Happy Friday. Coachella is back this weekend, and with it YouTube’s 10th year livestreaming the festival. For the occasion, exclusive Billie Eilish and Brockhampton merch will be sold directly on the livestream and a handful of Shorts creators will share BTS content—that’s behind-the-scenes, not the K-pop band.

–Hannah Doyle

77,000 to 1 Million Subscribers in 8 Days

Cyprien Outdoor Adventures entered the last week of 2021 with 77,000 subscribers and by the second week of 2022, had 1.1 million.

The YouTube channel documents bushcraft, which involves shelter-making and surviving in the wilderness. The videos are 10–25 minutes long with ASMR-style sound and no dialogue.

How did it get here?

• The French creator behind the channel, Cyprien, started uploading four years ago with fishing content including French titles and dialogue. 

• In 2021, at 1,500 subscribers, he pivoted to bushcraft content with English titles and no dialogue.

• He uploaded consistently and began averaging 5 million views a week by the end of 2021. 

• In the last five months, his videos averaged 2 million views with one episode about shelter building blowing up to over 167 million views.

Our Take

Like the appeal of Khaby Lame, Cyprien shows how dialogue-free content can be an asset, transcending language barriers to find a large audience. And what sets it apart from traditional ASMR content is its underlying theme of survivalism. It’s an innate human desire to want to know what it takes to survive in the woods. That, coupled with the creator's algorithm-pleasing long videos, consistent uploads, and polished editing positions it as a success.

Colin and Samir Appear on NPR's "How I Built This"

Guy Raz hosted the YouTubers and creators of this very newsletter for the first episode of How I Built This Lab, a series within their main podcast exploring entrepreneurship. 

They covered Colin and Samir’s origin story building The Lacrosse Network, the misconception of subscriber counts, and what they’ve learned from 10 years on YouTube that can help creators build their business. 

Here are some highlights from the 40-minute episode:

How they landed on the idea to cover creators on The Colin and Samir Show: 

S: When we sat down to figure out what to make content about, we thought ‘what if we just took these conversations that we had every morning, and turned that into videos.’ Over time we realized we were doing the same things we did in lacrosse—we were making content for the community that we were a part of. Telling stories about the people in that community.

Where the opportunities are on YouTube: 

C: If our history has shown us anything, underserved communities are communities that are going to be excited about your videos, and they’re going to come back again and again. It was the decision to talk about a community we’re a part of that has led us to actually being able to build a community that we can then find ways to monetize.

Our Take

Burnout is creative output without direction. We struggled for years to find our audience and value prop. Now two years in with an established focus, we’ve grown a team of six, this newsletter, and a future business plan. 

During the hardest moments of our career we listened to Guy Raz interview founders on How I Built This. Being on the show was something we’ll never forget and we hope you enjoy the episode.

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Peloton Launches an Interview Show on YouTube

Like Hot Ones for fitness, guests like Joe Jonas and Usain Bolt are set to appear on On The Leaderboard, where they’ll answer questions while running on a treadmill. The show is hosted by a rotating cast of Peloton instructors like Jess Sims and Selena Samuela.

The show’s first episode with Usain Bolt premiered on Wednesday, earning 26,000 views within the first 15 hours.

Our Take

Peloton is operating its media content like 2015-era Buzzfeed, leaning heavily on their influential instructors, some of whom have followings in the millions. By leveraging these creators, they're taking a step toward becoming a fitness media company. The big question for Peloton will be whether they can retain their talent. If we were them we’d ask Complex how they’ve managed to keep Sean Evans happy on Hot Ones.

🔥 Press Worthy

• TikTok is testing a dislike button.

• YouTuber Deestroying joins FaZe Clan.

• Enter to win a free ticket to the Creator Economy Expo in Phoenix.*

• Logan Paul releases NFT project 99 Originals.

• YouTube is sending Shorts creators to Coachella.

• Trapital is the go-to source for analyzing the business of music and its impact on creators.

*This is sponsored advertising content.

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