That Was Quick

Welcome back. Did anyone see the new Jackass movie this weekend? It raked in $23.5 million at the box office, with 3/4 of viewers under the age of 35—pretty good, for a few 50-year-old pranksters.

–Hannah Doyle

$234,000 in 30 Seconds

Last week Silicon Valley YouTuber Joma Tech launched a collection of 2,500 NFTs—which sold in less than a minute. The sale, held on Magic Eden, a Solana-based marketplace, brought in a total of 2,200 SOL, which equates to about $234,000. 

Joma Tech has 1.6 million subscribers and makes videos on tech and corporate culture in California’s Bay Area. He started the NFT project “Vaxxed Doggos'' to raise money for video production. The launch was also a part of his plan to pivot his channel’s content to crypto.

He started a Twitter account for the project in November, the same month he quit his job at Google to create videos on YouTube full time. He also started a Discord message board for fans, which has over 11,000 members. 

“I want my audience to grow with me and to feel like they’re part of my journey. I thought the best way to create this sense of community would be to sell NFTs,” Joma Tech said. “If they don’t want to be in the community anymore, they can sell their NFTs off to someone else. This keeps the community tight and intimate.”

The creator shared more about why he chose to fundraise via NFTs. Check out our exclusive Q&A at the end of this newsletter 👇

Our Take

Creators can maximize their fundraising potential by choosing a method that aligns with their audience. NFTs have resale value, which Joma Tech’s audience likes to participate in, and from which he gets 4% royalties each time the NFT is resold. That allows him to continue funding his video production long after the NFT sale.

A Film Shop Launches a Creator Content Studio

The creators who run the YouTube channel for the film and photography shop Moment are starting their own content studio, Sunny Sixteen. 

The studio will act as the umbrella brand for other channels they launched in tandem. So they’ll be managing four channels total. At launch, they’ll continue to be funded by Moment and make content for Moment’s channel. But their intention is to function separately in the future.

Our Take

Many brands find it difficult to retain in-house creators because at some point, they want to strike out on their own or lose interest. Sunny Sixteen is showing us a new way creators and brands can grow together, with brand support and a strong creator incentive.

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A Behind-the-Scenes Look Into Colin and Samir’s Channel

Here are some insights into our channel from the past 7 days:

7,884.8 → Average views per hour on our short about Ryan's Toy Reviews

6:00 am PT → The time our subscribers are most active on YouTube.

388,000 → Average views per day across our channel

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Tegan and Sara Start a Substack

The music artists are running their newsletter “I Think We’re Alone Now” like a Patreon mixed with a Tumblr from the early 2000’s.

Emails include free and paid tier content, with private audio and text conversations between each other, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at their upcoming 10th studio album.

Our Take

With them sharing intimate details of their album creation process, fans feel closer to their music and are part of what goes into it. For the artists, the medium lets them market their work in a way that doesn’t feel disingenuous and offers potential for recurring revenue.

🔥 Press Worthy

• KSI is performing at the Brit Awards.

• Charli D’Amelio teases an acting project.

• Twitter rolls out a “downvote” button.

• FaZe Clan partners with Nascar.

• Matthew Beem builds a giant chocolate bar for MrBeast.

Thanks to reader Tim Pei for today’s top story. Have any creator news you think would make a good story for the Press? Share your ideas with us here.

Creator Q&A: Joma Tech

The following interview, conducted via email, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

When you announced that you quit your job at Google to create on YouTube full-time, you said there was more opportunity cost to staying as a software engineer. Can you explain why?

Staying at Google would mean that I would have to continue working 40 hours a week. Google pays me well, but there’s no leverage, I’m trading my time for money. I can only make a fixed amount of compensation working there. As a YouTuber with 1.5M subscribers, there are many opportunities that I would miss out on if I had to continue spending 40 hours a week at a 9–5 job. Hence, quantitatively, I’m implicitly losing money by staying at Google because it prevents me from making more on other projects related to my YouTube.

What was the biggest challenge of putting together the NFT project?

I think the biggest challenge has yet to come: keeping the project alive. Yes, I've already received the funds, but it can be a PR disaster if promises for an NFT project are not followed through. Currently, there are still a lot of people who bought my NFTs in hopes to flip them and make more money. But, that’s not what we want; we want people who actually want to be part of the community and enjoy its perks to hold the NFTs.

Did you expect it to mint so quickly? Why or why not?

I expected to sell out eventually because the platform where I launched my NFTs is super popular. It’s called Magic Eden and it’s currently the most popular NFT marketplace in Solana. They have this product called Launchpad, where they handle everything related to the minting process. So I credit them for the success of this launch. It made everything smooth. There were no technical issues and it brought a lot of attention to the project.

However, I certainly didn’t expect it to mint in 30 seconds! That was insane. I thought my project would be the least popular project on the platform because I’m so new to the NFT space. VaxxedDoggos' Twitter page didn’t have as many followers as other projects either. I know follower number isn't a good indicator, but it’s a proxy for how many people are interested in the project, and it was relatively small compared to others. So I am overjoyed with the results.

What advice would you give to creators looking to fundraise? Would you recommend they consider NFTs?

Minting NFTs is not an easy way to fundraise because the project is going to stay with you for the rest of your career. This might seem obvious, but only fundraise if you really need to. It all depends on your target audience and your risk tolerance. I would be cautious with NFTs, especially if your audience is not that technical or dislikes NFTs. 

Also, when you’re done with fundraising, remember that your job is far from done. It actually just started. The process is equivalent to a startup raising a series A—the hard part, which is to spend that money smartly and grow your company, comes after the funding.