Ep# 13 | WTF does it take to Build Influence Today? Nikhil w/ Nuseir, Tanmay, Prajakta & Ranveer

Nikhil Kamath 0:00 Give me one unique hack each to a twenty-year-old boy or girl who wants to become a creator. [upbeat music] Are we rolling?

Ranveer Allahbadia 0:28 We have been rolling.

Prajakta Koli 0:28 I feel like we've been rolling for a while.

Nikhil Kamath 0:30 Yeah. Yeah. [upbeat music] Okay, hi, guys.

Prajakta Koli 0:37 Hello.

Nikhil Kamath 0:37 Thank you. Uh, lovely to meet you for the first time.

Prajakta Koli 0:40 Lovely to meet you. Thank you for having me.

Ranveer Allahbadia 0:42 Say that to us also? [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 0:43 No, I can't say it to these guys because I know them too well. They're all, uh, brothers from a long time, in different ways. I know more about them-

Ranveer Allahbadia 0:53 So if I'm a brother, do I get part of the inheritance? [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 0:55 [laughing] I have no kids, dude.

Ranveer Allahbadia 0:58 I just don't know. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:00 Bro, there's no inheritance. He's giving it all away. Did you not hear?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:03 Uh, okay. I'm, I'm Nikhil, Nitin, and Nitesh. I'm Nitesh, actually.

Prajakta Koli 1:06 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:07 But that's assuming you would live longer than I.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:10 No, even, uh, "...", you know? [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:15 Oh, is this the kind of podcast we're gonna have today?

Nikhil Kamath 1:16 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:17 Just, like, have fun.

Nuseir Yassin 1:17 One with no English language? [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:20 Oh! No, no, we'll keep it English.

Nuseir Yassin 1:22 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:23 No, but you guys are the pros at this. I'm the newbie. I do this one night a month. I'm trying to learn how you do this, so teach me along the way.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:31 Oh, says the guy who uploaded number one on Spotify this week. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:35 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:35 WTF. But also, Nas, because these guys have, uh, watched it, maybe. Uh, it's a conversation between-

Nuseir Yassin 1:42 I've, I've, I've watched two.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44 Okay. It's a conversation between all of us. So it's not me asking questions, it's not you answering, so we can all talk. Typically, we begin by saying a bit about ourselves, and because I know you guys, this is gonna be fun. [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:58 Yeah. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:58 Should we start with,

Nikhil Kamath 2:00 uh, Prajakta?

Prajakta Koli 2:01 Oh! Okay. Yeah, hi. Do I say it to everybody?

Nikhil Kamath 2:05 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 2:05 Yeah.

Prajakta Koli 2:06 Oh, then it's awkward. [laughing] But, uh, I'm Prajakta. I'm a content creator, actor now, from Mumbai, India, and I started creating content, uh, in twenty fifteen. And I've been doing it for close to nine years now. And, um, I kind of also branched out into acting a little bit in twenty nineteen.

Nikhil Kamath 2:25 Why did you first begin creating content?

Prajakta Koli 2:28 Um, because I failed at the one dream that I had. I wanted to be a radio jockey ever since I was eleven.

Nikhil Kamath 2:34 Failed, meaning?

Prajakta Koli 2:34 I, I became a radio jockey, and the show didn't work, and I got fired.

Nikhil Kamath 2:38 Ah.

Prajakta Koli 2:38 And I also heard myself, so I get it. So when I started doing radio, it was fun for the first, I think, couple of months, and then later it just got... Like, it was nothing like I'd imagined it would be. So it was quite disappointing. And, uh, that's when I met Sudeep from One Digital, and he was like, "You should ma- have a YouTube channel. You should create content." And I didn't know what that meant, so... And I was very unhappy as a radio intern. So I was like: You know what? I'm just going to try content. And that-

Nikhil Kamath 3:01 In Bombay, ten years ago?

Prajakta Koli 3:02 In Mumbai, yeah. And, uh, it just started like that. I had absolutely no dreams or no, uh, kind of way forward, or any idea about what I was doing.

Nikhil Kamath 3:11 All of you guys have done influencing for so long. You know what is one thing which is so stuck? Like, the way your voice has influenced-

Nuseir Yassin 3:19 I'm so sorry, one second, I have to stop you. There's no such thing as influencing. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 3:22 What do you call it?

Nuseir Yassin 3:23 No one here has done any influencing.

Nikhil Kamath 3:24 What do I call it?

Nuseir Yassin 3:24 Influencers are the fathers, the doctors-

Nikhil Kamath 3:26 Uh-huh

Nuseir Yassin 3:26 ... the mothers, the teachers.

Nikhil Kamath 3:27 Uh.

Nuseir Yassin 3:27 They influence children.

Nikhil Kamath 3:29 Uh.

Nuseir Yassin 3:29 We've done creating of to- content. We created content, and it has impacted people. But influencer is a term. It's like Bom- Mumbai, Bombay. Influencer as a term is, like, slightly self-obsessed, no?

Nikhil Kamath 3:43 Mm-hmm.

Nuseir Yassin 3:43 What do you guys think? Good.

Prajakta Koli 3:45 I never related to that term, honestly.

Ranveer Allahbadia 3:47 Prajakta, actually, I'll... I want to add, uh, Prajakta was o- one of the earlier generations on, on YouTube.

Nikhil Kamath 3:53 Mm-hmm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 3:53 Uh, then she did a short film called Khayali Pulay, in case you haven't seen. That was the first time I saw Prajakta act.

Nikhil Kamath 3:58 Good?

Ranveer Allahbadia 3:59 Yeah, really good.

Nikhil Kamath 4:00 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 4:00 Um, and I messaged her also-

Prajakta Koli 4:02 Yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 4:02 ... after that, saying, "Shit, I didn't know you could act!"

Prajakta Koli 4:04 [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 4:04 "That's crazy." And now that you've mentioned theatre, and then, um-

Prajakta Koli 4:07 Yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 4:07 ... um, yeah, I've known Prajakta for a while.

Prajakta Koli 4:09 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 4:09 She's extremely hardworking.

Nikhil Kamath 4:10 You're Marathi?

Prajakta Koli 4:11 I am, yes.

Nikhil Kamath 4:12 What do your-

Prajakta Koli 4:12 My mama's from Delhi, baba's from-

Nikhil Kamath 4:15 What do your parents do?

Prajakta Koli 4:17 Baba used to work, uh, he was in Cadbury before, and then later he was working in real estate. And, uh, Mama was a phonetics teacher. She used to teach languages.

Ranveer Allahbadia 4:26 Phonetics teacher?

Prajakta Koli 4:27 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 4:28 Wow.

Nikhil Kamath 4:28 What is-

Prajakta Koli 4:29 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 4:29 ... what is that?

Prajakta Koli 4:30 So, um, I mean, she used to have a bunch of kids, because apparently they are not taught A, B, C, D anymore. It's a, ba, ka, da.

Nikhil Kamath 4:37 Oh.

Prajakta Koli 4:37 So it's the phonetics set, and she's to teach that.

Nuseir Yassin 4:40 I'll tell you more about her.

Nikhil Kamath 4:41 Yeah.

Prajakta Koli 4:41 Oh, wow!

Nuseir Yassin 4:41 Every time I-

Prajakta Koli 4:42 Why is this becoming- [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 4:42 It's like we're introducing each other.

Nikhil Kamath 4:44 Can we, can we do this? Can the three of you say what does Prajakta appear to the outside world in your lens?

Ranveer Allahbadia 4:50 Yeah.

Prajakta Koli 4:51 Oh.

Ranveer Allahbadia 4:51 Uh, so I'd had Priyanka Chopra on the podcast once, and she gave this example of a swan that looks like it's very peaceful on the surface, but on the inside, the feet are paddling. Uh, I l- don't think I've come across a more hardworking and disciplined professional than this person. Seconded. She's very hardworking. Like, like-

Prajakta Koli 5:09 Thank you

Ranveer Allahbadia 5:09 ... she's probably the most disciplined content creator that I've known throughout my career.

Nuseir Yassin 5:15 And she is, uh, Bill Gates' favorite creator. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 5:18 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 5:18 Every time I see her, it's either at a, at Bill Gates' conference or at Davos conference. So she's like, represents India in the major conferences. I'll tell you what, they're not going to invite Tanmay for this one. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 5:30 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 5:30 Too risky!

Ranveer Allahbadia 5:32 Not anymore, brother. Not anymore.

Nikhil Kamath 5:34 How is that? How, how do you get yourself in these places?

Prajakta Koli 5:39 I think

Prajakta Koli 5:40 YouTube had a huge role to play in that.

Ranveer Allahbadia 5:42 Mm.

Prajakta Koli 5:43 Um, I... twenty nineteen is when, um, YouTube kind of reached out to me for this program called Creators for Change. Twenty eighteen. And, uh, they were like: Do you want to... So they pick a few creators from across the world, and they put, like, a band of us together, and they're like, "Make videos for this program called Creators for Change." And every year they have different, um, themes. In twenty nineteen... In twenty eighteen is when they reached out for the first time, and then twenty nineteen was the second year.... and that's when, um, there was this documentary that they were making with, uh, Michelle Obama for girls' education, and they reached out to me for that. And I think that was my first kind of step up from what I was doing back home, and that kind of opened a lot of doors for me. Uh, so YouTube has been a huge cheerleader in my journey, beyond just doing the content that I was natively doing on my channel, just putting me out there, giving me a platform to speak about things. And, um, then I happened to meet Nikhil Taneja, who kind of put me in touch with Goalkeepers. Uh, so that's how that started. The UNDP kind of came in through both these channels, so it, it kind of went into a whole domino effect once the first Creators for Change video went out. And, um, yeah, so th- that's how, that's how it began.

Nikhil Kamath 6:58 And when did you blow up and all of that? 2018, 2017?

Prajakta Koli 7:01 My first video actually went viral... So I started in twenty- Feb of 2015, and the first video that really, really blew up was in the July of that year, quickly-

Nikhil Kamath 7:11 What was it about?

Prajakta Koli 7:12 [chuckles] It was a video called, uh, Words Delhiites Use.

Nikhil Kamath 7:15 Mm.

Prajakta Koli 7:15 I heard a lot of Delhi go in that video.

Nikhil Kamath 7:18 Mm.

Prajakta Koli 7:18 Uh, but it kind of, like, blew up. And, uh, then it's just been like a rollercoaster. Like, it was-

Nikhil Kamath 7:25 Mm

Prajakta Koli 7:25 ... not one week was like another for a very, very long time.

Nikhil Kamath 7:28 Mm. Very cool. And now, what are you looking forward to?

Prajakta Koli 7:32 Um, I'm looking forward to more acting.

Nikhil Kamath 7:35 Mm.

Prajakta Koli 7:36 I'm looking... I'm writing.

Nikhil Kamath 7:37 Mm. Is that a natural transition, creator,

Nikhil Kamath 7:40 distribution, acting?

Prajakta Koli 7:42 It wasn't planned.

Nikhil Kamath 7:44 Mm.

Prajakta Koli 7:44 I was very surprised when it started coming my way. I, because I didn't... When I started making content, I didn't, I d- I don't think any of us thought that these avenues were actually even possible, um, for us.

Nikhil Kamath 7:53 Mm-hmm.

Prajakta Koli 7:54 So I was very surprised with it. I've always loved acting-

Nikhil Kamath 7:57 Mm-hmm

Prajakta Koli 7:57 ... uh, and I missed it after I quit theatre.

Nikhil Kamath 7:59 Mm-hmm.

Prajakta Koli 7:59 Um, so when it came, I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna give it a try."

Nikhil Kamath 8:02 Mm-hmm.

Prajakta Koli 8:02 But it wasn't conscious, no.

Nikhil Kamath 8:03 Mm.

Prajakta Koli 8:04 It just kind of happened.

Nikhil Kamath 8:05 Is there a hierarchy in that world? Like, I know there is a hierarchy between TV actors and large screen actors. Uh, when an influencer comes into that world, uh, is it tougher? Like, are you treated the same as an actor actor?

Prajakta Koli 8:22 Um, I feel like I also happen to be very fortunate to become an actor at a time when it's, mm, when the lines are slightly blurrier than they were before. I feel like OTT really opened it up for actors, where now if you see... Like, for example, seeing what a Karishma Tanna is doing or what a Harman Baweja is doing, like, it was, it's just crazy seeing them. Uh, because now suddenly I don't think that, I don't think that hierarchy is there where, you know, if you're a TV actor, you won't get cast because-

Nikhil Kamath 8:50 Mm

Prajakta Koli 8:50 ... TV, film, theatre-

Nikhil Kamath 8:52 No, I, I-

Prajakta Koli 8:52 Everybody's doing OTT.

Nikhil Kamath 8:53 I don't mean from a casting lens-

Prajakta Koli 8:54 Ah, okay

Nikhil Kamath 8:55 ... but from a societal-

Tanmay Bhat 8:57 Perception

Nikhil Kamath 8:57 ... hierarchy perception lens. [chuckles]

Tanmay Bhat 8:59 I think there is. Unfortunately, there is. There's even, there's even, uh, classism between platforms.

Nikhil Kamath 9:06 Mm-hmm.

Tanmay Bhat 9:06 If we are a TikToker, a Facebooker, a YouTuber, or an Instagrammer, it's like YouTuber is like Class One citizen, then Instagrammer, then, then TikToker, then Facebooker. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 9:16 Is that true?

Tanmay Bhat 9:17 Yeah, that... I agree. Do you agree with the classism?

Nikhil Kamath 9:20 What did you say again, the order?

Tanmay Bhat 9:21 I think YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, uh, TikTok, Facebook. I think, um, see, the people who... There's a line that I think Kunal Shah had once said, which is, uh, "„Jitna bada screen, utna bada profile"" Right? Like, um, the bigger the- the bigger the screen-

Nikhil Kamath 9:40 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 9:40 ... uh, the higher the status.

Nikhil Kamath 9:42 Totally.

Tanmay Bhat 9:42 Right? So movie, you perceive, perception is very high status, and then for a long time it was like television came before digital, and I think now digital is kind of penetrating a lot of it. Mostly my thesis is that, hey, if you, if you own distribution, you own eyeballs. No matter what, where you move to, the eyeballs will travel there, and it's playing out in the OTT world.

Prajakta Koli 10:01 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 10:01 Like, Bhuvan has his own show, Prajakta has her own show. Um, [clears throat] but I think, like, it still plays out in ways like, like if a, if a, you know, an Instagram creator gets a hoarding, right? They're on a hoarding-

Prajakta Koli 10:15 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 10:15 ... it's still a huge moment. It becomes the reel saying, "Oh, look, I'm on a hoarding," even though-

Nikhil Kamath 10:21 Right

Tanmay Bhat 10:21 ... every story gets way more eyeballs than a hoarding-

Prajakta Koli 10:24 Than a hoarding [chuckles]

Tanmay Bhat 10:24 ... would in a, in a-

Nikhil Kamath 10:24 What's a hoarding?

Tanmay Bhat 10:25 A hoarding, like a billboard.

Prajakta Koli 10:26 Billboard.

Nikhil Kamath 10:27 Oh, you were on a billboard recently.

Prajakta Koli 10:28 I was, yes.

Nikhil Kamath 10:29 A candy thing.

Prajakta Koli 10:30 Uh, yeah, with candy.

Nikhil Kamath 10:31 And, and, and, yeah, I... So when I was on a billboard, it's like the billboard gets, what, ten views? 20 views? [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 10:35 [chuckles] Yeah, exactly.

Nikhil Kamath 10:36 But the picture of the billboard on Instagram-

Prajakta Koli 10:38 Yeah. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 10:38 Gets way, way more

Nikhil Kamath 10:39 ... gets so many likes.

Prajakta Koli 10:40 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 10:40 I have something to say about Kunal Shah thing.

Tanmay Bhat 10:42 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 10:42 The screen, uh, what, what, what did you say? That the bigger the screen is the-

Tanmay Bhat 10:46 Bigger the screen, higher the status.

Prajakta Koli 10:47 Status.

Ranveer Allahbadia 10:47 Okay. A- and then combining it with this whole us getting older and times changing, I'd be way more excited to meet Joe Rogan than Tom Cruise-

Tanmay Bhat 10:56 For sure

Ranveer Allahbadia 10:56 ... because Joe Rogan's affected my life so much in the last 10 years.

Tanmay Bhat 10:59 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 10:59 And I'm not at all Gen Z. I'm, like, a core millennial, but I can see how my thought process is becoming more Gen Z just because of the times. And I'm sure that a lot of Gen Zs would say that about the digital stars who've survived in the long term.

Tanmay Bhat 11:12 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 11:13 Like, I, I don't care about-

Tanmay Bhat 11:14 Yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 11:14 ... meeting Hollywood actors. I would care a lot about meeting Naval Ravikant and-

Tanmay Bhat 11:17 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 11:17 ... Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss.

Nikhil Kamath 11:18 You think that'd be true for you?

Tanmay Bhat 11:20 Uh, it, it was true even in the previous generation. Let me explain how. Like, in our time, it would be insanely cool to hang out with an MTV VJ.

Prajakta Koli 11:30 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 11:31 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 11:31 It would be very cool-

Nikhil Kamath 11:32 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 11:33 ... right? 'Cause they were not movie stars-

Prajakta Koli 11:35 Oh, my God, Rannvijay!

Tanmay Bhat 11:35 .. but they were the other cat- Rannvijay-

Prajakta Koli 11:37 Oh, my God

Tanmay Bhat 11:37 ... right? Like, I'd give an arm and a leg to hang out with Rannvijay.

Prajakta Koli 11:39 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 11:40 So it was the other category of someone that you saw regularly.

Prajakta Koli 11:43 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 11:44 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 11:44 You know, you'd see a movie star twice a year, but here were VJs who you would see every day. And similarly, now, for people, they'd be watching Nuseir every day. So that feeling of, "Oh, my God, I can't believe this moment is real"-

Nikhil Kamath 11:54 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 11:55 ... uh, happens more when you see someone regularly.

Prajakta Koli 11:58 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 11:58 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 11:58 So I think digital folks have occupied that.

Prajakta Koli 12:01 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 12:01 Um, so it's, it's been true for multiple generations, I think. It's not just now.

Nikhil Kamath 12:05 Actually, very interesting. And the kids of today, the amount of time they spend on devices-

Tanmay Bhat 12:09 Oh, yeah

Nikhil Kamath 12:09 ... not watching movies.

Tanmay Bhat 12:11 The number one occupation for-

Nuseir Yassin 12:13 ... that people vie for today,

Nikhil Kamath 12:15 Mm-hmm.

Nuseir Yassin 12:15 especially kids, is-

Nikhil Kamath 12:16 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 12:16 -influencer.

Nikhil Kamath 12:17 Yeah, you know, that's the reason why we were doing this. Uh, so this show is typically around people who want to be an entrepreneur.

Ranveer Allahbadia 12:25 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 12:25 So whatever a 20-year-old boy or girl needs to know about entering a certain industry, we try and hit that and give them all the info that is required. Like, we did one around starting a restaurant recently.

Prajakta Koli 12:39 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 12:39 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 12:39 We did something else before that. Uh, it has become so important, even for people like me, uh, an entrepreneur, to build distribution, 'cause paying for distribution takes away so much of the delta you might have, uh, that a distrib- that a person with distribution brings organically.

Ranveer Allahbadia 12:58 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 12:58 Uh, I think we left off at, they said what they think about Prajakta. You did not. They said hardworking, hardworking-

Ranveer Allahbadia 13:04 No, I, I said... I said that-

Prajakta Koli 13:05 And big dreams

Ranveer Allahbadia 13:06 ... she's representing India to the world.

Nikhil Kamath 13:08 Ah.

Nuseir Yassin 13:08 But if we're speaking of hardworking, I want to mention something about Nuseir.

Prajakta Koli 13:11 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 13:11 I don't know anyone-

Nikhil Kamath 13:12 Mm

Nuseir Yassin 13:12 ... who works-

Prajakta Koli 13:13 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 13:13 -as much-

Ranveer Allahbadia 13:13 You just said that about her!

Nuseir Yassin 13:15 No, I didn't say that about her. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 13:17 No, no.

Nuseir Yassin 13:17 I didn't say... Okay, we have to judge them on how hard they work.

Nikhil Kamath 13:20 Who works harder, Nuseir or Prajakta? [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 13:21 Him, him, him, for sure.

Nuseir Yassin 13:22 Nuseir-

Prajakta Koli 13:23 For sure

Nuseir Yassin 13:23 ... Nuseir works incredibly hard, and I think I once asked, I won't mention what he said, but I once asked Nuseir, saying what drives him?

Nikhil Kamath 13:30 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 13:30 And he's got, like, an ambition and a purpose that is i- intensely strong, you know? Um, that I think is... Like, I, I don't, I don't feel that-

Nikhil Kamath 13:41 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 13:41 -what, what Nuseir feels.

Ranveer Allahbadia 13:42 Yeah, same.

Prajakta Koli 13:42 I also feel like with him, he's always so aware and so on. Like, I'll at least, at least 20 times a day, I'll have moments where I'll just zone out, and I'll not kind of keep up with... But any time you meet him, and I've, I've seen him at five o'clock in the morning at a breakfast buffet. I've seen him at two o'clock in the morning at a party with a drink, and I just feel like... I mean, I, I had the drink. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 14:06 [laughing] No question about the drink.

Prajakta Koli 14:07 Me, me, me, I had a drink. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 14:10 [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 14:10 But, um, every time I've had a conversation with him, it's never been dull, or it's never been kind of like, he... You know, it's not, it's not small talk-

Nikhil Kamath 14:19 Mm

Prajakta Koli 14:19 ... which I appreciate.

Nikhil Kamath 14:21 Each of you have a different journey from whatever profession to content creator-

Nuseir Yassin 14:26 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 14:27 ... to another profession: actor, uh, businessman, uh, social change maker?

Prajakta Koli 14:35 Maker.

Ranveer Allahbadia 14:35 No, no, no, entrepreneur.

Nikhil Kamath 14:36 Entrepreneur. [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 14:37 [laughing] Yeah, I'm not a social change maker.

Prajakta Koli 14:38 No, no, no.

Nuseir Yassin 14:39 Entrepreneur sounds cooler than businessman. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 14:41 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 14:41 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 14:41 Like, businessman sounds like I'm Singhania Saab, like-

Ranveer Allahbadia 14:44 Hustler.

Nuseir Yassin 14:45 Hustler, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 14:45 What am I then, man?

Nuseir Yassin 14:47 You are [laughing] you are King Nikhil.

Nikhil Kamath 14:49 [laughing] Yeah, right.

Nuseir Yassin 14:49 You are poster boy.

Prajakta Koli 14:51 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 14:51 Bangalore poster boy.

Nikhil Kamath 14:53 And Ranveer?

Ranveer Allahbadia 14:54 I think I did a little bit of entrepreneurship, but I'm back to being a content creator, and I want to stay here. I, I'm really enjoying

Ranveer Allahbadia 15:00 this now.

Nikhil Kamath 15:00 Oh, wow!

Ranveer Allahbadia 15:01 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 15:01 Bro, get out.

Ranveer Allahbadia 15:03 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 15:03 Please get out. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 15:05 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 15:05 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 15:05 It's mentally hard.

Ranveer Allahbadia 15:07 It's, it's, it's horrible in some ways-

Nikhil Kamath 15:09 Yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 15:09 ... uh, but it's also beautiful in some ways because I think over the course of my 20s, my priorities have changed a lot, and I'm really enjoying the work I do because it's truly not feeling like work. It does feel like spending a lot of hours creating that many podcasts and that much content, but, uh, I think I've started craving heartfelt messages and im- an impact on people's lives much more than I craved money and numbers and growth in my 20s. But I get to say that because I have the luxury-

Nuseir Yassin 15:39 Entrepreneurship is not money, and that's the biggest surprise.

Ranveer Allahbadia 15:42 Yeah. I, I also have the luxury of having really active co-founders who are growing the businesses and allowing me to just chase the content creation game because of the distribution thing you said earlier-

Nikhil Kamath 15:52 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 15:52 ... which is that-

Prajakta Koli 15:53 And what... Sorry, yeah, sorry.

Ranveer Allahbadia 15:54 Uh, ba- the easier way of saying that is, if you're more famous, you reach out to more people. You can sell your product to more people eventually, which we're seeing with all the businesses that are being built out anyway.

Nuseir Yassin 16:04 Yeah, but I'm gonna say something controversial.

Ranveer Allahbadia 16:06 Sure.

Nuseir Yassin 16:06 That at some point, you will not get more famous. At some point, you will saturate every single person in India that could potentially like you.

Ranveer Allahbadia 16:12 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 16:12 Then you'll have this amazing and sad decline.

Ranveer Allahbadia 16:16 Uh-huh.

Nuseir Yassin 16:16 And then the platforms wanna show a different face, a different podcast, a different name, and then, ah, what do you do then?

Ranveer Allahbadia 16:22 So I mean, I try [laughing] I- I'm sorry-

Nuseir Yassin 16:25 You host fun at parties? [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 16:28 [laughing] See, that is why I had a drink when I saw him. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 16:31 [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 16:32 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 16:32 I'm just saying there's a shelf life to creator life.

Nikhil Kamath 16:35 Mm. Interesting.

