Book of a strictly business varieties weekly podcasts featuring conversations about the business of media and entertainment.

Book of a strictly business varieties weekly podcasts featuring conversations about the business of media and entertainment.

I'm TV business writer Jennifer Moss.

I'm TV business writer Jennifer Moss.

Nebula, which launched in twenty nineteen, describes itself as a creator focused, creator built, creator first premium streaming service akin to a Netflix or Hulu, but with the athos of Patreon. The four year old indie streaming service, which is backed by creator owned management company Standard and a minority stake held by Curiosity Stream, costs five dollars a month or fifty dollars a year to subscribe to. It currently tolls six hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and past one hundred thousand daily active users in October. Nebula is home to the popular amazing race style online competition series Jetlag The Game, which is half a million subscribers on YouTube, as well as the Theater in the Round, Shakespearean trans Coming Out Story of the Prince, and Night of the Coconut, the debut film from Patrick Wilms. Unlike other streamers, Nebula sees YouTube as a partner, not a competitor, with episodes of Nebula series usually seeing a week long exclusive window on Nebula before creators post them to YouTube and use them to in turn promote Nebula. In August, Nebula named jet Lagstar Sam Dunby its first chief content officer, and is currently promoting its fall lineup of originals. We'll be back with Dave after this break here to talk about the growth of the indie platform and plans to expand on its slate of original series on today's Strictly Business podcast is Nebula CEO Dave Whiscus. I'd like to start with, just for our audience members who might not be familiar with Nebula, what is it in your own roof?

Nebula, which launched in twenty nineteen, describes itself as a creator focused, creator built, creator first premium streaming service akin to a Netflix or Hulu, but with the athos of Patreon. The four year old indie streaming service, which is backed by creator owned management company Standard and a minority stake held by Curiosity Stream, costs five dollars a month or fifty dollars a year to subscribe to. It currently tolls six hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and past one hundred thousand daily active users in October. Nebula is home to the popular amazing race style online competition series Jetlag The Game, which is half a million subscribers on YouTube, as well as the Theater in the Round, Shakespearean trans Coming Out Story of the Prince, and Night of the Coconut, the debut film from Patrick Wilms. Unlike other streamers, Nebula sees YouTube as a partner, not a competitor, with episodes of Nebula series usually seeing a week long exclusive window on Nebula before creators post them to YouTube and use them to in turn promote Nebula. In August, Nebula named jet Lagstar Sam Dunby its first chief content officer, and is currently promoting its fall lineup of originals. We'll be back with Dave after this break here to talk about the growth of the indie platform and plans to expand on its slate of original series on today's Strictly Business podcast is Nebula CEO Dave Whiscus. I'd like to start with, just for our audience members who might not be familiar with Nebula, what is it in your own roof?

There should be an easier answer to this question. Makes it complicated is that nothing like this has really been achieved before. And I don't necessarily mean that in a grand standing sort of way. It's just that it always ends up being like a tech company who tries to do a thing with creators, or an entertainment media company who tries to do user generated content stuff like Quibi or something. It's never the creators starting their own thing and then like really landing it. And in our case, it's a group of creators who got together because we saw that very simply on a creator career path, step one is YouTube or whatever, and step say ten is Netflix. The problem is where are steps two through nine? If we want that to exist, we want to build that bridge. We have to build it. And so the purpose of Nebula, the thing that we're building, the thing that we have built, it is intended to be a way for the creators to to sort of traverse the the vast space between user generating content and more traditionally accepted forms of media and entertainment. And it's it's almost a fraught answer to say to focus on, like what the creators get out of this, But what we've learned is that so much of the relationship, so much of what makes this this kind of thing powerful, is the relationship between the audience and the creator. That's where we win. It's that sort of parasocial dynamics. So for the audience at the base level, earliest days, it's about getting access to things early, it's about getting access to behind the scenes content. Not this similar from like the value proposition of a Patreon or something like that. As we look out into the future, we've always been building up our originals, building up our stable of you know, content that is made here and in the case of like a jet lag might end up also on YouTube as a way to pull people in, but things that have our logo on it. The idea is a little bit less Patreon, a little bit more a twenty four which can be a brand definition here's what creators are capable of. And then step three in that, I guess, is Nebula being more of a Netflix style destination home for really great things that are made by people who might not have had the opportunity or the means to do those projects within the traditional Hollywood system or traditional media system.

There should be an easier answer to this question. Makes it complicated is that nothing like this has really been achieved before. And I don't necessarily mean that in a grand standing sort of way. It's just that it always ends up being like a tech company who tries to do a thing with creators, or an entertainment media company who tries to do user generated content stuff like Quibi or something. It's never the creators starting their own thing and then like really landing it. And in our case, it's a group of creators who got together because we saw that very simply on a creator career path, step one is YouTube or whatever, and step say ten is Netflix. The problem is where are steps two through nine? If we want that to exist, we want to build that bridge. We have to build it. And so the purpose of Nebula, the thing that we're building, the thing that we have built, it is intended to be a way for the creators to to sort of traverse the the vast space between user generating content and more traditionally accepted forms of media and entertainment. And it's it's almost a fraught answer to say to focus on, like what the creators get out of this, But what we've learned is that so much of the relationship, so much of what makes this this kind of thing powerful, is the relationship between the audience and the creator. That's where we win. It's that sort of parasocial dynamics. So for the audience at the base level, earliest days, it's about getting access to things early, it's about getting access to behind the scenes content. Not this similar from like the value proposition of a Patreon or something like that. As we look out into the future, we've always been building up our originals, building up our stable of you know, content that is made here and in the case of like a jet lag might end up also on YouTube as a way to pull people in, but things that have our logo on it. The idea is a little bit less Patreon, a little bit more a twenty four which can be a brand definition here's what creators are capable of. And then step three in that, I guess, is Nebula being more of a Netflix style destination home for really great things that are made by people who might not have had the opportunity or the means to do those projects within the traditional Hollywood system or traditional media system.

