Hank Green lets loose on YouTube, billionaires, and algorithms | Decoder

This is crazy. I don't know if I should say this, but there's so much money. There's people, you know, they're like, they were early at OpenAI or they were early at Meta. Like, there's a lot of them and they have too much. It's ridiculous. And sometimes they will say, "I just don't know how to deploy it in a way that's maximal." And I'm like, "Sir, it's in your bank account right now doing zilch."

Yeah. I mean, I probably should let loose a little less.

Hello. It's always great to be here. I'm a big fan of your show.

I have been the guest before, but it was a while ago.

I mean, you guys did a great job of getting people on with me. Uh, your staff is fantastic at giving me good questions to ask and then I, uh, I just try and charm my way through it.

I'm so excited. I was just on another podcast and it was, it was like 100% just like talking about memes and stuff and I was like, can we talk about business please?

Not as much as I certainly would like them to. So usually people know the shows, like they know Hank and John, and then in addition to that they know the shows. So there are shows that we make that have a lot, like big audience, that we are not involved in, we don't host, but the fact that there's like a thing sitting underneath all of it I think is a little bit mysterious and also in a way almost anachronistic, like that's not how YouTube, that's not how media works anymore. And, um, but there is, and I want people to know about it. And I think that, like honestly, like that's starting to change. Um, but yeah, it's like it's over 70 people and we make a lot of different shows. Um, so I think it's like to some extent it's like, you know SciShow or you know Eons or you know Crash Course or you know Ask Anything, but you might not, and you might know John Green, you might know Hank Green, but you probably don't know Complexly. So really part of my job right now is just to say the word Complexly a lot. So let's do that.

12 years. Yeah. 15 years. Yeah.

There was an early YouTube grant. Yeah.

Yeah. And honestly, I think that program is considered a failure internally.

But I think that it was extremely successful if you only look at the money they gave to YouTubers. If you look at the money that they gave to like media companies, it was a very bad investment. But if you only look at like Rhett and Link and Phil DeFranco and the Fine Brothers and Hank and John, it turns out there was a lot of good stuff came out of that.

So it goes. Um, yeah.

there's a big piece of this that is incentive. You know, ultimately like everything in business is incentive and there's always been a bunch of like doors open to us that feel very business. You know, we got to turn this into a premium product. We got to create a subscription service. We should go over the top. We like all these different ways that you have, like if you have, which one of the things that Complexly has is an educational video brand that is used in pretty much every school district in America. I would say probably every school district, probably close to every school. We have a really great relationship with teachers. Teachers love us. Students love us. Administrators don't know that we exist because we don't have to sell ourselves to anybody because it's free and people watch because they want to learn even if they're not inside of school. So we have this thing that we could easily leverage.

This is why if you had a normal company you would turn this into a, like a, you know, some kind of premium model or you would be positioning yourself to sell to an edtech company, etc. Like that's what you would normally do. We keep not doing that. And, um, but I think that honestly it's like held us back from developing some projects because we don't want to do things that would lead us too quickly or too aggressively into a sort of business-shaped direction. And so because one of the, you know, tenets has always been like this, the video should be free for everyone forever. That's what we keep saying to people. That's what we say to the staff internally. And so this is like really a project that is about impact, which means two things. Like one, you got to, like, you're adding value if you're reaching more people and so anything that constricts the number of people you reach is decreasing your impact. And then, and then like how much good are you doing with the content, like what, how much value is the content itself delivering? And I think all of our shows are doing like that work and we want to keep them all open. We want to continue to compete in the online video space. We don't want to lock ourselves up or like lock teachers into using us because then it's like, oh, we did it. We created the moat and we can, you know, invest less in the content and it could be cheaper to make, and which you see this happen in educational media companies. And so that's all stuff that we don't think is a good idea. And so we're like, well, we need to actually, like if we're going to lead it this way long term, it can't just be like Hank and John say so. We have to create an incentive structure that's like actually, like what's the incentive structure that leads you to always be maximizing the impact rather than the revenue. And that's really a story that's more about, you know, like how do you, like if our job is now to sell ourselves to our, like crowdfunding or grants or like, you know, family foundations or, you know, big granting organizations, what are we going to be selling? We're not going to be selling, we're not going to be like trying to lock people in. We're trying to, like, the people we're accountable to now are like our audience and they're people who would like us to deliver value to our audience.