Ranveer Allahbadia 16:36 I, I think so.

Nuseir Yassin 16:36 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 16:36 Interesting.

Ranveer Allahbadia 16:37 I, I think so, and I intend on exiting creator life at some point.

Nuseir Yassin 16:40 Yes.

Ranveer Allahbadia 16:40 But also, cumulatively, I have, like, a bunch of channels. We have a lot... I'm not, like, number dropping here, but, like, we have, like, 20 to 25 million across those channels. I'm- I have a huge amount of distribution.

Nuseir Yassin 16:55 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 16:55 And the thing is, we're in a country of 1.5 billion people, 1.6, I don't know. What is the number? What, 1.6 billion people?

Prajakta Koli 17:01 1.3.

Nuseir Yassin 17:03 But we added 300 million now in the last 10 seconds, so [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 17:06 Oh, you never really know. You never have an exact number.

Nikhil Kamath 17:08 Your rounding error, the whole population is- [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 17:11 1.5 for the sake of conversation. What is 25 million people in front of 1.5 billion people to capture? And I've, I've, I've got these 25 million people over the last eight years.

Nikhil Kamath 17:22 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 17:22 So even if I continue for another 20 years, I think I'll reach a really large number. But also, I have an English channel and a Hindi channel, and my intentions with English are very international. My intentions with Hindi are very national.

Nuseir Yassin 17:33 But your problem is not the population of India, it's the social media algorithm. Eventually, they will say, "I don't wanna give this guy too much distribution," because the best interest of YouTube is to have a new MrBeast every five years.

Ranveer Allahbadia 17:46 Which is why I'll also be aggressive on my Instagram. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 17:50 Can you tell me-

Ranveer Allahbadia 17:50 And actually dive in on-

Nikhil Kamath 17:50 Can you tell me why, why that is? Why will YouTube benefit from creating a new MrBeast when there is one already?

Nuseir Yassin 17:56 Because imagine a world in which on YouTube, we only watch MrBeast as the number one creator for the next 30 years. That is not actually in YouTube's best interest. You want new faces. I mean, just like Hollywood, you want new faces.

Nikhil Kamath 18:08 But why can't there be MrBeast plus plus?

Nuseir Yassin 18:10 Because in the content world, there is the power law, in which 20% of the creators get 80% of the attention.

Nikhil Kamath 18:17 This is true, yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 18:17 The power law is massive here.... so it's not like everybody gets one million views! Are you hell happy? No, it's like if one person is slightly more engaging, they'll get 10 times more than the, the, the, the one next to them.

Tanmay Bhat 18:28 Mm. Except I think, like, it's not as sinister as if you, if you just-

Nuseir Yassin 18:32 Yeah, [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 18:32 ... take this clip out of context.

Nikhil Kamath 18:34 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 18:34 It's like Susan Wojcicki sitting down and is like, "Enough of MrBeast now!" [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 18:38 Neil Mohan.

Tanmay Bhat 18:39 Yeah, Neil Mohan.

Nikhil Kamath 18:39 Neil Mohan.

Tanmay Bhat 18:40 Neil Mohan. Neil, yeah. Uh, love you, Neil. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 18:43 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 18:43 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 18:45 It's not as sinister as that sound. It's just what happens is that, look, all platforms at the end of the day, digital platforms are trying to grab eyeballs from other platforms.

Nikhil Kamath 18:53 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 18:53 So they all eventually tweak their algorithm just a little bit, and it... sometimes it can take creators by surprise that, "Oh, X thing was working for so long-

Nikhil Kamath 19:03 And now it doesn't work anymore

Tanmay Bhat 19:04 ... and now it's no longer working." Some of this is a by-product of just general audience fatigue, which is, if I, if... Like, I know I'm a type of creator who I'm a binge watch type of creator. Which is, people come into my shit, they're going to watch me for three months, and they're like, "I get it. I get his thing now, but I'm over it, and I'm going to move on."

Nuseir Yassin 19:18 Yes.

Tanmay Bhat 19:18 So my attrition rate on my viewers, I look at it as, "Okay, this is a three- to four-month game."

Nikhil Kamath 19:22 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 19:22 And that can take creators by surprise. And in the 10 years that I've, you know, 10, 12 years that I've been around, and there, there have been, we call them batches of creators. Like, there are creators who come in batches, and then, you know, four years later, you've got to reinvent yourself, or else the next batch will take over, so on and so forth. But-

Nuseir Yassin 19:38 So let me be the bad guy-

Tanmay Bhat 19:39 [chuckles]

Nuseir Yassin 19:39 ... and sound the alarm to everybody listening and watching this podcast, which is: guys, you must plan and engineer your exit plan.

Tanmay Bhat 19:48 Yes.

Nuseir Yassin 19:48 When you make it big as a content creator-

Tanmay Bhat 19:50 100%

Nuseir Yassin 19:50 ... because no one sees the decline, because you're not getting the views.

Tanmay Bhat 19:54 Correct.

Nuseir Yassin 19:54 The decline is oftentimes very lonely. No one has seen the decline of, like, uh, the Hollywood celebrities, but you just haven't seen them in movies.

Tanmay Bhat 20:00 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 20:00 But you totally forgot about them.

Tanmay Bhat 20:01 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 20:01 So you must always get an exit plan, which I believe should be either entrepreneurship or acting or books or whatever.

Nikhil Kamath 20:09 And how long do you think this journey typically is, if you make it as a creator?

Nuseir Yassin 20:13 So I, I... w- well, I'd love to hear what you guys think. I think life is, goes in seven-year chunks.

Tanmay Bhat 20:19 Seven year? How did you guys come to this number? That's interesting.

Nuseir Yassin 20:22 Uh, so there's a... We were just talking about it, the seven-year itch. So-

Nikhil Kamath 20:25 We have something in Hindu culture as well.

Tanmay Bhat 20:27 Yeah. Is it?

Nikhil Kamath 20:28 Seven years of good luck, bad luck-

Nuseir Yassin 20:29 Ah!

Tanmay Bhat 20:30 Ah, interesting.

Nikhil Kamath 20:31 Oh.

Nuseir Yassin 20:31 What is the average marriage in India, in, in the US, and the average marriage in China? It's 6.6 years.

Tanmay Bhat 20:37 Oh, really?

Nuseir Yassin 20:38 Why is that?

Nikhil Kamath 20:39 Is that all?

Nuseir Yassin 20:41 Well, in India, it's probably 70 years, the average. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 20:45 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 20:45 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 20:45 Why are, why are people still getting married then?

Nuseir Yassin 20:48 I think-

Tanmay Bhat 20:48 Nikhil, we're not going to discuss-

Nuseir Yassin 20:49 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 20:50 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 20:50 ... personal problems now. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 20:52 Well, I was going to say, your taste buds even change.

Tanmay Bhat 20:54 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 20:54 Your cells in your body change every seven years.

Nikhil Kamath 20:56 What kind of taste buds?

Nuseir Yassin 20:57 Every s- somebody told me this, don't quote me on this, but every cell in your body changes every seven years.

Nikhil Kamath 21:02 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 21:02 Ah.

Nikhil Kamath 21:03 How long did you and Adeen date for?

Nuseir Yassin 21:04 Seven years! [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 21:07 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 21:07 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 21:07 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 21:07 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 21:08 No wonder you're so confident with your numbers. [laughing] Whose, whose taste buds changed? [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 21:12 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 21:13 Yeah. Interesting. I, I, uh, yeah, that seems fair.

Nikhil Kamath 21:17 How long have you

Nikhil Kamath 21:18 been a content creator?

Tanmay Bhat 21:20 Since 2000 and... So I began by doing stand-up, which is technically content creation. That was 2009, is when I started doing stand-up.

Nikhil Kamath 21:27 So you've done 14 years.

Nuseir Yassin 21:28 Wow.

Tanmay Bhat 21:28 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 21:29 Wow.

Tanmay Bhat 21:29 14, 14 years, and before that-

Nuseir Yassin 21:31 That's different iterations, different formats.

Tanmay Bhat 21:33 Different formats. Actually, before that, I was writing for television.

Nikhil Kamath 21:36 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 21:36 So I started by writing comedy first, then I started performing comedy, then I did YouTube, and then I started doing... I started doing eve- everything else.

Nuseir Yassin 21:46 I was one of the first 20,000 people who followed AIB on Facebook.

Tanmay Bhat 21:50 Oh, really?

Nuseir Yassin 21:50 For the AIB podcast.

Tanmay Bhat 21:52 Wow.

Nikhil Kamath 21:52 Okay, but you guys should now introduce yourselves, 'cause I know you guys, but-

Nuseir Yassin 21:56 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 21:57 ... people will want to know. Uh, Tanmay?

Tanmay Bhat 21:59 Um, I've introduced myself on this podcast, like, four times now. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 22:02 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 22:02 Actually, yeah. Tanmay is like the OG.

Tanmay Bhat 22:04 I've been around.

Nikhil Kamath 22:05 He's like the co-founder of this podcast. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 22:07 He's the co-founder of, like, 20 companies, too. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 22:09 Yeah. Everyone I meet in Bangalore now is like, "Tanmay is my co-founder." [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 22:13 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 22:13 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 22:13 He's taking over Bangalore.

Nuseir Yassin 22:15 Are you franchising the founder? [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 22:17 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 22:18 Uh-

Nikhil Kamath 22:18 Either co-founder, or he's written their ads-

Tanmay Bhat 22:20 [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 22:20 ... or he's doing some marketing work for them.

Nuseir Yassin 22:22 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 22:22 Like, I'm not kidding. I'm working with Tanmay on five different things.

Nuseir Yassin 22:25 So funny.

Tanmay Bhat 22:26 Yeah, that's... Maybe you could have just said, "I enjoy working with Tanmay."

Nikhil Kamath 22:30 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 22:30 But thanks for putting me that way.

Nikhil Kamath 22:31 We're doing a lot of things together.

Tanmay Bhat 22:32 Um, yeah, I think I began as, uh... I think, to put it succinctly, I began as an artist and a comedian, and now I'm exploring my entrepreneurial side by doing a bunch of different things. But I think at the heart of, at the heart of it, I would- I still introduce myself as primarily as a comedian.

Nikhil Kamath 22:53 Right.

Tanmay Bhat 22:53 Uh, you know, amongst all the terms, like comedian-

Nuseir Yassin 22:56 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 22:56 ... influencer, creator, entrepreneur, I still find saying I'm a comic to be the coolest and/or the most accurate version of what I'm like.

Nikhil Kamath 23:04 Do you feel like in life you associate where you make the most money to your vocation?

Nuseir Yassin 23:09 Ooh, that's a very good question.

Tanmay Bhat 23:11 Ooh, super interesting question. I think... d- can you rephrase it? Do you think in life you want to associate yourself with the vocation that makes you the most amount of money?

Nikhil Kamath 23:21 If you do five, if you do five things in life-

Tanmay Bhat 23:22 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 23:22 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 23:23 ... when somebody asks you, "What do you do?"

Tanmay Bhat 23:25 Uh.

Nikhil Kamath 23:25 Do you say where you make the most money? 'Cause I have this question asked to me so many times-

Tanmay Bhat 23:30 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 23:30 ... and I wonder, what should I say now? [chuckles]

Tanmay Bhat 23:32 Mm. Mm-hmm. No, I think for me it is, I still go back to s- I, I still introduce myself to people who don't know me, I'm, I s- first I say is, "I'm a comedian." Uh, which maybe not, [chuckles] not, not be the best idea now, 'cause people often respond with, "Okay, uh, this dude is going to be funny, or he's going to roast me," or whatever. But I don't know, I f- I find that to be a comedian is like an attitude of just l- leading life, which is, you know-

Nikhil Kamath 23:56 It's a little anti-establishment, right?

Tanmay Bhat 23:57 It is inherently a little anti-establishment, like-

Nikhil Kamath 24:00 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 24:00 ... so I find that to be the most appealing. Even now, like, like, someone was telling me the other day, saying, "Tanmay, you should document your weight loss journey. You should have a camera guy follow you and make those reels, and you know, where you're losing weight and all that kind of stuff." And inherently, I, I was asking myself, saying, "Why have I not done that?" And I feel like, I feel a little cringy talking about my achievements, 'cause it's such a [chuckles] it's such a weird thing to, to, to do.

Nikhil Kamath 24:25 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 24:25 Whereas comedians are much better off. Like, no comedian wants to get an award. Comedians want to be at the back of a room, making fun of everybody who's gathered here-

Nikhil Kamath 24:32 Yeah. [chuckles]

Tanmay Bhat 24:32 ... for, for this thing.

Nikhil Kamath 24:33 I'll tell you an interesting story. Uh, I was reading this book, some book on history-... jesters in courts, comedians in history have been part of culture for hundreds of years, thousands of years. They always had a very relevant and very important role in every court.

Tanmay Bhat 24:52 Mm-hmm.

Nikhil Kamath 24:53 Uh, a lot that could not be spoken about openly because of societal conditioning, the jester's role was to bring it into people's subconscious while making a joke about it-

Tanmay Bhat 25:06 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 25:06 ... and getting away with it.

Tanmay Bhat 25:07 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 25:07 So the very first jesters had crowns on their head.

Tanmay Bhat 25:11 Ah.

Nikhil Kamath 25:11 They, they had almost the importance in society that a king had, because these guys could actually speak their mind-

Tanmay Bhat 25:18 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 25:18 ... where nobody else could.

Tanmay Bhat 25:20 Mm, that's 'cause they were pardoned for s- speaking the truth.

Nikhil Kamath 25:22 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 25:23 Yeah. So it's inherently anti-establishment, so it feels coolest, coolest-

Nikhil Kamath 25:26 Is that why you say comedian?

Tanmay Bhat 25:27 Yeah, I think, I think that's why instinctively I want to go to that, 'cause I still think of it as the coolest term to describe it.

Nikhil Kamath 25:33 When I think of you, I think ad, ad maker.

Tanmay Bhat 25:36 Ah, now. [laughing]

Speaker 25:37 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 25:37 Marketing.

Nikhil Kamath 25:38 Marketing.

Tanmay Bhat 25:39 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 25:39 Yeah, 100%.

Tanmay Bhat 25:40 Yeah.

Speaker 25:40 Even I think comedian every time I think of you.

Tanmay Bhat 25:43 Mm, interesting.

Speaker 25:44 Writer and comedian.

Tanmay Bhat 25:45 What do you, what do you think?

Ranveer Allahbadia 25:46 I think elder brother.

Tanmay Bhat 25:47 Oh! [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 25:48 [laughing]

Speaker 25:48 [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 25:49 Cut the shit, guys.

Tanmay Bhat 25:50 You know, the thing is, the thing is, every time I see, every time I see, like, a comment that says-

Nikhil Kamath 25:55 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 25:55 ... "Ranveer, you're just so

Tanmay Bhat 25:56 annoyingly positive all the time," et cetera, et cetera, I'm like: You guys don't even know the real-life version of him.

Speaker 26:01 [laughing] He worse.

Tanmay Bhat 26:02 He's five times more annoying in person, wants to meet you, give you a hug, kiss you on the cheek.

Speaker 26:06 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 26:07 So frustrating.

Nikhil Kamath 26:08 You know, when I was younger, my mum would watch, uh, Kasauti Zindagi Ki and Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi.

Speaker 26:14 Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. Thank you.

Nikhil Kamath 26:15 So I have seen a few versions of Mihir-

Tanmay Bhat 26:18 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 26:18 ... a few versions of Tulsi-

Tanmay Bhat 26:20 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 26:21 ... Ganga, like, all the characters. I rem- remember them vaguely.

Tanmay Bhat 26:24 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 26:25 Ranveer would make such a good Mihir.

Speaker 26:27 Mihir?

Tanmay Bhat 26:28 Ah. [laughing]

Speaker 26:28 Oh, my God, that is so true!

Nikhil Kamath 26:31 He's like-

Speaker 26:31 That is so true. Sorry, I got too excited.

Nikhil Kamath 26:32 He's like the dream son-in-law.

Speaker 26:34 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 26:34 You, you guys are my friends. I'm friends with all of you at this table.

Nikhil Kamath 26:37 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 26:37 My friends know this about me, but for some reason, there's a playboy image that's spread that's really not me, dude. I wanna get married. I wanna have kids. I wanna impress my mother-in-law. That's what I really wanna do.

Tanmay Bhat 26:49 How is he as a playboy?

Nikhil Kamath 26:50 Yeah, nor do I.

Speaker 26:51 Neither-

Ranveer Allahbadia 26:51 My friends don't, but apparently, that's become, uh, an, an image.

Nikhil Kamath 26:56 I see Tanmay as the playboy.

Speaker 26:57 Have you been watching soap a lot?

Tanmay Bhat 26:58 Mm. [laughing] Mm, you-

Ranveer Allahbadia 26:59 So I, I had a, I had a series of videos on my Hindi channel-

Nikhil Kamath 27:02 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 27:03 ... which were basically about personality development.

Nikhil Kamath 27:06 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 27:06 Okay, and the context for the time is this is just when Reliance Jio had come out, and the internet had become affordable in India. So the Indian audiences were waking up to international standards about multiple things. Now, one of the things I figured that people wanted to learn was personality development, like learning to speak better English-

Nikhil Kamath 27:25 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 27:25 ... learning table manners, learning etiquette, uh, which we take for granted while we're growing up in urban India. I tried making a video called Five Personality Development Tips. No one clicked on it. Then I made a series of videos called [speaking Hindi] Okay, but the... which means how do you impress girls?

Nikhil Kamath 27:43 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 27:43 Okay, but the content was the same as personality development. But that branding stayed till now.

Tanmay Bhat 27:49 Wow.

Ranveer Allahbadia 27:49 That's one of the downsides of content creation. I have, I have so much to say about the downsides of content creation over the years, that, um, people don't understand that we're growing up in front of the world. We have to inherently-

Tanmay Bhat 28:00 And sometimes made to grow up. [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 28:02 Yeah, yeah, that, too.

Nikhil Kamath 28:03 You know, when I see you-

Ranveer Allahbadia 28:05 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 28:05 ... I think, good guy at heart, vulnerable to a large extent, but persuaded by too much in life. Not playboy at all.

Speaker 28:18 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 28:18 I feel like overthinking relationships, maybe, yes. Overcomplicating the notion of roman- a romantic relationship and trying to break it down and make it work and all of that, maybe, yes, but not that. When I look at Tanmay, I see-

Ranveer Allahbadia 28:36 [laughing] You. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 28:38 [laughing] When I look at Tanmay, I see somebody who is about to become a playboy.

Speaker 28:43 Oh, wow! [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 28:44 On the verge.

Speaker 28:45 That is why he wants to document his waiter journey also. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 28:49 On the cliff, like, you know, on the other side is chaos.

Speaker 28:52 2024, Tanmay.

Tanmay Bhat 28:53 Oh.

Nikhil Kamath 28:53 I mean, like, fun chaos, but I, I feel like he's, he's walking up that cliff, and then he's going to go to the other side and dive.

Ranveer Allahbadia 28:59 I know

Ranveer Allahbadia 29:00 Tanmay so intimately-

Tanmay Bhat 29:01 Yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 29:01 ... because I have-- my first job in life, before I started content creation-

Nikhil Kamath 29:05 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 29:06 ... I was a fitness trainer.

Nikhil Kamath 29:07 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 29:08 Like, right after college.

Tanmay Bhat 29:08 Yeah, I'll tell you the story. Ranveer and I started speaking because Ranveer used to send me drunk texts on Facebook Messenger.

Nikhil Kamath 29:14 [laughing]

Speaker 29:14 What?

Tanmay Bhat 29:14 He would send me... He would get drunk, and he would text me saying, "Bro, I just love you so much. I just wanna, I just wanna lift weights with you, bro."

Speaker 29:20 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 29:20 "I just love you too much." Like, he used to be so loving that I was like, "All right, all right, just come, just come."

Speaker 29:24 [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 29:25 This is, like, in my final semester of engineering college, when I knew that I'm not going to go down a traditional route, I'd got a fitness certification done, and I figured out how much money there is to be made as a fitness trainer. 'Cause my ultimate career goal in life was to set up three gyms in M- Mumbai.

Tanmay Bhat 29:40 And guys, I really tried to get him to not get into content, to be fair to me.

Speaker 29:45 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 29:45 I tried to tell him to do the gym thing- [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 29:48 No

Tanmay Bhat 29:48 ... but it didn't work out.

Ranveer Allahbadia 29:49 No.

Tanmay Bhat 29:49 [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 29:49 So one of the things I'm always gonna... Sorry, I'm getting romantic with my elder brother here.

Tanmay Bhat 29:53 Oh, my God!

Speaker 29:54 Aw.

Ranveer Allahbadia 29:54 But, um, there's one thing I'll always owe to him. Um, so I'd started training people because it was paying me really well, and I was working on this app I wanted to build. I wanted to build, like, an Uber for fitness coaches, where you can sit at home and, like, call a, uh, trainer, call a yoga session, call a, a weight training session, whatever.

Tanmay Bhat 30:13 Yeah, what an awful idea.

Ranveer Allahbadia 30:15 [laughing] Oh, yeah. In retrospect, I understand it.

Speaker 30:17 [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 30:17 But at that point, my only skills were fitness, marketing-

Tanmay Bhat 30:20 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 30:20 ... and, like, some wild business ideas. I just wanted to get started. To train myself, I started training people, actually. One of the people I trained was him, and this is when influencer marketing didn't even exist in India.

Speaker 30:32 Was this before BeerBiceps?

Ranveer Allahbadia 30:34 This was just when... Yeah, a little bit before.

Speaker 30:36 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 30:37 Little bit before things took off.

Speaker 30:38 Okay.

Ranveer Allahbadia 30:38 And, um, I literally didn't know that influencer marketing existed as a concept.... train, we, we trained for, like, maybe, like, a year-ish?

Tanmay Bhat 30:48 No, no-

Ranveer Allahbadia 30:49 Little less?

Tanmay Bhat 30:49 ... six, six months, tops.

Ranveer Allahbadia 30:50 But those six months were like education for me about, um, the wave that was going to come, which eventually led to the formation of Monk Entertainment, which led to me quitting fitness training. So thanks. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 31:02 [laughing] No, but that happens when you talk to Tanmay. Every time I have spent time talking to him, there's always so much insight in just not what, not what's happening now, but what's going to happen.

Tanmay Bhat 31:15 Hmm.

Prajakta Koli 31:15 So a lot of the conversation today, because I was thinking about it after we left also, was what's going to happen-

Tanmay Bhat 31:21 Yeah

Prajakta Koli 31:21 ... and what the next step should be, and what he wants to do. So I like the fact that he's always been someone I feel like who's always thought of the next step and take it forward, and that's helped a lot. Uh, that's been very helpful for creators like us a lot, because we didn't have that, uh, um, knowledge, or we didn't have the wisdom to even know okay, where is this going and how to take this forward.

Tanmay Bhat 31:42 But this is a, this is an annoying habit of mine, which is when I meet other creators, uh, I really like to tell them what I'm thinking-

Prajakta Koli 31:48 That's not annoying at all.

Tanmay Bhat 31:49 What I'm thinking. But it's, it's, it's got to be with someone where you think there's a safe space, [chuckles] where you can really talk about what you're thinking-

Prajakta Koli 31:55 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 31:55 ... without them being like, " क्या ज्ञान चोद है!" [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 31:58 [laughing] Do you still think about AIB?

Tanmay Bhat 32:01 Uh, yeah, 'cause it shows up on my timeline every now and then, and I watch the videos, and I'm like, "Still good."

Prajakta Koli 32:06 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 32:06 "Still good."

Prajakta Koli 32:07 It is.

Tanmay Bhat 32:08 Yeah, it's still good.

Guest 32:09 I think comedians and politicians together form some of the smartest people in society.

Tanmay Bhat 32:14 I wanna, I wanna take that and just wanna widen the... widen it a little bit. Like me and you have discussed, I think

Tanmay Bhat 32:22 a lot of the traits that politicians need, which is effectively mass manipulation, is what creators slash-

Ranveer Allahbadia 32:28 Oh, yeah, totally

Tanmay Bhat 32:28 ... influencers need today.

Ranveer Allahbadia 32:30 Hundred percent.

Guest 32:30 We're going to have a creator president very soon.

Tanmay Bhat 32:32 Yeah.

Guest 32:33 We almost did with Trump, but yeah, like, a YouTuber president is gonna happen.

Tanmay Bhat 32:36 It's gonna happen, right? That's, that's a good one, actually.

Ranveer Allahbadia 32:38 Yeah, hundred percent.

Tanmay Bhat 32:39 It's very possible.

Ranveer Allahbadia 32:39 You, you, you learn too much, and you have access to too much data.

Tanmay Bhat 32:43 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 32:43 Like, you, you're able to almost... I, I don't want-- it sounds arrogant to say you can almost predict the future, but when you have that much data, you can almost predict the future.

Guest 32:50 Yeah, but you also get trained on criticism.

Ranveer Allahbadia 32:53 Yeah.

Guest 32:53 You get trained how to block negative comments. Like, you, you really get this, like, crash course. Like, I feel like if I run for prime minister of any country, I feel like I'm ready. I'm ready. What are you gonna get? Okay, you're gonna say bad things. Okay, I already get them now. Uh, you know, I need to make videos. Okay, we're already making the videos. We have the editors. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 33:10 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 33:10 Yeah.