What is again asking you to define here?

What is again asking you to define here?

Standard which is a company that is behind Nebula and existed preceded Nebula's launch.

Standard which is a company that is behind Nebula and existed preceded Nebula's launch.

Very simply a talent management company. We work with a bunch of creators. We book sponsors on their shows and help them develop their businesses. And along the way we realize that there are some gaps in the industry, like around licensing and things like that, and we had been working We've been chatting with YouTube back when they were still doing originals. They had asked us for some pitches for original shows. We sent them over and they kind of never got back to us. So we decided, no, what, We're going to start our own streaming video platform.

Very simply a talent management company. We work with a bunch of creators. We book sponsors on their shows and help them develop their businesses. And along the way we realize that there are some gaps in the industry, like around licensing and things like that, and we had been working We've been chatting with YouTube back when they were still doing originals. They had asked us for some pitches for original shows. We sent them over and they kind of never got back to us. So we decided, no, what, We're going to start our own streaming video platform.

So standard is there to help creators build and guide and run their business operations, and Nebulas is kind of a consequence of that.

So standard is there to help creators build and guide and run their business operations, and Nebulas is kind of a consequence of that.

When we're exactly if you remember where and when where Nebula came from and what was part of the we can actually make this work when something like a Vessel did not work.

When we're exactly if you remember where and when where Nebula came from and what was part of the we can actually make this work when something like a Vessel did not work.

Yeah, I think Vessel was like as a technology driven technology solution made by technology people. There's business, there's technology, there's maybe some entertainment media in there. I don't want to comment too hard on them. But for us, it came organically. We had been approached by the group that was building what became Peacock in the end, wanting to bring like user generated content stuff onto a new platform they were building. They wanted to talk licensing, but how they approached the licensing deals it sort of didn't make much sense because it would be wildly different from creator to creator, and we kind of wanted to take the collective bargaining power, the leverage that we had as a as a group and kind of get everybody a more consistent deal. At the same time, we were being approached by Vimeo, the lovely people at Vimeo who they were saying, they picked one creator and they said, this person should have their own streaming service. We can build an over the top solution and empower that streaming service as well. That guy makes a video every three months. What kind of streaming service would that be? You're paying what five dollars a month for a content catalog of sixteen videos? Come on like that doesn't And they said, do you have any other creators who are more frequent, who for whom that would make sense? And said, well, no, The only way that would really make any times as if it were all of the creators, And oh, oh, that's an idea. What if we did that? And looking at the over the top streaming solutions at the time, how cheap it had gotten, and how doing something like that could provide a content licensing engine. Potentially there were multiple problems that could be solved at once, the licensing thing and you know, building out some sort of test bed of a new business venture for creators. And I took the idea to it. This would have been i want to say, November of twenty eighteen October November of twenty eighteen. I took to the creators and I've put this long email like here's kind of what I'm thinking, here's my vision for this. And I expected it would be a six month climb to convince everybody like, let's get it, let's get everybody on board. I knew that I could because it was just it was inexpensive enough that there wasn't a ton of risk in it, which had to come up with enough value proposition to the creators. So I figured out, well, give me six months and I'll eventually get everybody there. I sent out the email and instantly every single creator was like, we have to do this.

Yeah, I think Vessel was like as a technology driven technology solution made by technology people. There's business, there's technology, there's maybe some entertainment media in there. I don't want to comment too hard on them. But for us, it came organically. We had been approached by the group that was building what became Peacock in the end, wanting to bring like user generated content stuff onto a new platform they were building. They wanted to talk licensing, but how they approached the licensing deals it sort of didn't make much sense because it would be wildly different from creator to creator, and we kind of wanted to take the collective bargaining power, the leverage that we had as a as a group and kind of get everybody a more consistent deal. At the same time, we were being approached by Vimeo, the lovely people at Vimeo who they were saying, they picked one creator and they said, this person should have their own streaming service. We can build an over the top solution and empower that streaming service as well. That guy makes a video every three months. What kind of streaming service would that be? You're paying what five dollars a month for a content catalog of sixteen videos? Come on like that doesn't And they said, do you have any other creators who are more frequent, who for whom that would make sense? And said, well, no, The only way that would really make any times as if it were all of the creators, And oh, oh, that's an idea. What if we did that? And looking at the over the top streaming solutions at the time, how cheap it had gotten, and how doing something like that could provide a content licensing engine. Potentially there were multiple problems that could be solved at once, the licensing thing and you know, building out some sort of test bed of a new business venture for creators. And I took the idea to it. This would have been i want to say, November of twenty eighteen October November of twenty eighteen. I took to the creators and I've put this long email like here's kind of what I'm thinking, here's my vision for this. And I expected it would be a six month climb to convince everybody like, let's get it, let's get everybody on board. I knew that I could because it was just it was inexpensive enough that there wasn't a ton of risk in it, which had to come up with enough value proposition to the creators. So I figured out, well, give me six months and I'll eventually get everybody there. I sent out the email and instantly every single creator was like, we have to do this.

Let's go getting going doing that. I know you will.

Let's go getting going doing that. I know you will.

Started with I think it's one hundred thousand dollars to get Nebiella actually ready for a launch.

Started with I think it's one hundred thousand dollars to get Nebiella actually ready for a launch.

Where did that from? I know you didn't have venture capital.

Where did that from? I know you didn't have venture capital.

