John Hu (aka JayHoovy) talking to Eric Wei:
John:
I think the key insight that you’re sharing there stems from, actually, a Naval tweet, that I read many years ago, which says:
- Eventually, everyone will be in the creator economy.
And then the key insight that I always preach to my team is: Creators are just the new distribution channels. Right?
Even if they could run ads for that alcoholic company, I would argue they should instead create organic content, because no one watches ads anymore.
We, instead, want to connect with people and, like, organic content that we actually trust.
Eric, later at minute 33:41, re: his hypothetical ‘Nobody knows what they’re doing’ billboard:
That was an existential realization for me, when I realized people don’t know.
I remember — I mentioned earlier, like, the key successes to the financial technology business across these 3 criteria, and I said it came from the cofounder of PayPal — so, we had dinner with him, my cofounder and I.
We were very early in Karat, with one of the cofounders. and I remember being, like, almost like, in awe.
Like, I was like, wow. This like, really successful like, known person/billionaire or whatever, like, wants to meet with us. That’s insane.
And I was just like, wow, I hope I don’t like, come off incredibly stupid.
And he just like, wanted to ask about YouTubers.
He just had like, no conception of like, what was going on, and they were asking, like, very basic questions — because he just doesn’t know!
And I was like, oh, I actually know these! Like, not nearly as much as YouTubers —
But again, I think a lot of life is like finding yourself in the middle of two disparate knowledge bases — where I know enough about the creator world to answer the cofounder of PayPal’s questions, and enough about the financial tech world to be at dinner with him.
And I was like, oh my gosh, he actually does not know.
Smart creators should be asking themselves the following question:
- Why are billionaire company founders scrambling to learn about (and be) YouTubers?
Just what kind of vibrating bombshell of diamonds are you, as a successful creator, sitting on here?
You’d better answer that for yourself before the big money does.
And by the time they catch up, you had better already own your influence.
If you’re a YouTuber with a clear and early enough vision to have already built out your own platform, meaning,
- your personally-owned website,
- your own active email list, and
- your own offers,
…things could soon get kind of amazing.
I’d advise sticking around here for ongoing insights from fellow top creators at the leading edge of it all.
— Tang
John Hu’s owned platform is: Stan.
Eric Wei is co-founder of Karat.