Yeah. And I think also, you know, it's not hard to make good money if you have a YouTube channel that is reaching a lot of people as long as you're not spending a lot of money on the videos. And you know, I know that like I have my own personal channel that's just me and like I can make plenty, I can make enough money to fund my life with that. But if I wanted to like be like making educational content that was right all the time, you know, if I needed that infrastructure and if I wanted it to be like classroom quality, it's just impossible. There's just not a way to do that and like have brand deals in the middle of it. You can't do that if you're making educational videos for classrooms. And you can't like cut every corner. You have to have them be scripted. Like mostly what people are looking at is like how do you do low-budget long-form content? How do you spend less, like less time making stuff that's longer? And that's like podcasts. It's like, you know, yeah, yeah, here we are. And that's not really what we want to do. So there's like a business model problem there. And then the other is like the attention competition world and like we want to compete in that space, but there's different areas of that. And so we really, we would like people to be using our content because they know that it's good in addition to it being something that grabs your attention. Um, and thus we don't have to be like, you know what, if the aliens made the pyramids and then use that as like the leverage into teaching you about Egypt. No, it was like, that's not the world we want to be existing in.

Some of those are my dollars.

We've gotten some of those things and they have done that. They've stopped, but for a long time they did do stuff like that. They were like, "We want educational content for this age range and we want, you know, we recognize that it's very..." So in particular, like 8 to 12 is a real no-man's land in terms of being able to fund content. Um, with younger than that, there's more granting organizations that want to fund it and there's like PBS stuff. And, um, but and then with like older than that, the kids are making their own decisions and they're watching MrBeast. But that middle area, there's not a lot to do there, which I think is an interesting problem to try and solve. And so YouTube did that for a while. They, you know, our show, SciShow Kids, was created through them giving us some money. I'm like the most biased person you can talk to about YouTube because like I've had a really productive relationship with them over the years. They've responded when I've criticized them about things. This has stopped a little bit honestly. Like, you know, I criticized them about sort of not telling us, not really saying out loud that they're training AI with our content but doing it and basically saying like this is a competitive advantage we have, we can just like pop into our license that now we can do this and everybody's going to agree with the license because it's not like they're going to stop uploading on YouTube. We're going to say, not only are we going to use this, we have permission to use this. And unlike all these other companies that trained on a bunch of non-consensual data, we trained on consensual data. And by consensual, it's like we put it in the license and then everybody agreed to it because they had no choice. And nobody even knew that that was happening. Um, and I was, I, you know, I made a thing and, you know, basically radio silence. And so I think that in particular this period, uh, it's just so, it feels so ruthless and everybody is having to, in terms of these big tech companies fighting to be the one who create the digital god. Uh, it felt like, you know, there's kind of a reason why I maybe didn't hear back about that. But I've had a pretty productive relationship and I like honestly, I've always imagined myself to be running a business. And the reality is that YouTube shares a heck of a lot more revenue with me than most platforms. You know, we get 55% of the ad revenue from our videos. Um, and then like I'm out here on Instagram and they're like, "How are we going to build the slot machine today? We're going to change it every two weeks. You're never going to know how much money you make. Sometimes you're going to make a ton. Sometimes you're not going to make a lot. It's going to be a real sort of randomized reward situation that's going to make you feel like you're like playing a game that's very exciting and then one day the money will just stop and now you figure it out." And I think YouTube would probably have structured itself like that if it had figured that out sooner. Like I think a lot of people think of the 55% cut as a huge blunder on their part that they set this system up and they can't change it. Like, you know, I think there would be a true creator revolt if they decided that they were going to alter the way that that money is split.

There are product design lawsuits occurring right now about those platforms that suggest maybe it will be less than one year. Um, are you talking about like, um, the like infinite feeds being manipulative or something like that?

Really glad we didn't have an investor pushing us to do all this.

I mean, you do it no matter what. Why would you? If I was making 20 times more money from YouTube and I had investors behind me, they'd still want me to make 40 times more money, you know?

Yeah. I mean, so really what we're looking at is like, okay, well, what about the way TV worked? And do you think that, and like the question is, did TV create higher value content? And the answer is yes. Created content that like more people spent more money on, made more money making, there were more people involved in the creation. There was a more robust economy, and now there is less. And what we're looking at there is a little bit of if you take away the gatekeepers, if you say anybody can create, everybody will, and they don't need as much money because they just want to make things and they just want to get attention and they just want like to feel important in society. And I watch this, it's much more intense on TikTok where people come in and they're like, "All I want is to be heard." And that works for six months. And then they're like, "But I also need to pay rent and I've got a lot of..." There's a lot of parts of being heard that actually suck. Especially if you're not a white man, you're starting to get a lot of negative consequences to the stuff, to posting and putting your face out there. And then you're like, "Well, I'd like something in exchange for all of this." And you're trying to figure that out. And then the two sort of paths that occur is either you figure out a way to make it work by diversifying across platforms and creating, like productizing, etc. Make it a podcast is a big one. And then or you burn out and somebody, and you know who replaces you? Anybody. Because they all, like for six months, they're just like, "Oh my god, somebody's listening to me. They're laughing at my jokes. They're paying attention. I'm the person who like I was watching and they were like everybody wants it." But what these platforms have realized is that you could just have them last for six months and then burn through them.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that, but like I think that you and I are trying to figure out what the business model looks like. It's reflective of the, like, you know, think about how newspapers did this. You know, there was a time when making a newspaper was extremely cheap. Uh, you could give them away for less than the cost of print because of advertising. Suddenly there was all this distribution, yellow journalism, everybody fighting for attention with the most sensational headlines and following, you know, murders and like just like so. So we're doing that. That's where we're at right now in online media. And then eventually, you know, something happened and by 1980, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times had editorial standards and a huge moat and they worked really hard to get things right all the time so that you could trust them, unlike those crappy newspapers. And like that's just what's happening. And so like you and I are saying like Vox, Vox is a brand. The Verge is a brand and you can trust us in a different way than you trust some guy on TikTok. And when I'm 20, I don't get that. But when I'm 30, I do. And when I'm 20, I don't have money. And when I'm 30, I do. And when I'm 20, I'm not subscribing to anything. I'm just watching whatever comes across my feed. And when I'm 30, I type in theverge.com, the last website on Earth.

