsorship basically. Like I I was happy to to to do it and and everything I said I I stand behind. I also feel like the videos that tried to specifically the one main video that

Speaker A

tried to point out the flaws in that video I don't think is that compelling.

Speaker A

He complains that I say like with autonomous cars, you know, we'd have better traffic flow. And he's like, no, like a car takes up the same amount of space, you know, whether it's driven by a person or or an autonomous vehicle.

Speaker A

That shows this absolute lack of understanding of why traffic happens. It's not necessarily because the cars are too big or whatever, there's too many of them. It's because of how they're interacting with each other. And cars have and humans have this lag

Speaker A

between when the car in front goes and when you go. And that's going to slow down everything. We know that that slows you down when you're crossing an intersection. We know that that slows people down on the highway. I get what's

Speaker A

known as the the uh moving roadblock sometimes where you're driving along and two people are just like in both lanes and they're both going slowly but they're not like one is not passing the so you're just like jammed up there. And

Speaker A

that's what I mean. How you drive the car determines how much effective space it takes on the highway, which is like clearly and well understood. So, I don't know like if there was gross bias in the video, I am open to it being called out.

Speaker A

I feel like as a scientist and as a science communicator and as someone who values the truth, I am happy to receive criticism and I'm happy to discuss it. I want it because like I am interested in getting at the truth. I am not

Speaker A

interested in just like being up in my ivory tower and being, you know, like not listening to any criticism. I'm willing to acknowledge any criticism.

Speaker A

And sometimes I've made mistakes and sometimes I've been wrong. But like when I'm not, I want to be able to make those counterarguments and I want us to be able to, you know, in good faith get to [clears throat] the the right thing. You

Speaker A

know, Derek, do you feel like you're held to a different standard as an educator, as somebody who literally has the word truth in your channel name?

Speaker A

Like Veritasium is a madeup element, but it's the element of truth, right? Right. Yeah. How do you think through that?

Speaker A

We may be held to a different standard, but I would be happy for everyone to be held to this standard. Like I am not upset if people want to question or criticize anything we do. Like I'm happy to engage with debate. So yeah, I don't

Speaker A

I don't think it's unfair. like it's well any creator on YouTube, including us. Like, it kind of scientific ethos is that scientists don't work by just being like, "Oh, I figured it out. This is how it works." And then everyone's like,

Speaker A

"Great. Yes, that's how it works." No, everyone is trying to tear everything else down. And it's because when you can't tear something down, you realize, okay, well, that that is a really true thing, you know, because we've all had a

Speaker A

shot at it. So yeah. Is there other criticism you've like faced over the years or comments you've gotten you're like that's actually fair and it's caused a a change?

Speaker A

Well, it's interesting because the Tom Nicholas video, as much as I didn't agree with what he did or how he said it, um I did agree with the fundamental point which is when you do something and the audience doesn't know if you're

Speaker A

doing it for the money or you're doing it because you actually believe it. um it's just as bad. It's just as bad whether there's actual impropriy or whether there's just the appearance of impropriy.

Speaker A

That's what that made me realize. And so that's where we as a team decided collectively that like we don't need the money this badly that we do anything that ever allows the audience to question that for us.

Speaker A

Yeah. I think it's interesting because I think every creator in their own niche has to wrestle with that. Like I was interviewing Marquez and Linus Tech Tips thinking about like okay if you're reviewing a company's product like you

Speaker A

probably shouldn't be doing a sponsored ad read from that company. So think about I feel like that's even harder for them you know when your whole you know business is reviewing stuff.

Speaker A

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is you know thinking about different formats and like trying to mix it up.

Speaker A

Derek how how do you make educational content interesting? because you know a lot of us go to school um a lot of our teachers are trying their best but the content isn't always interesting.

Speaker A

Meanwhile like you're taking topics um and like creating 20 25 minute videos that I didn't think I'd watch but all of a sudden I'm going through the entire video like how do you do that and how do you think about clickbait? The thing I

Speaker A

think about being a science creator on YouTube is I feel like in some ways I have the easiest job because other people I don't know if you're doing lifestyle, you're doing comedy, like you have to generate that all from within

Speaker A

you and you have to come up with new ideas and make it fresh and I wouldn't know how to do that. What's amazing about being a science creator is I have hundreds of years of the greatest ideas that humans have ever had. ideas that

Speaker A

have changed the world in profound ways and I can just harvest from that treasure trove of like crazy stories and wild adventures and discoveries and you know like I have the the best material.

Speaker A

This is not boring like this stuff is crazy and counterintuitive and wonderful and deep and complex. You know my favorite thing is the aha moment. You know, if I can explain something in a way that makes me go, "Whoa, that's

Speaker A

cool." or makes other people feel feel the same way. You know, that is for me that's the sweet spot of what I want to be doing. You know, we talk about clickbait, but the ideal thing that your title and thumbnail needs to do is it

Speaker A

needs to communicate to an audience who doesn't already know about that thing, like what are they really going to get out of this video? I you know I've heard some science creators uh talk about this like they're making broccoli pizza where

Speaker A

the broccoli is the educational thing the thing you want to learn and you make it palatable with the pizza part all the entertainment that we put around it um but I kind of think of my job in the

Speaker A

opposite way like I am this five-star Michelin chef and I am taking the broccoli and I am cooking it in just such a way that the broccoli itself is exquisite and that flavor is is hopefully brought out in the dish so

Speaker A

people are like wow that is awesome not not for the accuchal not for stuff around it but for the actual um thing itself but but how do you do that Derek cuz that that's much like like a harder

Speaker A

uh done than said I pulled some of your top videos here have just taken off in the way a lot of entertainment videos have I mean these have like over 40 like 50 million views how do you like make

Speaker A

the broccoli taste that good? How do you make educational content that entertaining? I see some where I think a visual stunt or something like a big visual hook was the reason why this video went viral. So the video about the 96 million shade

Speaker A

balls on the reservoir. Obviously that's just such a weird thing that you know once you see this thumbnail you kind of have to click it.