Guest 33:10 Like, you want a slogan for the campaign? We have the marketers. Like, what else do you need?

Tanmay Bhat 33:14 Yeah.

Guest 33:14 That's it. You just need to reach a million people.

Tanmay Bhat 33:17 You're a good-

Guest 33:17 Do you think that could happen here in India?

Tanmay Bhat 33:20 Uh, I think so.

Guest 33:21 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 33:22 I think it's-

Prajakta Koli 33:22 In 10 years' time.

Guest 33:23 Is anybody on the cusp? Do you see any politicians, barred creators?

Ranveer Allahbadia 33:29 Ankit Baiyanpuria, you know him? Ram Ram Bhai Saryane.

Tanmay Bhat 33:32 Ram Ram Bhai Saryane, the guy who...

Ranveer Allahbadia 33:34 Mm-hmm.

Tanmay Bhat 33:34 SeventyFive Hard challenge.

Guest 33:35 Is he a politician now?

Tanmay Bhat 33:36 He's not, but someone like that could gain that much, um, that much distribution. In fact, I think, um, there's, like, a mix of... Like, I think newer age politicians will be a lot more digitally savvy.

Prajakta Koli 33:48 Hmm.

Tanmay Bhat 33:48 Like, you take someone like Vivek, uh, in, in the US right now, Vivek Ramaswamy.

Ranveer Allahbadia 33:52 Yeah, Vivek, yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 33:53 He's a creator.

Guest 33:54 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 33:54 Every day there's a schedule, and he goes and shoots something, and there's, like, five clips of it that come out.

Guest 33:59 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 34:00 And you have to be a, a creator, quote-unquote, if you want to make it-

Guest 34:04 But do you think the voting audience is essentially the same?

Ranveer Allahbadia 34:07 I, I don't think it'll happen in India anytime soon.

Tanmay Bhat 34:08 How many, how many million smartphones in India now, Nikhil?

Ranveer Allahbadia 34:12 Six hundred million.

Tanmay Bhat 34:13 Six hundred million?

Ranveer Allahbadia 34:14 Seven hundred.

Tanmay Bhat 34:14 That's your, that's your vote base, 'cause they all are, they all are watching stuff. Um, I think all eyeballs are gonna be through the phone now, so you will have to be a creator if you want massively like that.

Prajakta Koli 34:24 Yeah.

Guest 34:24 I think it'll happen in a thirty million population. But by that logic, I would have assumed more TVs in India than smartphones or access to TV.

Tanmay Bhat 34:31 Yeah.

Guest 34:31 So I would have thought TV actors would have become politicians.

Ranveer Allahbadia 34:34 But that time is changing. I mean-

Prajakta Koli 34:35 Did we have, like-

Ranveer Allahbadia 34:36 ... film actors became politicians.

Prajakta Koli 34:37 Yeah, we had Bollywood kind of going that way.

Ranveer Allahbadia 34:40 Yeah.

Guest 34:40 Not, not truly. Not in a manner where it moved the needle, per se.

Tanmay Bhat 34:47 Hmm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 34:48 So I've, I've asked some friends of mine from the world of politics this question, and by, by that I don't mean politicians. I mean people who work in... I don't know how you frame this. Like, in during the elections, they help with like-

Tanmay Bhat 35:00 Bureaucrats?

Ranveer Allahbadia 35:01 No, no. Yeah, also bureaucrats.

Guest 35:02 Advisers, lobbyists.

Ranveer Allahbadia 35:03 But, like, there, there's a lot of work that goes behind, uh, even carrying out an election. And then from the political parties, there's a lot of work that goes into swaying the vote in one direction in different constituencies. So th- there is a whole other skill set involved when you're actually beginning that political career in order to win the elections, but it's a learnable skill set. And I think this content creator thing is actually the bigger skill set about, like, affecting masses. Uh, I, I think there's-- so there's this YouTube channel I've followed for years. It's called Charisma on Command. It's one of my favorite YouTube channels ever.

Tanmay Bhat 35:33 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 35:34 Highly recommend it.

Guest 35:35 It's nice.

Ranveer Allahbadia 35:35 It's about social skills, and it's about media skills. I think so much of media is communication and-

Guest 35:39 Yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 35:40 ... what or what people understand from the words you're saying. Uh, they analyzed Trump, and I think most people know this about Trump now, but he would say very basic things repeatedly.

Guest 35:51 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 35:51 That's actually what content is in the long term. When people think of your brand as a content creator, they'll associate certain words with you. Like with me, I know it's positivity, motivation.

Guest 36:00 BeerBiceps is my favorite YouTube channel. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 36:03 [laughing]

Guest 36:03 That's interesting. What is it with you guys? What is your narrative of you you're trying to put?

Prajakta Koli 36:07 Achcha, of me? Ah, okay.

Tanmay Bhat 36:10 Um, that I'm generally curious. I... You, you can't fake it.

Prajakta Koli 36:16 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 36:16 The thing is, if you're a regular creative, especially if you're going to be consistent, you can't fake it.

Prajakta Koli 36:20 Hmm.

Tanmay Bhat 36:21 So my strategy would be, what am I naturally curious about? And just turn that into content-

Prajakta Koli 36:25 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 36:25 ... 'cause it automatically makes the most authentic version of you-

Prajakta Koli 36:28 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 36:28 ... go out. Um, but you can't fake who you are, but-

Prajakta Koli 36:32 At least not for very long

Tanmay Bhat 36:33 ... but you can control showing people how much of you.

Prajakta Koli 36:36 Yeah.

Guest 36:36 Hmm.

Prajakta Koli 36:36 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 36:36 Like, you, you can do that.

Guest 36:38 You know-

Tanmay Bhat 36:38 Like, am I, is that accurate, Nuseir?

Prajakta Koli 36:40 Yeah.

Guest 36:40 Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 36:41 Mostly-

Guest 36:41 Especially podcasts. It's impossible after one hour of podcast-

Prajakta Koli 36:45 Yeah

Guest 36:45 ... this is who you really are.

Tanmay Bhat 36:46 Yeah, yeah.

Guest 36:47 Like, that's why po- po- uh, presidents, uh, really don't go on podcasts more than one hour or two hours. It becomes, you know, the third hour is, like, that's where you make the mistakes. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 36:54 Mm-hmm. [laughing] That's why Nikhil shoots for, like, six.

Guest 36:55 Yeah. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 36:56 [laughing]

Guest 36:56 But tell me this, each of us, deep down-

Nikhil Kamath 37:00 ... are completely different, not completely, but slightly different from what we project.

Tanmay Bhat 37:05 Slightly different, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 37:06 'Cause we all are, we all are darker, right? I think any philosopher would say, Machiavelli used to say this, right? Like, a prince needs to project A, B, C, D, E-

Tanmay Bhat 37:16 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 37:16 ... but he actually has to be something else.

Tanmay Bhat 37:18 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 37:19 Like, being generous, I'll take one of the examples. Like, being generous for a prince or a king is not a good thing, because if you're a king and generous, people get accustomed to your generosity, and they forget the world before that.

Tanmay Bhat 37:32 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 37:32 And then you have to increase taxes to continue to be generous, and when you do that, they go after you.

Tanmay Bhat 37:38 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 37:39 So, as a king, you need to be a completely different thing, but you need to project-

Tanmay Bhat 37:44 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 37:45 ... a bunch of things. You know, virtuous, moralistic, generosity, uh, ritualistic, religious. These are things when you project upon a society that resonates with you-

Tanmay Bhat 37:57 Mm-hmm

Nikhil Kamath 37:58 ... uh, the odds of you staying in power for longer are probably higher. So when you say authentic, do you mean truly authentic, or do you mean this mask that you're projecting, which is slightly authentic, but not authenting- authentic enough-

Tanmay Bhat 38:13 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 38:13 ... to get you to the top?

Tanmay Bhat 38:14 Interesting. So I like to think of it as, you know, in, if you're playing FIFA and you select a character-

Nikhil Kamath 38:19 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 38:19 ... you have, like, seven attributes show up. So the digital version of authentic would be, what are some of the attributes that are actually true, right? And those are the ones you choose to project-

Nikhil Kamath 38:30 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 38:30 ... 'cause that's what's, that's what's the closest version of you. But you can't truly be fully authentic. That's a, that's a suicide-

Nikhil Kamath 38:37 That gets you into trouble.

Tanmay Bhat 38:38 100%.

Speaker 38:39 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 38:39 Because nobody's fully clean, and unfortunately, when you-

Speaker 38:41 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 38:41 ... gotta be, when you gotta be public-

Nikhil Kamath 38:44 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 38:44 ... you've gotta try be as clean as-

Nikhil Kamath 38:45 I, I think clean is the wrong word. I feel like every human has-

Ranveer Allahbadia 38:48 Different personalities, yeah

Nikhil Kamath 38:49 ... A side and B side.

Ranveer Allahbadia 38:50 Of course.

Nikhil Kamath 38:50 He has a outside, and he has a shadow side.

Ranveer Allahbadia 38:52 So I've, I've met hundreds of creators, and I think you guys can, can relate to this. You, you see their content, and then you meet them, and actually the thing that surprised me the most is that most creators are extroverted-

Nikhil Kamath 39:02 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 39:02 ... in the camera. They're very excited.

Tanmay Bhat 39:04 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 39:04 They're very energetic. But when you meet them, they're, like, in the corner or just by themselves, like-

Nikhil Kamath 39:08 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 39:08 ... not talking to anybody.

Tanmay Bhat 39:09 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 39:09 You're like, "Wait, is this the same person?"

Tanmay Bhat 39:11 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 39:11 So I, I think the... Yeah, you're right. There's still, eh, extraversion versus introversion.

Tanmay Bhat 39:16 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 39:16 Most creators are actually introverted, that I've realized-

Tanmay Bhat 39:18 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 39:18 ... which is shocking.

Speaker 39:19 Mm-hmm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 39:20 They only like talking to a camera. They don't like talking to humans.

Nikhil Kamath 39:22 Mm-hmm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 39:23 Um, so there, there is a dissonance. There is a difference between what you see on YouTube and what you see in real life, and I would even argue that we're all a bit more [censored] than what we make our videos about.

Tanmay Bhat 39:35 Oh, 100%.

Ranveer Allahbadia 39:36 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 39:37 So you're saying, in summary, if there is a young creator who, young wannabe curate, creator, content creator... [web thumbs up]

Ranveer Allahbadia 39:44 Nice.

Nikhil Kamath 39:45 Spider-Man. [laughing]

Speaker 39:46 [laughing] Spidey sense.

Tanmay Bhat 39:48 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 39:49 Say a young-

Speaker 39:50 Creator

Nikhil Kamath 39:51 ... 20-year-old wannabe entrepreneur trying to build distribution through content creation. What we are saying is he has to be authentic, but to the extent that is acceptable in the societal norms that he lives under, and he still has to do one or two things to resonate with the audience.

Ranveer Allahbadia 40:14 But Nikhil-

Nikhil Kamath 40:14 There has to be authenticity, but not, not beyond a point.

Ranveer Allahbadia 40:18 But Nikhil, isn't that true for-

Speaker 40:20 Everything

Ranveer Allahbadia 40:21 ... Isn't it true for, um, any time you are effectively speaking to an audience, be it as an entrepreneur talking to 1,000 employees in the, in the company?

Tanmay Bhat 40:30 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 40:30 I think any time there is a major public interaction, there is a degree of performance-

Nikhil Kamath 40:35 Mm-hmm

Ranveer Allahbadia 40:35 ... that almost is uncontrollable. It just comes up.

Tanmay Bhat 40:38 Even if you're not speaking to anybody, why do people dress up?

Ranveer Allahbadia 40:41 Yeah.

Speaker 40:41 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 40:41 Why do you put your nicest clothes? Because you want to show a different version of who you really are. Why do people put make-up on?

Nikhil Kamath 40:46 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 40:46 That's human nature-

Speaker 40:48 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 40:48 ... I think, so we shouldn't blame it on the creators-

Ranveer Allahbadia 40:50 Yeah.

Speaker 40:50 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 40:50 ... for being different-

Speaker 40:51 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 40:51 ... in front of an audience.

Ranveer Allahbadia 40:52 Yeah, for sure. Uh, I mean, no one's blaming creator. I think Nikhil is just delving into the human psyche.

Nikhil Kamath 40:57 No, no, no, understand, figure out what works.

Speaker 40:59 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 40:59 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 40:59 I, I have a compass I follow when it comes to this authenticity thought, uh, in my head, is that the larger the quantity of content that you release, the closer you get to your actual authenticity.

Tanmay Bhat 41:11 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 41:11 But ideally, you shouldn't go to 100%, because of the second point, which is that everything you say should be true, but not everything that's true should be said. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 41:21 You got a lot of hate, right, like recently. And I've tried to, like... I know Ranveer for a long time, okay? I know Ranveer from a few years ago when he was younger, and I remember him interviewing me or doing a podcast. We did one together, and I was like, "This guy is so good." He organically has a way to put you s- put you so at ease that you're so comfortable talking to him, and he's-

Speaker 41:49 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 41:49 Agreed.

Nikhil Kamath 41:50 And he's always been such a nice guy through and through.

Speaker 41:53 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 41:53 When people were saying so much crap about him, I was like... You know, I, I called him up, right? I do call him up, and I say, "You know, like,

Nikhil Kamath 42:00 don't take this to heart." Like, if somebody is making the effort to look up Ranveer, search him on Twitter-

Tanmay Bhat 42:05 Trust me-

Nikhil Kamath 42:05 ... and then go there and write a comment.

Tanmay Bhat 42:07 He's not taking it to heart. [laughing]

Speaker 42:09 [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 42:09 [laughing] Yeah, so-

Nikhil Kamath 42:09 But how do you put up with that? But that's a big part of being a content creator, right?

Tanmay Bhat 42:13 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 42:13 I'll give you the 100% honest answer.

Nikhil Kamath 42:15 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 42:15 I went through a shithole of a phase in engineering college, and it just blew all the emotions out of me. And, like, I was just left emotionless by the end of engineering college.

Tanmay Bhat 42:25 That's not true.

Ranveer Allahbadia 42:26 I-

Tanmay Bhat 42:26 You're an emotional guy.

Speaker 42:26 Yeah, that's not true. You're very emotional.

Ranveer Allahbadia 42:28 Uh, maybe I can compartmentalize it well, but I'll, I'll tell you. There's been two phases where hate has affected me. The first time was when I first had a viral video, like an all-out national viral video, where I spoke about-

Nikhil Kamath 42:40 Aamir Khan.

Tanmay Bhat 42:40 Aamir Khan.

Ranveer Allahbadia 42:41 Aamir Khan.

Tanmay Bhat 42:41 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 42:41 And Am- Aamir Khan's... You know who Aamir Khan is. Uh, he had a big fitness transformation, and at that point-

Nikhil Kamath 42:47 Oh, yes

Ranveer Allahbadia 42:48 ... uh, I made a video about how it's probably not completely natural.

42:51 Oh, wow.

42:52 And, uh, it was just a suggest- suggestive video, but that's the first time I blew up as a fitness content creator. The second time was fairly recently, where... So I've been canceled a lot on Twitter over the last, like, since COVID began, like, since 2020.

Nikhil Kamath 43:05 Does it get easier?

Ranveer Allahbadia 43:07 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 43:08 ... what do you do? Like, these young people we are encouraging to build distribution, to sell the brands they'll later create, they will get canceled.

Nuseir Yassin 43:15 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 43:16 So is it best to, like, shut up when you're getting canceled and ignore it?

Ranveer Allahbadia 43:20 Um.

Nikhil Kamath 43:21 What is, like, a tip?

Ranveer Allahbadia 43:23 It's, it's too subjective, because the canceling, sometimes it's truly your fault, and if it is, you should, like, address it. Uh-

Nuseir Yassin 43:31 Yeah, but I also want to push back against the word "cancel." There's no such thing as cancel.

Nikhil Kamath 43:36 The-

Nuseir Yassin 43:36 You cannot be canceled on the internet. It is... The algorithm has no emotions. You think the algorithm is, like, right wing or left wing? It doesn't care. You create content, it's interesting enough, it shows it to people. So you can say you're canceled, but you come back next video, and you get the same number of views, if not more. The question is, what do you do when there is pushback from the audience? And the way you should look at it is pushback is the most positive thing that can happen to you.

Ranveer Allahbadia 43:59 Correct.

Nuseir Yassin 44:00 As a creator, if you get canceled or pushed back, you have cracked it.

Ranveer Allahbadia 44:05 Yes.

Nuseir Yassin 44:05 You are finally relevant enough to hate.

Ranveer Allahbadia 44:08 It, it... it's very subjective-

Tanmay Bhat 44:09 The opposite of, the opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference.

Speaker 44:12 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 44:12 Exactly.

Tanmay Bhat 44:13 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 44:13 The opposite of love is indifference.

Nikhil Kamath 44:14 Is that true in this world?

Nuseir Yassin 44:15 Yes.

Ranveer Allahbadia 44:15 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 44:15 Very true.

Ranveer Allahbadia 44:16 Yeah. People, again, we're using the word cancel because of a lack of other words to describe that situation-

Speaker 44:21 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 44:21 ... where you're receiving a tsunami of criticism on the internet.

Speaker 44:24 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 44:25 Uh, now it boils down to who you are subjectively on the inside as a content creator. Are you someone who will absorb all of it and feel bad about it, or are you someone who will absorb all of it, take the, the feedback, and then improve your content? For me, my game has always been quantity. You need to know your own game and your own strengths as a co- content creator.

Speaker 44:43 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 44:43 Not... I'm not the smartest, not the most creative creator, but I can create a huge amount of content. That amount is good enough for you to show your improvement, show that you absorb the feedback, and eventually, those same people who've been pissed off at you for that one thing will say, "Okay, we've noticed now-

Nuseir Yassin 45:00 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 45:00 ... that you've corrected your mistakes and admitted to doing the wrong." And in some cases, where if you don't agree with what you're being canceled for, don't respond. [chuckles] So...

Nuseir Yassin 45:09 People need to understand another thing, is that creators are change-makers. When you make a video, you are affecting change in the world. Every ti- time you want to change something, there is resistance. If I try to change the location of this cup, there is resistance of the cup towards my change. If you try to change a country, there is resistance. That's why every politician in the world gets death threats, because they are the ones who are making the most change.

Nikhil Kamath 45:33 Is that, is that something a creator should actively do, uh, if he is anti, let me not say establishment, but anti-public opinion, he gets more traction?

Nuseir Yassin 45:44 You will get more... Yes, you will get more traction if you are that.

Nikhil Kamath 45:47 So is that a hack? Like, you look at what is-

Tanmay Bhat 45:48 In general, extreme opinions will-

Nuseir Yassin 45:50 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 45:50 ... get more traction.

Nuseir Yassin 45:52 Yeah. The hope is that-

Ranveer Allahbadia 45:53 The opposite of-

Nuseir Yassin 45:53 ... your extreme opinion is not bad.

Nikhil Kamath 45:55 Why is that? Like, because the negative feedback loop soothes, soothes our psyche in some weird manner? If everybody is saying a certain restaurant is good-

Nuseir Yassin 46:05 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 46:06 ... and if you were to go online and say, "This restaurant is shit, crap, don't go there-

Speaker 46:10 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 46:10 ... bad, bad, bad"-

Ranveer Allahbadia 46:11 Yeah, it gets, gets a lot of these

Nikhil Kamath 46:11 ... your comment will get more.

Speaker 46:13 I feel like we also love drama.

Tanmay Bhat 46:16 A strong opinion about anything creates a market for the antithesis of that opinion by itself.

Nikhil Kamath 46:24 Right.

Tanmay Bhat 46:24 Because everyone is online trying to build a brand. One of the easiest ways to build a brand is to be contrarian. So every single strong opinion automatically creates the opposite market.

Nuseir Yassin 46:37 So u- unfortunately, in social media, every

Nuseir Yassin 46:40 year there's roughly, like, six to seven opportunities to go guaranteed viral.

Ranveer Allahbadia 46:44 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 46:45 Guaranteed.

Ranveer Allahbadia 46:45 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 46:45 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 46:45 Like, any video you make about a topic-

Speaker 46:47 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 46:47 ... it will go viral. Unfortunately, a lot of people utilize that just to get attention. For example, Israel-Palestine. Right now, anybody make a pro-Palestine video, I guarantee you millions of views. Uh, to a few years ago, there were wildfires in Australia.

Speaker 47:00 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 47:01 Anybody that made any video about that... Oh, there was protests in Bangladesh.

Speaker 47:04 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 47:04 Anybody... Farmers protests in India. These are all opportunities for content creators to get attention, even if they don't care about the topic. And this is-

Nikhil Kamath 47:13 Just, just take a contrary view.

Nuseir Yassin 47:14 This is not, not just the content creator.

Nikhil Kamath 47:15 They're not the content-

Ranveer Allahbadia 47:16 This is everyone, Nikhil.

Nikhil Kamath 47:17 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 47:17 Every single person.

Nuseir Yassin 47:17 But this is not contrary. They're saying, like, if everybody's saying, "Okay, we need to protest with the farmers," for example, which I didn't understand what, what it was about, uh, you will get the views. You will become famous in those six chances every year. And I've seen people who know nothing about Indian politics or local Indian affairs, just like-

Tanmay Bhat 47:35 Rihanna.

Nuseir Yassin 47:36 Oh! [laughing]

Speaker 47:36 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 47:38 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 47:38 That's the one. Now I remember. Rihanna was like, "I'm with the Indians." I was like, "What does Rihanna know about this?" [chuckles]

Tanmay Bhat 47:43 Yeah, yeah. But it became cool to say that.

Nuseir Yassin 47:45 It became cool to say that.

Tanmay Bhat 47:46 Likes breed tribalism.

Ranveer Allahbadia 47:48 Yes.

Nikhil Kamath 47:48 Right now, right now, right now, has it become cool to say pro-Palestinian stuff?

Nuseir Yassin 47:52 It's become cool.

Nikhil Kamath 47:54 Why is that?

Nuseir Yassin 47:56 Because there's two billion Muslims in the world, and now, the minute you promote or you support this topic, every Muslim will want to support you as well. So you see that tribalism happen, even if people don't know the intricacies of this very complicated conflict-

Nikhil Kamath 48:10 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 48:10 ... which I'm part of, for 75 years!

Nikhil Kamath 48:12 Then-

Nuseir Yassin 48:12 If things were this easy, man-

Nikhil Kamath 48:14 Then let's more

Nuseir Yassin 48:14 ... it would have been solved.

Nikhil Kamath 48:16 I, I want to understand. Like-

Nuseir Yassin 48:17 [scoffs]

Nikhil Kamath 48:18 ... I've heard every side there is. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 48:19 We don't have enough hours in this podcast for this. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 48:22 No, give us like, give us a brief history of you. You're a Arab Israeli.

Tanmay Bhat 48:28 So I'm, I'm, I'm Israeli-Palestinian.

Nikhil Kamath 48:32 Explain. Where were you born? Start from the beginning.

Speaker 48:35 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 48:35 This, this I'm curious about, genuinely.

Nuseir Yassin 48:37 No, no-

Tanmay Bhat 48:37 What a fascinating story.

Nuseir Yassin 48:38 Yeah!

Tanmay Bhat 48:39 Like, interesting story.

Nuseir Yassin 48:39 Yeah. Look, when people look at, uh, Israel, they think a country for Jewish people. What they don't understand is that 20% of that country is not Jewish.

Tanmay Bhat 48:48 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 48:48 And what they don't understand is when Israel came to existence, uh, there, there were other people living there, and some people left, some people got kicked out, some people died, and some people stayed inside.

Tanmay Bhat 48:59 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 48:59 So my ancestors are the ones who stayed under Israel. So one day we woke up, we're like, "Okay, we're Israeli citizens."

Nikhil Kamath 49:06 Okay, so there were a certain number of Jews there. There were-

Nuseir Yassin 49:08 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 49:08 ... a certain number of Arabs?

Nuseir Yassin 49:10 Correct.

Nikhil Kamath 49:10 ... all of these were the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights-

Nuseir Yassin 49:14 Everything.

Nikhil Kamath 49:14 -everything in between-

Nuseir Yassin 49:15 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 49:16 ... was one country. Did it have a border?

Nuseir Yassin 49:18 It was [chuckles] it was not one-

Nikhil Kamath 49:19 Was it, was it a sovereign nation? Was it one-

Nuseir Yassin 49:21 No, there was, there was the British Empire. It was the man-

Nikhil Kamath 49:24 After the British left.

Nuseir Yassin 49:24 It was a British mandate.

Nikhil Kamath 49:26 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 49:26 And then before that it was the Ottomans.

Nikhil Kamath 49:27 Right.

Nuseir Yassin 49:27 So it's very complicated to, like, actually say, "Oh, there was one country here," but there were actual people living there.

Nikhil Kamath 49:35 The land that belonged to the Palestinians, in my naive-

Nuseir Yassin 49:39 Yes

Nikhil Kamath 49:39 ... the little bit of information from the few books I've read-

Nuseir Yassin 49:43 Correct

Nikhil Kamath 49:43 ... kind of information, the landmass that they had has been c- consistently going down with time.