The extent that that can be true, it is true because the calculus there is how much were we paying the engineer who was working on it for the time that they are the engineers who were working on it over the time that they spent working on it. It wasn't like we wrote a hundred thousand dollars check. It's more like we as a business standard. We have a whole what you can call it. We have a back end software that we developed, the help power like Creator Things, this booking of sponsors and voicing stuff like that. It was sort of like a little mini sales force for Creator Things, and we've been building that since twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, oh, twenty seventeen. The engineering team was working on it when we were looking at doing an over the top video solution. Well, like I said, we're talking to Vimeo, but they wanted to own the credit card relationship. And coming from my years of working with Apple as a designer, I was keenly aware and my years of being a musician, I was keenly aware that what made the iTunes music store work is that when you want another song, Apple already has your credit card number, you just press a button. And what made the app store work is that when you want that new app, Apple already has your credit card number and you press a button. By giving Vimeo full ownership of the credit card relationship, we would potentially be cutting ourselves off future opportunities where we could do cool, interesting you know, integrations of sorts by virtue of just you know, we don't even own the actual relationship, and you know what if things fell apart with that company, anything had happened, we don't want to We don't want to cut off all future possibilities. And so we found a different partner instead, and it required a little bit of development effort on our side. So we just we knew we could either reassign an engineer or make one more higher, and so we just made one more higher onto the team. And then as the project developed, it became a little bit more complex when we made a second higher and I think we only had the two people. By launch, there was like two engineers working on it, which is where we came up with the number like those two engineers over that period of time, roughly one hundred k. Not an exact science on that. It's hard for it to because they were also working on other stuff at the same time, but the money came from Standard was profitable. We had those resources and the intent was always let's keep reinvesting our successes into building more successes. And this was a thing that felt like it could potentially become something. We had no idea that it would turn into this. I mean, I guess we had hopes, but even our hopes, it never quite This never seems possible, this never seemed.

The extent that that can be true, it is true because the calculus there is how much were we paying the engineer who was working on it for the time that they are the engineers who were working on it over the time that they spent working on it. It wasn't like we wrote a hundred thousand dollars check. It's more like we as a business standard. We have a whole what you can call it. We have a back end software that we developed, the help power like Creator Things, this booking of sponsors and voicing stuff like that. It was sort of like a little mini sales force for Creator Things, and we've been building that since twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, oh, twenty seventeen. The engineering team was working on it when we were looking at doing an over the top video solution. Well, like I said, we're talking to Vimeo, but they wanted to own the credit card relationship. And coming from my years of working with Apple as a designer, I was keenly aware and my years of being a musician, I was keenly aware that what made the iTunes music store work is that when you want another song, Apple already has your credit card number, you just press a button. And what made the app store work is that when you want that new app, Apple already has your credit card number and you press a button. By giving Vimeo full ownership of the credit card relationship, we would potentially be cutting ourselves off future opportunities where we could do cool, interesting you know, integrations of sorts by virtue of just you know, we don't even own the actual relationship, and you know what if things fell apart with that company, anything had happened, we don't want to We don't want to cut off all future possibilities. And so we found a different partner instead, and it required a little bit of development effort on our side. So we just we knew we could either reassign an engineer or make one more higher, and so we just made one more higher onto the team. And then as the project developed, it became a little bit more complex when we made a second higher and I think we only had the two people. By launch, there was like two engineers working on it, which is where we came up with the number like those two engineers over that period of time, roughly one hundred k. Not an exact science on that. It's hard for it to because they were also working on other stuff at the same time, but the money came from Standard was profitable. We had those resources and the intent was always let's keep reinvesting our successes into building more successes. And this was a thing that felt like it could potentially become something. We had no idea that it would turn into this. I mean, I guess we had hopes, but even our hopes, it never quite This never seems possible, this never seemed.

Realistic talking about what it has turned into. This is and correct me if any of this is out of date. But currently Nebula is valued at one hundred and fifty million and there are six hundred and fifty thousand paying users and that's still with no venture capital funding.

Realistic talking about what it has turned into. This is and correct me if any of this is out of date. But currently Nebula is valued at one hundred and fifty million and there are six hundred and fifty thousand paying users and that's still with no venture capital funding.

Pretty close Standard. The valuation is on Standard because it's confusing. Standard is the company that owns Nebula, and while Nebula is technically a separate LLC for a handful of reasons, when we talk valuation, we're talking about the entirety of the machine. So much of the creator relationships and audience relationships and partnerships and everything happened up at the stand undred level, so it's kind of it's hard to fully disconnect the two. But in that number, when we came up with the number, it was based on like the totality of everything that we're doing, okay, and then the year, Yeah, six hundred and at the moment, like six hundred and eighty thousand, okay, And.

Pretty close Standard. The valuation is on Standard because it's confusing. Standard is the company that owns Nebula, and while Nebula is technically a separate LLC for a handful of reasons, when we talk valuation, we're talking about the entirety of the machine. So much of the creator relationships and audience relationships and partnerships and everything happened up at the stand undred level, so it's kind of it's hard to fully disconnect the two. But in that number, when we came up with the number, it was based on like the totality of everything that we're doing, okay, and then the year, Yeah, six hundred and at the moment, like six hundred and eighty thousand, okay, And.

Then I believe you tweeted recently that Nebula just passed one hundred thousand daily active users.

Then I believe you tweeted recently that Nebula just passed one hundred thousand daily active users.

Yeah, that was a fun one, and we're we're getting close to three hundred thousand monthly active all right.

Yeah, that was a fun one, and we're we're getting close to three hundred thousand monthly active all right.

So with that behind it, you know, we've talked a lot about the business mechanics of getting it launched first, but where are those views coming from the content on Nebula? What can you explain what the system is and the current funneling of the exclusive window of this content before creators post it elsewhere like on YouTube.

So with that behind it, you know, we've talked a lot about the business mechanics of getting it launched first, but where are those views coming from the content on Nebula? What can you explain what the system is and the current funneling of the exclusive window of this content before creators post it elsewhere like on YouTube.