Speaker A

That is like YouTube Hall of Fame for me. [laughter] That thumbnail and that video that is YouTube Hall of Fame.

Speaker A

Can I reveal something? This title and thumbnail were basically suggested, basically given to me by Mr. Beast. So, we met at uh one of these YouTube meetups in 2019 and I showed him uh a few seconds of footage and he looked at

Speaker A

it and he was like, "That's a banger." And I was like, "Okay, so what should my title and thumbnail be?" Cuz I'm thinking about calling it something like throwing shade balls [laughter] cuz the balls in the video are like

Speaker A

they're they're covering like coming into the water. Yeah. Very odd. Yeah. Yeah. But he was like, "You're going to call it why are there 96 million black balls on this lake?" And I was like, "Well, it's not a lake. It's a

Speaker A

reservoir." So, um, so that was my contribution to the title. Uh, and he's like, "It's going to be you and and and a picture of all the balls behind it." So, yeah. So, it maybe it's not surprising that the uh most viewed video

Speaker A

on the channel is one that Mr. Beast suggested the title and thumbnail for. Um, so yeah, some of these are visual stunts. You know, I've always found the look of a gel, right? This is the world's lightest solid. I've always

Speaker A

found that particularly compelling. It's just like it's just looks not real. Um, and it is that way in person and it and it's that way in the video and then you have this whole scientific story behind it. So, um, for the shape balls, I knew

Speaker A

that this video had gone viral of people opening the back door of this truck and just the balls rolling into the the reservoir.

Speaker A

A different video. Yeah, a separate video. Before I ever did this, there was a video with like 11 or 15 million views on it and and it just showed that. And I'm like, this is very compelling visual, but why are they doing it? And that

Speaker A

video didn't answer any of that, you know? It was just like strictly like, here's the video, here's the clip, and then, you know, nothing. M so the goal is always to get to the bottom of it and to like go deeper than

Speaker A

any other source, you know. Uh uh similar with Navy's indoor ocean. We had seen that go viral before. We knew that people had made videos there, but no one had really addressed the question of like why do we have an indoor ocean and

Speaker A

like how does it work? And you get in there and you figure out what they're actually doing. If you look deeply enough, that's always where I find things that really surprise, you know, and and things that surprise and excite me. And if they do that, then

Speaker A

I try to again just like communicate that to other people. So really, that's all I'm trying to capture is like my interest, my excitement, my surprise. If I feel that way, I think other people will feel that way. And I and I try to

Speaker A

just, you know, put it together how it makes the most sense to me. And and it seems to make the most sense to other people that way, too. Something internally I call the double barrel is the text that we put on the thumbnail.

Speaker A

What do you mean by double barrel? It's like two shots or, you know, two things coming at you. But here, I want those things to be intention. So, I want I want it to be like, you know, a lot of

Speaker A

our double barrels could be something like, "How was this allowed?" or "What's happening?" or like, "Why is this?" Or we've got a a double barrel that's just like, "Whoops." And it's this guy pouring substance all over the earth.

Speaker A

And the title is the man who accidentally killed the most people in history. So, these things like pull uh together. So, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A

Versus what most YouTubers may do like for the am I retiring video, they would be like like uh the truth about my retirement. They would just reuse it.

Speaker A

They might and then therefore it's like not a double barrel, it's a single barrel, right? I love it when you can find a title and a thumbnail where they work together to create a sort of tension that's like, "Oh, I get exactly what

Speaker A

this is about." That's like more powerful than either of them alone. Yeah. So, I'm always looking for that, like some sort of mesh between the title and thumbnail. I like something like this, like you want the double barrel to be quickly

Speaker A

readable. So quickly readable that people couldn't decide whether they want to read it or not. Like the like the the words immediately go in your head. So, you want it to be like bad idea or you know, like bad idea, what's what's a bad

Speaker A

idea? The perfect battery material is dangerous. Okay, so we're sort of getting into that. But yeah, I think some of these are better than others. Here's a video where I feel like the thumbnail sucks and so we need

Speaker A

to redo this. These illusions fool almost everyone. But this is a video about audio illusions, but like we should do better. I love the live uh roast of your own channel.

Speaker A

Yeah. I mean like I look at these and I'm like these are not h like I'm not happy with these. There's this one, the trillion dollar equation and the double barrel is simply this is it. I came up

Speaker A

with that. I don't love it. I don't love it cuz like that is the trillion dollar equation. But and now my team wants to use this is it as a double barrel a lot and I'm like guys don't do it. It wasn't

Speaker A

a good idea the first time I suggested it and uh we should probably fix this.

Speaker A

Yeah. Um are there other things [clears throat] about today's videos like can you share like what's the most expensive video you've made to date?

Speaker A

So there's one more thing about Derek that blew my mind. It's that he invented a board game called Elements of Truth and a science toy called Snatoms to help make science more fun to learn. both of which are powered by Shopify, which is

Speaker A

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Speaker A

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Speaker A

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Speaker A

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Speaker A

have an idea to start a business, then go to my link below at shopify.com/youshi yo uh h a ei [music] to get your free trial on Shopify today. There was one video which was wild to make, which is

Speaker A

with Tom Brady, who I never thought in my wildest dreams I would ever get to meet or would ever want to be on the channel, but I flew overnight from London to Miami. Um, my kids were on break, so we were up in the UK and I was

Speaker A

there for literally on the ground 18 hours maybe, something like that. So, met him in the middle of the day. We had 90 minutes. It's like you got to get all your shots, all your slow-mo, all your setups, all your drone, whatever,

Speaker A

you know, all your conversation with him, and that 90 minutes and he's going to disappear.

