Why You Should Create Content in 2024 [Naval Ravikant, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jimmy (MrBeast) Donaldson]
Hey friend!
I have collected some insights on Why you should become a Content Creator this year! I picked the nuggets from Naval Ravikant, Chamath Palihapitiya, Mark Rober (23M Subs on YouTube) and Jimmy (aka MrBeast) Donaldson.
But before, a summary of the Content Creator Playbook:
Grow an audience on any platform which has a discovery algorithm such as YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, Instagram…
(Optional, though recommended) — Redirect (amap) that Audience to your own Website / Blog / Community… (e.g./ you own website, Substack, Discord or any other platform where you actually have direct reach with the audience).
Monetize thru: Ads Revenue (e.g./ YouTube’s Adsense Program), Affiliate Marketing, Brand Deals or your own business (which solves a common problem in your Audience).
I hope you will find this article valuable :)
🧠 Quotes (my favorite)
“The new oil is ideas. It’s all digital. All the new fortunes are being created in ideas space. In fact, if you’re starting out today as a young, ambitious person, you don’t learn real estate; you don’t learn coal and oil mining; you don’t go into the extraction of physical resources to create wealth. You go into ideas space. You go into programming, books, movies, blogs and podcasts and building robots, which are mostly intellectual property underneath.”
"The most powerful money-makers are actually individual brands"
"Today in Society... You get rewarded for creative work"
- Naval Ravikant
"I would focus on the Content Creator side of things because I believe that's 'where the puck is going'. That's a much more important shift... In how we all consume information."
- Chamath Palihapitiya
"I think four or five years from now there's gonna be a lot of articles about Creators who will be billionaire Creators."
- Mark Rober
👨 People
Chamath Palihapitiya is the CEO of Social Capital (Venture Capital Fund). In 2007, he joined Facebook and led the User Growth Team. His net worth is estimated to be over 1 Billion $.
Naval Ravikant is the co-founder of AngelList and co-author of Venture Hacks. He has invested (early-stage) in companies like Uber, Twitter and FourSquare.
Mark Rober is a former Apple engineer who makes videos on YouTube and has grown an Audience to 23.3M Subscribers (as of January 2023).
Jimmy (Mr Beast) Donaldson runs several YouTube Channels, a delivery fast food restaurant (Mr Beast Burger) and two philanthropic projects: Beast Philanthropy and Team Trees. His brand is valued in the Billions of dollars.
📝 Notes
Chapter 1 — Chamath Palihapitiya: The Evolution of Social Apps and the Next Big Opportunity
(Interview took place on December 2022)
Where are we probabilistically going? (in Apps & Social Experiences).
Before Chamath answered this question, he went back to how all started and analyzed the evolution until today and the ongoing most clear opportunity (though not clear to the knowledge of most people). He tells the story in 3 waves:
The First Wave — The Platforms
The mission here was to build the platforms and scale them.
The winners? Apple and Google. They captured trillions of dollars (in Enterprise Value) and reached billions of Monthly Active Users (MAU).
The Second Wave — The (Social) Apps
Once the platforms scaled to mass use, the second wave took place. In this case, the mission was to create the social network (on top of the platforms) — a social ecosystem. Chamath argues this was the "Atomized version of the platforms".
The winners? Facebook, Tencent QQ, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. These too captured trillions of dollars (in Enterprise Value) and reached billions of Monthly Active Users.
Where is now the “puck” (opportunity) going? —> That’s the third wave!
The Third Wave — The Content Creators
"The next most obvious atomic unit are Content Creators.” The Content Creators are the ones that “sit on top” of the Social Apps, and represent the new atomization. And it is hiding in plain sight.
The mission here is to provide (to the audience) a unique New’s Feed, Community….
2 big instances: Lex Fridman and Jimmy (MrBeast) Donaldson.
Future projections (next 5 years):
Trillions of dollars in Economic Value.
Reach to billions of People.
“I would focus on the Content Creator side of things because I believe that's 'where the puck is going'. That's a much more important shift... In how we all consume information.”
“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” - Wayne Gretzky
The new filter of information are Individual Brands!
Chapter 2 — Naval Ravikant: The New Oil is Ideas
(June 2019)
The Default Model for people is to work for other people. That’s the Employment Model… "I must work for other people - work my way up the ladder". Which is also how you end up in the Competition Trap — trying to imitate what other people is doing to make money.
But in the modern digital economy, there is a new model available…
"Today in Society... You get rewarded for creative work."
"The most powerful money-makers are actually individual brands."
You need 3 things…
Leverage — e.g./ Internet Media
Unique skill-set (Specific Knowledge)
Accountability — Put your name on it! (you have to take the risks to gain the rewards).
The key, Naval argues, is to be Authentic and Find what you love doing (that's how you escape the Competition Trap), and then map it with Society’s needs!
(November 2021)
“The new oil is ideas. It’s all digital. All the new fortunes are being created in ideas space.
In fact, if you’re starting out today as a young, ambitious person, you don’t learn real estate; you don’t learn coal and oil mining; you don’t go into the extraction of physical resources to create wealth. You go into ideas space. You go into programming, books, movies, blogs and podcasts and building robots, which are mostly intellectual property underneath.”
