Samir Chaudry on the Zuck x MrBeast interview, TikTok limbo, and why brand beats virality

we're running a little late and look at the lighting the the 4K yeah beautiful looking great expect nothing less you've got the best setup of any we've had 70 guests in a month and knocking them all out of the park uh can we start can we start with the latest interview you did uh Zuck and Jimmy Mr Beast the biggest Tech God the biggest Creator God you're putting them together now uh what' you learn from that and uh how'd that come together um yeah well first of all what's up guys thanks for having me on um what did I learn from that I mean I think actually you know first and foremost it was fascinating to talk to someone who you know we consider to be like the aour of this generation of human connection right like if you really take a step back and you go the way we're all connecting even what we're doing right now there was this era that happened that um pushed the way that we as humans engage with each other and how information travels and I think Mark was like obviously heavily oh yeah involved in in in that and arguably uh the outour of that this this era of human connection so I find that to be super fascinating we met Mark uh up at meta MH a while ago to do an Orion demo you guys know what Orion is like glasses yeah I'm super jealous it sounds amazing so that was one of the craziest that was truly one of the craziest Tech experiences I've ever had in my life and we met and we it was it was nice and you know casual conversation and um started talking about having him on the show but you know with with a guess like that it takes time yeah uh and then adding Jimmy to the mix it was like you know a lot of the context was around us talking about Facebook video talking about creators on Facebook and it felt like you know we only have a handful of friends who have found success on Facebook Jimmy's one of those people so felt like um having him be a part of the conversation and when you say Facebook do you mean actual Facebook actual Facebook like Legacy Facebook so does he just post the full YouTube video there or does he have a different strategy on Facebook so most people post Clips like short form Clips on Facebook now for conversational content like what we're doing right now I find it really hard to do because there's so much cultur Nuance you have to dubb which was one of the main things Jimmy talked about like you actually have to dub content for other cultures to understand it sure and the majority of the users are not us-based and not english- speaking so Jimmy talked about how a lot of his content that is highly viewed is is shorter form content that is language agnostic so there's like a video of him running with bags of money you can understand that no matter what um but I think the the main thing that we talked about that I I couldn't stop thinking about was around the Prem that maybe a lot of the engagement of the internet in the future is going to happen in the context of messaging and DMS a lot of the human engagement in the future as compared to probably us engaging with a lot of bots and AI agents and you know yeah I I kind of noticed that on Instagram I'm seeing more and more reals where the number of shares is higher than the number of likes which means that people are not going to the comments to have the discussion they're they're sending oh you got to watch this and then that starts a conversation in a DM well I think as creator we think about that quite a bit that a short form piece of content is a unit of conversation yep and thinking about that and through that lens you actually create differently right like your thought is okay I'm gonna I'm gonna create something that somebody can share in a DM with a friend and that's like a gift you're giving them a gift to reconnect with someone social currency to make someone laugh uh it's a very different thought than like a long form 38 minute piece of YouTube content that you're going to watch on a connected TV yeah uh can we go back to the ran demo it sounded amazing everyone's review was unanimously it's incredible uh put it in the context of the vision exctly The Vision Pro had the same thing where people tried it for an hour and they were like this is incredible and then it had this churn curve turn curve where people were returning them and they were collecting dust and that seems to be like the classic VR problem are you convinced that this is the one that I'll be wearing for six months straight no but I find it I find it fascinating we've sat with a lot of you know Tech CEOs most most recently Evan Spiegel and Mark Zuckerberg and you know both are very focused on as as the future of how we'll we'll engage with tech um Orion was the most compelling because it was the lightest weight to be honest I think two reasons Orion was compelling one it was the lightest weight it feels like just glasses on you which is very different like The Vision Pro does not feel like glasses um and when you have glasses I think you retain the level of social engagement that human beings are used to where like if you've ever worn the Rayband metas I think the Rayband metas and Orion like they're tangibly different in weight and size but if you take what the Orion can do and put it into the Rayband metas that's the most compelling product I could think of because it's lightweight it looks cool um you can still look someone in the eyes um but the thing that was really unique about the Orion glasses that you wear this like neural wristband and before we did the demo you start to like they ask you to do some movements like click your finger like this each finger is a different function oh and these your brain waves and like your neural waves are fed into this computer and basically it learns what it looks like when you go like this or go like this and the reason why is because eventually when you're wearing these glasses they want you to be able to be holding a cup of coffee and be able to click on something because this command is different from this command is different from this command and we did that we held something and basically you almost just think the motion and it happens so I think what was shocking to me is like how intuitive it is love it um if it can be in the form factor of of the rayen metas or you know something that looks cool I think we're too aware of our own image as humans to walk around wearing Apple Vision Pros yeah um I I've got a bunch of questions what's going on with Tik Tok do you have an update there uh there's supposed to be some decision made like early April is what we've been hearing but it's been radio silent I've been looking at Poly market and trying to figure out you know what's going on uh it doesn't seem like Mr Beast is in the lead to buy it at the moment but do you have any uh do you have any insight there I I mean look look I know I've I've seen probably similar things that you guys have seen I've had some conversations you know uh around the industry about it um my perspective is I don't think I think it'll keep getting punted that conversation will keep getting punted uh you know I think Tik Tok is a dramatic economic driver in the US I think it had a lot of sway in the um you know in in in the the election I think it's a way that like politics is is getting um communicated I think it's a way news is getting communicated I think it's like probably the biggest search engine for Gen Z right now even for me I'm like you know going on a a trip this summer I'm searching stuff on Tik Tok it's a crazy platform we we started with a dry account we got 300K views on like the first video we posted it's like just the opportunity is like staring