Speaker A

Wow. And [laughter] that was one of the most terrifying shoots of my life. Yeah. Uh just trying to get like everything we possibly can, not forget anything, and like, you know, he's like throwing these bombs at us, and I'm like, I'm not that sporty a guy,

Speaker A

and I'm trying to like catch these like lasers from Tom Brady. Terrifying. [snorts] Yeah. Well, I think it's a huge like testament to the fact that you as an educator are doing stuff with the goat with Tom Brady and just, you know, uh,

Speaker A

and he, you know, wants to collab with you. That's an amazing thing as he gets more into YouTube.

Speaker A

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to break down the different eras of Veritasium because, you know, for a while you did everything by yourself. Um, how many employees, team members do you have now?

Speaker A

The team I think is now over 30. Over 30. Yeah. But I don't even know everyone anymore. So yeah, it's gotten way bigger than I ever thought. So I started the channel as a oneman band.

Speaker A

I was doing everything. Terrible animations editing filming writing researching. The reason why it was difficult to hire anyone was because I knew what I wanted and I didn't know if anyone else could understand that, would understand what I

Speaker A

was looking for. Also, another problem I had was I was not as scripted. And so if I brought an editor in, it would almost be like look through all this footage and turn it into something. But you don't script out your videos.

Speaker A

We do now. Oh wow. But for a long time there was basically no script.

Speaker A

You're sharing all this dense information and you're like there's no script. There's no teleprompter. You're just speaking off the top of your head.

Speaker A

Yeah. A lot of it for many many years. I'm trying to think like the first time I did prompter it might have been 2014 2015 and even then I wasn't doing it every video. So, you know, um, so you'd fire off a bunch of takes.

Speaker A

Yeah. Like just like speaking off the top of your head. Yes. And then you were hoping that maybe there's an editor out there that could go through it like Well, I wouldn't hope for the editor.

Speaker A

I'd know that I was the editor. Okay. Got it. Got it. So, a lot of the time, you know, I might go visit a facility or something and I'd shoot all the footage and I'd ask all the questions that seemed relevant to

Speaker A

me. Then later I'd bring them back and I'd be doing the edit. And as I'm editing, I'm figuring out, oh, this is not well explained. And then I'm like, okay, I need a little bridging sentence here or I need to do a little little bit

Speaker A

about this and sketch something out. Um, so my process was very slow, very inefficient, very painstaking of just, you know, like I would battle with the footage for days, maybe weeks, trying to shape it into something that was

Speaker A

watchable. And I'm one of the slowest, most inefficient editors you've ever seen. So it was terrible. But it was also not the kind of thing that I could outsource. I couldn't even not a lot of the video creation process for

Speaker A

me actually happened in the edit and a lot of figuring out like what am I going to say? How am I going to say it? How I'm going to form this whole thing happened in the edit. So, um yeah, I was

Speaker A

pretty bad YouTuber for a long time. Well, I mean, you're still getting a ton of views, but but I'm I'm curious like what changed because I think a lot of YouTubers start there, they can't let go of the editing or the script writing,

Speaker A

and they stay there. Yeah. I had a few people email me and say, "Hey, I've seen your animations. I think I can do better." And when those people emailed me, I normally wrote back and said like, "Great. Uh, here's an animation I need.

Speaker A

Do you want to show me like a sample of what you can do?" Um, and then I would go on to hire a few of those people. So animators were maybe even easier to hire as freelancers where I could say this is

Speaker A

specifically the vision. I could make them a sketch and stuff and they could make it look a lot better than I could.

Speaker A

Um, and then eventually I found an editor in co who has become like my go-to guy. But even with him, like the first few videos, I wasn't quite sure that it was a good fit. And I wasn't and

Speaker A

I also don't know if he hated working with me because first video was about redshifting photons in different frames of reference and I was like describing all these meticulous things about how these astronauts had to be. So he was

Speaker A

both editing and doing VFX. Um, which I think he nearly pulled his hair out. So yeah, but eventually we found a way to work together and I realized like he he's got so many strengths and is such a

Speaker A

better editor than I am. um that yeah he he's amazing and and now we've got even more editors editors inhouse who are also extraordinary. So now there's a good group of people who who I can count on. I think it speaks to like it is

Speaker A

expensive like to do what you do like I'm looking at the visuals like I'm looking at your team like like could you share like what what is like you know an average video cost these days?

Speaker A

I don't know if I can share exactly what it costs, but it's way more than [laughter] I ever wanted to spend on a video. Um, I am less involved with the day-to-day running of things. And it's one of my

Speaker A

pieces of feedback is like, how are we possibly spending this much on each video, right? Yeah. It's an insane amount of money. It's the kind of money that I could have lived off easily for a year, you know, that we spent on every

Speaker A

video. On one video. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So, it's crazy. It's crazy. But I got to say a lot of the places where that money is going, it's going to people who are science specialists. They have degrees in science. They're contact experts.

Speaker A

They're doing fact checks. So like we do multiple runs of fact checks on every video. So not only, you know, is all of this effort going into the script, but also into the visuals into like the animations like is that CO2 molecule

Speaker A

like correctly represented or like the notes I was catching like okay well the are we conserving momentum when the photons come in and and create a pair.

Speaker A

So there there's like ridiculous uh uh attention to detail and it costs money for that. Starting a YouTube channel is like starting a snowball and it's always hardest to make a snowball when it's smallest. Like that's the point where you're sort of

Speaker A

like cramming the snow together just trying to like get it started. Once the ball gets bigger, it's easier to keep it rolling. Um it's the same thing with hiring. Hiring your first person is probably your hardest hire. How first

Speaker A

and second, you know, third. That's when it's really challenging. Once you have 10 or 15, you know, I think it gets a little easier to roll the snowball and like, oh yeah, we're picking up good people and they're sort of they're

Speaker A

coming into a system. I found a lot of what I had to do when I was hiring people was I had to codify my process.