That's the... earth.com. Oddly, there's two .coms embedded in it. Uh, it's bold. You know, we're going to do a Super Bowl ad to get people to pay attention to it.

Because the, yeah, the only thing that we want is like the base level thing that we want is, you know, you don't have impact without reach.

Yes, I think so. I think that like a thing that I want to, you know, I'm moving over to being a board member rather than an owner. And I think that like a big thing that that board will be constructed for is to make sure that we don't let the incentives go too far in the other way where like reach doesn't matter anymore as long as we're making content that feels really good to make. I think that that is a thing that you got to be careful about. Uh, so, you know, we want to structure it so that when we're talking about our impact reports we're looking at whether we're growing our impact, whether we're actually reaching more people. And then this is, I don't know if I should say this, but you know, there's so much money.

It kind of infuriates me that like, you know, for every year that Crash Course has existed, we've been scraping by and that's because we create way more value than we capture. Like we could easily have been a company that was extremely profitable and that like was, you know, potentially taking on Pearson and maybe that would have been the thing that would have had a bigger impact on the world if we like actually taken on these existing educational media companies and like hired an army of salespeople and tried to do the thing. That's not for me. So that's part of it. That's not for me. I'm just, that was never going to be me. But if what we're talking about is impact and like we're good at that and like we're good at making videos that make people curious, that capture people's attention, that get them oriented on a thing that's going to provide them value in the short and long term, then we should like, I don't know, just give us money to do it. I don't, like we'll make the YouTube money that every other YouTuber makes. And I think I'm saying this to other educational creators too. Like I want them to hear this as well. Somebody should be giving you money. There should be patronage. It's the year 2026. Income inequality, like not income inequality, wealth inequality is like Gilded Age level crap going on. There's people, you know, they're like, they were early at OpenAI or they were early at Meta. Like there's a lot of them and they have too much. It's ridiculous. And sometimes they will say to me, they will say, "I just don't know how to deploy it in a way that's maximal." And I'm like, "Sir, it's in your bank account right now doing zilch." So I feel like just let me figure it out for you. Um, and that's a little bit how I feel.

I'm like, YouTube has created a pretty healthy economic ecosystem for a certain kind of content. It's not Game of Thrones. It's not Mr. Rogers, but a certain kind of content is thriving. I know a lot of YouTubers who are professionals and they have small businesses that are really great and they've slapped a lot of money into the economy one way or the other. Um, and a lot of that has gone to like creative professionals and it's like a new thing to be and it's weird and I think that it's good. Like I think that it could have been done in a way that was worse. I think it could have been done in a way that was better. Um, but I also think that like it's 2026 and like money is going to weird places and I think I would like honestly for more people to follow our lead here. And if your content is a social good, you're not going to be a billionaire. So you might as well have like a good job and so like maybe the thing you should do is like be a charity. Like if you're good at it, if you're actually delivering value, don't be a charity just so that you can like make stuff. Uh, and it's not like getting any reach or anything. Like look around for people like me and support. And also, you don't have to like look at their Patreon and going, "Well, they're asking for $50 a month. I'll give them $50 a month." You can send him an email and be like, "I'd like to give you $50,000." Get the money out of your bank account. I say this as a rich person who does this, like, and who just gave away, you know, most of my net worth, right? Like that's what turning into a charity is. I could have sold this company for a lot of money and I didn't. That's because like the impact matters more to me and like that, and also for clarity, I'm also fine. Like I've sold another company and like things are good. So I don't think that, like I think that people should be careful about this if they, uh, but um, yeah, like that, yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, you can launder into science content is very powerful.

Anyway, call my brother.