It's really to choose your own adventure story as a creator. If you want to make things that only live on Nebula, you can. If you want to make things that live on Nebula for a week and then go to YouTube, you can. We have different naming structures for these things to try to disambiguate it for the audience, but the intent is that Nebula is like the canonical home of the things that these creators make. And in the case of jet Lag, the business model is built around the YouTube version that every video ends with a cliffhanger that makes you want to go sign up for Nebula that was baked in from day one. That's always been the plan, and that works very effectively. And there are some creators who they were able to get ahead on schedule, and you know, maybe they make one video per month, but they got a head on schedule. So the video always goes to Nebula, and then last month's video goes to YouTube at the same time, and we call those Nebula. First, there's full on Nebula original productions which will only ever be on Nebula, and then there's like bonus content kind of DVD extras we call Nebula. Plus. The way that the audience comes in sort of depends on the creator. For some creators, they sign up because they really want to see the next video. For some creators, the audience signs up because there's bonus stuff that they really want to see. For some creators, many creators, it's talking about the originals is what pulls people in. And then there's of course the people who come and sign up just because they want to support the creators. Again, I think that what makes us so different and what's hard for more traditional systems to it's hard to fit us in with more traditional systems because the audience, a large portion of the audience signs up for Nebula because they believe in us and they want to support these creators. I don't think Disney has that kind of relationship. I don't think Netflix has that kind of relationship.

It's really to choose your own adventure story as a creator. If you want to make things that only live on Nebula, you can. If you want to make things that live on Nebula for a week and then go to YouTube, you can. We have different naming structures for these things to try to disambiguate it for the audience, but the intent is that Nebula is like the canonical home of the things that these creators make. And in the case of jet Lag, the business model is built around the YouTube version that every video ends with a cliffhanger that makes you want to go sign up for Nebula that was baked in from day one. That's always been the plan, and that works very effectively. And there are some creators who they were able to get ahead on schedule, and you know, maybe they make one video per month, but they got a head on schedule. So the video always goes to Nebula, and then last month's video goes to YouTube at the same time, and we call those Nebula. First, there's full on Nebula original productions which will only ever be on Nebula, and then there's like bonus content kind of DVD extras we call Nebula. Plus. The way that the audience comes in sort of depends on the creator. For some creators, they sign up because they really want to see the next video. For some creators, the audience signs up because there's bonus stuff that they really want to see. For some creators, many creators, it's talking about the originals is what pulls people in. And then there's of course the people who come and sign up just because they want to support the creators. Again, I think that what makes us so different and what's hard for more traditional systems to it's hard to fit us in with more traditional systems because the audience, a large portion of the audience signs up for Nebula because they believe in us and they want to support these creators. I don't think Disney has that kind of relationship. I don't think Netflix has that kind of relationship.

We'll be back with more from Dave after this break into Netflix. I know there was a stot that.

We'll be back with more from Dave after this break into Netflix. I know there was a stot that.

Nebula is second only to Netflix and customer retention.

Nebula is second only to Netflix and customer retention.

How do you guys measure that churn?

How do you guys measure that churn?

We're using antenna data for that. I believe Netflix is three point six percent churn rate and the purported number two Disney plus is around four and a half percent turn rate based on the last numbers that we saw, and we, depending on where we are in a month, hover between like three point eight to four percent. So according to Antenna data, if they were to classify us in the same ranking, we would be number two for customer attention, behind Netflix.

We're using antenna data for that. I believe Netflix is three point six percent churn rate and the purported number two Disney plus is around four and a half percent turn rate based on the last numbers that we saw, and we, depending on where we are in a month, hover between like three point eight to four percent. So according to Antenna data, if they were to classify us in the same ranking, we would be number two for customer attention, behind Netflix.

What would you say is the biggest factor keeping that churn rate for you?

What would you say is the biggest factor keeping that churn rate for you?

I think the audience just really loves the creators. They want to see the creators succeed, and when they come in, they stay because they're they're invested in the story. And the cheap cop out retort to that would be that so many of our customers come in like overall, a little over fifty percent of the people who sign up for Nebula sign up for annual plans, So of course monthly train is going to be low. And Netflix doesn't offer an annual plan. I don't believe many of the big streamers don't, which is weird. I've got thoughts on that, But I would argue that the reason that our customers sign up for annuals so heavily to begin with is because they they know what they're getting into, they're committing. They know that we get more money up front, they know that things are going to grow and evolve over time. They know that they're going to get more stuff. Why wouldn't they spend thirty bucks? And I think that's what it comes down to. They believe in what we're doing. They want to see how this unfolds, and they're making a one year investment.

I think the audience just really loves the creators. They want to see the creators succeed, and when they come in, they stay because they're they're invested in the story. And the cheap cop out retort to that would be that so many of our customers come in like overall, a little over fifty percent of the people who sign up for Nebula sign up for annual plans, So of course monthly train is going to be low. And Netflix doesn't offer an annual plan. I don't believe many of the big streamers don't, which is weird. I've got thoughts on that, But I would argue that the reason that our customers sign up for annuals so heavily to begin with is because they they know what they're getting into, they're committing. They know that we get more money up front, they know that things are going to grow and evolve over time. They know that they're going to get more stuff. Why wouldn't they spend thirty bucks? And I think that's what it comes down to. They believe in what we're doing. They want to see how this unfolds, and they're making a one year investment.

In that story, we mentioned jet Lag, but I'm going to go into a little more specifically now, the travel game show that I'm obsessed with and the reason I signed up for Nebula. When I first discovered jet Lag, I watched everything currently available on YouTube, and I believe we were in the middle of one of the seasons at that point. Then I went and signed up Fornibula because I wanted to see what was currently there. We got you, Yeah, you got me, and I watched Crime Spree, which for people to know that was like the unoffsual first season that's only available to stream on Nebula. So I'd love to get an idea during a season of jet Lag or if you have another example of another show that has that same format on Nebula, what do sign ups look like? What is kind of the bump that you get from something like that, especially given that if I wanted to, I could wait and watch it all on YouTube, you.