Speaker A

So if there are people who are going to start writing scripts, I need to tell them like what are my secrets of writing a script? So I I sat down and basically brain dumped everything that I've learned over 10 or 15 years of making

Speaker A

videos. That's the writing guide which gets handed off to to people who are coming in new and and getting trained up.

Speaker A

What what are some of those secrets? Like what are some of those things that you're like this is what makes a Veritassium video?

Speaker A

I think one of the keys is that there's no intro. So you have to get straight into it.

Speaker A

Uh, we do either like a cold open or a story or an experiment or some moment from filming that's really compelling.

Speaker A

Um, you cannot open with what I call the TV intro. Have you ever walked out at night and looked up at the night stars and just thought about our place in the universe like that's how you would start

Speaker A

it if it was BBC or whatever. But that's not a YouTube start. YouTube start has to be faster into it. People can click off any moment. You have to give them a reason to stay and watch. You have to

Speaker A

give them the these days I talk about making a compelling mystery. Like I don't just want the video to be like today I'm going to teach you about the computer motherboard. What is its function? And like that's just it's just

Speaker A

not going to get there. So I want to start with something discrepant. I want to start with something weird. I want to start with a problem and we're going to work through that problem and as we work through it maybe new problems will arise

Speaker A

but we are going to go somewhere. This is going to be a journey. Can you give me an example of like a time you did that well and maybe a time you did that poorly when it comes to like capturing

Speaker A

the viewers's attention when you're in the actual video they've clicked on it? Yeah. So there's the video on super cold water which I open by saying so you want to see water freeze almost immediately.

Speaker A

Well, here's what you're going to need. Uh some very pure water. Fiji water has been recommended to me uh by a friend.

Speaker A

And obviously we're going to need a freezer, some way to cool it down. So, I'm going to put this uh bottle of water in the freezer. Like, all of this is so terrible and mindless and is no way to

Speaker A

start a video, right? We could have started the video with just like watch this. Do you see how this water is freezing right now? Like, there I'm into it in 3 seconds and you have the thing you have the thing happening. And if

Speaker A

people want to stick around and figure out why, great. I can unpack that and and that would be the way to do it. So, that's how I would do it today. So the way I did it at the time is, you know,

Speaker A

just like why are people waiting around to watch that? You want a high density of information. You want a high density of things happening of like moving through things. You have the edit so you can really chop things fine and like

Speaker A

people don't need to see everything. It's fine. Like and a lot of the things I was saying were like idiot like like ah I I am so annoyed watching myself back um these days. Derek, how did you think about like selling your channel

Speaker A

cuz that that was a big moment. Well, correct me if I'm wrong. You sold a good portion of your channel.

Speaker A

That's right. Right. How much of your channel did you sell? It was a majority stake in majority stake. Yeah.

Speaker A

Okay. So, over 50%. That's correct. You're no longer the majority owner of Cassium. That's true.

Speaker A

Is that Is that weird to say? Um, a little bit, but also I don't know if I had made peace with it. Um, I feel like I have.

Speaker A

So, uh, in 2021, I went really hard on the channel. I was approaching 10 million subscribers and that was the goal for the year. and I hired on a few full-time team members.

Speaker A

And this was the first time that I really had a team. And what I found was rather than taking work off my plate, it added work because I was constantly making sure that they had stuff to do and that meant I was

Speaker A

working into the night and you know people in different time zones and we had an editor who came on board. So, there were probably, you know, three or four people who were working full-time and then we had another maybe 10 or so

Speaker A

who would work freelance making thumbnails or making animations, things like that. Um, so that was the team and I just went so hard in 2021 that I feel like most weeks were, you know, 80 90 hour a week

Speaker A

weeks. Um, and you know, it was still kind of co times, so people weren't going out very much and I certainly wasn't. Um, so I was just kind of like throwing myself into the work. And you had three kids at that time. Now you

Speaker A

have four. Yes. Yeah. Three kids at the time, four now. And um I think as I said in my video, like there were nights when I didn't go upstairs to see the kids uh to bed. Like I was just downstairs. I was

Speaker A

like crunching on a video and needed to finish a thing, you know, and I would frequently pull all nighters. I'd be driving across LA to to grab the the file for my editor because um his internet wasn't that

Speaker A

fast. So, like literally driving a a drive across LA at like 3:00 a.m. was the the [snorts] fastest uh transfer speed we could get. And then I would come home and I'd upload it and I'd launch for like 6 a.m. on the West

Speaker A

Coast. So, um 2021 was a really hard year, like a really just there was way too much. So it was interesting the following year when some investors started you know coming around and saying hey we'd be interested in you know partnering you

Speaker A

with you on the channel or you know investing buying a significant portion of it and uh I think at that point maybe I was exhausted and had all these kids and I wanted to spend more time with them and I mean so a big idea I want

Speaker A

everyone to know is that you know making this YouTube channel has been my dream job and I've had so many incredible experiences, the best choice of my life ever was starting a YouTube channel and just diving into this.

Speaker A

Um, having said that, after 13 years, you know, going really hard, the thing that started getting to me was the feeling of the treadmill of like I need to put something out the, you know, like maybe a sponsor calls up and I'm like,

Speaker A

oh, I need to do something within two weeks. What can we pull off in two weeks? So, that was getting to be a lot.