Nuseir Yassin 49:48 For the, for the average person who doesn't want to go to the details, there was 11 opportunities for peace, and they were squandered for different reasons. Sometimes it was Israel's fault, and many times it was Palestine's fault, right? But e- eventually, the leaders in these positions have come to realize it is more popular to wage a war than to wage peace. In the Middle East, more politicians died from making peace than from making war.

Nikhil Kamath 50:13 Explain.

Nuseir Yassin 50:13 I'm gonna say that again.

Tanmay Bhat 50:14 Interesting.

Nuseir Yassin 50:15 More politicians died from making peace than from making war. Sadat made peace with Israel. The Egyptian guy, Egyptian president, made peace with, with Israel, got assassinated. Rabin, in Palestine, made peace, wanted to make peace, got assassinated by Israel.

Nikhil Kamath 50:29 Why, why, why?

Tanmay Bhat 50:30 The algorithm wants war.

Nuseir Yassin 50:31 The algorithm wants war. I mean-

Nikhil Kamath 50:33 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 50:33 ... eventually an extremist will come and be like, "Oh, this politician is gonna end my struggle, which is my struggle for a whole country, and they're gonna only settle for half. I'm gonna kill them." While if a politician wages war, it's like, "Oh yeah, this politician is standing for what I want." So that, then, so that's when I realized, oh, my God, that's why North Korea is like, will always stay North Korea. If, if the, if the, if the president tries to do anything different, he's the first to be assassinated. So... [sighs]

Nikhil Kamath 51:06 Assassinated by?

Nuseir Yassin 51:07 By people in North Korea who want to keep the status quo.

Tanmay Bhat 51:10 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 51:11 Basically, the people who have gained affluence-

Nuseir Yassin 51:15 Gained affluence

Nikhil Kamath 51:15 ... by proximity to that person?

Tanmay Bhat 51:16 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 51:16 Something like that?

Nuseir Yassin 51:17 Something like that. And e- eventually, in a nutshell, a- as much as we all want peace, peace is a very politically risky move. And that's why, r- in, in the last week, no one is calling for peace because it's also risky for content creators. I made a video calling for peace a week ago, and I got 100 death threats.

Tanmay Bhat 51:34 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 51:35 Why did I get 100 death threats for calling for [beep] peace?

Tanmay Bhat 51:38 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 51:39 Because this is the time to call for justice-

Tanmay Bhat 51:41 Mm

Nuseir Yassin 51:42 ... for war, for getting back what, what we deserve, and all that stuff.

Tanmay Bhat 51:46 The algorithm wants war. Nikhil, like, that to me encapsulates-

Nuseir Yassin 51:49 But the human algorithm.

Tanmay Bhat 51:50 Exactly.

Nuseir Yassin 51:51 The human algorithm wants justice.

Tanmay Bhat 51:52 The algorithm is very human.

Nuseir Yassin 51:54 I... Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 51:54 The algorithm-

Nikhil Kamath 51:54 Basically

Tanmay Bhat 51:55 ... is basically telling you what people want.

Nuseir Yassin 51:56 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 51:57 I love, like, I love, and respect, and admire, um, just Nuseir being able to talk about this with this much conviction-

Nikhil Kamath 52:05 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 52:05 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 52:05 ... because I don't know if I'd have the courage-

Nikhil Kamath 52:06 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 52:06 ... given where, you know-

Nikhil Kamath 52:08 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 52:08 ... what, what he has been through-

Nikhil Kamath 52:09 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 52:09 ... and/or what he might go through.

Nikhil Kamath 52:11 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 52:11 To bring it back to content creators, this is why we need content creators who are able to say what they really want to say, even if it costs them their l- their life. Yes, you can create content and make money. You can create content and build a business. But the point of content creation is, as you said, social change. We must change the narrative on Muslims, on Jews, on Israel and Palestine, on India, Pakistan. I think that's why we're all here. But there's a different kind of content creator who wants to entertain, and that is also good, too.

Nikhil Kamath 52:43 Mm-hmm.

Nuseir Yassin 52:43 So ask yourself, do you want to be a content creator to build a business, to entertain, or to educate?

Nikhil Kamath 52:50 How far do you think the first content creator assassination is?

Nuseir Yassin 52:54 Ooh, I think it probably already happened-

Tanmay Bhat 52:57 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 52:58 ... to a female content creator somewhere in the world. I think it did happen.

Nikhil Kamath 53:02 But, but the point he made is so relevant. I feel like with a corporation disseminating news, they're bound to be biased in one form or another. I think the role of a content creator in getting their actual story out is so incredibly important for the world, right?

Tanmay Bhat 53:20 Yeah, it's indepen- it's independent thought needs to be encouraged. But I also think that... Look, there are- it's, it's, it's easy to say that everybody should be able to voice their opinion. Um, but voicing your opinion is, A, not necessary, not necessarily the best thing for business, which-

Nuseir Yassin 53:39 Yeah, not good for business

Tanmay Bhat 53:40 ... most, let's be honest, most content creators are in the pursuit of being brand-friendly enough, that they can make a living, that they can make a living. Uh, but I also say that you want to be king first before you become a philosopher, right? [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 53:55 Like Shah Rukh Khan.

Tanmay Bhat 53:56 Like Shah Rukh. Shah Rukh-

Nikhil Kamath 53:56 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 53:56 ... Shah Rukh said this, right?

Nikhil Kamath 53:57 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 53:57 Um, so you want, you want

Tanmay Bhat 54:00 to feel secure financially before you're able to voice your thought very, very publicly.

Nikhil Kamath 54:05 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 54:06 Or at least this is what I have maintained, that I think if I feel extremely secure financially, it actually, the thing you're, that you're buying by making money is freedom to express.

Nuseir Yassin 54:16 Yes.

Tanmay Bhat 54:17 If I am able to divide my revenue income from what I say publicly, that's the ideal world.

Nuseir Yassin 54:23 Yes.

Tanmay Bhat 54:23 This is why I agree with Nuseir when he says that if you build distribution, you want to build businesses under it.

Nikhil Kamath 54:28 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 54:28 So you have an infrastructure around you that can continue to exist without being dependent on what the comment section says about you.

Nikhil Kamath 54:34 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 54:35 Such a good point, and I want to give this advice to anybody that's starting content: Brands are not your friends. Brands are not your friends.

Tanmay Bhat 54:45 Brands are not your friends.

Nuseir Yassin 54:46 Brands are the first to chicken out when you get canceled, when you get pushback.

Tanmay Bhat 54:50 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 54:50 Like, I lost a couple of brand deals in the last month. I'm sure you lost brand deals in your life.

Nikhil Kamath 54:53 Did you, too?

Nuseir Yassin 54:53 We've all lost brand deals.

Tanmay Bhat 54:55 In life, yeah, lots.

Nuseir Yassin 54:56 Because of something you said.

Nikhil Kamath 54:57 Prajakta, you too?

Speaker 54:58 Not yet.

Nikhil Kamath 54:59 Have you ever been canceled or pushed back?

Speaker 55:01 Um...

Tanmay Bhat 55:03 ... No.

Ranveer Allahbadia 55:04 Not, not yet.

Tanmay Bhat 55:04 If you have to think that long-

Ranveer Allahbadia 55:05 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 55:05 ... it's a no. [chuckles]

Nuseir Yassin 55:07 So maybe this is the time. Say something!

Ranveer Allahbadia 55:08 Oh, Lord. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 55:10 [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 55:10 But I was, I was talking to Tanmay about this, and I agreed to what he said about the whole opinion bit of it. What I was telling him, I was like, "I'm so nervous about this, because a lot of times I'm so unaware."

Nuseir Yassin 55:19 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 55:20 And there are so many things that I'm constantly kind of educating myself, because it's a huge world when you put yourself out there.

Nikhil Kamath 55:26 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 55:26 You know, like you are ex- there's a lot of expectations of comments about so many things that, especially in a country like ours, where it's such a mix of people with different likes and different kind of content that you watch, and different issues that we're kind of living with.

Tanmay Bhat 55:41 It's like 15 countries in the comment section-

Ranveer Allahbadia 55:42 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 55:42 ... right? Like, it's like-

Nuseir Yassin 55:43 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 55:43 It's so mixed. Um, so for someone like me, I, I'm terrible at multitasking. If I am doing one thing, I'm literally not watching anything else, I'm not reading anything else, I'm not educating myself about anything else. If I'm... Like, for example, right now I'm writing a book, and that's all I'm doing. I'm so unaware about so many things, which is why this is, this is a very informative- [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 56:03 Yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 56:03 ... conversation for me, because I now have context to a lot of things, which, which I should have, because I understand the responsibility that comes from being someone who speaks out and who has impact.

Nuseir Yassin 56:14 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 56:14 So that is something that I'm constantly working on.

Nuseir Yassin 56:17 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 56:17 So I feel like for someone like me, it just, it, it is a tough space when it comes to, uh, having that opinion.

Nuseir Yassin 56:25 So if I was a brand, I would throw all my money at you.

Tanmay Bhat 56:28 As they have. [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 56:30 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 56:30 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 56:31 Because you are so safe. I can associate with you, and you'll never be cancelled for saying something stupid about Israel-Palestine, so-

Tanmay Bhat 56:38 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 56:38 ... so that's why th- this is a good strategy, actually, to, to build a good business. Uh, unfortunately, we have a big mouth, and so I, I've realized that now that I lost a million dollars from making that video from a brand deal, y- community is the one thing that will stick with you no matter what you say.

Ranveer Allahbadia 56:56 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 56:56 So now I'm building only community-based businesses. That, I think, is the future.

Nikhil Kamath 57:00 Give me, give me an example of what do you mean by community?

Nuseir Yassin 57:02 Community-based business is basically I wanna make my money not from a brand that gives me, uh, $100,000 to make a video, whatever. I wanna make my money from selling a product to the people that follow me everywhere around the world. For example, it's Nas Travels. So we're creating this group trips product, where we take you on a trip to Ecuador to see Ecuador for a week together. So even if I get cancelled by a brand, a, and a person buying my product in, uh, Colombia does not care.

Nikhil Kamath 57:30 That actually makes sense.

Nuseir Yassin 57:31 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 57:32 Are you doing that, too?

Tanmay Bhat 57:34 Yeah, I'm working on building businesses that can leverage the distribution that I have.

Nikhil Kamath 57:40 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 57:40 And I think this is a good strategy for every creator.

Nikhil Kamath 57:43 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 57:43 Especially if... I mean, a lot of creators who aren't in the entertainment section-

Nikhil Kamath 57:47 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 57:48 ... usually already have this built in, like-

Ranveer Allahbadia 57:50 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 57:50 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 57:50 ... you know, Sharan, for example-

Ranveer Allahbadia 57:51 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 57:52 ... has already thought of it. Uh, a lot of folks who are into education have edtech to fall on.

Nikhil Kamath 57:57 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 57:57 But it usually is folks in the entertainment section that kind of have to think about, "Well, what is the business that I'm gonna build?"

Ranveer Allahbadia 58:02 Yeah. [chuckles]

Nuseir Yassin 58:03 Yes.

Tanmay Bhat 58:03 "Because my whole business is-

Ranveer Allahbadia 58:04 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 58:04 ... I'm gonna play an ad in the middle of entertaining you."

Nuseir Yassin 58:07 [chuckles] Right.

Tanmay Bhat 58:07 Uh, so one of my natural instincts was, I love writing content and I've written comedy my whole life, so writing, advertising, marketing, that sort of stuff came naturally to me. I moved to Bangalore. I realized that, oh, there's, there's a, there's a big section here that could do with some of my advice.

Ranveer Allahbadia 58:23 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 58:23 And so I started, you know, advising startups and that, that sort of thing. But it- this is super useful advice, and I think Nuseir is the king of this. Nuseir has done such a good job. Like, no one understands video like him. So now he produces video, and it's a playbook that he taught his company, and now this company can scale for him. So tomorrow, if a brand doesn't work, Nuseir is still okay. And I think this... I truly believe that, A, everyone should be making content, 'cause it teaches you sales-

Nuseir Yassin 58:46 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 58:47 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 58:47 ... across the board. And really, what do you need to be successful? You know-

Nikhil Kamath 58:49 Is that making content at the end of the day?

Tanmay Bhat 58:52 Yes.

Nikhil Kamath 58:52 Learning how to make sales?

Tanmay Bhat 58:53 Yes.

Ranveer Allahbadia 58:53 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 58:53 Marketing?

Ranveer Allahbadia 58:54 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 58:54 If you- I would- if I were hiring for marketing, if there was a kid who could take an Instagram page from zero to 10,000-

Nuseir Yassin 59:00 Yep

Tanmay Bhat 59:00 ... that kid is killer.

Ranveer Allahbadia 59:02 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 59:02 Killer.

Tanmay Bhat 59:02 Right? Most CMOs don't know how to do this.

Ranveer Allahbadia 59:04 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 59:04 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 59:04 Most CMOs would not know where to spend money-

Ranveer Allahbadia 59:07 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 59:07 ... to make this happen.

Ranveer Allahbadia 59:07 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 59:08 In fact, people who are in marketing jobs at brands, what they're truly doing is exercising their judgment on what's good or not.

Ranveer Allahbadia 59:14 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 59:14 They're spending dollar-

Ranveer Allahbadia 59:15 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 59:15 ... on making a decision. How do you know what's good or not if you haven't done it 20 times over-

Ranveer Allahbadia 59:19 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 59:20 ... and seen what's good or not?

Ranveer Allahbadia 59:21 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 59:21 So I truly think most people who make content, content today, if you have this experience for 10 years, there is a very good marketing job at the end of it.

Ranveer Allahbadia 59:29 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 59:29 Do you think that's another

Nikhil Kamath 59:30 pathway? Like, we-

Tanmay Bhat 59:31 Hundred percent.

Nikhil Kamath 59:32 We thought of build influence, distribution, start a business, fashion, restaurant, SaaS, software, whatever. Sell.

Tanmay Bhat 59:41 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 59:41 Another part could be build distribution, get hired?

Nuseir Yassin 59:45 Yes.

Tanmay Bhat 59:45 Build distribution, get hired. In fact, I think, like Nuseir mentioned earlier, there's gonna be a whole batch of creators who, the, you know, who after five years of traction realize that this might not happen. Marketing is a super interesting and useful career that they can get into almost immediately, 'cause they know more than

Tanmay Bhat 1:00:00 most marketers.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:01 Very interesting. Before we get into the influencer-influencer parts, uh, broadly-

Tanmay Bhat 1:00:07 Oh, we haven't gotten into it? [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:00:10 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:10 We're gonna start with big-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:00:10 I thought we were there! [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 1:00:12 Wow.

Nuseir Yassin 1:00:12 There's a reason why this goes on for five hours.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:00:14 Oh.

Nuseir Yassin 1:00:14 This goes on for five hours.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:15 Content creator economy, how big is it?

Tanmay Bhat 1:00:18 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:00:18 In 2021, I remember this number. There was this whole, um, article about how the creator economy has added 10,000 crores to the Indian GDP. It's contributed 10,000 crores to the Indian GDP. Uh, I don't... You would be a better person to break that down. W- what I understand is it's created that kind of employment, that kind of influencer marketing spends, et cetera. We've been in the space for eight- I've been in the space for eight years. Tanmay's been in it longer. We've constantly seen an increase in influencer marketing rates, as long as you stick to the game. That's where I anticipate it's going.

Nuseir Yassin 1:00:56 But the space itself, you started at the very beginning of it. Like, it's-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:01:00 He started at the very beginning

Nuseir Yassin 1:01:00 ... like 10 years, right? This whole space is 10 years. It's a 10-year, uh, industry, and I think there's an article last week that said it is a $250 billion economy.

Tanmay Bhat 1:01:08 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 1:01:09 Now, what people need to understand is that all these numbers are meaningless. Nobody cares.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:01:13 [chuckles]

Nuseir Yassin 1:01:13 What they should have conviction of is that we are 1% of the way there in the creator economy. This is as new as AI.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:22 ... So let's assume the size is 100 billion. That's what the global size people say. We'll assume India is lesser because, uh, the rate per clicks, how much money you can make out of views in India is-

Nuseir Yassin 1:01:35 Low ARPU.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:36 Significantly lower, right?

Nuseir Yassin 1:01:37 Yes.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:37 Would you say one-fifth, one-tenth of US?

Nuseir Yassin 1:01:39 One-tenth. It's one-tenth. Exactly one-tenth.

Tanmay Bhat 1:01:41 I mean, my YouTube ad revenue CPMs would say even worse.

Nuseir Yassin 1:01:46 No, 'cause, so I have, so I have international audience, and I can segment based on country. So if I get a thousand view, $1,000 from American audience, I get $100 from-

Tanmay Bhat 1:01:54 Mm

Nuseir Yassin 1:01:54 ... Indian audience.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:55 Can you break down the 10,000 crore thing? What, what, what does it mean? I would say... See, I know a little bit about the influencer marketing world. I have a company called Kofluenza I've invested in. I think the amount of money brands are spending on purely social media influencers, 'cause you can extrapolate and everybody's an influencer, right? If your profession is social media influencer, like you, for example, I would assume that number is between 1,500, 2,000 crores a year, and growing by 30, 40%.

Tanmay Bhat 1:02:30 2,000 crores, so effectively you're saying that 2,000 crores is the advertising pool for influencers?

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:38 Yeah. That's how much money-

Nuseir Yassin 1:02:40 That's smaller.

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:40 I'm a T-shirt maker, I give Tanmay that much... I give Tanmay 50 lakhs to promote my T-shirt. I'm talking about things like that purely. I'm not talking about-

Nuseir Yassin 1:02:47 But that's 10% of the economy.

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:49 Yeah. That's 10%.

Nuseir Yassin 1:02:50 There's another 90%, which is community commerce. Creators making money from their followers. Without-

Tanmay Bhat 1:02:55 That's even smaller.

Nuseir Yassin 1:02:56 Without needing a... Well, I think it's gonna get much bigger than brands.

Tanmay Bhat 1:02:59 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:59 But today I don't think it's very big.

Nuseir Yassin 1:03:01 But, but there's a-

Tanmay Bhat 1:03:03 In India.

Nuseir Yassin 1:03:03 But in India, maybe, but there's actually, like, a s- because in India, maybe the audience does not buy-

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:07 Mm

Nuseir Yassin 1:03:07 ... so you rely a lot on brands, and maybe that's the culture here in India. But in America, you're making much more money from your community-

Tanmay Bhat 1:03:13 Mm

Nuseir Yassin 1:03:13 ... than you're making from a brand.

Tanmay Bhat 1:03:15 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:16 Everything that happens in America always takes five years to get to India.

Nuseir Yassin 1:03:19 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:19 This has been the one-

Nuseir Yassin 1:03:21 Yes

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:21 ... out more golden lesson I've learned-

Nuseir Yassin 1:03:22 Yes

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:22 ... in my content creation career.

Tanmay Bhat 1:03:23 Not too necessarily in this case. Give me a second. [upbeat music] Okay, give me 30 seconds. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:03:32 Continue with that. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:33 It happens in every industry, um, to a large degree, but in media, I've noticed that this happens very, very heavily.

Tanmay Bhat 1:03:40 No, no, no.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:40 No-

Tanmay Bhat 1:03:40 This is... We're talking cultural trends-wise, but the simple fact is India is a DAU farm of the world, and when you're a low ARPU country, for... Let me j- just explain that, what I mean by low ARPU.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:53 What is DAU farm as well?

Tanmay Bhat 1:03:54 Yeah. DAU means daily active user, farm of the world. What this means is that Netflix will launch in India, but Netflix makes the most amount of money per subscriber around the world. But for their investors, they're like, "We have 20 million customers, 30 million customers from India." So that looks impressive on a global earnings call, right? Um, this is why I think we're far away from a US market, and it's not just five years away, because the degree to which you can monetize your audience is directly related to how affluent-

Nuseir Yassin 1:04:26 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 1:04:27 ... your audience is. And India, unfortunately, is a low ARPU country. We are a developing economy.

Nikhil Kamath 1:04:32 What is ARPU?

Tanmay Bhat 1:04:33 ARPU is revenue per user.

Nikhil Kamath 1:04:34 Got it.

Tanmay Bhat 1:04:35 So how much money can you extract from per user? This is true across platforms, true across creators.

Nuseir Yassin 1:04:40 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:04:40 Facebook makes, uh, Face- uh, Facebook ARPU in India is way lower, just like Snapchat, just like Netflix, all of that. So no, India is not just five years away, it's when the whole economy prospers enough.

Nuseir Yassin 1:04:51 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that is the pessimistic view. The optimistic view-

Tanmay Bhat 1:04:56 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 1:04:56 The optimistic view, let's, let's all be optimistic here. The people here want to become creators,

Nuseir Yassin 1:05:00 is that in India, people maybe are not used to buying something on the internet that is digital, but they are used to spending a lot of money on-

Tanmay Bhat 1:05:09 Money online

Nuseir Yassin 1:05:10 ... physical experiences. For example, Nas Summit tomorrow, 1,000 tickets sold, $77 per ticket, which I just made $77,000 from India audience, purely India audience, right?

Tanmay Bhat 1:05:22 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 1:05:22 So there is-

Tanmay Bhat 1:05:23 Yeah, it depends on what they would spend that, like-

Nuseir Yassin 1:05:25 Yes, what's the product?

Tanmay Bhat 1:05:26 Yeah. India spends very highly on hope-

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:28 Experiences.

Nuseir Yassin 1:05:29 Physical experiences.

Tanmay Bhat 1:05:29 Hopium products, I would say. We spend very highly on education.

Nuseir Yassin 1:05:33 Yes.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:33 What is hopium?

Tanmay Bhat 1:05:34 Uh, products that give you hope for a-

Nuseir Yassin 1:05:36 Better realities

Tanmay Bhat 1:05:37 ... state that you wanna, you wanna be in.

Nuseir Yassin 1:05:38 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:05:38 So we do, we do... I mean, finfluencers make so much money.

Nuseir Yassin 1:05:43 So much money in India.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:43 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 1:05:43 Right? Uh, financial products will make, make a lot of money. In India, products that either save you money-

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:49 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 1:05:50 Uh, save you money or make you more money will make a lot of money. Products that save you time don't necessarily make that much money-

Nuseir Yassin 1:05:55 Yes

Tanmay Bhat 1:05:55 ... which is why courses, edtech courses will do really well in India. Um, products that give you higher status, because higher status leads to higher mating success, those make a lot more money.

Nikhil Kamath 1:06:05 Give me an example.

Nuseir Yassin 1:06:07 Cred?

Tanmay Bhat 1:06:08 Uh, Cred, for example. Okay, higher status is, we spend a lot of money on fancy weddings, wedding wear, right? That's a higher s- higher status thing.

Nikhil Kamath 1:06:17 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 1:06:17 Uh, we are less likely to use... Like, we want discounts on our Uber rides because we're not- we don't care so much about-

Nuseir Yassin 1:06:23 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 1:06:23 ... saving 20 minutes. Um-

Nuseir Yassin 1:06:25 So India has a lot of money.

Tanmay Bhat 1:06:27 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:06:27 It's just people think a product that does well in America will do well in India, but actually, it needs to be Indianified, almost.

Tanmay Bhat 1:06:33 Correct.

Nuseir Yassin 1:06:33 A different product needs to be sold here.

Nikhil Kamath 1:06:35 Yeah. I mean, the, it's always been the compass I've followed in terms of deciding what, where I want to take my content-

Tanmay Bhat 1:06:42 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 1:06:42 ... as well as the next business moves, because as content creators, we don't have reference points in India. Like, the reference point I'm using as a content creator in India, one, uh, it used to be like, like you, like, at the start of my career. Now it's a little bit of Baba Ramdev.

Tanmay Bhat 1:06:56 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:06:57 Because he's the original influencer-

Tanmay Bhat 1:06:59 Mm-hmm

Nikhil Kamath 1:06:59 ... of this country.

Tanmay Bhat 1:06:59 Interesting.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07:00 Uh, like, I mean, he influ- So Baba to give Nas Company-

Tanmay Bhat 1:07:04 Yeah, I know.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07:04 Have you heard of Baba Ramdev?

Tanmay Bhat 1:07:04 Yeah, of course.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07:05 You've heard of his brand, Patanjali?

Nuseir Yassin 1:07:06 I'm, like, 20% Indian at this point. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:07:09 [laughing] Like, I know a lot of the references.

Tanmay Bhat 1:07:10 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07:11 Okay.

Tanmay Bhat 1:07:11 Nateshwar. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:07:14 That I don't understand. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 1:07:16 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07:17 You-

Tanmay Bhat 1:07:17 I, I mean, Patanjali was, uh, from merch.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07:20 Yeah. [chuckles]

Tanmay Bhat 1:07:20 It was a merch launch.

Nuseir Yassin 1:07:21 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:07:21 Merch.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07:21 You earn, you earn trust over a very long period of time.

Nuseir Yassin 1:07:25 Have you tried selling merch?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:07:27 ... uh, for me, my merch is digital. It's my meditation app called Level Supermind.