you in the face no matter what you think about the politics yeah do do I know if it's actually going to sell to a US company I I have no idea like I saw that Mark Andre and andreon Horwitz is putting their name in the Hat I know the what Alexis ohanian's doing and project Liberty is super interesting in terms of uh trying to like reshape what it looks and feels like but you know there's a right now it is uh the most powerful for you algorithm that we have access to um a lot of American businesses are powered by Tik Tok meaning like young startups young media entrepreneurs are powered by Tik Tok there's a lot of brand that are exchanged through there you know when we sat with Adam misseri when we sat with Evan Spiegel obviously like the maybe the ideal scenario even the a conversation with Zuck is like those ad dollars shift to us companies um versus Tik Tok but like I don't know we haven't we haven't really seen or we don't really have precedent for it uh in the US unless you guys know that we do but like I I don't know that we have precedent for for something like this what about Creator businesses you want to follow up on that what do you got we could start there I wanted to get your take on AI and creators buddy of mine Trevor had BR that was like super super early and ahead of its time mcf doing doing doing Lil Michaela was like almost like 10 years ahead yeah it's crazy uh executed very well exited the business uh and then last year was funny we covered a few of these there was like a period where the new like Ecom style info product was like everybody should have an AI creator that makes like $5,000 a month for them you know like doing brand deals and like obviously that's not actually like happening in a wide scale or it's certainly not easy to do are you seeing instances yet of of AI like fully AI generated creators that are actually building loyal followings meaningful ad businesses or digital products Etc so I mean look like V what you're talking about with Lil Michaela is like considered vtuber right and I think YouTubers are picking up like the at the end of last year the most subscribed to Twitch streamer was iron Mouse which is a vtuber uh so virtual creators like animated creators I think will continue to to pick up steam like we've always been interested in animated content like what happened with gpt's uh you know image model immediately everyone's like turning themselves into anime like we're we're we're into animation um fully AI generated is not something I've seen I think AI enhanced is like there's it's almost comical to suggest that content is not at in some level AI enhanced whether it's the audio of it the video um but I I have not seen an instance of like a fully AI generated Creator yeah and that's want I was going to say probably most compelling fully AI generated content is the podcasts that have been created through notebook LM yeah notbook LM for sure that's the most compelling to me like audio I think is where it'll happen first yeah before it happens in video I think we're too aware of video for for it to happen through like true human yeah I mean lmaa proves otherwise but I think uh audio it could happen because what notebook LM showed me was hey if I have like a 20 minute drive couldn't I just customize like hey I want to know about what's happening in the world of politics what's happening in the world of the Creator economy and the NBA scores from last night yeah and just tell notbook LM I have a 20-minute drive just build me a podcast that's bespoke to me for this exact moment for this exact use case uh so that that I think is where we'll see it first is an audio yeah last question uh do you think that uh create some creators have moved on from this idea of the goal is scale right like it it used to be you know you sort of like start out and you're like I want to get millions of views like I want to I want my videos to go viral I think now people are realizing that virality is sometimes like curse a curse or doesn't even necessarily help with like building a sort of sustainable business because there's some creators that can get 10,000 views a video and they can have a fantastic lifestyle and sort of P pursue their creative passions and that's like the right size for whatever Niche that they're in but um you know and we we see this like we like the the video John's referencing like we got a video that gets 300,000 views on Tik Tok and it like doesn't do anything get text messes about it yeah nobody like it's fine but I'm but I'm curious if you see sort of a broader sort of systemic shift where people are like you know really orienting around like quality of audience and sort of the the business side as well I think you guys are an example of that right like I think you guys have built a really cool brand and I think brand is really hard to build I think what people have learned is that views are available across platforms right if you solve the math equation like you can get viewership um that's not very exciting brand is exciting I think brands are Timeless Brands um give a feeling to people and I think we're just maturing to that point where like brand matters views are somewhat interesting but we're also in a world where like you could spend an hour on Tik Tok and not remember what you watched so Colin and I always think about this uh concept of memorable views versus forgettable views and you want to be producing memorable views and oftentimes that means you're actually targeting a smaller group I think our world has gotten increasingly fragmented right like the everybody is famous and nobody is famous because there's this stat that 47% of gen Z are a fan of something on the Internet that no one they know personally is a fan of whoa and that is one of the most that's from YouTube it's one of the most interesting stats I've seen about the internet that will only increase over time W and so if we play that out and explore like how fragmented attention is getting um how bespoke our online experiences are we're moving away from monoculture we're moving into world of like smaller tribes right smaller ideologies across the internet and I think the opportunity is to build a really meaningful brand for one of those small groups of people I think the the challenge to be like the next Mr Beast to be like a massive monocultural um brand like I find that to be not even exciting to me like I like meeting our audience and like meeting them out in public and being like Oh yeah these are these are my people this is people like yeah that's exciting to me and I think uh as the internet gets more and more fragmented that will continue to happen yeah well that's more time we got to have you back I mean really we're sending our best uh for the entire Palisades rebuilding effort uh thanks man I I mean I know most of the fans will probably know that you were affected and um we really hope that everything's going well there and if there's anything that um folks can do to help uh we yeah we'd love to be supportive of that appreciate it I love what you guys are doing this super cool it's it's Unique so yeah keep keep it going yeah talk to you thanks for coming on thanks so much bye that's great uh yeah I mean we could have talked to him for like two hours it's like you know it's like our business so there's so much there we didn't even get to like I wanted to hear the Doug deuro uh strategy versus what Mr Beast is doing versus what other folks are doing on the monetization side uh slow Ventures and stuff uh I know he'll have some great takes there but of course we will have him back in the temple of Technology any day now um let's hopefully bring in our next guest will from open AI any day now