Chapter 3 — Mark Rober: Why Content Creators are much more valuable now than ever before.
(Interview took place on December 2022 // Source Interview: Colin and Samir)
"I think four or five years from now there's gonna be a lot of articles about Creators who will be billionaire Creators."
2 reasons why…
1) The Creator's influence enables a Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Business Model. — which is very valuable because it skips paying to intermediaries.
2) "The Data Darkness" Phenomenon
"It used to be really easy (for businesses) to find audiences. (Now) it's not as easy to find an audience if you don't have it."
This phenomenon essentially means that your data can’t be tracked (Cookies Policy) and so companies have a harder time finding a relevant audience. Thus, people with an audience become more valuable (in the market) as companies can use that audience (the audience profile is molded by the theme of the content) to pitch their stuff (e.g./ Mark Rober’s content is about building/engineering and the subscribers are mostly kids, so his channel can be an optimal publishing space for companies like Lego).
The New Paradigm of Entrepreneurship
The traditional paradigm is the classic "Product-Market” fit. Which is based on first building the product, and then find an audience to pitch that product. Now, Colin and Samir (interviewers) argue that we are moving towards a paradigm shift —> first you grow an audience, and then you go build the product (which fits the common interests of the audience). They call it “Market-Product” fit.
Picking Nuggets Note:
I’m currently reading the book “Hackers and Painters”, by Paul Graham (founder of VC firm Y Combinator). It was published on 2004, so it doesn’t say anything about YouTube or being a Creator, but I’m surely getting many nuggets given its timeless nature. One thing I read that made me realized how important this new entrepreneurship paradigm might be (market-product fit), is that one of the most important things in a Startup is keeping the time-to-market short — You want to launch the product asap so that you can start having your first users / customers and then iterate the product based on their feedback. You want to make minimum guesses, and take maximum feedback — that’s how you make something that people actually wants (another definition I learnt from the book —> Wealth is not money. Wealth is what people want. Whereas money is just how people credit you for giving them what they want). On the opposite, the longer you take to build the product, the more likely it is that you are “prematurely optimizing” — meaning that you are optimizing on your guesses rather than the user’s feedback.
If we reflect on this idea, we can see how important it becomes to first have an audience and then build the product. You can build that product almost entirely based on potential user’s feedback — seeing what they say in the comments section, what content get’s most views, you can directly ask them if they would be interested in a specific product.
Peter Thiel (on his book Zero to One) also remarks the importance of having a successful distribution channel (that is, anything related to advertising, marketing and sales). He argues that you can have an amazing product, but if you don't find an effective distribution channel... your company is gonna fail. On the other hand, if you build an average undifferentiated product but you have a successful distribution channel... your business can be successful! Therefore, building *first* the distribution channel / audience and *then* making a product that can flow in that distribution channel and solve the needs of that audience... I think it's the less risky way to go about building a profitable business!
Passages from Peter Thiel’s Zero to One
“We underestimate the importance of distribution… Customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen, and it’s harder than it looks…
It’s better to think of distribution as something essential to the design of your product. If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business—no matter how good the product.”
Chapter 4 — MrBeast: Making Content in YouTube
(June 2021)
MrBeast did an event on his Discord Community where he shared tips about YouTube. One of the questions was — “What's the best thing to start doing on YouTube?” To what MrBeast answered: “Whatever you love. Whatever gets you out of bed in the morning. Whatever you are curious and passionate about.”
He also argues that even if your interests are very niche and weird, there is the possibility that you find an audience thanks to the enormous reach of YouTube.
Picking Nuggets Note:
This is exactly what Naval Ravikant also says, but he also mentions that your passion should be valuable to Society (in order to find an audience/market). He summarizes it in his quote:
"Do what feels like play to you, but looks like work to others".
So the holy grail is to find Founder-Product-Market Fit.
* Founder-Product Fit —> "What feels like play to you". Your passion. But the market doesn't care (in most cases).
* Product-Market Fit —> It probably "looks like work to others", because anything that is useful to Society tend to be this way. People love what you make, but you hate the process of making it. (so what’s the point if you are unhappy? Unless you can sell quickly and become Financially Independent I guess…). Besides, you will unlikely become the best at what you do because you are not passionate about it (so there is the risk that you start competing with people who is genuinely passionate about that, and make better products as result).
* Founder-Product-Market Fit —> "What feels like play to you, but looks like work to others". People love what you make, and you also love making it! Maybe you don’t love it as much as something that has only Founder-Product Fit, but that’s OK. Also Jeff Bezos argues that when your passion starts becoming a business, there will always be things you won’t enjoy doing (heard it on an interview a long time ago but can’t trace back its source), but the secret is that you enjoy *most* of what you do. Besides, you have a shot at becoming the best at what you do because you love doing it! (that will set you apart from competition).
But how do you know in advance if what you are doing is (or could become) valuable to Society? This is really hard to know. But I guide myself on this with 3 ideas:
* "Looks like work to others" -- Indication that what you do has an intrinsic value to Society.
* Asking myself: Does what I'm doing has the potential to positively impact the life of any one person? If the answer is yes, then I think I’m on the right path.