Nuseir Yassin 1:07:31 Digital, right, so not physical. By the way, actually, Prajakta, when we met in Davos, you were wearing a sweater, and the sweater was so interesting that it... She put out a picture, it got so many likes that the sweater ended up selling out at this, uh, uh, shop.

Prajakta Koli 1:07:44 Yeah, I should have worn my merch. [chuckles]

Nuseir Yassin 1:07:46 You should have-

Prajakta Koli 1:07:46 I would have worn it. [chuckles]

Nuseir Yassin 1:07:47 So there is money in merch in India, is there?

Prajakta Koli 1:07:49 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:07:50 Not in merch, necessarily.

Prajakta Koli 1:07:52 But not many people who have started influencer-led brands have done well.

Tanmay Bhat 1:07:57 Yeah.

Prajakta Koli 1:07:58 I would say the failure rate is

Prajakta Koli 1:08:00 80, 90%.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:08:01 Yeah. Yeah, okay, I'll tell you what I learned off of this meditation app.

Prajakta Koli 1:08:04 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:08:05 W- this is gonna be a slightly long answer, okay?

Prajakta Koli 1:08:07 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:08:08 Um, basically, uh, we got a huge boost when the app launched, uh, and then it started trailing off a little bit. Long story short, I figured that now there's too much distribution built out. This is in 2021. Um, we're, we're doing content, content is going well, we're getting growth, but it's time to create a product at this point. Uh, I always wanted to do something in the health space. Uh, eventually, we, we created an app with both physical fitness as well as what I term as mental fitness, uh, which is a bunch of guided meditations, guided, uh, sleep stories, et cetera. Uh, always wanted to bootstrap it. When we launched, we got a massive response thanks to BeerBiceps's distribution, and it gradually started declining a little bit over time, even if we, um, spoke about it in every episode. What I decided to do at that stage was we went from two episodes a week to four episodes a week. Now, for some reason, this hacked the YouTube algorithm, and my stuff started getting shown not just to, uh-

Nuseir Yassin 1:09:15 People who subscribe to you.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:09:16 Yeah, but way more. I don't know what happened.

Nuseir Yassin 1:09:19 Short video.

Prajakta Koli 1:09:19 Is that, is that still as relevant, how many times you post exponentially takes up your audience?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:09:25 It de- depends on the content. For some... I think I also caught the podcast trend in the country. So, um, instead of my, uh, subscriber rate, my monthly subscriber rate should have just doubled, but it- I think it went something like four times.

Tanmay Bhat 1:09:38 Yeah, it went vertically. I would just wanna double-click on this a little bit, right? So some formats lend itself to higher top of funnel, right? For example, Dhruv Rathee, right?

Prajakta Koli 1:09:48 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 1:09:48 Dhruv effectively is a modern-day news channel.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:09:51 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:09:51 Right? So-

Prajakta Koli 1:09:53 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 1:09:53 ... news dominate, whatever is dominating the news, if Dhruv makes a video-

Prajakta Koli 1:09:56 Do you think he's doing so much... He's doing so well because he's taking, like we discussed earlier, anti-narrative of-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:10:03 I don't think it's the case with Dhruv.

Tanmay Bhat 1:10:04 Yeah, I don't think-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:10:05 With other people-

Tanmay Bhat 1:10:06 Yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:10:06 ... but not with Dhruv.

Tanmay Bhat 1:10:06 Dhruv is not extreme as much as just an explainer of-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:10:10 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 1:10:10 ... what he thinks is going on.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:10:10 I think he's more like a Vox.

Tanmay Bhat 1:10:12 Yeah, so it's similarly in Ranveer's case, uh, you know, Ranveer's guests bring in newer audiences each time, and Ranveer is able to retain some of them, who end up subscribing. They're like, "I wanna see more of Ranveer on my timeline," 'cause he interviews a lot of popular guests.

Prajakta Koli 1:10:25 So if I were new, if I were a 20-year-old boy starting something out to build distribution, how often

Prajakta Koli 1:10:33 should I post? What duration works today? What is the path of least resistance-

Nuseir Yassin 1:10:38 Yeah

Prajakta Koli 1:10:39 ... to get distribution?

Nuseir Yassin 1:10:39 So I think a lot of people in this cha- table make long videos, including you.

Prajakta Koli 1:10:45 Mm-hmm.

Nuseir Yassin 1:10:45 And I don't know who the hell is still watching this video?

Prajakta Koli 1:10:47 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:10:47 You must have a lot of time on your, on your life. [laugh] Okay? But the only and the best way to get distribution today is to make YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels that are 59 seconds exactly, which is the One Minute Guy.

Prajakta Koli 1:11:01 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 1:11:02 And I think short content gets you reach, and after you get the reach, you should go deep by creating the podcast. But you shouldn't start by creating a podcast-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:11:12 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 1:11:13 ... because, A, you've had fame from other places. That's why your podcast works. But if, if there's a nobody now starting a podcast, unfortunately, that's gonna kill their dreams.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:11:23 Also, social media changes extremely rapidly.

Prajakta Koli 1:11:25 Do you guys agree with what he said?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:11:27 Social media changes literally every six months.

Prajakta Koli 1:11:29 Uh.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:11:29 So, but for the last year or so, a good beginning has been exactly what Nas said. If you start-

Prajakta Koli 1:11:34 So you make short videos, one minute, two minute, three minute to begin with?

Tanmay Bhat 1:11:37 It's, it's easier to get more tof- top of funnel through short video, I agree, but the holy grail is long-form.

Nuseir Yassin 1:11:43 Yes.

Tanmay Bhat 1:11:44 That's, that's, that's the holy grail. I wanna ask Prajakta, actually. Prajakta has done both. Like, she's prolific at short video now, but you began with, with YouTube. Like, what do you think? Like, 'cause you've done both, and you now do a lot of the short video stuff.

Prajakta Koli 1:11:56 I was actually forced to go to short video when the lockdown started-

Tanmay Bhat 1:12:00 Mm

Prajakta Koli 1:12:00 ... because that is what everybody was doing. And that was, I think, the only time as a creator where I felt like I didn't have an option, because it had reached a point where I felt like nobody's watching it. Nobody has the patience for it. Nobody wants to spend any more time. So that's how it started, and I did not expect to like it. I was very resistant to short-form content. I was, um, I was very adamant, uh, almost stubborn with saying, "You know what? I don't care if the whole world's gonna make short-form content, I'm going to stick to..."

Tanmay Bhat 1:12:30 Wow.

Prajakta Koli 1:12:31 I remember talking to Neil when, uh, they kind of took funding off, uh, YouTube Originals.

Tanmay Bhat 1:12:37 Mm.

Prajakta Koli 1:12:37 I was so upset.

Tanmay Bhat 1:12:39 Yeah.

Prajakta Koli 1:12:39 But I was like, "I was coming to you with pitches. I had things I've been working on. I wanted to pitch Originals to you, and you've taken funding off because you're pushing Shorts."

Tanmay Bhat 1:12:47 Mm.

Prajakta Koli 1:12:47 And that broke my heart, but-

Tanmay Bhat 1:12:49 Yeah

Prajakta Koli 1:12:49 ... I started having fun with it [chuckles] because then you kind of see-

Tanmay Bhat 1:12:53 Yeah

Prajakta Koli 1:12:53 ... um, it's nice to go from a point of understanding that if I'm making a 20-minute video and my analytics tell me that I lost a huge chunk of my audience at seven seconds-

Tanmay Bhat 1:13:05 Mm

Prajakta Koli 1:13:06 ... and then going and watching, like, a 20-second video and seeing that, oh, my God, there's that many replays and shares happening. So it's, uh, it's affirmative, but like he said, the holy grail-

Tanmay Bhat 1:13:17 Holy grail is long-form

Prajakta Koli 1:13:18 ... is long-form.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:13:19 Also, with long-form, you're truly building community because you're developing trust, 'cause they're getting to know your heart and not just your vision.

Nuseir Yassin 1:13:26 Yes, but, but let me disagree here a little bit. It's... This is like trying to swim against the tide.

Tanmay Bhat 1:13:31 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:13:32 You must ask yourself-

Prajakta Koli 1:13:33 Yeah, yeah

Nuseir Yassin 1:13:33 ... where is the tide going? If you swim against the tide, you can do this, and you're still in the same location, okay? Always go with the winds. So what is the winds? It's basically, what does the C-level leaders at social media platforms say?... you should read the earnings report. You should read the quarterly calls of Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, and from listening to the CEOs of the social medias, you can guess where the tides are gonna go-

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:57 Yes

Nuseir Yassin 1:13:57 -because these guys control the tides.

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:59 And where are they-

Nuseir Yassin 1:13:59 They're tide makers.

Nikhil Kamath 1:14:00 Where are they going, according to you?

Nuseir Yassin 1:14:01 So, so seven years ago, I was following Mark Zuckerberg's reports, right? I was following the quarterly earnings. Mark Zuckerberg, seven years ago, said, "Uh, you know, pictures are great, uh, but, you know, I, I see a future where, uh, in the future, where 90% of Facebook is gonna be video." [claps] Bam, let's go.

Nikhil Kamath 1:14:17 Boom!

Nuseir Yassin 1:14:17 Video. Let's go, right? So no pictures, not a single picture on Nas Daily, right? What I'm trying to say is, the tide makers and the fortune makers are actually humans living in Silicon Valley and in China. Listen to what they say, and then do exactly what they say.

Nikhil Kamath 1:14:32 And what are they saying today?

Nuseir Yassin 1:14:33 So right now, the TikTok guy is saying shopping on TikTok is gonna be big, and live on TikTok is gonna be big, so I would probably try that. The people at YouTube are saying, you know, "No more originals. YouTube Shorts is gonna be the future," so I would, I would index on that. Facebook or Instagram is saying... What are they saying? They didn't say anything these days. Instagram is like-

Tanmay Bhat 1:14:51 Metaverse. They're saying metaverse.

Nuseir Yassin 1:14:53 Oh, they're saying metaverse, right? So I would keep my eyes open. Like, if I was starting a seven-year career now, I would probably want to start as, like, AI creator or a metaverse creator, because in six years you are gonna be at the right place at the right time.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:05 Is it a lot more expensive to create content on the metaverse?

Tanmay Bhat 1:15:09 Right now, I mean, like-

Nuseir Yassin 1:15:10 No, it's just a camera.

Tanmay Bhat 1:15:11 It's... Yeah, it's, it's not expensive. It's just, I think 99% of the people haven't even bought Quest 3 yet-

Nuseir Yassin 1:15:16 Can't watch it.

Tanmay Bhat 1:15:17 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:15:17 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:15:17 They just, they haven't tested it out.

Nuseir Yassin 1:15:18 There's like two million people in the world that can watch it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:20 Like, so what, what we're saying in summary is-

Nuseir Yassin 1:15:23 Yeah, okay.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:23 Make Shorts, build distribution, then do long-form.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:15:26 No, I, I wanna add something experiential here-

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:28 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:15:28 -based on my experience selling this meditation app, okay? We get about three to four million views on any short-form video that I create, which is usually emotional.

Tanmay Bhat 1:15:40 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:15:40 It caters to the mental health-oriented audience, to whom my app is also catered to. I'm trying to hit the mark. I reach that audience for sure, because those reels get insane engagement, okay? I do podcasts like that as well. We always get more sales from the podcasts.

Nuseir Yassin 1:15:53 Wow.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:15:54 Like, almost... We get, we get almost no sales from Instagram.

Tanmay Bhat 1:15:57 Yeah, I want to just-

Nuseir Yassin 1:15:58 Yes

Tanmay Bhat 1:15:58 ... double-click on this, Nikhil-

Nuseir Yassin 1:15:59 That's correct.

Tanmay Bhat 1:15:59 Because it's not, it's not as, it's not as black and white as what Nuseir is saying. While I fundamentally agree with him, um, think about how you're consuming short-form content, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:16:07 Mm-hmm.

Tanmay Bhat 1:16:08 You are actually scrolling, and something comes across, and you see it, and that counts as a view to that. So-

Nuseir Yassin 1:16:14 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 1:16:14 ... when Ranveer gets four million views on a Short, probably a million of them may be people who actively subscribe to Ranveer, whereas the rest of them are just going to watch him-

Nuseir Yassin 1:16:23 Yes

Tanmay Bhat 1:16:23 ... for 30 seconds and move on. Which is why affinity to a creator when they watch you for nine minutes straight or 10 minutes straight is a lot higher, which is why movement or click-through ratio on links that you provide will be a lot higher on long-form. So short video is a great way to get-

Nikhil Kamath 1:16:37 Attention

Tanmay Bhat 1:16:38 ... to get traction, to get traction.

Nuseir Yassin 1:16:39 Discovered.

Tanmay Bhat 1:16:40 And I would bet on, like, Dhoni said this recently, right? And Nuseir said this a bit before, saying that you don't want to kill your dreams by attempting something so audacious by swimming against the tide. What you really want is to start feeling confident as a creator early on in your career.

Nuseir Yassin 1:16:52 Yes.

Tanmay Bhat 1:16:52 Which is why short-form video is-

Nuseir Yassin 1:16:54 Yes

Tanmay Bhat 1:16:54 ... is effective for you to start.

Nikhil Kamath 1:16:56 Mm-hmm.

Tanmay Bhat 1:16:56 That is why.

Nuseir Yassin 1:16:57 Yes, correct. There's different phases in your life. One is you're a nobody. Everybody starts out a nobody. We were all nobodies 10 years ago, correct? So when you are a nobody, your number one goal is to be discovered. You get discovered through Shorts. Then, your number one goal is to build a community, so you make longs. Then, your number one goal is to build a business, so you build a community-

Tanmay Bhat 1:17:15 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 1:17:15 ... build a business.

Tanmay Bhat 1:17:16 The number one goal is to start feeling confident that you can be a creator. Like Dhoni said, I said-

Nuseir Yassin 1:17:20 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 1:17:21 ... that you want to bet on a guy who's confident about himself than necessarily someone who's more talented. Because you can be very talented but be under-confident, but you're not going to be effective.

Nuseir Yassin 1:17:29 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:17:29 So as a creator, I would, I would push for, try and get that one video to pop so you feel like you can do this, because nothing is as-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:17:37 And how, the harsh truth is that this industry, especially when it comes to money, is heavily dependent on the views you're generating. Be it long-form or short-form, just figure out how to get the views first and foremost.

Tanmay Bhat 1:17:45 Yes. Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:17:46 Then you can, like, go through the nooks and crannies of it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:17:48 And-

Prajakta Koli 1:17:48 I also feel like when you start off, you... It, it takes some time as a newer creator to grasp the idea that it's a very long game.

Tanmay Bhat 1:17:56 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:17:57 Yes.

Prajakta Koli 1:17:57 It's not something that's going to start, give you overnight vir- virality, and then your life's set, and you're gonna have businesses and a community and stuff like that. So I feel like if you're starting off, why-- what they're saying is important is because, for you personally, it's extremely important for you to feel like you have it in you to keep going, to reach a point where you will be able to make a community.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:18:15 Pe- people kind of talk about the downsides of content creation. They don't know the true picture of

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:18:20 it, and in its core, it's a chef's job. You're serving food constantly, and people will forget you after, like, a month of you releasing content.

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:27 So just to summarize, we first learnt that every seven years, typically a creator life changes, and you have to use that time to monetize, build something which is outside of creation. We spoke about short-form is a good way to build traction initially-

Nuseir Yassin 1:18:44 Yes

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:44 ... before moving on to long-form.

Nuseir Yassin 1:18:46 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:46 Listen to what the CEO of TikTok, Facebook, Twitter are saying.

Nuseir Yassin 1:18:51 Hundred percent.

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:52 Uh, hear their earning calls and try to figure out where they might be going to next. Now, what does a... What are the low-hanging fruits? Like, he, he also said, uh, Nas said at some point that these six opportunities in a year, where by taking the contrarian opinion, you could have a hack to building distribution. I'm not suggesting anyone should do it, but that's one hack. Now, I'm starting today. My name is Nikhil. I'm twenty years old. I want to build a business selling, uh, T-shirts in two years.

Nuseir Yassin 1:19:28 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:19:29 I don't want to go the traditional route of performance marketing, because that skews up my numbers, and I'll never make money that way.

Nuseir Yassin 1:19:35 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:19:35 I need to build distribution to sell merch. What kind of content do I start creating today? Low-hanging fruit.

Tanmay Bhat 1:19:41 Yeah, I, I want to go first here. I think at the heart

Tanmay Bhat 1:19:45 of-... either long-form or short-form, is viewer retention at the heart of it. Even if it's short-form, the videos that perform the best are ones which has highest viewer retention, right? Average view duration on that short has to be high. And if you notice, every major trend on Instagram, every major filter, every trend that comes around is basically hinging on what happens, what's the reveal at the end, right? Be it the thing on the top of your head-

Nuseir Yassin 1:20:11 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 1:20:11 ... saying which, "What movie star are you?" It, it goes around for a bit-

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:14 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 1:20:14 ... and at the end of it, you'll get the answer. Why is it like that? Because it's trying to get you to watch towards the end. So even with short-form, like, stuff like, um, three things to, three things to, uh, three things to keep an eye on when you're making your wardrobe. Number three, number two, number one. A small hack, for example, you people wanna stick to number one, and that's how you get people to watch till the end. "Number one will blow your mind," that's how people begin, begin videos.

Nuseir Yassin 1:20:40 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:20:40 At the heart of it, get people to watch till the end, that's gonna get more likes.

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:43 And that really works.

Nuseir Yassin 1:20:43 So, so but that, that's the format, right? The question you need to ask yourself is, when it comes to the content, what do I have access to that nobody else in the world has access to?

Tanmay Bhat 1:20:54 True, true.

Nuseir Yassin 1:20:54 That's the question: What do I know better than anybody around my friends?

Tanmay Bhat 1:20:59 Yes.

Nuseir Yassin 1:21:00 What do I... What, what is my unique access, right? So when I-

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:03 What is, what is that answer for you?

Nuseir Yassin 1:21:04 So for me, right, I was like, "Okay, um, I'm a software engineer, but a lot of my friends have access to, like, engineering. Actually, what I have access to is the [beep] world! I have access to Kenya. I have access to Ethiopia. Because I have money to travel, I have a good passport, I have access to the world, while a lot of people in India or a lot of people in Pakistan, a lot of people in my hometown country, don't have access to the world. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go show you Ethiopia." And so my unique value to you is, it's not, it's not my beauty, it's not my looks, it's, "I'm gonna show you the world. I'm gonna make you travel with me for free while you're pooping in the bathroom, and I'm showing you Ethiopia for one minute." So that's access. So the question is, what is access you have access that nobody has access to?

Tanmay Bhat 1:21:45 What makes you unique?

Nuseir Yassin 1:21:46 What makes me unique-

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:46 What makes you unique

Nuseir Yassin 1:21:46 ... is a comedic sense.

Tanmay Bhat 1:21:48 Comedic sense. So I-

Nuseir Yassin 1:21:48 You know how to make people laugh.

Tanmay Bhat 1:21:50 So I take that to any genre that I, that I go to naturally.

Nuseir Yassin 1:21:53 Exactly.

Tanmay Bhat 1:21:53 Uh, an- another thing I w- just want to add to what Nuseir said, while what you have... Andrew Huberman is a great example. He has access to neurological data from [beep] Harvard-

Nuseir Yassin 1:22:02 Right, health data.

Tanmay Bhat 1:22:03 Yeah. So he's able to, he's able to talk about that. You're special in that one thing that everybody cares about. The second aspect is, do people care about, do people care about what you have access to?

Nuseir Yassin 1:22:11 You'd be surprised that everybody in the world cares about-

Tanmay Bhat 1:22:13 Cares about

Nuseir Yassin 1:22:14 ... what you have access to.

Tanmay Bhat 1:22:14 Yeah, yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:22:14 Even T-shirt manufacturing, you could get millions of views if you make a good piece of content on how a T-shirt is made.

Tanmay Bhat 1:22:21 You can, but as a long-term plan, it's what you have access to and what the world cares about. That's your-

Nuseir Yassin 1:22:27 The marriage of the two, exactly.

Tanmay Bhat 1:22:28 That's, that's the marriage.

Nuseir Yassin 1:22:29 Exactly.

Tanmay Bhat 1:22:29 And the second thing I want to add there is, like, this is great. What Nuseir said is true, but how you make your shit and how scalable it is-

Nuseir Yassin 1:22:38 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 1:22:38 ... determines how tired you get over, over a 10-year timeline, right? Uh, so in my case, I'm lucky that I'm able to make humor out of anything.

Nuseir Yassin 1:22:47 That's easy.

Tanmay Bhat 1:22:47 So I'm able to jump genres and be-

Nuseir Yassin 1:22:49 To stay for 10 years

Tanmay Bhat 1:22:49 ... I'm able to scale a lot more, a lot more easily, where it's harder to scale when you're traveling three days of the year.

Nuseir Yassin 1:22:54 That's why I stopped after seven years.

Tanmay Bhat 1:22:55 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:22:55 'Cause you can't travel to Ethiopia anymore. I'm done, [chuckles] I'm tired! You know?

Tanmay Bhat 1:22:59 Yeah. And I can't keep watching Ethiopia while I'm pooping. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:23:02 Prajakta, what do you have access to?

Prajakta Koli 1:23:04 I think for me, and it took me some time to realize that, because, like when I said when I started making content, I didn't make it with any sort of plan. It wasn't conscious. I didn't know what I was doing. It took me a very long time to figure out what my place as a creator was. I was, uh, very, very inspired by what Lilly was doing at that time. So that was again, a route that was set for a female content creator starting off in comedy.

Nuseir Yassin 1:23:30 Mm.

Prajakta Koli 1:23:31 Doing what AIB was doing was a route that was set. I understood that, "Oh, I can make like songs, and I can make sketches," and stuff like that. So a lot of it, and is why I said in the beginning, is it was so important for our creator, creator journey to have a player like AIB ahead of us, was because a lot of it was really just adapting as I kept going, because I was just winging it for a very, very long time. I was making shit up as I was going. If you asked me, "Where do I see myself?" Like, if you asked me five years ago where I saw myself, I, I had no clue. Uh, I didn't also expect the economy to be what it is today.

Nuseir Yassin 1:24:04 And today, what do you have access to?

Prajakta Koli 1:24:06 I think right now, I've come to realize that what I have access to is that I can tell really mundane stories and make it interesting.

Nuseir Yassin 1:24:12 How?

Prajakta Koli 1:24:13 Through sketches, through the storytelling that I'm doing right now, through, uh... Even if it's a story of me working out, it's mundane-

Nuseir Yassin 1:24:21 Would you, would you put sketches in the depiction category? If you're able to depict something in an artistic manner, that's a USP for-

Prajakta Koli 1:24:29 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:24:29 Yeah.

Prajakta Koli 1:24:29 I think storytelling for me. Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:24:30 Commentary on-

Prajakta Koli 1:24:31 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 1:24:31 ... society is access.

Nuseir Yassin 1:24:33 And what, what makes you work w- because that's not really access in a manner, right? Why is most-

Tanmay Bhat 1:24:38 But she has access of just talent to perform-

Prajakta Koli 1:24:41 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 1:24:41 ... in multiple ways. She can act, she can dance.

Prajakta Koli 1:24:43 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 1:24:44 Um-

Prajakta Koli 1:24:44 I write.

Tanmay Bhat 1:24:45 Yeah, she write.

Prajakta Koli 1:24:45 I quite write.

Nuseir Yassin 1:24:45 And, and for the person watching this, you can tell if you have the access to that or not based on how entertained you keep your five friends.

Tanmay Bhat 1:24:51 Correct.

Prajakta Koli 1:24:51 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:24:51 And I- I'm assuming before this, you-

Prajakta Koli 1:24:53 But I only have five, so you got that right. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 1:24:55 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:24:55 But I'm assuming before you started content, you were, like, the life of your five friends.

Prajakta Koli 1:24:59 Yeah. Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:24:59 Right?

Prajakta Koli 1:24:59 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:25:00 So that is your first signal that there's something there. Like, when I started Facebook as a, as a normal person, my Facebook status update was getting 60 likes, and my roommate's Facebook status update was, was getting six likes. I was like, "Okay-

Prajakta Koli 1:25:11 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 1:25:11 ... if I am 10 times better than my roommate at telling a story, there's something there." So if somebody's watching this, and they're the life of the party of their friends-

Prajakta Koli 1:25:20 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 1:25:21 ... you can have 10 million followers.

Prajakta Koli 1:25:22 Yeah. And I also feel like it, it gets very confusing when you start off because it's a very singular journey.

Tanmay Bhat 1:25:28 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 1:25:28 Yeah.

Prajakta Koli 1:25:29 Uh, when you start off, you are kind of figuring everything out for yourself in a way that... Also, eight years ago, nobody knew where this was going, unless I'm sure Tanmay knew.

Tanmay Bhat 1:25:39 What? With, with the short video? I had no [beep] -

Prajakta Koli 1:25:42 Not short video-

Nuseir Yassin 1:25:42 [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 1:25:42 ... but, like, I, I just in my head, I just feel like you just knew more than I knew, uh-

Tanmay Bhat 1:25:47 Mm

Prajakta Koli 1:25:47 ... back when I started, and it-

Tanmay Bhat 1:25:49 Mm

Prajakta Koli 1:25:49 ... because you were doing that already. But I just feel like it is, it is such a... It can get very, um-... क्या बोलते हैं उसको?