Speaker A

And uh these investors came around and their pitch was different from a lot of the pitches that I'd heard from trying to get into the creator economy where they would say things like, "Well, we'll give you some capital so you can

Speaker A

invest." Or, you know, I was like, "I don't really need capital. Like, we have capital. The thing I'm struggling with is running a business." Because that was never my goal. That was never my vision.

Speaker A

I don't want to manage people. I don't want to spend time on hiring. Um, so this pitch from the investors was like, "We're going to come in and help grow what you're doing. We're going to help you by finding people to um take things

Speaker A

off your plate, things that you don't want to be doing, and we're going to handle all the business stuff, and we're also going to help, you know, grow this thing to be something bigger and something that can really um live out in

Speaker A

the world in a in like a bigger way than just a YouTube channel." So, to me, that was really interesting. That was like, okay, I I feel like this can be a good opportunity to expand what Veritasium is

Speaker A

doing. I think Veritassium has this mission. The goal is to get people to really think about the way the universe works and like what is really true and what's not.

Speaker A

And I think we can do more of that if it's not just me who's pushing this, you know?

Speaker A

Um, so I was excited at the opportunity of other people coming on. Was any part of you skeptical though?

Speaker A

cuz like I mean getting investment other people coming in who like don't know like what it takes to pull off a Veritassium video like I I don't know like I I I feel like a lot of like creators like I it's hard to let go the

Speaker A

control like how how did you know that um it was going to be okay?

Speaker A

I think one thing is you have to be wary like I was wary of investors.

Speaker A

Yeah. um you have to be careful about who you're going to work with 100%.

Speaker A

So these investors flew out to visit me where I was living and we spent several days, you know, talking through what's important to me, what's important to the channel. And really talking through these things of like, okay, are you going to want

Speaker A

control over ideas? And they're like, no. You know, they unders You asked them. Yeah. Yeah. They understood that I had grown the channel to this place doing a particular set of things. So rather than come in and impose well we think you

Speaker A

should be doing XYZ like they were more about scaling what I was already doing.

Speaker A

They were more about you know if you have a strong idea about something and you just want to do it that way like we'll listen to you. You know if you if you say this video is not ready we'll

Speaker A

we'll say okay. So, I trusted them and I I believed them because they seem like, you know, good people. And now I can say having 3 years experience working together that they've been very responsive to my feedback.

Speaker A

Yeah. And this is electrify. Yeah. Right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I think some people who watch say, "Okay, investors come in, they're going to want want to make money, and then that invariably will make the content worse." Yeah. And I've seen some people online

Speaker A

say, "Okay, well, now that investors are involved, they only want to make more money and so the quality of what we make [snorts] is going to drop." Um, I'm skeptical of that view because I think investors should know like what is the

Speaker A

value of the product that they're buying and what does this business need to do to to continue making money and to make more money. I think the smart thing as an investor is to listen to the creator to understand exactly what they do, why

Speaker A

they're doing it, and just do more of that. And that is, I would argue, what we've been able to accomplish over the last few years has been increase the production value, increase the quality of the videos, increase the number of

Speaker A

experts and the scrutiny and the factecking and stuff. All of that has just gone up um as a result of the increased budget.

Speaker A

Yeah, cuz there are those videos like I found one that has millions of views like how private equity turns your favorite channels into slop. I don't know if you've seen that one, but there's a big worry as channels are

Speaker A

starting to sell, YouTube is maturing, that the money will change the quality of the content. What else have you done to make sure that doesn't happen?

Speaker A

This view of what do investors do when they come and they buy something? I know there's examples of times when investors come in and they totally like got a company, add debt, and you know, just profit off it and and the whole

Speaker A

thing collapses. I don't think that that is what Electrify is trying to do. I believe that what they are trying to do is build a new media company that is made up of a bunch of YouTube channels that they have bought and then what

Speaker A

they've done with those channels once they they're invested in them is help them grow and help them, you know, be bigger and better versions of themselves. I maybe that's too optimistic, but I think people are too cynical when they think, you know, the

Speaker A

only thing that investors want to do is take money and ruin the product. It's like, well, ruining the product is going to ruin the flow of money. Like, that's just dumb.

Speaker A

So, I have always believed that the financial incentive, that the profit motive actually should drive the investors to do the right thing for the audience.

Speaker A

Like, if we're not making videos that the audience likes, they're not going to keep watching. we're not going to get sponsors who want to sponsor the videos.

Speaker A

So, they have to do the right thing, right? So, that's where my maybe some of my belief in these investors comes from is it it comes from the belief that our incentives are really aligned.

Speaker A

And my experience with them over three years has been that whenever I've said something to them like this doesn't feel right or I don't think we should do it this way, they've listened to me. And I think that that's a good business

Speaker A

decision on their part because I know what we're doing more than anyone does. Um I remember there's a video where, you know, we're having a tough time getting all the components and we need to get a video out by the end of the month. And

Speaker A

we were like, well, we could split this in two and just put one sponsor on this one. We'll have another sponsor for for the next half next month. And that seemed like a great, you know, business strategy or whatever. But I said like I

Speaker A

think this video really is so important and so big that we can't break it apart like it it's just going to kind of kill the flow and people watching part two without seeing part one is it's it's not

Speaker A

the right thing. So I said we just have to hold the video and keep it together as one thing. And it's it was the longest video we had made to that point. It was nearly an hour.

Speaker A

And the company agreed with me. They were like yeah it's fine. You know we'll we'll tell the sponsor to hold off.

Speaker A

We'll tell the sponsor it's it's a better thing kept all together. And it was like clearly against their interests financially, but because it was the right thing creatively for us to do, they saw that, they agreed with me and

Speaker A

and that's the way we did it. We kept the whole video together. So, and I would say since the investors, you know, we've made longer videos than ever before, and we've made videos that uh have done better than any that we've

Speaker A

ever made before. So, I think it's working, you know, like No, it I mean I was looking at the viewership before and after uh the time of the sale and uh it's actually very impressive that the views have not like

Speaker A

dropped off because a lot of times like you know people bring in investment or they'll sell or they'll bring in other co-hosts and like the viewership will just plummet.