The crazy thing is that I did print out and sign the paperwork, but after I e-signed it just because I wanted to have a copy.

Um, it's as you might imagine, it's really lawyer... Yeah. And one thing I know about lawyer stuff is I don't need to pay that much attention. Um, so like, uh, there was a lot of like, um, if we do it this way then X, if we do it this way then Y, if we do it this way then Z. And it was like, which do you want, X, Y, or Z, rather than do you want to do it this way, this way, or this way? It was sort of like outcome-based and so that, and like we talked through it and we had to find a lawyer who, there turns out there's not a lot of people who do this and also people often do it in ways that are about tax evasion. And so the figuring that out, uh, to do it in a way where the IRS wouldn't be like, are you doing tax evasion? Um, was important but, um, and slow. Like I think it's been a year since we made this decision but ultimately it was about finding the right lawyers who knew how things worked and had done this before.

The big thing was, um, how is this going to affect staff? How is this going to affect content? Um, how will we communicate this to people? Like, will this make sense to people? And also will they feel like they're losing something? So, um, you know, at Complexly we have a pretty robust profit-sharing system. We've always said that if we're acquired that will be then reflected in the acquisition even though we don't have equity. Um, but there would be like a sort of similar share as our profit distribution that would go out. Um, and so is that something that would feel like a loss to people? Is there a way to compensate people for that loss? Um, because in the same way that like the equity is no longer me and John's, in the same way we can never sell and people will never get like a big windfall because of that sale. And ultimately it turned out that not very many people in the company were like sitting back waiting thinking that that was going to happen someday. Uh, it's not really a tech startup vibe because it's a media company. It's educational media in particular. And also we had placed a lot of constraints on the content. Um, so I think, you know, when people look at us as an acquisition target they were like, oh, you won't put any of it behind a paywall. What if we made new stuff? And they're like, no, not that either. And they're like, "Well, we don't really want you then." You know, they wanted things, but like that was a real limitation on the value. So, there's that. And then there was like, you know, what are the different ways you can go here? Um, and so we did, I'll be honest, like we took meetings with people who wanted to buy us just to like get the lay of the land and, uh, you know,

Ultimately decided that that was not a path we wanted to explore. And we also looked at other weird ownership structures, whether employee ownership was a thing that we could try, and it just seemed like there was too many signals that actually the thing that this thing should be is a nonprofit organization.

Oh, I mean, yeah, it will make it. Yeah, it's not complicated. Like we kept offering people chances to give us money and they took them, you know, like even though they knew they were giving money to a for-profit corporation, they would be like, "Oh yeah, we want you to make Crash Course. We think it's really good." And we'd do a fundraiser for Crash Course. And you know, we keep that money internally connected to Crash Course and we don't, you know, John and I haven't taken profit distributions in over a decade, but that money doesn't end up coming to us, etc. And so we do these internal fundraisers and every year they kept getting bigger. So that's a big one.

We also get money from granting organizations that usually only give to nonprofits, but they were giving to us because they were like, well, there's not really any other way to reach the kind of people that we want to reach. And so we're going to give money to you even though we tend to not do that. And they were giving us signals that they'd give us more if we were a nonprofit.

I wish I knew exactly. So I have not been the CEO in a couple of years. I would have that exact number, but it's definitely over 70.

So we have recently done a restructure actually. So previously we were show siloed and so we'd, you know, have Crash Course would have its own graphics department and its own editorial department and its own production department. And now we have more, this is not entirely done yet, and there's some silos will continue to exist maybe, I'm not sure, that like now we have like an art department that does art across all of the shows. And I think that, you know, the sort of flow between different areas of production is more open so that people aren't always on one show forever and ever, which can be, you know, SciShow in particular can be, which is basically seven days a week, I think that five, seven, something like that, depending on the week, can be just kind of a grind, you know, and it's not like we have seasons where we take two months off, like we take two weeks off at Christmas, so that, you know, getting a little more flow around.

And then yeah, we've got a chief development officer who is in charge of money who oversees both brand deals and like grants and also has a crowdfunding component to it. We've got a little tiny marketing department that also does merch. So like that's how big the marketing department is, with the marketing and product part of the company. And so we've got art and then we've got production and then we've got editorial.

No. What's that? I got kicked off of that by getting cancer and then getting in cancer treatment and I was like, somebody's going to have to be the CEO while I do this. So first for like a couple of weeks my brother took over, which is desperately not something he wanted to do, but he did a great job. And then eventually our COO moved into that position and I was like very on the fence at first about whether I would come back in and then I like saw how great Julie was doing and also how much I enjoyed not doing the work.

Yeah, she is. I think that she stays on as the CEO. So sometimes the nonprofit has an executive director rather than a CEO. This is the same job. So yeah, she's still CEO.