Tanmay Bhat 1:25:57 Pendulum.

Nuseir Yassin 1:25:58 The pendulum.

Prajakta Koli 1:25:58 नहीं, जब अकेले हो जाते हो एकदम से कि you are in-

Tanmay Bhat 1:26:00 Isolated.

Prajakta Koli 1:26:01 Isolating!

Tanmay Bhat 1:26:01 Yeah.

Prajakta Koli 1:26:01 It can get very, very isolating for you. So, even if you don't exactly know how to pinpoint what you have access to, I still feel like it's still not a bad point to start.

Nuseir Yassin 1:26:14 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:26:15 Um, it's, I universally agree with the thought that everyone must try creating online.

Prajakta Koli 1:26:20 Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

Nuseir Yassin 1:26:20 Yeah, and that gets me to my next point, which is we used to live in a world before, this is I think Gary Vee said this before, where it's like you're either a doctor or a lawyer. Choose. Twenty years ago, choose. You're a teacher, a doctor, or a lawyer. It's an either.

Tanmay Bhat 1:26:34 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:26:35 Today, we live in the "and" economy, right?

Tanmay Bhat 1:26:38 Yes.

Nuseir Yassin 1:26:38 This is not my idea, to be clear. The "and." You today, you can be a doctor and a teacher.

Prajakta Koli 1:26:44 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:26:44 You can be a lawyer and a creator, and actually, creator is the most "and" job in the world.

Tanmay Bhat 1:26:50 Yes.

Nuseir Yassin 1:26:50 You can literally be teacher, waiter-

Tanmay Bhat 1:26:52 Seen this play out so many people.

Prajakta Koli 1:26:54 Entrepreneur-

Nikhil Kamath 1:26:54 ... adds a lot of value to your other profession.

Nuseir Yassin 1:26:55 Exactly.

Tanmay Bhat 1:26:55 Hundred percent.

Nikhil Kamath 1:26:56 So now we are saying not just entrepreneurs, but even-

Tanmay Bhat 1:26:59 Everyone

Nikhil Kamath 1:26:59 ... professionals.

Tanmay Bhat 1:27:00 Everyone.

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:01 It's a way for doctors, engineers, everybody to find clients-

Tanmay Bhat 1:27:05 Right from the guy scooping our ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 1:27:08 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:27:08 Totally.

Prajakta Koli 1:27:09 I feel like it's already happening, no?

Tanmay Bhat 1:27:11 Or future president, yeah.

Prajakta Koli 1:27:12 I feel like-

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:12 What is, what is your unique access today?

Tanmay Bhat 1:27:15 I mean, Ranveer started off with health, right? Like, he, he had access to knowledge about-

Nuseir Yassin 1:27:18 But your access to, like, interesting humans.

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:20 Uh, I've had, like, seven reinventions over an eight-year career. Uh, so I don't have an exact answer, but according to me, uh, one is the size of my country's population. That's one unique thing I have. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:27:32 What? How do you have access to that?

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:35 I can talk in Hindi, you can't. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 1:27:39 Fair point.

Tanmay Bhat 1:27:39 Very macro, fair point.

Nuseir Yassin 1:27:41 You'll see my Hindi.

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:41 No, I tell you what, I don't know-

Nuseir Yassin 1:27:43 "Ye Ethiopia hai!" [laughing] "Aur hum waha aaj ek mountain pe khade hai."

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:50 [laughing] Uh, there, there's a very different pulse in India, like, of the Indian audiences.

Tanmay Bhat 1:27:55 Oh, yeah, 100%.

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:56 So content for them is very different as compared to, uh, content for English audience. And I owe it to this human here-

Prajakta Koli 1:28:00 Yeah, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:28:01 ... who suggested that I begin Hindi content in the first place. That's one. Uh, the second is, I think, uh, you... as a content creator, you have to see your own human side also. What are you good at as a human being? Uh, I'm an energetic person, so I think stamina, and that's just helped, because I truly believe in content, it's about quantity over quality after a point. So you figure out how to up your quality-

Tanmay Bhat 1:28:20 Wow, really?

Nikhil Kamath 1:28:21 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:28:21 After a point, quantity over quality?

Nikhil Kamath 1:28:23 Yeah, for me.

Tanmay Bhat 1:28:23 Interesting.

Nuseir Yassin 1:28:24 I do that.

Nikhil Kamath 1:28:25 That's a great tip. So whenever you begin, even if you're doing one every six months, quality hits?

Nuseir Yassin 1:28:30 No, no. When you begin, it's only quantity game.

Nikhil Kamath 1:28:33 He's saying quality first, then quantity.

Nuseir Yassin 1:28:35 You say quality first?

Nikhil Kamath 1:28:36 I had to learn something. At least, see, I'm, I'm talking based on my own trajectory. I learnt how to create videos-

Tanmay Bhat 1:28:41 Well, you've got to have some quality, no?

Nuseir Yassin 1:28:42 No, zero quality. You should have zero quality at the beginning. Have you seen day one Nas Daily? It's horrible.

Tanmay Bhat 1:28:47 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:28:48 It's cringe.

Nikhil Kamath 1:28:48 I, I think that's how all of us feel about all our content, but just the ability to frame.

Tanmay Bhat 1:28:53 Nikhil, to, to, to double-click on that, the more quantity you output, the better your quality gets-

Nikhil Kamath 1:28:58 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 1:28:58 ... if you're really paying attention.

Nikhil Kamath 1:28:59 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:28:59 So quantity helps.

Nikhil Kamath 1:29:00 And the third, like, strong thing that's worked for me, honestly, it's a bit of a clichéd answer, but engineering college. Because it just taught me how to think of the world as machines. It taught me how to break, reverse engineer things, and now I can learn anything faster than normal.

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:14 But Ranveer, now, the reason I follow you is because you have access to interesting... India's most interesting humans, and-

Tanmay Bhat 1:29:19 That's now, yeah

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:20 ... the normal person cannot get access to.

Nikhil Kamath 1:29:21 That's access for you today.

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:22 That's access for you today.

Tanmay Bhat 1:29:23 That's access for you today.

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:24 But actually, people should ask themselves, whoever is watching this, ask yourself, what kind of weapon are you? Are you a machine gun or are you a sniper?

Tanmay Bhat 1:29:31 Sniper.

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:31 How'd you know?

Prajakta Koli 1:29:32 Wow!

Tanmay Bhat 1:29:32 I say the same thing.

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:33 You... Ah, yo, we are brothers from another mother. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 1:29:36 We've done too many panels, brother. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 1:29:40 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:40 A machine gun is somebody that say, "If I want to kill the enemy, we should get a viral video. I shoot five hundred bullets and hope something sticks and hits the enemy."

Nikhil Kamath 1:29:47 Hmm. Okay, another digression here.

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:49 Wait, wait, this is an important idea!

Nikhil Kamath 1:29:50 Yeah, yeah. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:51 A sniper-

Nikhil Kamath 1:29:52 We're done. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:53 No, the sniper has one bullet-

Nikhil Kamath 1:29:55 Uh.

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:55 ... and gets a headshot.

Nikhil Kamath 1:29:56 Right.

Nuseir Yassin 1:29:57 So a sniper in this case is somebody who goes and makes a Netflix documentary, waits three years, puts it on Netflix, becomes big. Jewish matchmaking or Indian matchmaking. That's sniper creator.

Nikhil Kamath 1:30:06 Is that a thing, Jewish matchmaking?

Nuseir Yassin 1:30:07 Yeah, that's a real thing. That's a sniper creator. Whoever made that, that's a sniper. One episode, I'm famous around the world. A, a, a machine gun is a thousand videos in a thousand days, a thousand skits, a thousand podcasts. We're all machine guns.

Tanmay Bhat 1:30:18 AIB was sniper. Once a month, twice a month, boom!

Nuseir Yassin 1:30:21 You're a sniper.

Tanmay Bhat 1:30:22 We're all sniper.

Nuseir Yassin 1:30:23 You're a machine gun.

Tanmay Bhat 1:30:23 You come once,

Tanmay Bhat 1:30:24 once a week. I'm, I'm machine gun now, which is I'm outputting nine, ten videos a month.

Nuseir Yassin 1:30:28 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:30:28 Okay, so one digression. I wanted to ask you guys, psychology states that kids born after the year '94 are very different from us, so they don't get driving licenses as much. People who are above the age of 18 and are applicable to get a license are not applying as much.

Tanmay Bhat 1:30:47 Ah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:30:47 They don't buy homes as much.

Tanmay Bhat 1:30:49 So Uber. Uh-huh.

Nikhil Kamath 1:30:50 They don't, uh, go on dates.

Prajakta Koli 1:30:51 They are not buying homes as much?

Nikhil Kamath 1:30:53 No.

Tanmay Bhat 1:30:53 No.

Nikhil Kamath 1:30:53 They don't go on dates as often, and they spend a lot of time on their devices. So if the new content creators of today, because the young- younger generation initially adopts content, that becomes cool. If somebody is starting in the content world today, what does he build to cater to this generation? This is a very coddled generation, right? Uh, they're more about rights, less about contribution. These are people born in a post-9/11 world, where they grew up not knowing what was going on. Uh, they know about rights.

Nuseir Yassin 1:31:30 The post-truth world now.

Nikhil Kamath 1:31:31 Yeah, they, they've had anti-bullying in school. They've been... They've not been allowed to go out and play. Like, you remember when we were kids, like, your parents would tell you, "Come home by 9:00 PM," right?

Tanmay Bhat 1:31:41 Correct, correct.

Nikhil Kamath 1:31:42 Like, right now, that doesn't happen anymore.

Tanmay Bhat 1:31:44 It's the worst.

Nikhil Kamath 1:31:44 Right now, the kids are totally tracked. Uh, they, they have to tell their parents what they're doing at every point of time. So this will change the consumers of the content that is getting created today, and the people who build-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:32:00 ... from now on, have to bear this generation in mind.

Nuseir Yassin 1:32:02 I mean, short video is a direct result of this. It's lower attention spans, right?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:32:06 Uh-

Nikhil Kamath 1:32:06 Is that all?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:32:07 I, I'd break that down a little further.

Nikhil Kamath 1:32:09 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:32:09 The one, uh, human need that stays constant is storytelling. The second human need that stays constant that's not spoken about is feeling something extremely emotional, something that piques your emotion a lot. And emotion could also be just laughing really hard on Tanmay's reaction videos, something that piques your emotion heavily. Also, this generation, like the new- the younger people that I have come across, the ones that work with me, I've seen generally have more problems dealing with loneliness than people our age did. Uh, it says that there is some kind of vacuum there, which I've seen gets filled with emotional content and really raw content, which is also why I think podcasts are taking off in the country. People want realism. I-- there's a fantastic podcast called Untriggered. It's something like this, but more like chill.

Nikhil Kamath 1:32:53 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 1:32:54 Gen Z.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:32:54 Yeah, more Gen Z.

Nikhil Kamath 1:32:55 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:32:56 Uh, blowing up, just consistently, consistently catering to, uh, the lonely urban Indian, because when people listen to it, they feel like, "Hey, I'm hanging out with my friends."

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:04 But-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:33:04 I-

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:05 these kids have a lot more time on their devices. I'm saying they're not going out and playing because they're on their devices so much more. Strangely enough, another data point here is their, their necessity or how they perceive work is 20% lesser than our generation. Like, when we were-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:33:23 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:23 ... at that, their age, we were thinking work, work, work.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:33:26 They, they prioritize healing a lot more.

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:29 And they, they are a lot more-

Nuseir Yassin 1:33:31 Healing from what?

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:32 From-

Nuseir Yassin 1:33:33 They've not been injured yet by life to be healed.

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:35 No, but the thing is, the strange thing is, when you tell someone, when you teach a kid that if Tanmay says something about me, I can let it offend me so much, even though he's expressing his point of view, that I can have mental trauma because of it, and then I can be depressed or one of a hundred different things.

Nuseir Yassin 1:33:53 Why me as an example? [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:33:55 [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 1:33:56 So I, I actually kind of have a different opinion.

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:58 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:33:58 I actually don't think today's young kids are like this, like hurt and emotion and all that stuff. I don't think they're... Actually, I feel like they're much stronger.

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:07 Do you think they get offended a lot?

Nuseir Yassin 1:34:09 No, I just think offended people have a bigger voice. I don't think the number of offended people are actually-

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:15 I would agree with that. I feel like the ecosystem has changed in such a manner that people take offense not just to what is said to them, people take offense to what is happening around them, and it affects them in a significantly more, uh, significantly deeper manner than it did my generation.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:34:35 And people hold on to pain a lot longer.

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:37 Because they've been taught and conditioned to believe, this generation that I'm talking about, that, A, it is right to get offended, B, it is good to, you know, demand for your rights. But nobody has ever asked them that, what is your contribution to anything for which you're demanding the rights that you expect you should have?

Nuseir Yassin 1:34:57 So I'm looking at the glass, I think, half full.

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:59 And I'm looking at it half empty.

Nuseir Yassin 1:35:00 And you're looking at it like right here.

Nikhil Kamath 1:35:01 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:35:01 I think that behavior actually does affect change. You think naturally we're just gonna have a nice country? No, it comes from a lot of-

Nikhil Kamath 1:35:10 [scoffs]

Nuseir Yassin 1:35:10 ... hard, like, disagreements and, and, and fights.

Nikhil Kamath 1:35:13 But what are you disagreeing about? You're disagreeing about things like, "I don't like this city, I don't like this, I don't like that-

Nuseir Yassin 1:35:21 Right, yeah, when people-

Nikhil Kamath 1:35:22 ... based on my expectations."

Nuseir Yassin 1:35:22 When enough people come out and say, "I don't like the traffic in Ba- Ba- Bangalore," what's gonna happen? That's gonna create some pressure on the city council to fix traffic.

Nikhil Kamath 1:35:30 The, the question I'm also saying... You have a point there, but the, the point I'm trying to make is this person who is complaining about the traffic in Bangalore has become the kind of person that you put him in any ecosystem, will spend a lot of time complaining.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:35:43 Nikhil-

Nuseir Yassin 1:35:43 Mm. Fair

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:35:43 ... 'cause the, the path, the path to likes has the least resistance today than it did earlier.

Nikhil Kamath 1:35:51 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:35:51 Earlier, the path to like, to getting likes, was through literally getting a fancier job, was to literally do... You would, you would want likes in the domains that were accessible to you. Now, just that in today's world, you're able to get quicker dopamine hits by saying X, Y, and Z things. As someone once said, saying you, the, you get likes if you're pretty, witty, or outragey.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:16 [chuckles]

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:36:16 These are the three, these are the three quickest paths to like.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:19 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:36:19 So I don't blame the generation for, for being that way-

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:22 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:36:22 ... 'cause that's the quickest path to like.

Prajakta Koli 1:36:24 Also, I feel like a lot of the young people, like he said right now, because of the loneliness that they are, uh, kind of going through a lot more than we did, are looking for companionship in causes.

Nuseir Yassin 1:36:37 Yeah, yeah.

Prajakta Koli 1:36:37 Uh, like, I remember a time, and I hate to say, put it like that, but I remember a time where it was cool to talk about depression.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:44 Now is that time.

Prajakta Koli 1:36:46 When it started.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:47 Uh.

Prajakta Koli 1:36:47 It was cool to talk about, um, uh, bullying.

Nuseir Yassin 1:36:51 Mm.

Prajakta Koli 1:36:51 You know, there came a time where one person would speak up a- about it, and then everybody would speak up about it, and it became... The term started getting used so loosely-

Nuseir Yassin 1:36:59 Yeah

Prajakta Koli 1:37:00 ... uh, that we reached a point-

Nuseir Yassin 1:37:01 Therapy became common.

Prajakta Koli 1:37:01 Yeah, yeah. Like, a, the sensitivity from it kind of went away. So I feel like at this point, a lot of our young audiences are also looking for these groups and these communities.

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:11 That, Prajakta, that is my point. I'm not saying this trend is a good thing-

Prajakta Koli 1:37:15 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:15 ... or a bad thing. I'm saying, as a content creator beginning today, what is a hack to hit this market?

Nuseir Yassin 1:37:22 Okay, so, okay, we have-

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:23 And get them to follow you.

Nuseir Yassin 1:37:24 We have to make a distinction between complaining about something and feeling like a victim about something. Feeling like a victim, I agree with you, no one should feel like a victim. "I'm a victim, help me, help me!" For example, traffic in Bangalore, okay? You can either say, "Because of the traffic in Bangalore, my mental health is, is, is, is killing me, and then I cannot show up to work." That's a victim mentality, right? But you could also be a change-maker mentality and say, "I don't like the traffic in Bangalore because of this and this and this and this."

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:50 I agree with you. I'm, I'm talking about the victims-

Nuseir Yassin 1:37:52 So maybe we shouldn't be victims

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:53 ... and that's hap-

Nuseir Yassin 1:37:54 Yes

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:54 ... that's happening a lot.

Nuseir Yassin 1:37:55 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:55 Now I'm wondering-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:37:56 And because, Nikhil, there is, there's likes in victimhood.

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:00 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:38:00 ... There's likes and there's likes and likes.

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:02 No, no, but the real question here, at the bottom of this, is what content do you build to hit this market?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:38:09 Okay.

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:09 Because we know this market is there.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:38:11 But we shouldn't make content to hit this market.

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:12 No, but get them to resonate with you.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:38:14 I'll, I'll give you-

1:38:14 But people are!

1:38:15 Yeah.

1:38:15 People are.

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:16 Like what?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:38:16 Outraging, outraging and being victim gets likes.

1:38:19 I'll give you, I'll give you-

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:20 Is that-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:38:20 ... a very 2023 answer, and this answer would've been different last year and the year before that. Uh, right now, the key to growth is Instagram Reels. What's working on Instagram Reels is emotional content. What's working within emotional content is well-made content. So the bottom line here is that the skill that should be focused on now is how you can become a better video content creator. How can it be better looking? How can you tell a story in a short amount of time? And at the end of your reel, do you leave someone feeling like they want more, from you or from the story?

1:38:48 But if you wanna grow a base on LinkedIn or Twitter, you don't need to necessarily make video.

1:38:52 Yeah.

1:38:52 But if you're outraging, you'll probably get- [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:54 Do you think that's the way to resonate with this marketplace?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:38:58 If I'm on social media, I'm seeing the best of other people's lives. Would I not automatically feel like I deserve that, too?

1:39:05 Yes, you would.

1:39:06 Of course you would.

1:39:07 Very natural.

1:39:07 Of course you would. Let me give you an interesting anecdote, okay? And I'm pretty sure it will check out statistically. The attrition-

Prajakta Koli 1:39:13 Pretty sure, huh? [chuckles]

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:39:14 Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure of this, like, if someone does this. The attrition rate amongst talent management companies is at its highest it's ever been. All right? Why is that? You ask any-

Prajakta Koli 1:39:24 Can you explain what attrition rate is?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:39:25 I'll explain. Attrition rate is when people leave a company-

Prajakta Koli 1:39:27 Got it

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:39:27 ... which is the employees churn. Now, you ask, you ask Viraj from Monkie, you ask, you ask Vijay from Collective. Why is that? Because 20 years ago, if I was managing ta- talent... For example, if I was managing A. R. Rahman, right? Would there be that much envy for A. R. Rahman? As a manager, I'd look at A. R. Rahman make 3 crore rupees per show. I would not have that much envy. But today, if I'm managing a creator who makes short video or makes sketches on Instagram, what... And this person is taking 10 lakhs per reel, how high do you think that envy is? It's insanely high, right? That is why attrition rate is going, going higher and higher, because more managers are managing talent who are doing things that seem a lot more accessible and doable.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:06 How do you utilize that?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:40:08 If you-

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:08 If you're a content creator, and you know the generation you're creating for-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:40:12 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:13 -is a bit more entitled-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:40:14 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:15 ... is a bit more victimized, is-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:40:16 Is a bit more allu, uh, uh, uh, they are allured by flashy life. We already do this. Why, why does flexing on the internet get more likes?

1:40:23 Yeah, sales 101, you solve for their problems, which is this.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:26 I'll, I'll define who I want to solve the problem for.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:40:28 Sure.

1:40:28 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:28 I am a

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:30 20-year-old girl in Bangalore who is going to college, not really interested in education that much, but going because my parents have drawn that path for me. I have 50,000 rupees a month of income I'm earning from some side thing that I'm doing. I have 20,000 rupees to spend. I have four hours a day to consume content. I spend seven hours a day on my cell phone doing ABC. This is a different category of people than five, 10, 15, 20 years ago. What kind of content will resonate with this crowd, nuanced different from 10 years ago?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:41:10 I think every creator will have a different answer, firstly. I'll tell you my answer.

1:41:14 Yeah.

1:41:15 These problems are happening with younger people because there's overthinking. You solve for their overthinking.

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:20 How?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:41:21 By talking about your own story as a creator. This is also personal branding, that I was also at this stage, this is what I did, and this is the solution I had. That's something that works for me a lot. The second thing that I've noticed people want a lot, I don't know whether it's an Indian thing or not, Nas, please chip in. Uh, people are extremely hungry for knowledge and unbiased media, like raw media. So you throw a bomb of rawness through the podcast, and in terms of this overthinking and these emotional problems, that's where I have my Instagram game.

Prajakta Koli 1:41:50 But is there only one kind of content that they want to consume?

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:52 No, no. There'd be a bunch of options. I want you guys to tell me what these are.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:41:56 This girl, so, uh, we're looking at this girl as a glass not half empty, empty. We're looking at this girl as somebody who wants to feel entitled, who wants to, like, be, like, have a, have a, has terrible opinions. This girl, actually, what she really wants, she wants to travel to 50 countries around the world before she's age 30. She wants to be a millionaire before she's 30.

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:14 Why? Okay-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:14 She doesn't want any forced arranged marriage.

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:16 Go, go, go one level deeper. Why does she want to travel?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:19 Because it's a human basic desire to be free and experience the world.

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:24 Is it validation amongst her peer group-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:26 Yes

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:26 ... a bit more than it was 10 years ago?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:28 No, I think it's-

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:29 And that's why travel works today?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:30 I think it's a, it's a basic human desire. I don't think it's validat- I don't think it's like, "I wanna travel just to tell my friends I travel." I think that's a minority. I think independently, everybody wants experiences.

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:38 I, I think, I think data would prove otherwise.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:40 In-

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:40 That because of social media and posting pics-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:42 People want to travel

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:43 ... when you travel, you travel so much more. Like, we're going after the nuance now.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:47 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:47 We are saying-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:48 Very Indian thing

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:48 ... what can you sell to that girl?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:49 Very Indian thing.

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:50 No, no, it's also a Western thing. It's prevalent outside.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:52 Maybe if you're American, I think-

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:54 In America, living in, say, suburban, whatever, Mississippi.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:42:58 I, I refuse to believe people wanna travel just so they tell their friends they want to travel.

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:01 Not just, but also because they can post pictures.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:43:03 They get fuel added benefit. But, but people wanna travel just because they wanna travel.

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:06 You know, I go to Maldives sometimes. It's very close from Bangalore, an hour's flight. Chinese couples come to Maldives not to check out Maldives. They come there to take pictures of themselves.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:43:17 Pictures, yeah. Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:18 Because social validation is such a big commodity in China, to the extent that who you marry, who you date, what job you get, all of these kind of like are so correlated to how much social following you have.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:43:32 But why, why is this new talk?

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:33 No, it's not new.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:43:34 Because we've been socially validating to each other since we were tribal, since we had a tribe-

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:38 No, I'm not-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:43:38 ... and people put different make-up on their face.

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:39 I'm, I'm not saying it's new. What I'm saying is-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:43:41 Right, it's, it's the same

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:41 ... I'm saying this category beyond '94, '95, these kids are different in this nuanced manner. Does the content created for them-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:43:51 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:51 ... have to change?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:43:52 Have to look, look different? My answer is definitely not. I... There's nothing different between somebody born after '94 or somebody born in 1794. We all want social validation. We all want to signal to others that we're good, that we're pretty, that we're whatever. Even tribes in Papua New Guinea, okay, there's always that guy who's, like, best dressed, has a feather. "Look at me, look at me, look at me." Now, you can say, "Look at me," by having a nice picture in the Maldives. It's easier to say, "Look at me," but the fundamentals of humans have not changed since 1994.

Prajakta Koli 1:44:23 You know, just adding on to what he said and going back to the content bit, I remember when we were shooting, uh, when Mismatch came, came to us, and we started reading the text, uh, the scripts of Mismatch, we were shooting it. Muskaan, who's, uh, one of the actors on Mismatch with me, we used to keep discussing how this is so similar to the content we watched when I was a teenager.... like we watched Shararat, and we watched Dil Mil Gaye. These are, these were TV shows.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:46 Amazing, amazing shows. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 1:44:48 [laughing] Uh, we watched Sanjeevani. Uh, yeah. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:52 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 1:44:52 [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 1:44:54 Uh, what was the one that had Shweta in it? Um-

Tanmay Bhat 1:44:58 All of them.

Prajakta Koli 1:44:59 Yeah. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 1:45:01 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:01 [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 1:45:01 So this, and we realized that the content that is getting made in 2019 came out on Netflix on, in 2020, was so similar to what I was watching when I was 12 and 13.