Speaker A

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel like the pressure on you like has changed as you've brought on like outside investment? like what what's been that like cuz I I could also see a world where like you take on money

Speaker A

and then it's like okay now you have to figure out how to give your investors a return like there's another like pressure that could come with that like h how do you think through like that decision of taking on money?

Speaker A

For me the decision about taking on money was really a decision about reducing risk. I am always worried as a YouTuber and I feel like this has been my number one worry and I don't know if it's everyone else's worry but I project

Speaker A

that it is. Um but it's just that like you don't know when your channel's going to end. You don't know when you're going to stop getting the views. And for me as a father of three and now four um like I

Speaker A

need to provide some stability for my family. I need to know that I have a long-term future even if you know YouTube crashes and burns or you know just stops showing my my videos. So when investors approached me, I was like, I

Speaker A

didn't really ever expect to sell this. I didn't expect to be able to sell this.

Speaker A

I thought that this was fundamentally dependent on me and uh you know, if it if it goes up or down, like that's um that's that's on me. Uh so when I was able to take money off the table, I was

Speaker A

like, well, I should do that. just it's just smart um business-wise, you know, I I maintain a certain ownership share, so I'll continue to earn from the channel and you know, if it goes up, great, but also if it goes down, like I don't lose

Speaker A

everything. Um so that was a really important decision for me and one where I saw it as like yeah, de-risking as as the biggest step. I also felt like I could start to separate myself from the success or failure of every video. like

Speaker A

I felt my own selfworth was intrinsically tied to how each video did. And I think it's a much healthier position I'm in today where I'm like I understand that not every video is going to be a banger and you know we're going

Speaker A

to try to do our best on each one but you know if there's some that don't make it like you know learn from it and move on. You know it's it's less I feel less um personally despondent after one of

Speaker A

those goes out these days. Yeah. And why sell a majority stake in your channel? like why not keep the majority yourself like keep voting power that's a good question I think after 13 14 years of making YouTube videos I was

Speaker A

kind of ready to do something different so I'm thinking about other projects that I might want to do you know maybe I want to make a feature length doc or maybe I want to work with other streamers or maybe I want to make a

Speaker A

podcast or maybe I just want to take a few years off or something [clears throat] so that is why I wanted to you know take more of a backseat here was because I feel like I've done a lot

Speaker A

of what I came to do on YouTube and I'm a I'm happy for this channel to have like a life beyond me. Um I I think all the people who are working with me now are amazing and very talented and the

Speaker A

videos are more popular now than they were when I was doing it just by myself.

Speaker A

So yeah, the most successful the channel's ever been is like with me less involved. So there's a certain irony there. Um, but as I say to the team, like, you know, they're they're taking the ball and running with it and and I'm

Speaker A

interested in maybe doing some passion projects or things that take 6 months, 12 months, um, where I can't have my eye fully on on YouTube necessarily.

Speaker A

So, that was really I I feel like liberating for me, just this sense of like I'm not wedded to this grind every day, uh, day in day out, and if there's like a deep passion project I want to

Speaker A

pursue, I now have the the time and the mental space to do it. Yeah. Um, so that's what I'm really excited about and being able to pursue things that I find interesting and meaningful and you know spending time with my kids, my family,

Speaker A

um, traveling the world, you know, those sorts of things. Uh, those mean a lot to me. Yeah.

Speaker A

I I think it's really inspiring cuz like as a YouTuber, you don't really think of that as an exit option. Or at least you didn't like even 5 years ago.

Speaker A

Yes. Even Even like three years ago until the deal was signed, I was like there's no way this is going to going to go through. So, can you share like how much did they offer to buy your channel?

Speaker A

I don't know if I can explain exactly, but it was many years of profit.

Speaker A

H is it a profit sharing? Uh the the way they valued the company was based on how much profit we make in a year. So, it's a multiple of that.

Speaker A

Got it. Yeah. Got it. That's so interesting. There's like comparables being built right now for other verticals or other companies like you know it's like a multiplier of like Yeah. profit. There's certain like sites now that allow you to buy like

Speaker A

e-commerce businesses for I don't know 5 to 10x like multiple of IATA you know and I'd say that's that's kind of the zone where they were yeah but not on the high end.

Speaker A

Yeah. [laughter] What were those negotiations like? I feel like I was pretty naive honestly about the negotiations. I know now you know a lot more that you can hire brokers and people to come in and you know really you know hard ball them or

Speaker A

whatever. Um I was not like that with the negotiation. I was more like, you know, I'm surprised that anyone would offer me money for this thing because it feels so dependent on my work and um so that it felt to me unsellable.

Speaker A

So, in in some ways, I was just grateful that anyone was willing to pay anything for it.

Speaker A

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Speaker A

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Speaker A

[music] So, the initial negotiations were done basically directly with me, and then I had I had lawyers who came in and and negotiated like the fine terms and things. Um, which I'm grateful for, but um, yeah, I I don't know. You probably

Speaker A

could do a much better job, but like I I mean, yeah, I feel like you're um pioneering a new ground for a lot of YouTubers, maybe. Um, do you feel like, Derek, looking back at it, like, do you wish you asked for more

Speaker A

money? Maybe. [laughter] But what I can tell you is I'm glad that I didn't try to perfect it so much that it didn't happen, you know?

Speaker A

Yeah. I think in a ways that's quite a YouTube approach and generally a good approach to life. Yeah. It's like you know if you get somewhere in the ballpark like and it happens that's better than trying to like get it down

Speaker A

to the last dollar they were willing to pay and then it not working out. Yeah.