In that story, we mentioned jet Lag, but I'm going to go into a little more specifically now, the travel game show that I'm obsessed with and the reason I signed up for Nebula. When I first discovered jet Lag, I watched everything currently available on YouTube, and I believe we were in the middle of one of the seasons at that point. Then I went and signed up Fornibula because I wanted to see what was currently there. We got you, Yeah, you got me, and I watched Crime Spree, which for people to know that was like the unoffsual first season that's only available to stream on Nebula. So I'd love to get an idea during a season of jet Lag or if you have another example of another show that has that same format on Nebula, what do sign ups look like? What is kind of the bump that you get from something like that, especially given that if I wanted to, I could wait and watch it all on YouTube, you.

Could, or you could sign up. It's thirty bucks a year, which comes out to be two dollars and fifty cents a month. You know, we've done premiere events where if you're a Nebulus subscriber you get to it's first come for serve. But if you're a Nebula subscriber, you can just come to the premiere let us know. We'll get you to the spot, and the spots usually I say sell out, they're free. The spots sell out like within minutes, and we'll get every single time we'll get one or two people who are like, if I'm not signed up for Nebula, can I just buy a ticket? And the answer is yeah, it's thirty dollars and it comes with a free year of Nebula. Like, it's thirty dollars. Your uber to the venue is going to cost you. That the price point is so low, especially relative to other streamers. I'm not saying that this is no money, and I don't want to ignore that that there's income disparity. I don't want to make that assumption. But when you consider the emotional attachment that the audiences tend to have, and for a show like jet Lag, people really love Sam and Ben and Adam, they love them. The jet Lags are kind of intense about it. They're the they have a lot of fun. We get fan art. I get fan art. I'm not even on the show. Jet Lag. Fans drop pictures of all of us and they are constantly discussing us on Discord and on Twitter, and they just really, really really love the show and that kind of emotional attachment. Of course, they want to see the next episode. When something can reach people and bring a little bit of joy like that, and it has that spirit of independence. It's not a big budget Hollywood style game show production that's all full of spectacle, and like, this is people doing a thing that it looks like you could do that. We get people asking all the time, can you make like a home version that I could play with my friends, or can will you sell the cards so that I can do the same thing. But we're careful about that because I don't want to encourage people to jump on planes or do anything that annoys other people. And a bigger conversations we had about how a thing like that could be done ethically. I know that the jet Lag team works really hard to make sure that anything they do, like when they film, they're always consciously people's privacy. They're not out there to be like you know, jerk YouTubers getting everybody's way, and so coming up with a way to share that that isn't encouraging people to be obnoxious as something, but that kind of relationship when an audience loves to show that much, and when it's that easy to project yourself in or feel like you're friends with these people, of course you want to hit the button. That's not the hill to climb, you know, A five dollars a month or thirty dollars a year hill to sign up for that not insurmountable, and so we do see a pretty big bump obviously when jet Lags on air, we conversions sign ups for jet Lag go up dramatically, but it kind of happens that way. We have shows that drive huge numbers. Interestingly, by various metrics, jet Lag is not our number one show. It is, I think by audience engagement in terms of just people being excited about it and sending us fan art, certainly our number one show, but not always by watch time, not always by sign ups. So whenever certain kinds of projects go out, I think jet Legs are our only travel or game show style thing at the moment in that format. We're working on some stuff, handful of things. We don't want to just make jet Lag two. We want to be really careful about one not saturating, but two not like, I don't know, diluting, if that makes sense. We want to reinvest our success into doing something creatively interesting, not just doing the same thing again. But there's a number of formats. Different creators work on different things. It's more about like audience depth and audience love will drive the big numbers.

Could, or you could sign up. It's thirty bucks a year, which comes out to be two dollars and fifty cents a month. You know, we've done premiere events where if you're a Nebulus subscriber you get to it's first come for serve. But if you're a Nebula subscriber, you can just come to the premiere let us know. We'll get you to the spot, and the spots usually I say sell out, they're free. The spots sell out like within minutes, and we'll get every single time we'll get one or two people who are like, if I'm not signed up for Nebula, can I just buy a ticket? And the answer is yeah, it's thirty dollars and it comes with a free year of Nebula. Like, it's thirty dollars. Your uber to the venue is going to cost you. That the price point is so low, especially relative to other streamers. I'm not saying that this is no money, and I don't want to ignore that that there's income disparity. I don't want to make that assumption. But when you consider the emotional attachment that the audiences tend to have, and for a show like jet Lag, people really love Sam and Ben and Adam, they love them. The jet Lags are kind of intense about it. They're the they have a lot of fun. We get fan art. I get fan art. I'm not even on the show. Jet Lag. Fans drop pictures of all of us and they are constantly discussing us on Discord and on Twitter, and they just really, really really love the show and that kind of emotional attachment. Of course, they want to see the next episode. When something can reach people and bring a little bit of joy like that, and it has that spirit of independence. It's not a big budget Hollywood style game show production that's all full of spectacle, and like, this is people doing a thing that it looks like you could do that. We get people asking all the time, can you make like a home version that I could play with my friends, or can will you sell the cards so that I can do the same thing. But we're careful about that because I don't want to encourage people to jump on planes or do anything that annoys other people. And a bigger conversations we had about how a thing like that could be done ethically. I know that the jet Lag team works really hard to make sure that anything they do, like when they film, they're always consciously people's privacy. They're not out there to be like you know, jerk YouTubers getting everybody's way, and so coming up with a way to share that that isn't encouraging people to be obnoxious as something, but that kind of relationship when an audience loves to show that much, and when it's that easy to project yourself in or feel like you're friends with these people, of course you want to hit the button. That's not the hill to climb, you know, A five dollars a month or thirty dollars a year hill to sign up for that not insurmountable, and so we do see a pretty big bump obviously when jet Lags on air, we conversions sign ups for jet Lag go up dramatically, but it kind of happens that way. We have shows that drive huge numbers. Interestingly, by various metrics, jet Lag is not our number one show. It is, I think by audience engagement in terms of just people being excited about it and sending us fan art, certainly our number one show, but not always by watch time, not always by sign ups. So whenever certain kinds of projects go out, I think jet Legs are our only travel or game show style thing at the moment in that format. We're working on some stuff, handful of things. We don't want to just make jet Lag two. We want to be really careful about one not saturating, but two not like, I don't know, diluting, if that makes sense. We want to reinvest our success into doing something creatively interesting, not just doing the same thing again. But there's a number of formats. Different creators work on different things. It's more about like audience depth and audience love will drive the big numbers.