* Asking myself: Is the project interesting?...
“The best test of whether it's worthwhile to work on something is whether you find it interesting. That may sound like a dangerously subjective measure, but it's probably the most accurate one you're going to get. You're the one working on the stuff. Who's in a better position than you to judge whether it's important, and what's a better predictor of its importance than whether it's interesting?”
- Paul Graham (Essay on How to Work Hard)
Chapter 5 — Last Reflections
As Naval Ravikant and Alex Hormozi argue, Ideas and Attention are the New Oil. In the following diagram, you can see the full chain of value from the ideas to the monetization of them (specific for Content Creators):
1) Follow your passion and your genuine curiosity. Which naturally will give you ideas.
2) Package those ideas in a digital format using Social Platforms such as YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter… (whatever fits best what you are doing). Is important to first use the Social Platforms because these have an algorithm of discovery, and that’s how you build the audience.
3) Once you have an audience, you can direct them to your personal blog / newsletter / community… (which do not have an algorithm of discovery, but you establish more direct contact with the existing audience). Some instances: Any personal blog / website (wordpress, wix, ghost...), Substack (Blog + Newsletter), Discord (Community)...
4) Monetization type 1 -- thru native ads in the Social Media Platform. (If it lets you share the revenue. For instance, on YouTube you get 55% of the Internal Ads Revenue).
5) Monetization type 2 -- Promote other people's products (ideally that you like and use). Once you start having an audience (1-10K followers / subscribers), you can start monetizing thru:
Affiliate Marketing. You recommend a product / service and if people click and buy with your link (tracked with cookies) you get a percentage-based commission of that sale.
Brand Deals (when you have +20K Subs).
6) Monetization type 3 -- Make and promote your own products. Another way to monetize is to make your own products which solve common needs of your Audience. You can build a portfolio of products (which is essentially a business). And because of the Direct-to-Consumer model and that nowadays there are so many websites/apps that can help you to build those products and facilitate the online commerce, it becomes really simple to ship the products!
Check out the YouTube video here!
📁 All the ideas in this article are saved and classified in a searchable Database, which (as of July 2024) contains nearly 2,000 timeless ideas (sourced directly from the most influential doers and entrepreneurs — captured on books, interviews/podcasts and articles).
I call this Database the Doers Notebook, and I’ve recently opened it for anyone who wants it.
🤔 Why did I build this?
Well, as the Latin motto goes, “A chief part of learning is simply knowing where you can find a thing.” And since it’s all 🔎 searchable, we only need to type a keyword to immediately get a list of insights related to it!
For instance, if I’m unsure about how to get more sales in my business, I can simply type the word “sales” and immediately get 88 search results! In this case from Jim Edwards, Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Balaji Srinivasan, Nassim Taleb, and many other remarkable individuals.
It’s like having a 🧠 second brain from which we can pull wisdom on demand.
And this is super valuable because it can significantly decrease the error rate in our judgment.
“In an age of infinite leverage [code and media], judgment is the most important skill.”
- Naval Ravikant
I actually made a video where I went through the list of insights I got for the keywords “sales” and “creative”.
So, if you wanna get better at sales and learn to be more creative (and also see all the features of the database and how you can get access) then definitely check out the video 👇
📚 Snippets of Stuff I’m reading…
"Someone graduating from college thinks, and is told, that he needs to get a job, as if the important thing were becoming a member of an institution. A more direct way to put it would be: you need to start doing something people want. You don’t need to join a company to do that. All a company is is a group of people working together to do something people want. It’s doing something people want that matters, not joining the group. For most people the best plan probably is to go to work for some existing company. But it is a good idea to understand what’s happening when you do this. A job means doing something people want, averaged together with everyone else in that company.
If you want to go faster, it’s a problem to have your work tangled together with a large number of other people’s. In a large group, your performance is not separately measurable—and the rest of the group slows you down."- Paul Graham (Hackers and Painters)
"Much progress comes from the young because of their relative freedom from the system and courage to take action that older people lose as they become trapped in life."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
"I discovered that I had been intuitively using the less-is-more idea as an aid in decision making (contrary to the method of putting a series of pros and cons side by side on a computer screen). For instance, if you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason. Likewise the French army had a heuristic to reject excuses for absenteeism for more than one reason, like death of grandmother, cold virus, and being bitten by a boar. If someone attacks a book or idea using more than one argument, you know it is not real: nobody says “he is a criminal, he killed many people, and he also has bad table manners and bad breath and is a very poor driver."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
👨💻Other content I have found super valuable lately...
3 Tweets:
Until next time,
Julio xx
P.S. If you liked this article, you'll definitely enjoy my free 80-page ebook. It’s packed with 23 big ideas (from top influential doers and entrepreneurs) to become better, richer and wiser. Download your copy here!
Big fan of the YouTube channel, didn't know you had a Substack too. Love a lot of the stuff in here, especially the last long quote from Taleb. Your great at connecting ideas and thinkers together. Keep the content coming!
Loving it Julio. It reminds me of the piece by Brian Balfour on the 4 market fits:
https://www.reforge.com/blog/the-road-to-100m