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:12 Right, right.

Prajakta Koli 1:45:13 And that came from a whole kind of, um, um, uh, peak of all the crime dramas, all the true crime, all, um, slightly darker, grayer content. So when you speak, when you speak about all this, then maybe has, has the, uh, machinery changed, or do we approach a different angle when you're telling these stories? And I want to hear what you guys have to say about this, that how come then a simple piece of content that was very new at the time that it came out, because most of the content was very unlike that, resonated with an audience that is post '94, but it was also something that resonated with us when we were that age?

Tanmay Bhat 1:45:53 Mm. I think, uh, broadly, first principles thinking when it comes to content creation, broadly, I agree with Nuseir that-

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:01 Yes!

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:02 ... Bro- broadly, I agree.

Prajakta Koli 1:46:03 Broadly. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:03 Yeah. Fundamentally, brains haven't changed.

Prajakta Koli 1:46:05 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:06 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:06 Brains and the chemical reaction in the brain when you, when you-

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:08 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:08 ... perceive something, that hasn't, that hasn't-

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:10 That's thousands of years.

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:11 That hasn't changed.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:12 Do you think woke data- woke content will work more today than it did 100 years ago?

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:15 Yeah, I was just getting to the nuances.

Prajakta Koli 1:46:17 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:17 Some of the nuances you should, you should keep in mind is that the things that a hyper-connected world, the, uh, um, the big difference between 1794 and now is that we are hyper-connected, right? So content, uh, moves a lot faster. So know that we're in a post-ru- post-truth world, right? We're not in a world where anything gets verified ever.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:37 But we always were in a post-truth world.

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:39 So this, this is the nuance from today, which is that shit gets boring a lot quicker.

Prajakta Koli 1:46:43 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:43 Yes.

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:43 Right? As opposed to 1794.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:45 Correct.

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:46 Uh, tricks get older a lot quicker now, as opposed to 1794.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:49 Correct.

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:50 Uh, the, the, this- that's the kind of nuance I was trying to look at, which is you've got to reinvent the, uh, reinvent a lot more. It, shit gets boring a lot quicker.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:57 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:46:57 But it's not a sexy answer that Nikhil was looking for.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:59 Is there a,

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:00 is there a sexy answer? Like, I want to tell the 20-year-old girl what to go and create, which will do better than 100 years ago.

Tanmay Bhat 1:47:09 Okay, should we brainstorm on different categories?

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:11 Yeah, yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:47:11 Like, I'm assuming what is... Define her access. Like, what makes her unique?

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:15 Yeah, exactly.

Prajakta Koli 1:47:16 Uh-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:16 N- nothing unique, more generic, like I described-

Tanmay Bhat 1:47:18 Say she's into fashion.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:20 Say she's a-

Tanmay Bhat 1:47:23 Or she's into math.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:23 Very specifically-

Prajakta Koli 1:47:24 Tech-focused

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:25 ... India-focused. She's studying BCom in a tier two college in Bangalore.

Tanmay Bhat 1:47:31 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:31 Let's say pocket money is not 50,000. Let's say it's 10,000 rupees.

Tanmay Bhat 1:47:35 Doesn't matter.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:35 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:47:36 Mm. But what is, what are her interests?

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:38 She likes music, Bollywood, uh, stock investing, and content creators.

Tanmay Bhat 1:47:46 All right.

Prajakta Koli 1:47:46 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:47:46 So off the top of my head, Bollywood, she could review movies.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:49 Yeah, I'd say-

Prajakta Koli 1:47:50 Is that an opportunity?

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:51 New age-

Prajakta Koli 1:47:51 Because there are, there are so many people already reviewing movies.

Tanmay Bhat 1:47:54 Yeah. What's, what's the manner in which they're reviewing movies?

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:57 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:47:57 A format idea is you could review movies either straight, like, "Hey, this is what I thought of the movie," or you review movies in a format. Like, I would do a format like, things I thought of while wa- watching Rocky Aur Rani. That's my format. That's how I'd do movie reviews.

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:09 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:48:09 I just tell you the thoughts in my head, so it's just a bu- series of jump cuts, like, I thought this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this.

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:15 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:48:15 Or she can do something-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:15 All right

Tanmay Bhat 1:48:15 ... that's unique to her, stock investing for women that are broke. That's, that's-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:20 I- I'll give you a sexy answer

Tanmay Bhat 1:48:20 ... stock investing for women that are broke, honestly.

Prajakta Koli 1:48:22 Or just simplifying communication around stocks. We weren't taught that.

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:25 Stocks, stocks, stocks-

Prajakta Koli 1:48:25 Tell me how to do my taxes. I don't know it

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:27 ... stocks for women.

Tanmay Bhat 1:48:27 The sexy answer for me is new age journalism. Start talking about world events. It's very risky, it'll get you canceled a lot, but if you, and you- [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 1:48:34 What are you saying, Ranveer? [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 1:48:36 New age, new age. I'm not, like, taking away nothing from journalism degrees. I think you need to be trained to be a journalist, et cetera, et cetera. But, um-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:43 It's called salesy

Tanmay Bhat 1:48:43 ... I don't care. It's where the world is going.

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:45 No, I actually resonate with him. I feel like journalism inherently as an idea sitting behind a corporation does not work, because every corporation has bias.

Tanmay Bhat 1:48:55 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:56 It has to eventually become more fragmented.

Tanmay Bhat 1:48:58 Salesy. Every journalist that wants to survive as a journalist has to go independent-

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:01 Every human has bias

Tanmay Bhat 1:49:02 ... in the next 10 years.

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:03 I agree with you.

Prajakta Koli 1:49:04 I feel like, especially when you're starting off, and I, I, I agree to what you're saying, but I feel like it'll take a 20-year-old creator who's starting off a really long time to reach there, to, A, also have the guts to put it out like that.

Tanmay Bhat 1:49:15 Fair.

Prajakta Koli 1:49:15 It's not easy-

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:17 Yeah

Prajakta Koli 1:49:17 ... to put yourself out there, because it's ruthless. And why do we forget that at the end of the day, it is a job?

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:24 It's much more ruthless for women than men.

Prajakta Koli 1:49:26 Yeah, and you have to turn your laptop off, and you have to have a life where you are not messed up in your head because of something that happened.

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:32 Is that true, what he said? Is it a lot more ruthless for women?

Prajakta Koli 1:49:35 Uh, [sighs] I'm always the wrong person, uh, to answer this, and I'll get to that in just a minute, but, like, finishing what I was saying. So I feel like for a, for anyone new, actually, woman or man, start, start, or any other gender, starting off, uh, right now, I feel like it's important... And it goes back to what we said a while ago. It's important for you to g- get that confidence and validation and credit for yourself, to kind of keep going, because it's a much longer journey. So I feel like if she had to start, to reach what you are saying, she will have to do something as basic as report things as is.

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:07 Okay.

Prajakta Koli 1:50:07 And then start pushing out opinions, then start giving, uh, perspective, then start sharing personal stories-

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:14 Yeah

Prajakta Koli 1:50:14 ... see what the community is saying.

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:16 But would she get traction if she reports things as is?

Prajakta Koli 1:50:19 So many channels are.

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:21 Mm.

Prajakta Koli 1:50:21 There are so many channels right now that are only doing YouTube news.

Tanmay Bhat 1:50:24 Yeah, reports things as is, as in, in the most boring way possible? No.

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:27 In the- [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 1:50:28 Not in the most boring way, obviously.

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:30 So the nuance comes in-

Tanmay Bhat 1:50:31 I mean, but things as they are, like, truth is often very boring.

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:34 But, but with a different format, with a bit more energy.

Tanmay Bhat 1:50:36 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:36 What if she does it, what if she's dancing?

Tanmay Bhat 1:50:37 Right.

Prajakta Koli 1:50:37 With jump cutty-

Tanmay Bhat 1:50:38 Presentation

Prajakta Koli 1:50:38 ... and if it's-

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:39 Yeah

Prajakta Koli 1:50:39 ... it's not the kind that she's sitting in front of a green screen and reading out of a folder, but she is, say it is a vlog-

Tanmay Bhat 1:50:46 Mm

Prajakta Koli 1:50:46 ... where every-... hour of the day. Suppose she vlogs for 10 hours a day, and every hour of the day she gives you a fun fact.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:50:52 This is, vlogs is the answer also.

Nuseir Yassin 1:50:54 Really?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:50:55 Yeah.

Prajakta Koli 1:50:55 Yeah, because it's engaging.

Nuseir Yassin 1:50:55 No, vlog is not the answer. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:57 I know vlogs had become really big a few years ago, right? And then it disappeared.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:00 2016, and it died.

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:01 I remember Casey Neistat.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:03 Path with least friction for likes, vlogging.

Prajakta Koli 1:51:04 Casey Neistat.

Nuseir Yassin 1:51:05 Vlogging?

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:06 Yeah, in India, for sure. Like, uh, the-

Nuseir Yassin 1:51:08 But your life has to be interesting. Making a vlog is much harder. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:11 You've not seen Indian vlogs. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 1:51:12 And it has to stay interesting every day.

Nuseir Yassin 1:51:14 [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:15 Okay, for people who don't know, what is a vlog?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:18 It's a video log-

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:19 Of?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:20 Of anything.

Prajakta Koli 1:51:20 Your life.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:20 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:51:20 It's basically filming your life from when you wake up until when you sleep.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:23 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:51:23 It's a 10- to 20-minute-long video, and it's basically means you have your camera with you the whole goddamn time.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:29 Time. It's live.

Prajakta Koli 1:51:30 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:30 So the thing is, vlogging can either be high-effort vlogging, or it could just be documenting your life. It is the... Like, it's a, it's the, it's the quickest way of outputting something, which is you just document everything that's happening. So there are lots of incredibly boring vlogs, and there are folks who make it interesting as well. Um, second question, what was it?

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:48 Give me a good example, Indian vlogs.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:50 Indian vlogs? Of what, like...

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:52 Anything.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:53 Um-

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:53 Who's doing well?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:54 Yeah, so India's biggest vlogger is this guy called Saurabh Joshi.

Prajakta Koli 1:51:58 Saurabh Joshi.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:51:58 Uh, super interesting, right? Like, he lives with his family in a small town called Haldwani. Um, he lives with his mum, dad, his younger brother, some extended family. Extremely relatable. Like, he puts out a video every day that does... that clocks, like, five to seven million views every single day. So for me, as a viewer, this is-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:16 So what's working there?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:52:17 Just pure relatability. He's just like millions and millions of other families in this country, so people love watching-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:23 Extremely raw. Is that what's working for Ankit?

Nuseir Yassin 1:52:26 Yes.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:52:26 Yes. Yes. Also, Ankit is also like a mission-driven creator. Mission-driven creator is also very aspirational, like-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:33 So if I were again a 20-year-old boy instead of a girl, and I want to start on the journey of vlogging-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:52:39 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:39 ... to build distribution-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:52:41 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:42 what kind of life should I project? What will work?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:52:44 Uh, not really life, but I think the quickest way to get a form a community is to find a mission. Like, if you were starting, um, saying, "I'm gonna get six-pack abs-"

Prajakta Koli 1:52:53 75 Hard.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:52:54 ... 75 Hard, like, "I'm, I'm gonna get this in the next, in the next X number of days," the viewer automatically roots that you, you get it, so.

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:02 Is that going back to your earlier point, where you have to have a reveal at the end?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:07 That it helps-

Nuseir Yassin 1:53:07 Helps, yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:07 ... when people wanna find-

Prajakta Koli 1:53:08 There's an end goal

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:09 ... find about what's the end of this story. If there's an end goal, uh, people wanna watch it till the end, right?

Nuseir Yassin 1:53:13 Yeah, that's true.

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:14 Prajakta, if you had to start a vlog, that would work?

Prajakta Koli 1:53:19 I would d- I would do that, uh, working out for 100 days, and I vlog my workout journey every single day.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:25 Like, there's a really popular YouTuber-

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:26 Yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:26 ... called Ryan Trahan, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:28 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:28 Who became massive. He started a series called Traveling Across America using one penny, right? Nuseir-

Nuseir Yassin 1:53:33 Yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:33 ... correct me if I'm wrong.

Nuseir Yassin 1:53:34 Correct.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:34 Traveling across US-

Nuseir Yassin 1:53:35 In 30 days.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:35 In 30 days, traveling across America using one penny. So every episode, he would begin with one penny and be like, "I'm gonna go from A point, A to B."

Nuseir Yassin 1:53:42 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:42 It makes the episode automatically that much more viewable.

Nuseir Yassin 1:53:44 Why go far? I mean, Nas Daily, that's how it was. It was a thousand-day journey around the world.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:48 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 1:53:48 So you start to see... I started to see that the numbers of likes and views start to go up in the last 20 days.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:53:54 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 1:53:54 Because people are like, "Oh, how is he gonna end his thousand-day journey?"

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:57 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:53:57 "Is he gonna break a day? And what's gonna happen on day 1,000?" On day 1,000, I got the most number of likes I ever got.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:54:02 Ankit-

Nuseir Yassin 1:54:02 So that's the reveal.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:54:03 75 Hard, 75th day, most number of views.

Nuseir Yassin 1:54:06 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:06 Now he's a lot more than 75.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:54:07 Now he's a lot more. Now he's just continuing.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:09 You do a lot of stuff around... Ranveer does a lot of spirituality, uh, religion, uh, you know, the whole UFO, uh-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:54:19 The occult

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:19 ... mystic stuff and all of that. Is there a big audience for that? Is that a hack?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:54:24 Um, there is a big audience for that because it interests a lot of people. It genuinely interested me since I was a kid-

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:31 Mm

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:54:31 ... and I get to explore these subjects as an adult. So I think the genuinity of it is what that massive TAM connects with.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:37 The one thing life has taught me is never shit on anything, because nobody knows-

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:54:41 Exactly

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:41 ... what you don't know. So I don't wanna, like, uh, comment about it from that lens, but if I were a, a creator who wants to build traction in that segment, what should I really talk about?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:54:55 The truth is that, at least what I sense in India, is that that phase has gone now.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:01 Yeah?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:55:01 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:02 Religion?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:55:03 Not religion. Religion will never go. The other stuff you mentioned.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:06 Alien...

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:55:06 Yeah. People want depth in content now. They-

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:09 But there can be depth there, too, right?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:55:10 So if you can bring depth, great, but there aren't enough people to talk about it now in India.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:14 So what, what does Ranveer think today will work in the next one year?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:55:19 The next one year? Because the-

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:20 One to two years

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:55:21 ... elections are coming up, so political content. Young people are getting into politics. Uh, older people don't have the balls to speak about politics nowadays. So if some kid speaks about politics, it'll actually garner a lot of attention.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:33 And what else?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:55:34 That's one massive one. Geopolitics-

Nuseir Yassin 1:55:36 Extremes. Extremes get views.

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:55:37 Yeah. Geopolitics is the other one, same, same category.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:40 And when you're talking about politics, will the anti-view get a lot more traction?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:55:46 I think at this point, it's about depth. Uh, Thinkschool, great example. Deep content that's selling. You can't do surface-level content. At least, I'm speaking from a very India perspective, but I think this is the case from international, uh, uh, you know, in international waters as well. We see that with Andrew Huberman. We see that with even Andrew Schulz and all these guys, they go deep with their conversations. So now is that point where Joe Rogan was in 2018, where he started doing three-hour podcasts, and people are willing to listen to it. So if you bring depth to your content-

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:15 What worked for Joe Rogan?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:56:16 Quantity.

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:18 You think?

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:56:18 Yes. I've been listening to Joe Rogan since I was in college, which is 2011 or 2012, and he used to get 30,000 views. And I've seen him going from there to this $100 million Spotify contract. Before I began content creation, it was a dream of mine to have a podcast, but I always thought, "Dude, India either will never be ready for a podcast or it's not ready for a podcast yet." And I started my shit 'cause we were doing two channels. Work was getting too much for me. I wanted to switch off one channel. Team said, "Listen, what's the easiest form of content you can do?" I said, "I'll talk to people and turn that into content."

Ranveer Allahbadia 1:56:50 And then we just hit a wave.

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:52 ... Okay, next question: How big of a hack is making content in regional languages?

Nuseir Yassin 1:56:58 Big hack!

Tanmay Bhat 1:57:00 Big hack.

Nuseir Yassin 1:57:00 Huge hack.

Tanmay Bhat 1:57:01 Huge hack.

Nuseir Yassin 1:57:02 Huge. I'll give you, I'll give you a stat. Nas Daily has sixty-five million followers. Thirty million of our followers don't speak English. They cannot speak English. We have two million followers in Vietnam. That's two percent of the country, and I don't speak a single word of Vietnamese. Fourteen percent of Russia watches Nas Daily every month on YouTube, the kids, mainly. Why? It's because we take the same content that we done in, in English, and we localize it to thirteen other languages.

Nikhil Kamath 1:57:30 U- using AI or like-

Nuseir Yassin 1:57:32 Uh, we did subtitles. We did... At the beginning, we did subtitles, and now we do dubbing, which we pay $100 per minute, and now we're using AI. But all of that has, has unlocked a massive market. The question is, why?

Nikhil Kamath 1:57:43 Can you, can you also give some tools after you say why?

Nuseir Yassin 1:57:45 Yeah, absolutely. Why does Nas Daily have two million followers in Vietnam? Because the demand for content in Vietnam is very high. You have 100 million people. Each one of them has ten hours every day they want to watch videos. But the people making the videos in Vietnam are very low. There's only state media, there's, like, TV, which is boring, and then a couple of content creators. And every Hollywood movie doesn't actually make it to Vietnam. All this content you make does not make it to Vietnam. All this podcast you make does not make it to Vietnam. So there's no supply of content. When you add this content in Vietnamese, the supply is so low, you get so many views. That is called a hack, like equilibrium. There's no equilibrium in content, supply and demand. So in English, there is an equilibrium. There's enough supply of content, there's enough demand for it, you meet in the middle.

Tanmay Bhat 1:58:32 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 1:58:32 In Vietnamese, supply is so low-

Tanmay Bhat 1:58:35 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 1:58:35 ... the demand is so high.

Tanmay Bhat 1:58:36 It's true. Uh, when you speak to people's identity, it generates, it generates a just a higher engagement rate, right? Be it in their native language or be it about who they are. For example, if I, if I say, "You know, ten things only engineers will understand," right? It'll get a lot more shares from engineers.

Nuseir Yassin 1:58:56 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:58:56 Ten things that only Vietnamese people will get.

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:58 That's interesting.

Tanmay Bhat 1:58:59 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:59 Go, go deeper in that.

Tanmay Bhat 1:59:01 If you... Speaking to someone's identity just gets, gets more. Like, like, BuzzFeed pioneered this ages ago, right?

Nuseir Yassin 1:59:08 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:59:08 BuzzFeed did, uh, "Take this quiz if you're overweight," or, "Fifteen things that fat girls will, will relate to," right? Like, they pioneered this, and it became obvious eventually. That's why nationalistic content does really well. That's why geopolitics does really well.

Nuseir Yassin 1:59:23 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:59:23 Right? Because geopolitics, you can't speak about geopolitics without attracting an identity touch point of the two countries that you're, that you're talking about. I do Pakistanis Are Savage. Why do I put Pakistani Are Savage in the title? Because I know Pakistani people are gonna, gonna click on it.

Nuseir Yassin 1:59:37 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:59:37 Right? Um, so, i- i- that's another hack, which is when you speak to people's identities, they'll, they'll-

Nuseir Yassin 1:59:42 That's good

Tanmay Bhat 1:59:43 ... engage and share more.

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:43 And how do you identify niche identities?

Tanmay Bhat 1:59:46 There's just large islands, man. There's so many identities.

Nuseir Yassin 1:59:48 Countries. Countries.

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:48 How do you, how do you figure that out? Like, if I'm a content creator-

Tanmay Bhat 1:59:51 The language you speak at home, that's one identity. The job you do, that's one identity. The family you grew up around, that's one identity. You went to ICSE, CBSE-

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:58 National identity is the easiest one.

Tanmay Bhat 1:59:59 National identity is the easiest one. What-- In India, there are so many... Because we have five thousand identities, there are five thousand islands. ICSE, CBSE, SC schools.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:06 But how do, how do I find a small enough identity?

Nuseir Yassin 2:00:09 Why do you need to find a small identity?

Tanmay Bhat 2:00:10 Why do you need to find a small?

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:11 Because the smaller it is, the more they'll share, you said, right?

Nuseir Yassin 2:00:14 No, no, no.

Tanmay Bhat 2:00:14 No, no, no.

Nuseir Yassin 2:00:14 Find the biggest one.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:15 The biggest one is country, then-

Tanmay Bhat 2:00:17 Yes, but the more-

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:18 That's the thing

Tanmay Bhat 2:00:18 ... the more specific you are, the more specific you are-

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:20 The more specific.

Tanmay Bhat 2:00:20 That, that kind of helps.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:21 I'm taking specific as smaller.

Nuseir Yassin 2:00:23 No, no, it's countries.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:23 So what are these identities which are unutilized?

Nuseir Yassin 2:00:25 It's countries. You have no idea, when people actually start content creation, like influencers in, in America, they go where? They go to the Philippines. Because when a white guy-

Tanmay Bhat 2:00:33 They go... They collaborate with Indians now.

Nuseir Yassin 2:00:35 When a white... Yeah, and then when a white guy goes to the Philippines, says, "I ate Filipino food."

Tanmay Bhat 2:00:39 Yeah, huge.

Nuseir Yassin 2:00:40 Huge.

Tanmay Bhat 2:00:41 Huge.

Nuseir Yassin 2:00:41 Huge. Same with India. Actually, I got, I got pushback, I got cancelled because I made so many videos in the Philippines, because they were like: "Oh, you're just using us to get views." Which wasn't true. I actually really like the Philippines. But anyway, that was a thing.

Tanmay Bhat 2:00:53 But also, yes. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 2:00:55 [laughing] No, so no, I went to seventy countries!

Prajakta Koli 2:00:59 Can I, can I say something?

Nuseir Yassin 2:01:01 Yeah.

Prajakta Koli 2:01:01 There's something that I've realized with the whole regional targeting of content, right? And I, I'm... Correct me if I'm wrong, this is just something also... This is something I've felt, uh, in the past two, three years, and that has helped me as a creator in taking the pressure off of numbers. For example, when I started off, I, in my head, content creators had a pyramid, right? If you had more numbers, you were on top, and then as you had lesser numbers, you were on the bottom of the food chain.

Tanmay Bhat 2:01:30 It's a reverse pyramid.

Prajakta Koli 2:01:32 Reverse pyramid. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 2:01:34 [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 2:01:34 Yeah, like that one.

Tanmay Bhat 2:01:34 Ah, go on.

Prajakta Koli 2:01:35 But at this point, I feel like it's a globe, where one person's top is other person's bottom. If a brand has to come to me to market a product in a certain language that is spoken in a certain part of the country that I don't speak, I could have millions and millions of followers, but I'm useless.

Nuseir Yassin 2:01:55 Doesn't matter.

Prajakta Koli 2:01:56 It does not matter. A f- a, a creator who speaks the regional language, has the regional references, and has one-hundredth of my numbers-

Tanmay Bhat 2:02:04 Could charge a premium

Prajakta Koli 2:02:05 ... could charge a premium and get that much ROI-

Tanmay Bhat 2:02:09 Yep

Prajakta Koli 2:02:09 ... for the brand. So at this point, regional content has reached a point where the whole dynamics of the creator economy have shifted to really depends on where you're coming from and whom do you want to talk to.

Tanmay Bhat 2:02:23 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 2:02:23 And supply is lower, so you can also charge more.

Tanmay Bhat 2:02:25 Exactly.

Nuseir Yassin 2:02:26 Right.

Tanmay Bhat 2:02:26 Nelson Mandela said an amazing quote: "If you speak to me... If you speak to a man in a language that he learned, it goes to his brain."

Nuseir Yassin 2:02:33 Yes.

Tanmay Bhat 2:02:34 "If you speak to a man in his native language, it goes to his heart."

Nuseir Yassin 2:02:38 I have something to add to that from the Indian context. I've always believed that the, in India, the English content, you do it for the money; the Hindi content, you do it for the power.

Tanmay Bhat 2:02:48 Yeah, that makes sense. It goes to the heart.

Nuseir Yassin 2:02:50 You can actually influence people's lives, like-

Prajakta Koli 2:02:52 Hindi content, you do for money?

Nuseir Yassin 2:02:54 No, no. English content-

Tanmay Bhat 2:02:54 English content you do for money.

Prajakta Koli 2:02:55 You do for money?

Nuseir Yassin 2:02:56 It's higher brand value.

Prajakta Koli 2:02:56 And Hindi you do for power.

Tanmay Bhat 2:02:56 Brand, brand managers can speak English.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:02:59 ... that, that's true. Brand managers can, can speak in-

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:01 Brand managers value-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:03:01 The decision makers might not be influencer marketing, but no.

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:03 No, also, also, Ranveer, uh, hire Arpu for English-speaking people.

Tanmay Bhat 2:03:06 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:06 Also, before we leave this topic, I want to ask, what are the tools a new creator can use today to translate? Like, what works, what doesn't work?