So with that all that said, why is.

So with that all that said, why is.

Jet LaGG not exclusively on Nebula, And that same question going for any really high trafficking Nebula stuff, and if those conversations have ever been had with those creators and why from a business standpoint, someone would see, well, obviously this does very well and it could do better if it only existed here.

Jet LaGG not exclusively on Nebula, And that same question going for any really high trafficking Nebula stuff, and if those conversations have ever been had with those creators and why from a business standpoint, someone would see, well, obviously this does very well and it could do better if it only existed here.

It's easy to think that what we're building is a YouTube competitor, and if you imagine it as a YouTube competitor, it's easy to think that anything we do from any creator we work with, the goal should be for it to be exclusively on Nebula. What we're really building is a Netflix competitor, and the path we're going to have to take to get there. YouTube is our biggest partner. YouTube is our closest ally. YouTube is the top of the funnel for us. We're just sold bit further down, and the way that the audience dynamics work, the YouTube algorithm, much maligned, is our greatest champion. It's out there finding new fans for us. It's out there finding new people who love the things that our creators make. And so we've designed our system, our entire business model around leveraging that to bring those fans to us. How often do you get, like an egga corporation building you a free machine to bring you audience first. I'm going to take advantage of that. Someday. It's entirely possible that any of our shows become exclusive to Nebula, not really by design, at least at the moment we have folks. Lindsay Ellis is one hundred percent exclusive to Nebula, not really by our request so much as hers. She sort of got tired of the way she was in the public eye, and she sort of wanted to approach her career differently, and we were supportive of that. He absolutely kills on Watschteim. Her fans love her too. But it wasn't because we're like, we must collect all of the things and they must all be hours. We're not like Thanos out there grabbing all the Infinity stones. We're not here to catch them all. I'm back to Pokemon. The goal rather is to build a bridge. I want to occupy a much more a twenty four style space where we work with the creators, we help them make the We help them make the things that they want to make, we help them develop as creators. I'm in La right now on set with Jesse Earl Jesse Gender, who's directing her first larger, larger budget short film, sci fi production, narrative fiction. We've got like panavision, camera and the actors you've heard of and all of this. And the idea is that if we provide Jesse with a structure that can help her become successful, she can actually become a real filmmaker. She has the talent, she has the skill, she has the ambition. It's for most of our creators, those aren't the gap. For most people on YouTube, those aren't the gap. It usually comes down to connections, funding and experience. And so what we're trying to do with Nebula is build a system that can provide the connections the funding and the experience and build a bridge so not everything has to be exclusive here. I would love it if we could live in a world where Jesse or other filmmakers we work with Patrick Williams start making movies that go to a wide theatrical release and there's some segment of the audience where the only thing they know Nebula as is the you know, the stinger that comes up before the movie starts, the same way that you would see the A twenty four logo or the sky Dance logo, Amble and Entertainment like these kinds of things. I guess the closest analog for the division is something like if A twenty four had their own streaming service, you can see everything everywhere, all at once on any of the things. But if you go to A twenty four saying you can see all of their productions, That's kind of how we're thinking about it.

It's easy to think that what we're building is a YouTube competitor, and if you imagine it as a YouTube competitor, it's easy to think that anything we do from any creator we work with, the goal should be for it to be exclusively on Nebula. What we're really building is a Netflix competitor, and the path we're going to have to take to get there. YouTube is our biggest partner. YouTube is our closest ally. YouTube is the top of the funnel for us. We're just sold bit further down, and the way that the audience dynamics work, the YouTube algorithm, much maligned, is our greatest champion. It's out there finding new fans for us. It's out there finding new people who love the things that our creators make. And so we've designed our system, our entire business model around leveraging that to bring those fans to us. How often do you get, like an egga corporation building you a free machine to bring you audience first. I'm going to take advantage of that. Someday. It's entirely possible that any of our shows become exclusive to Nebula, not really by design, at least at the moment we have folks. Lindsay Ellis is one hundred percent exclusive to Nebula, not really by our request so much as hers. She sort of got tired of the way she was in the public eye, and she sort of wanted to approach her career differently, and we were supportive of that. He absolutely kills on Watschteim. Her fans love her too. But it wasn't because we're like, we must collect all of the things and they must all be hours. We're not like Thanos out there grabbing all the Infinity stones. We're not here to catch them all. I'm back to Pokemon. The goal rather is to build a bridge. I want to occupy a much more a twenty four style space where we work with the creators, we help them make the We help them make the things that they want to make, we help them develop as creators. I'm in La right now on set with Jesse Earl Jesse Gender, who's directing her first larger, larger budget short film, sci fi production, narrative fiction. We've got like panavision, camera and the actors you've heard of and all of this. And the idea is that if we provide Jesse with a structure that can help her become successful, she can actually become a real filmmaker. She has the talent, she has the skill, she has the ambition. It's for most of our creators, those aren't the gap. For most people on YouTube, those aren't the gap. It usually comes down to connections, funding and experience. And so what we're trying to do with Nebula is build a system that can provide the connections the funding and the experience and build a bridge so not everything has to be exclusive here. I would love it if we could live in a world where Jesse or other filmmakers we work with Patrick Williams start making movies that go to a wide theatrical release and there's some segment of the audience where the only thing they know Nebula as is the you know, the stinger that comes up before the movie starts, the same way that you would see the A twenty four logo or the sky Dance logo, Amble and Entertainment like these kinds of things. I guess the closest analog for the division is something like if A twenty four had their own streaming service, you can see everything everywhere, all at once on any of the things. But if you go to A twenty four saying you can see all of their productions, That's kind of how we're thinking about it.