Speaker A

So what I can say is since uh working with investors, you know, obviously the number of people who work on the channel has grown hugely uh the amount that I work dayto-day has dropped precipitously. So these days I'm

Speaker A

only working a few hours a week. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you still produce this level of content.

Speaker A

And the content is, you know, doing better than ever and is extraordinary production value. And I work with amazing people. So, my life has gotten way more enjoyable and way less work.

Speaker A

Um, and at the same time, the channel has has flourished and done really well.

Speaker A

I can say that every year since the investment, we've grown by about 30% in terms of watchtime hours and and or maybe more than that in terms of watchtime hours, but in terms of, you know, revenue and and uh things that are

Speaker A

happening. Yeah. So, we've sort of doubled, I would say, in in three years. Wow. in terms of the the business. So, yeah, it's it's been really successful.

Speaker A

Did you ever wish you hired internally and maybe brought in a business partner or somebody who like could help grow it or take that off your plate versus like giving away ownership?

Speaker A

Yeah, I can imagine an alternate universe where I built all this in-house and I imagine that that would have been a much more stressful alternative universe. it would have been a much more challenging uh road for me to to walk

Speaker A

and I would have worked a lot more. Yeah. Um I think it's possible and maybe there would have been more upside if I did that. But again, I'm not really after more upside. Like this has been such an extraordinary

Speaker A

journey and I'm you know grateful to be here and to feel financially stable and and confident that you know I can support my family for the foreseeable future and u and any project I want to pursue you know is still open to me. I

Speaker A

mean, I I just appreciate you talking about it because like there's no blueprint right now for what happens after 10 15 years on YouTube and Oh, yeah. Like I I think for me it was looking at all the counterfactuals of, you know, my

Speaker A

friends who retired or stopped making videos cuz they couldn't or, you know, got really sick or you there's so many things that happen and the algorithm just plummets. Like sometimes I just check in on people who were, you know,

Speaker A

huge 5 years ago and it's just like, oh man, you know, what happened? um the fact that that can happen is just to me the most terrifying thing. So for me it's been about avoiding that possibility and and this is a much

Speaker A

better choice for me. But and how do you keep up the quality and the views? Cuz like that is the other fascinating thing about Veritasium. It's like it's grown, you know, and I won't name names, but there's other channels out

Speaker A

there that have taken on money and they've plummeted or they've not done as well. Um because at the end of the day like investors are not always creators who know the channel and brand and content like you. Like how like I I'm I'm just

Speaker A

blown away that you're saying you work like a few hours a week. Like how are you able to keep the quality and the team the team like I if if we hadn't hired amazing people Yeah. things probably would have crashed

Speaker A

and they helped the investors electrify help with the hiring. They did a lot of the hiring. There was a time a year after the investment where my most experienced and best producer quit and my second best uh got a concussion

Speaker A

and was like couldn't work for months. Wow. And at that point we still hadn't hired many other people. So there was basically nothing happening and that that was the time when we had our fourth kid. So there was a massive like lull in

Speaker A

the channel about a year after the investment and I really had to come back in and like put my hand to the wheel and I was just like right back in it like you know 80 90 hour weeks kind of thing

Speaker A

like I was back just doing everything and and and lifting us up again while the investors worked on finding more people and hiring and and training them up and getting them involved with me. So yeah, there was definitely, you know, we

Speaker A

had our ups and downs, but we still managed to come out um come out ahead, but yeah, the the amount of expenses we have is now like four times, maybe five times bigger than it was when I uh sold. So, and then really it's all

Speaker A

people expenses. We've grown to to 30 people. So, is it over $10 million like a year expense?

Speaker A

No, no, no. Spending millions of dollars. We're spending millions, but not 10 million. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, that's still a really high cost. I mean, and also it is a beautiful thing. You're investing in the science community and educators like

Speaker A

hiring people to make these videos. So, yeah, that money is, you know, going somewhere that it just Yeah. helps give back in a big way.

Speaker A

Yeah. Was interesting when I talked about the investment on the channel. Uh what we saw on the Patreon was a dramatic increase in the people who wanted to support the channel.

Speaker A

What? Oh, wait. What? Wait. you took on money from investors and then we talked about it on Pat we talked it talked about it on the channel patrons gave you more money and then Patreon uh the number of people

Speaker A

I think who were supporting us increased dramatically as a result of that video. Wow.

Speaker A

And I think the what that reflects is they want to support you know now rather than one science communicator you're supporting like 30. You know what I mean?

Speaker A

Um you're supporting a whole team of people who are taking on this mission and it's the one that I'm passionate about. I want people to be able to get to the truth about anything. I want us to look at evidence. I want us to have

Speaker A

rational conversations. The world needs that now more than ever. Uh and here here's a dedicated group of people and like they're all like gung-ho passionate. They're ready to do it. Um, so I'm just I'm I'm so excited to have

Speaker A

like created this thing which has grown bigger than my wildest dreams and to at the same time feel like, you know what, I'm comfortable as I am and and I want to be free to to pursue anything um that

Speaker A

I'm interested in. Yeah. Yeah. How do you bring on co-hosts? Veritas started with just you. Like now like a bunch of videos have different co-hosts and I I'll also say that's like something that a lot of other channels

Speaker A

struggle with. They bring in a co-host, those videos don't do as well. the main like person who started the channel has to come back in but your videos with other like folks who are not you still do well like what's the secret to

Speaker A

bringing in co-hosts on a YouTube channel I think one thing is the co-hosts have to be excellent science communicators in their own right I think one of the things that's helped train them up is one they're science qualified they've

Speaker A

got science degrees also they've worked on a lot of videos before so they've written a lot of scripts they've been working behind the scenes they've been researchers they've been writers they've been part of the team for years appach

Speaker A

be natural, be yourself because they are really compelling and um great science communicators in their own right. I think you know we start by sort of feathering people in of like yeah I I'll handle the you know half of it you can

Speaker A

handle half or uh something like that and gradually decrease the percentage that I'm in. Um, and I I I've been amazed as well at just, you know, the the audience has been open to embracing new people who, you know, come from

Speaker A

different backgrounds, have different experiences, um, but are all also very passionate about this mission and, uh, and they're very talented.

