Not For You. With You.

Good morning to the 12 of you on our list. In the spirit of this issue, we want to make this newsletter with you, not for you. Reply with some feedback and in the meantime, we’ll see you on Slack.

In today’s issue:

→ How Ludwig Ahgren Became the King of Twitch

→ Why Victoria Paris is the Next Emma Chamberlain

→ Not Boring’s NFT Experiment

How Ludwig Ahgren Became the King of Twitch

Ludwig topped the charts by streaming non-stop for a month 

Livestreamer Ludwig Ahgren broke the record for most subscribers ever on Twitch by live streaming 24 hours/day for 31 days straight. The “Subathon” was an effort to grow his subscribers and it clearly worked. Before the stream he had roughly 70,000 subscribers, now he sits at over 280,000, dethroning the previous record holder, Ninja, in the process. 

So who is the new King of Twitch?

• He’s a competitive gamer → played Among Us with top streamers like Valkyrae and Pokimane, and even released his own Christmas themed EP. 3.5M streams across YouTube and Spotify - not too shabby for an amateur musician.

• Ludwig is prolific - to incentivize fans to subscribe, every subscription added 10 seconds to the overall length of the stream.  The stream consisted of Ludwig gaming, cooking, delivering sponsored ad reads, and ended with him spending long periods of time sleeping in his racecar bed.  On the final day all proceeds generated from the stream were donated to charity. Subscribers seemed more interested in rallying around the mission than they were about the content itself.

Our Take

The Twitch playbook for live content is completely different from pre-produced platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Top live creators build streams around consistency, engagement, and a shared mission with their audience. Give your fans a mission to rally around and watch your community grow. 

Why Victoria Paris Is the Next Emma Chamberlain

Spoiler: It’s not the coffee 

Lifestyle TikToker Victoria Paris makes 30 to 50 videos a day about everything from working out to social issues. In under 4 months, leaning into her authentic brand of lifestyle vlogging has already gotten her to over 800k followers and an absurd average of 1.1M TikTok likes a day. We were tipped off to Victoria by our friends at High Tea and have been fascinated ever since. 

Watch a handful of her videos and you get a feel for her style: organic, effortless, authentic. What you see is what you get. It’s that same authenticity that launched Emma Chamberlain into YouTube stardom. 

• Followers ride shotgun→ Victoria answers nearly all comments directly and gets video ideas from fans via TikTok’s Q&A feature

• It’s messy→ there’s no dance routines, no plan, and most importantly no filters

• It’s relatable→ her content embraces the weird and accepts everyone for who they areOur Take

Whether you’re the biggest creator on the platform or just getting going, collaborations don’t always have to take place online or be between two creators. Physical events and gatherings are just around the corner so get your strategy ready.

Our Take

Lifestyle vlogging is moving to TikTok. The platform allows creators like Victoria to produce 30x the content in a day than they could on YouTube. Good creators know that social media is a conversation, the more often they can press publish, the stronger their community becomes.

Make Way For The NFT Revolution

The newsletter gave thousands to fans, collaborators, and charity in 24 hours

Packy McCormick, the author behind Not Boring, a popular financial newsletter that’s grown to nearly 50,000 readers in a single year, turned his most popular essay into an NFT and split the earnings across some of the mailers’ biggest supporters and collaborators. 

Imagine you're an artist known for making valuable paintings across the world. Every time you sell a piece, you take a little bit of the profits and share it with the people who’ve inspired you the most, like fans or other painters. That’s the concept that helped Packy net nearly $5.5K in NFT sales. But only half that money ended up in his bank account.

The rest he split:  

• 31% with Collaborators → The people who Packy credits as having the biggest influence on his writing

• 10% with Fans → The people who helped spread the word about the NFT Sale

• 9% to Charity → On behalf of collaborators he couldn't get in touch with

In 24 hours, Packy found a way to ride the hype wave of NFTs to grow his audience by thousands of readers, create an investment opportunity for one NFT buyer, and give back to his biggest collaborators.

Our Take

Dedicated fans are no longer comfortable sitting on the sidelines for their favorite creators. As engagement evolves, consumers will start to have a say in creating their favorite content, and can use methods like NFT’s to be compensated for their engagement. Find ways to bring your audience into your creative process and they'll reward you.

🔥  In Other News

• Clubhouse sounds the hiring horn with a focus on verticals like sports

• Peter McKinnon is raising money, will he beat his last record of $2.2m? 

• Community, the startup that makes you think P Diddy is actually texting you  raises $40m