Okay, with that, I'm wondering if you can explain what the difference is between original content that lives on Nebula and a Nebula original.

Okay, with that, I'm wondering if you can explain what the difference is between original content that lives on Nebula and a Nebula original.

Is there a difference? Well, make sure.

Is there a difference? Well, make sure.

Underting you guys have a state of Nebula originals that you've announced coming in the fall, So I wonder what they are and why they're labeled that way, and what that means. A Nebula versus a creator whose content exists on Nebula if there are things commissioned by Nebula and that are owned by Nebula versus content that does a creator own it when it exists on there and is on.

Underting you guys have a state of Nebula originals that you've announced coming in the fall, So I wonder what they are and why they're labeled that way, and what that means. A Nebula versus a creator whose content exists on Nebula if there are things commissioned by Nebula and that are owned by Nebula versus content that does a creator own it when it exists on there and is on.

Nebula Ooh, there's a part of this question I'm really excited to answer. I'll save that part. So there's the it's a yeah, this isn't entirely intuitive and there's not a great solution for this. But the best way to think of this is if we are paying for it in total or you know, in majority, and we are providing our own production resources. We have an entire Nebula Studios team, which is headed up by a former Marvel Studios producer, that exists specifically to help creators make the things that they want to make. So, like for Identities, the Nebula original film that we're working on here in La this week, we have an entire production team working together to support Jesse in making this film that is very clearly a Nebula original, writing, production, support, with providing funding, and it'll live exclusively on Nebula for a creator who they made a video and they also made like a five minute companion piece that doesn't really fit on YouTube. So they're going to make it like a Nebula exclusive thing that's not really an original, not in not in the way that you'd think prestige original. It's more of like bonus content, like a DVD extra, So we kind of break it down like that. If it's its own thing and stands alone and you could imagine, you know, sitting down and hitting play on just that and we help to make it, then that's an original. If there's prestige, that's an original. But if it's like a thing that kind of needs the rest of the system to make any sense, that's more of a plus kind of thing. But the other part of your question, like who owns it, Every single thing that the creators make that go on Nebula, including every single one of our originals, are owned by the creators. We do not own the intellectual property. If it's a Nebula original, we get an exclusive an exclusive streaming license, but we don't own the IP. So if in the case of the short film that we're working on now, Identities, it could be treated as a pilot episode of a show, and Jesse could take that pilot to Netflix, to HBO, to whomever and sell the show. They would have to buy their rights to the pilot from us, the streaming rights to the pilot from us, but Jesse could sell the entire show. We don't get a penny. You can develop merchandising around it. We don't get a penny. Ask George Lucas how valuable that can be.

Nebula Ooh, there's a part of this question I'm really excited to answer. I'll save that part. So there's the it's a yeah, this isn't entirely intuitive and there's not a great solution for this. But the best way to think of this is if we are paying for it in total or you know, in majority, and we are providing our own production resources. We have an entire Nebula Studios team, which is headed up by a former Marvel Studios producer, that exists specifically to help creators make the things that they want to make. So, like for Identities, the Nebula original film that we're working on here in La this week, we have an entire production team working together to support Jesse in making this film that is very clearly a Nebula original, writing, production, support, with providing funding, and it'll live exclusively on Nebula for a creator who they made a video and they also made like a five minute companion piece that doesn't really fit on YouTube. So they're going to make it like a Nebula exclusive thing that's not really an original, not in not in the way that you'd think prestige original. It's more of like bonus content, like a DVD extra, So we kind of break it down like that. If it's its own thing and stands alone and you could imagine, you know, sitting down and hitting play on just that and we help to make it, then that's an original. If there's prestige, that's an original. But if it's like a thing that kind of needs the rest of the system to make any sense, that's more of a plus kind of thing. But the other part of your question, like who owns it, Every single thing that the creators make that go on Nebula, including every single one of our originals, are owned by the creators. We do not own the intellectual property. If it's a Nebula original, we get an exclusive an exclusive streaming license, but we don't own the IP. So if in the case of the short film that we're working on now, Identities, it could be treated as a pilot episode of a show, and Jesse could take that pilot to Netflix, to HBO, to whomever and sell the show. They would have to buy their rights to the pilot from us, the streaming rights to the pilot from us, but Jesse could sell the entire show. We don't get a penny. You can develop merchandising around it. We don't get a penny. Ask George Lucas how valuable that can be.

So does that pose, you know, concerns to Nebula as a company that you don't own the IP and could a creator take their content off Nebula anytime they wanted to.

So does that pose, you know, concerns to Nebula as a company that you don't own the IP and could a creator take their content off Nebula anytime they wanted to.