Speaker A

Do you ever see a day where you're not involved in the channel at all?

Speaker A

I'm not sure. Uh, it's possible. I still feel like Veritasium and even if I'm not on screen, I hope that people remember that what started it and what the mission of the whole channel is. Um, yeah, I I really hope we keep driving

Speaker A

that way. I'm curious, do you have a grand plan for Veritasium as a channel?

Speaker A

Like when you first started because obviously now you sold the majority stake in the channel, you brought on co-host. Like I'm curious, did you think about ultimately where it was going to go by naming the channel Veritassium versus Derek Muller?

Speaker A

Absolutely not. No, I had no idea where this was going to go. I didn't think it was going to be a business. I didn't think it would support my lifestyle. I didn't know what would happen. I think the reason why I wanted a name for the

Speaker A

channel. I mean, I I thought about all kinds of stuff like, you know, sigh, sci flick, like whatever. Like, I just had a bunch of terrible names. Uh, at some point, I came up with scienceium, which like element of science and science,

Speaker A

sciencia means knowledge. So, like an element of knowledge. Okay. But I knew what the logo would have to be. it would have to have the first letter or the first two letters in a box you know like a element S is sulfur SC

Speaker A

is scandium so I was like I can't can't use scienceium and then I was like is there another kind of you were actually looking at the periodic table I didn't even have to look at the periodic table I know S is

Speaker A

sulfur and SC is scandium you know yeah fair enough uh so I I threw that's just common knowledge that everybody knows yeah totally yeah so I I threw that I threw that name I put it aside for a second and I was like

Speaker A

is there any other sort of old Latin you know Greek kind of root that would work for you know making an element and then that's when I thought of veritas and veritassium and I was like oh you know

Speaker A

an element element of truth element element of truth that works this is the and I went and I looked the.com was available the the Gmail was available the uh Tik Tok the Twitter handle was available so I was like everything is

Speaker A

available except the YouTube channel for some reason someone had already come up with Veritassium on YouTube so um took me a while before I managed to get it get it away from them. But because I could get like the.com and the Twitter

Speaker A

and I I felt like I won the lottery in that moment. I was like this is the greatest greatest thing ever. Greatest name ever.

Speaker A

It is a great name. I I think you may win for like best YouTube channel name.

Speaker A

But no, it's incredibly nerdy and hard to remember. And if anyone doesn't know science or Latin or whatever and you're like, "What's your channel name?" Veritassium. They're like, "What?" You know like No, but it gets that audience, you know.

Speaker A

It does. It does. Yeah, it worked. Um, do you think that name actually made it easier to sell and have co-hosts?

Speaker A

Probably. Yeah. Like cuz if it was Derek Mohler, it's like it's harder to understand like this co-host or what's this? It's like, you know, I think um now you can look at it and say, "Yeah, that was a really fortunate

Speaker A

decision, but no foresight, nothing like that." No. Do you think that for creators who want to start a channel like is it good to have like a different brand name? Yeah, it's a great question. Um, I really don't know what to suggest to people. I

Speaker A

think if you can think of a strong branding, like yeah, go for it. Um, for me personally, you know, I now have a channel which just is my name now. So, if anyone wants to find me, I'll be over there.

Speaker A

Um, but yeah, I don't know whether strategically like it probably is a good idea if I mean if people are playing the game, but like back then there was no game to be played. Like there was no money, there

Speaker A

was nothing happening. It was like, you know, this is just a hobby. This is just a project I'm doing.

Speaker A

No, it's interesting given how well worked out for you. Can I share my hot take? And so I I think there's two groups is like you can name it your first name, last name, you know, Derek Mohler, John Ushi, or like uh you do

Speaker A

Veritassium, you know. Um but I think like a middle ground if you're thinking about like expanding the brand or like having other people come up on it is like kind of the Daily Show method where it's like the Daily Show with John

Speaker A

Stewart with Trevor Noah. you know, you could kind of replace, but you have the overall brand. So, Clear Abram does a good job of this huge if true with Clear Abram.

Speaker A

I kind of like that method. And, you know, we're trying to do with ours like our show naming is created with John Ushi. And [clears throat] I can't see a world where I stopped doing this, but if I don't know, like

Speaker A

created could be a brand. Exactly. And it is like we're gonna, you know, there's a lot of ways that we're going to expand it, but like Yeah.

Speaker A

Created with and then you insert a new co-host or new host or something. So, I don't know. I I I think it's like uh something interesting to think about because you never know where your channel could go and

Speaker A

Yeah. No, I think that's a really good take. I think at the time when I was naming the channel, not a lot of people maybe named the channel after themselves, so there was like community channel or Vlog Brothers, you know. So,

Speaker A

I don't know if I was just like following the trend of like you don't name your channel your name, but but now it is a more common thing. So, yeah.

Speaker A

Yeah. Derek, I I want to say thank you again for coming on the show. Just everything you've done for YouTubers, like for the way you've inspired my career. And just want to give you the final word if there's anything else you

Speaker A

want to add. Thank you for having me. And also just thank you to everyone on YouTube cuz it's been an awesome ride for these 15

Topics:VeritasiumJon YoushaeiYouTube channel saleYouTube sponsorshipeducational contentscience YouTubechannel growthcontent creationYouTube monetizationcreator interview

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