Tanmay Bhat 2:03:15 Oh, AI has solved this.

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:17 Which one?

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:03:17 HeyGen.

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:18 HeyGen.

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:19 Huh?

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:19 HeyGen, uh, is now AI dubbing.

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:21 Spell it?

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:21 Um-

Tanmay Bhat 2:03:21 H-E-Y-G-E-N.

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:23 -G-E-N. Uh, actually, I built, like, a company called this. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:25 Is that, is that better than dubbing, paying somebody to dub?

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:28 Uh, it's very expensive. So paying somebody to dub, you need an agency. It's $100 per minute.

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:32 Also, maybe-

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:32 Very expensive

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:33 ... I mean, I, uh, please give your opinions. I don't know if it's the best decision to dub straight from the beginning of your content journey.

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:38 Oh, yeah, do not do that. Yeah, just stick with one language. Don't even consider it.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:03:42 And ace content is a skill. It is a skill. It's, it's different from filmmaking. Like, you need to understand how social media works and evolves.

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:49 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:03:49 So maybe at the start, just-

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:50 Yeah

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:03:51 ... create an initial voiceover.

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:51 We only did this when after I hit 15 million followers.

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:55 So then you use something like HeyGen?

Nuseir Yassin 2:03:57 Then you start 13 languages, yeah, different languages.

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:59 And you, you're saying AI works just as well as dubbing today?

Nuseir Yassin 2:04:02 In the next two months-

Tanmay Bhat 2:04:03 It will be

Nuseir Yassin 2:04:04 ... it will be just as good.

Tanmay Bhat 2:04:04 It will be better.

Nuseir Yassin 2:04:05 It'll be so damn cheap. It's so exciting.

Tanmay Bhat 2:04:05 HeyGen is already very good. The cost to make and duplicate content is going to zero. We're almost there.

Nikhil Kamath 2:04:12 But doesn't it look weird when your mouth is doing something-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:04:14 No, no, not anymore.

Tanmay Bhat 2:04:15 No, not anymore.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:04:15 I have a video on that.

Tanmay Bhat 2:04:15 No, it's gonna get built in on YouTube, Nikhil. There's gonna be a button where you can select a language, and your mouth will move in that language. It's gonna come into YouTube. It's gonna take forever, 'cause YouTube is a slightly slower moving beast, but it's gonna come.

Nikhil Kamath 2:04:26 Do subtitles work?

Nuseir Yassin 2:04:28 So interestingly enough, there's two types of countries in the world. There's a subtitle country and a dubbing country. Germany is a dubbing country. That's why when you go visit Germany, nobody speaks English, because they watch Hollywood dubbed. But in Serbia, and in my country, it's a subtitle country, so I would watch movies, but I would read subtitles.

Tanmay Bhat 2:04:46 Interesting.

Nuseir Yassin 2:04:46 That's why my... I speak English. Thank God I was born in a subtitle country, and this is what scares me about dubbing: it'll make you not learn the language.

Tanmay Bhat 2:04:54 Hmm.

Nuseir Yassin 2:04:55 So-

Nikhil Kamath 2:04:55 What works in India?

Nuseir Yassin 2:04:56 India is a subtitle country, I think. I figure-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:04:59 On- only Nuseir

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:05:00 will have the answer.

Nuseir Yassin 2:05:00 Um, actually, India may be a dubbing country.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:03 Hey, what, what about virtue signaling? I know a lot of-

Tanmay Bhat 2:05:06 Yeah, what about it

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:06 ... actors and business people do it.

Prajakta Koli 2:05:08 Can you explain what virtue signaling is?

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:10 Pretending to be a saint, wh- whereas you're as human as all of us.

Tanmay Bhat 2:05:15 Okay, like signaling-

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:16 On-

Tanmay Bhat 2:05:16 ... how virtuous you are.

Prajakta Koli 2:05:17 Got it, got it, got it.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:17 On social media, if you survive long enough on social media, people know exactly who you are.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:05:21 Yeah, exactly.

Tanmay Bhat 2:05:22 Virtue signaling works, Nikhil. It does work, but it creates an expectation out of you that's hard to sustain.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:29 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:05:29 Because not everybody's as virtuous as they claim to be.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:32 Nobody is.

Tanmay Bhat 2:05:33 Nobody is. So you can virtue signal, and it does, it does work, which is people will like you, and people will think a certain way of you.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:39 Yeah, but I'm talking about somebody who wants to become a creator, 20 year old.

Tanmay Bhat 2:05:43 Hmm, hmm.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:44 Will virtue signaling work for someone like that?

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:05:46 S- not... I think at that stage, it's important to just stand out. All this comes later.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:50 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:05:50 I think it's a way to hack the algorithm.

Tanmay Bhat 2:05:51 Uh, yeah, what's the point of virtue signaling your virtues in emptiness? Like, you need a large audience [chuckles] to signal your virtue to.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:57 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 2:05:57 Get your audience, then virtue signal.

Prajakta Koli 2:05:58 You'll also not know what the virtue is-

Tanmay Bhat 2:06:00 [laughing] Yeah

Prajakta Koli 2:06:01 ... for a very long time.

Tanmay Bhat 2:06:03 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:06:03 So begin by being anti, anti, anti whatever, and when you have an audience, become more virtuous and resonate with whatever soci- society-

Tanmay Bhat 2:06:11 If you have a large enough audience, you will need to display your virtue at some point.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:06:14 Yes, you need to.

Tanmay Bhat 2:06:15 Or you'll find the need to.

Nikhil Kamath 2:06:15 When is that point?

Tanmay Bhat 2:06:17 It could be-

Nuseir Yassin 2:06:17 When, when your audience start to ask you to virtue signal.

Nikhil Kamath 2:06:20 Oh-

Nuseir Yassin 2:06:20 When your audience start to ask you: "What's your opinion about Israel-Palestine?"

Prajakta Koli 2:06:23 Yeah, when they start speaking back to you.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:06:24 You've crossed that point.

Nuseir Yassin 2:06:25 I've crossed that.

Nikhil Kamath 2:06:26 Actually, all of you have crossed that point.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:06:27 Yeah, yeah, okay.

Tanmay Bhat 2:06:28 Nikhil, your audience will expect what they think you will respond to.

Nuseir Yassin 2:06:32 Yes.

Tanmay Bhat 2:06:32 Right? If you continuously virtue signal about y- my thoughts on what the political affairs are, and if you keep talking about that, at some point, if you go quiet, your audience will be like, "Yo, what happened? Why aren't you opin- opining about this?"

Prajakta Koli 2:06:44 Or even something as simple as relationships. When creators share about their relationship online-

Tanmay Bhat 2:06:50 Yeah, yeah

Prajakta Koli 2:06:50 ... and then they go all out, uh, sharing, talking about it, even doing brand deals, such things like that.

Tanmay Bhat 2:06:56 Correct.

Prajakta Koli 2:06:56 And then when that falls out-

Tanmay Bhat 2:06:58 Hmm, people are like, "What happened?"

Prajakta Koli 2:06:58 ... and your audience expects you to answer, I don't think that's the time you can take a stand saying, "Oh, no, I want my space."

Nuseir Yassin 2:07:05 Yeah, but what I recommend to people is that the image that they are in real life-

Nikhil Kamath 2:07:09 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 2:07:09 ... should be online. It's so important.

Prajakta Koli 2:07:11 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:07:12 I, I have a-

Nikhil Kamath 2:07:12 That's interesting.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:07:13 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:07:14 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:07:14 Uh, [beep] with social media, so much of you is out there.

Prajakta Koli 2:07:18 Mm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:07:19 Okay, um, because of the show, I met a lot of people who mentored me in many ways. Uh, and I tried being the best possible dude in real life. Wasn't successful everywhere, made mistakes, but a lot of that rubbed off. For example, like it began... Like, my channel began as a fitness channel, Maximize Your Fitness. I worked on my mental health in order to talk about mental health content. I won't make yoga content until I've mastered yoga, and I've begun yoga since the last year. So if you have a vision of what kind of content you want to make,

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:07:50 start working on it right now.

Tanmay Bhat 2:07:52 You can fake it till you make it, but for how long? I mean, it's possible to fake it till you make it.

Nuseir Yassin 2:07:56 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:07:57 You can. I mean, that's true.

Prajakta Koli 2:07:59 I also feel like collaborations are very, very powerful when you start a creative journey.

Nikhil Kamath 2:08:04 That's interesting. Go into that.

Prajakta Koli 2:08:06 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:08:06 How does, how does a new person collaborate, and who do they collaborate with?

Prajakta Koli 2:08:09 With other new people.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:08:11 Like people who are near your numbers.

Nikhil Kamath 2:08:12 How do you find them?

Prajakta Koli 2:08:13 Or you can be ambitious. Like, I remember shooting Lily or Text a- as often as I could-

Tanmay Bhat 2:08:19 We all have

Prajakta Koli 2:08:19 ... till it happened. Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:08:20 We all have shot Lily or Text at some point. [laughing]

Prajakta Koli 2:08:21 Till it actually happened. I remember shooting, uh, or, like, just kind of manifesting in my head and wanting to do something with Hrithik Roshan, I'm a huge fan, till that happened. But that's, that took a long, long time. I'm just saying, in general, I have learnt so much from-

Nikhil Kamath 2:08:37 And what works when you message these people? What can one say that will work?

Prajakta Koli 2:08:41 "Hi, I'm a creator, and this is what I do, and I really, really like your work, and if you have some time, I would love to shoot something with you."

Tanmay Bhat 2:08:48 Doesn't work. Doesn't work.

Prajakta Koli 2:08:49 It doesn't work, though.

Tanmay Bhat 2:08:49 It's just wh- whenever you are asking someone anything, their time, money-

Nuseir Yassin 2:08:55 Especially their time

Tanmay Bhat 2:08:55 ... especially their time, you've got to understand what would incentivize them.

Nuseir Yassin 2:08:59 You must give them value.

Prajakta Koli 2:09:01 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:09:01 ...When I speak about collaborations, I also speak about friendships and, uh, allies in the creator community.

Nuseir Yassin 2:09:07 Say, I'm a creator beginning today.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:09:09 Mm-hmm.

Nuseir Yassin 2:09:09 I want to be a part of a ecosystem with other curators and creators. How do I find them?

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:09:16 When I started off, I don't know, I don't think YouTube does that anymore, but when I started off, I remember telling my partner manager at YouTube or just shooting texts to YouTube, saying when-

Nuseir Yassin 2:09:24 What is a partner manager at YouTube?

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:09:26 You'll have a partner manager on YouTube who's looking after your account and is who you can sit down with every now and then.

Nuseir Yassin 2:09:31 Really?

Tanmay Bhat 2:09:32 Back, back in the... Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:09:32 Yeah, you don't have that anymore.

Tanmay Bhat 2:09:33 Back in the day, back in the day, there were fewer creators.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:09:35 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 2:09:35 Now, to get a elig- to be eligible for a partner manager, you need to have-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:09:38 Certain amount of hours

Tanmay Bhat 2:09:38 ...X thousand hours of watch time, X number of subscribers-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:09:41 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 2:09:41 ... et cetera, et cetera. It's hard now.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:09:42 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:09:42 The number of partner managers per creator is like, is very low.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:09:45 A lot. Uh, so I, I remember telling her that if there's any kind of social gathering, any kind of, uh, panel discussion, any kind of creator, um, uh, workshop happening, "Please, please sign me up for this, because I want to go and meet other people, and I want to do that." What we can do now is, uh, I, I feel like a lot of creators, like a lo- lot of newer creators now I meet at social events done by YouTube or Facebook or Instagram, and I just feel like-

Nuseir Yassin 2:10:12 Is that a good hack, to show up at these events and meet people?

Tanmay Bhat 2:10:14 Nas Summit.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:10:14 I think so, yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:10:15 Oh, show up at Nas Summit. [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:10:16 Summits, yeah. Like, uh, like finding these, finding these hubs-

Nuseir Yassin 2:10:21 I'm coming to find some [chuckles]

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:10:21 ... where conversation's relevant to what you are doing or in the realm of your, uh, life as a creator are happening, and kind of wanting to be in those places.

Tanmay Bhat 2:10:29 There is something called non-consensual collaboration.

Nuseir Yassin 2:10:32 [laughing] What is that?

Tanmay Bhat 2:10:33 Okay. For example, this is a growing trend now, which is if you want to collaborate with someone-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:10:38 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 2:10:38 ... you get your- you start talking about how you want to collaborate with this person, and you get your whole follower base to go-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:10:44 Oh

Tanmay Bhat 2:10:44 ... start spamming them and messaging, "This person wants to do something with you." [clapping] Right? All... So what the algorithm is doing is the algorithm is recognizing that this person is talking about this person, so the video automatically starts getting recommended to people who follow this person.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:10:57 Oh.

Tanmay Bhat 2:10:58 This happens on YouTube all the time. It has started happening on Instagram, et cetera, et cetera.

Nuseir Yassin 2:11:01 Like Why Rat Kohli?

Tanmay Bhat 2:11:02 Like Why Rat Kohli?!

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:11:03 Oh, my God.

Nuseir Yassin 2:11:03 Oh, my.

Tanmay Bhat 2:11:03 That's non-consensual collaboration. This dude just kept talking about, you know, Virat.

Nuseir Yassin 2:11:07 I love that.

Tanmay Bhat 2:11:08 Uh, so non-consensual collaboration is one. But generally speaking, you wanna collaborate with people you are more likely to get a yes to collaborate one.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:11:17 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:11:18 So people wanna collaborate up, but that's hard.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:11:21 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:11:21 So you wanna start collaborating sideways.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:11:22 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 2:11:23 Makes sense. Thumbnails

Nuseir Yassin 2:11:25 and titles, how important are they?

Tanmay Bhat 2:11:27 Very important!

Nuseir Yassin 2:11:29 Not important.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:11:30 [laughing] Not?

Nuseir Yassin 2:11:31 Really.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:11:31 Mm.

Nuseir Yassin 2:11:32 At all. Zero.

Tanmay Bhat 2:11:35 Should we debate?

Nuseir Yassin 2:11:36 Yeah. Go ahead. Why is it important?

Tanmay Bhat 2:11:39 Um, sizzle matters as much as steak.

Nuseir Yassin 2:11:45 Steak.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:11:45 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 2:11:46 Uh, sizzle, sizzle matters. Um, I mean, there's e- enough documented evidence that suggests that... I mean, MrBeast is a great example. Just last week, he was tweeting about how videos where he closes his mouth get a lot more views than videos- than thumbnails where his mouth is open.

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:02 I thought he said the other thing, thumbnails where his mouth is open get more views. 'Cause then people-

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:07 Well, either or, either or.

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:08 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:08 Basically, he changed one variable-

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:10 'Cause when his mouth is open, people think he's saying something and wanna click it.

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:12 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So e- either or, which is, oh, he changed one variable, and that, that made a big difference.

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:17 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:18 Boring title... I mean, there's a... Nuseir, how can you disagree? Boring title-- I mean, of course, short, on short video, it's, it's, it's-

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:23 That's my point

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:24 ... the short video, it's completely different.

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:25 What I'm trying to say is there's only one platform and one type of video-

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:29 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:29 ... where thumbnail and title matter, which is a long video on YouTube.

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:33 Yeah, on YouTube. Yeah, yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:34 The majority of people watching this are gonna be uploading Instagram reels.

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:38 Yes.

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:39 On an Instagram reels, the title doesn't matter-

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:41 Thumbnail doesn't matter

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:41 ... thumbnail doesn't matter.

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:42 Doesn't matter.

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:42 In fact, no one should be stressing over this at the beginning.

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:45 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:45 Just stress over the first three seconds of the video, the first sentence that you say in the video.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:12:50 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:50 So on TikTok, thumbnails don't matter, on Instagram, thumbnails don't matter, and on Facebook, thumbnails don't matter, and in YouTube Shorts, thumbnails don't matter. Only on YouTube-

Tanmay Bhat 2:12:58 YouTube videos

Nuseir Yassin 2:12:59 ... long videos.

Tanmay Bhat 2:13:00 Videos, thumbnails.

Nuseir Yassin 2:13:00 Okay, so for YouTube videos, what do you do? How do you make a thumbnail and a title that works?

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:13:06 I've delegated everything in my organization when it comes to video content, other than actually coming on screen. Titling and thumbnails are things I've not been able to delegate. And I have, I have two s- like, other channels, B- I have BeerBiceps, which is English, Ranveer Allahbadia, Hindi. There's TRS Clips English and TRS Clips Hindi. The titles are done by me, and the thumbnails are also suggested by me.

Tanmay Bhat 2:13:27 Just wanna suggest some things that people could follow. You should probably check out Paddy Galloway. He does, um, uh, he does a YouTube course, and he talks a lot about titling and thumbnail. Follow this guy called Papa Okus on Twitter. He's an Indian kid who is deeply into it. Sorry, I just wanted to throw in the recommendation.

Nuseir Yassin 2:13:42 So, so when it comes to titles, there's very easy wins, okay? How, why, what. Start the title with how and why, because the average human really wants to know why Greenland is not actually green. The human brain-

Tanmay Bhat 2:13:59 Good point

Nuseir Yassin 2:13:59 ... really wants to know how aquariums work, okay? So how and why is a very easy win. The second easy win is superlatives, and we teach all this at Nas Academy. I've, I've done this fifty times. Superlatives: v- everybody wants to know the story of the world's tallest man.

Tanmay Bhat 2:14:16 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 2:14:16 Everybody wants-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:14:17 Mm

Nuseir Yassin 2:14:17 ... to know who is the world's youngest billionaire.

Tanmay Bhat 2:14:20 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 2:14:21 Who is it? You know, so [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:14:24 The Monk Entertainment.

Nuseir Yassin 2:14:25 So, so, so extremes, and how and why, and the last one is, uh, uh, paradox. So the, the, the, the unhappy billionaire.

Tanmay Bhat 2:14:38 Hmm.

Nuseir Yassin 2:14:38 Well, you as- assume a billionaire is always happy, right?

Tanmay Bhat 2:14:41 Contradictory.

Nuseir Yassin 2:14:41 But why are they unhappy? Contradictory.

Tanmay Bhat 2:14:43 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 2:14:43 So that's the three biggest categories for things that people wanna click on.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:14:46 Is there a tool that you can use that'll help in this?

Nuseir Yassin 2:14:49 Pattern recognition. Copy.

Tanmay Bhat 2:14:50 If you take- if you pirate the Nas Academy course and put it into ChatGPT, [laughing] it'll-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:14:54 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 2:14:55 It'll-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:14:55 And share it on Instagram.

Nuseir Yassin 2:14:56 Why not just, like, pay money? [laughing] Is there-

Tanmay Bhat 2:14:58 If you pirate the course-

Nuseir Yassin 2:15:00 ... Why not just give us money? [laughing]

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:15:01 Is there a course on how to put good thumbnails and titles?

Tanmay Bhat 2:15:04 Uh, yeah, yeah, like, it's a module, but-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:15:06 Oh

Tanmay Bhat 2:15:06 ... but there, I don't know if there's a whole course.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:15:07 And how much do you charge?

Nuseir Yassin 2:15:08 ... uh, it's the, the, the price is not India-friendly. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 2:15:11 Yeah, yeah, nice.

Nuseir Yassin 2:15:11 It's $3,000 for five months, but it's five months.

Tanmay Bhat 2:15:15 Five-month, five-month cohort.

Nuseir Yassin 2:15:16 Five-month cohort.

Nikhil Kamath 2:15:16 What if somebody just wants to learn this bit?

Nuseir Yassin 2:15:18 You can't. Just go to YouTube and get it for free.

Tanmay Bhat 2:15:19 You pirate it, and you get it for free. [laughing]

Nuseir Yassin 2:15:22 [laughing] Stop it! Because of you, we don't make money.

Nikhil Kamath 2:15:25 Okay, you guys, tips.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:15:27 I-

Nikhil Kamath 2:15:27 Thumbnail and titles.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:15:28 [sighs] I've... For me, these things didn't work, like, after a point. Maybe it's because I have a larger quantity of content, so then I need to bring novelty to the titles and all that. I try focusing on first three words, that's all.

Nikhil Kamath 2:15:42 And what do you do in the first three words?

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:15:44 I actually learned it from you, I think. You had suggested this first three words. [beep] It, it's too si- it has to match the content of the video. Um, shocking, secret, is what works in India.

Tanmay Bhat 2:15:56 [chuckles]

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:15:57 Um, dark. These kind of words that create an emotion.

Nikhil Kamath 2:16:01 Give us some more. Shocking, secret, dark, then?

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:16:04 Twisted.

Tanmay Bhat 2:16:06 Hmm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:16:07 Um-

Nikhil Kamath 2:16:08 Because when you say that, people-

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:16:09 Intense.

Nikhil Kamath 2:16:10 You, you're playing the inquisitiveness card.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:16:12 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:16:12 Yeah.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:16:13 But again, this is... I, I used to believe in set formulas for titles-

Prajakta Koli 2:16:17 Hmm.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:16:17 -and TRS Clips, English and Hindi, taught me otherwise. It was just a very brutal experience for me, and it's still a brutal experience.

Tanmay Bhat 2:16:23 I think, yeah, there's some things that could help people are just observe your own behavior when you're, when you're clicking on videos.

Prajakta Koli 2:16:29 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:16:29 If just that one moment of self-reflection, saying: What made me click on, click on it?

Prajakta Koli 2:16:32 Yeah, that's always good.

Nuseir Yassin 2:16:33 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:16:33 Outside of what Nuseir also said, I agree with that. Uh, the TAM of your video really matters, which is totally addressable market.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:16:39 Hmm.

Tanmay Bhat 2:16:39 Like, you could m- have a paradoxical title about something that nobody cares about-

Nuseir Yassin 2:16:42 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 2:16:43 ... and it would not get views. It should be, it should be a broad TAM. Um, yeah, that's what I want to add.

Nuseir Yassin 2:16:48 Also, also copy, uh, uh, successful videos.

Tanmay Bhat 2:16:50 Yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 2:16:50 So look at a, at a viral video, like go to like m- like a Vox channel and, uh, sort the videos by popular-

Tanmay Bhat 2:16:56 Popularity. Great hack.

Nuseir Yassin 2:16:57 And then just, uh, copy their thumbnail and copy the title.

Ranveer Allahbadia 2:16:59 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:00 Yeah, so one hack is you could go to any YouTube channel-

Prajakta Koli 2:17:04 Hmm

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:04 ... of the genre that you are operating in. So if, if Ranveer was starting out, and he was talking about fitness, I would say go to the top 10 fitness channels that, that are existing. Go to Videos, click on Most popular, and just see the subjects that have done really well.

Nuseir Yassin 2:17:17 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:17 It auto-sorts. Your first 20 videos are already there.

Prajakta Koli 2:17:19 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:19 It's just the first 20 most popular.

Nuseir Yassin 2:17:20 But, but, guys, I really hope anybody watching this, I cannot stress it enough, do not start your career by making long YouTube videos.

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:26 Yeah, yeah.

Nuseir Yassin 2:17:27 It, it will ruin your dream. There's no discoverability algorithm-

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:30 Agreed

Nuseir Yassin 2:17:31 ... in this. Like, just like, this is only when you're big enough.

Prajakta Koli 2:17:33 Hmm.

Nuseir Yassin 2:17:34 For now, focus on TikTok, Instagram-

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:36 Yeah

Nuseir Yassin 2:17:36 ... YouTube Shorts.

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:36 But there's like, this comes with caveats. For example, for example-

Nikhil Kamath 2:17:40 Hmm

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:40 ... you want to, you, you could do long videos. For example, if you're a bunch of friends, you want to start a podcast, you could, but you optimize for short video output.

Nuseir Yassin 2:17:49 Yes.

Prajakta Koli 2:17:49 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:49 That's what you optimize for. You could do long-form video, but likelihood of success is very low.

Prajakta Koli 2:17:53 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:53 If you optimize for short video output.

Nuseir Yassin 2:17:55 Yes.

Prajakta Koli 2:17:56 Like-

Tanmay Bhat 2:17:56 In fact, now, a lot of people actually do podcasts very much keeping in mind that I'm actually not shooting a two-hour podcast. I'm shooting 20 clips.

Nuseir Yassin 2:18:03 Yeah.

Prajakta Koli 2:18:03 Hmm.

Nuseir Yassin 2:18:03 That's fine.

Tanmay Bhat 2:18:04 You were saying?

Prajakta Koli 2:18:05 Like, when we used to do this, right, when we started off, we would upload a YouTube video, and back, uh, Instagram had just started video on it. So we used to cut a 20-second trailer from our video and then-

Tanmay Bhat 2:18:18 [chuckles] Yeah, put it on to Instagram

Prajakta Koli 2:18:19 ... put it on Instagram and say, "Full video on YouTube."

Tanmay Bhat 2:18:21 Hmm.

Prajakta Koli 2:18:21 But that did wonders for us.

Tanmay Bhat 2:18:23 Hmm.

Prajakta Koli 2:18:23 So I feel like you can use that model right now by what he's saying, like, make a longer video, but then optimize it-

Tanmay Bhat 2:18:29 Optimize it for short

Prajakta Koli 2:18:30 ... by cutting tiny bits of it and putting it on YouTube.