Concerns? No, No, I think that trust has to be at the core of what we do. Like I don't want to be in business with anybody who doesn't want to be in business with me. I don't want people locked into a relationship for a creator. They either they believe in what we're doing and we're all on the same team, or they don't. And it's helpful to note that Nebula fifty perc of Nebula is owned by the creators. If we were to ever sell it, we have to contractually give fifty percent of that money to the creators. Whenever there's there's profit, we have to give fifty percent of that profit to the creators. This is a partnership. So when we bring a new creator in, we're not signing talent. We're bringing in a new business. It's part of the reason why we're so slow and methodical and how we grow our roster, like we're we're not signing random deals to get content. We are. You know, these are new roommates we're interviewing. These are longer term relationships. So because of that, because of the nature of the relationships, we don't see a lot of people leave. There's not a ton of hard requirements for things people are have to do. So for the folks who maybe don't have the bandwidth or aren't seeing returns, then you know, they can kind of just coast on it and keep uploading to both places and still get some level of reward. Also, we're the largest sponsor for all of our creators. We literally every month, our largest line item is we pay all of our creators to go tell our audience that they're on Nebula. So there's not a ton of incentive for anyone to walk away from that relationship. So we're not really worried about it. I think we have to lock people into anything. If the deal is good enough, if the relationship is good enough, they'll stay. And hanging on to intellectual property licenses doesn't get us out of that, it doesn't solve any problems. In fact, by not doing that, it helps us at a tempo of like we're in this together. We're helping you build things. Our mission is not to own all of the things in the world. Our mission is to help an extremely talented and ambitious group of young creators. I say young not because they're twelve, but because the industry is young, help them make the things that they want to make because we know they can. And if we're a hit maker, and if we are, if we build our reputation on trust and our ability to help achieve those goals, then that's where we're going to win. Not because we have an infinitely deep content catalog of things we own. We don't need to own everything. It's better if we don't.

Concerns? No, No, I think that trust has to be at the core of what we do. Like I don't want to be in business with anybody who doesn't want to be in business with me. I don't want people locked into a relationship for a creator. They either they believe in what we're doing and we're all on the same team, or they don't. And it's helpful to note that Nebula fifty perc of Nebula is owned by the creators. If we were to ever sell it, we have to contractually give fifty percent of that money to the creators. Whenever there's there's profit, we have to give fifty percent of that profit to the creators. This is a partnership. So when we bring a new creator in, we're not signing talent. We're bringing in a new business. It's part of the reason why we're so slow and methodical and how we grow our roster, like we're we're not signing random deals to get content. We are. You know, these are new roommates we're interviewing. These are longer term relationships. So because of that, because of the nature of the relationships, we don't see a lot of people leave. There's not a ton of hard requirements for things people are have to do. So for the folks who maybe don't have the bandwidth or aren't seeing returns, then you know, they can kind of just coast on it and keep uploading to both places and still get some level of reward. Also, we're the largest sponsor for all of our creators. We literally every month, our largest line item is we pay all of our creators to go tell our audience that they're on Nebula. So there's not a ton of incentive for anyone to walk away from that relationship. So we're not really worried about it. I think we have to lock people into anything. If the deal is good enough, if the relationship is good enough, they'll stay. And hanging on to intellectual property licenses doesn't get us out of that, it doesn't solve any problems. In fact, by not doing that, it helps us at a tempo of like we're in this together. We're helping you build things. Our mission is not to own all of the things in the world. Our mission is to help an extremely talented and ambitious group of young creators. I say young not because they're twelve, but because the industry is young, help them make the things that they want to make because we know they can. And if we're a hit maker, and if we are, if we build our reputation on trust and our ability to help achieve those goals, then that's where we're going to win. Not because we have an infinitely deep content catalog of things we own. We don't need to own everything. It's better if we don't.

Thank you for joining me today, Bab.

Thank you for joining me today, Bab.

In closing, is there anything else you want our audience to know about Nebula?

In closing, is there anything else you want our audience to know about Nebula?

There's this uphill battle we've been fighting for years to get any kind of recognition outside of our bubble. And we talked to going back to the thing with Sam and doing Netflix stuff, or you developing shows for other platforms and all of that. We've had similar conversations. We've been approached by major Hollywood development companies like yeah, we want to put your show, your creators on Netflix. We do these things and we go through the exercise like Okay, well how long would development take? What does the money look like? And it ends up being like, okay, so you want us to You want this creator to commit two years of their life to developing a thing that they sell for fifty thousand dollars and they maybe get a roll on for another maybe one hundred two hundred k, setting aside everything else they could be working on. You want them to spend two years on this for a show that you're going to cancel after one season because it's Netflix two hundred and fifty k, right, Or we could just stay on YouTube, reach hundreds of millions of people and make millions of dollars a year. Why the hell are we even talking to you? It just doesn't make any sense. Hollywood treats us as a farm league. They treat us like cheap talent. My number one goal in starting doing like real pr work and getting our name out there in a different way was getting coverage and Variety.

There's this uphill battle we've been fighting for years to get any kind of recognition outside of our bubble. And we talked to going back to the thing with Sam and doing Netflix stuff, or you developing shows for other platforms and all of that. We've had similar conversations. We've been approached by major Hollywood development companies like yeah, we want to put your show, your creators on Netflix. We do these things and we go through the exercise like Okay, well how long would development take? What does the money look like? And it ends up being like, okay, so you want us to You want this creator to commit two years of their life to developing a thing that they sell for fifty thousand dollars and they maybe get a roll on for another maybe one hundred two hundred k, setting aside everything else they could be working on. You want them to spend two years on this for a show that you're going to cancel after one season because it's Netflix two hundred and fifty k, right, Or we could just stay on YouTube, reach hundreds of millions of people and make millions of dollars a year. Why the hell are we even talking to you? It just doesn't make any sense. Hollywood treats us as a farm league. They treat us like cheap talent. My number one goal in starting doing like real pr work and getting our name out there in a different way was getting coverage and Variety.

Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of Variety Strictly Business podcast. You can find new episodes weekly on Apple Podcasts.

Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of Variety Strictly Business podcast. You can find new episodes weekly on Apple Podcasts.