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Speaker 2: Many are live at boom Spree time.
Speaker 3: We are here in Hollywood, and I gotta say, before
Speaker 3: the time of my Space and Facebook, there was.
Speaker 4: A time before Land, before.
Speaker 2: Time the Internet.
Speaker 3: The Internet was full of message boards. There really was
Speaker 3: a time before with like minded communities. That's what it
Speaker 3: was all about. They would discuss their niche interest together
Speaker 3: from all corners of the world, bring together.
Speaker 4: Like minded individual Honestly, I feel like that's actually coming
Speaker 4: back right now. Increasingly, affinity A based platforms have been
Speaker 4: making a comeback. They're often kinder and gentler places where
Speaker 4: enthusiastics can just go and engage over common interests. I
Speaker 4: got Strava, for example, said I've been like all over
Speaker 4: read it lately. I'm the oldest person.
Speaker 5: It's the parent thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm like forty years late on Reddit, but it's
Speaker 4: working out for me. And yourew letterbox though. It's a
Speaker 4: place for movie boffs and they can catalog the movies
Speaker 4: and discuss the ones that they've seen. We got with
Speaker 4: us jemmac grace, which she's the editor in chief of Letterbox.
Speaker 4: She's here with us at screen time.
Speaker 2: Welcome.
Speaker 4: Understand what things look like right now because a lot
Speaker 4: of these platforms saw a huge search during the pandemic.
Speaker 4: Well we were all at home. Now we're all back
Speaker 4: out doing stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Are you still seeing growth on the platform?
Speaker 7: Oh? Even more so.
Speaker 8: I mean we had pretty insane growth during the pandemic.
Speaker 8: We went into it with one point eight million members.
Speaker 8: We came out, not that it's over, but you know,
Speaker 8: a couple of years later we had six million members
Speaker 8: and we're now at sixteen million, like close to sixteen
Speaker 8: million in.
Speaker 2: The last couple of years.
Speaker 8: So Yeah, people just keep coming to write their thoughts
Speaker 8: about movies.
Speaker 2: That is because I get it. During the pandemic, Yeah, stuck.
Speaker 3: At home, we were looking for communities and to feel connected.
Speaker 2: Why do you think it continues to grow?
Speaker 8: Yeah, and to feel connected and also to feel maybe
Speaker 8: a sense of achievement in our days when there was
Speaker 8: sort of no shape to those.
Speaker 7: Long lockdown days.
Speaker 8: I think it's continued to grow because something that happened
Speaker 8: during that time was a lot of people coming to
Speaker 8: write their thoughts about the Twilight series and then go,
Speaker 8: what else has Robert Pattinson done? He's oh good time,
Speaker 8: Oh the Lighthouse with Willem Dafoe.
Speaker 6: This is interesting.
Speaker 8: This is a cinema I've never seen before, and then
Speaker 8: started a cinephile journey that coming out of the pandemic
Speaker 8: has taken them into art house cinemas to see a
Speaker 8: lot of films that they never got to see on
Speaker 8: the big screen the first time around. And they're finding
Speaker 8: community literally in cinema. Four years now, we see a
Speaker 8: lot of under thirty five year old engagement in the cinema.
Speaker 4: Is it actually a safe place that stays on top
Speaker 4: of it? Because you see on Twitter, you see on Instagram,
Speaker 4: you see on Facebook. Yeah, it just evolves right away.
Speaker 4: It gets political. Democrats control the weather comment such a close.
Speaker 4: Is letterbox free of that?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 8: You know, every part of the Internet has its can
Speaker 8: I say douchebags on Bloomberg.
Speaker 7: Just tad, I'm so sorry about it.
Speaker 8: Every part of the Internet has pilons. But I think
Speaker 8: the benefit and the beauty of a place like Letterbox
Speaker 8: and Strava is that the conversation happens specific to the
Speaker 8: film that a member is reviewing.
Speaker 2: Or specific to a list that they put together of.
Speaker 8: Movies they love or William Defoe movie is ranked. And
Speaker 8: so there's no kind of central town square on Letterbox
Speaker 8: for everybody to pile it on soon. And we also
Speaker 8: give our members tools like comment moderation, tools of their
Speaker 8: own so they can curate their own spaces. So the
Speaker 8: conversation happens around a movie or around a movie list,
Speaker 8: and that's generally what keeps it kind, but also it's
Speaker 8: in our community policy.
Speaker 7: Two words be.
Speaker 2: Cool Heimer, Barbie Heimer, Borbenheimer.
Speaker 3: However you want to say Barbie and Appenheimer. Yeah, what
Speaker 3: did that do for your platform? Did he give it
Speaker 3: a musler? Did you see anything significant.
Speaker 7: On for that?
Speaker 8: We definitely saw a massive mon of growth around a
Speaker 8: lot of editorial we did with Greta Gerwig at Barbie
Speaker 8: Time and with Martin Scott Sez at Killers at the
Speaker 8: Flower Moontime like.
Speaker 2: Where there are spikes there.
Speaker 8: But more than that, it's not just about getting new
Speaker 8: members to letter Box. What I loved about Barbie was
Speaker 8: Greta's generosity and sharing all of the film references that
Speaker 8: she used to make that film, everything from Pee Wee's
Speaker 8: Big Adventure to Singing in the Rain. And then we
Speaker 8: see at the back end the watch list spikes of
Speaker 8: our members going, Greta loves that film.
Speaker 2: I love Greta.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna watch that film.
Speaker 2: History in cinema, right, yeah, the Crow movie?
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And so for us, it's all about
Speaker 8: film discovery. That is that is purely what is about
Speaker 8: film discovery, enabling people to discover more films, whether they're
Speaker 8: in cinemas right now or whether they're coming out on
Speaker 8: a Criterion four K. And if someone like Greta Gerwig
Speaker 8: is saying, here are the thirty one movies that inspired Barbie,
Speaker 8: we see the activity among our members watching those movies.
Speaker 4: Are you platform agnostic in the sense of who cares
Speaker 4: if the film comes out on happy ex suited theaters?
Speaker 4: At the same time, who cares if the film was
Speaker 4: only available in theaters before VCRs. Yeah, we're even a thing.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we're shifted, absolutely, Like we want people to see
Speaker 8: films where they can see them, and I mean the
Speaker 8: state of theatrical right, is that not every film comes
Speaker 8: out in every cinema in every town around the world,
Speaker 8: and so we see a lot of members reviewing a
Speaker 8: film saying, I drove two hours to see this, and
Speaker 8: I'm so glad I did because I wanted to see
Speaker 8: it in the seventy millimeter. But also other people who
Speaker 8: you know, watching it on their streaming services, and all
Speaker 8: of it is fine because they're all watching movies.
Speaker 2: How do you just make money? How do we make money?
Speaker 2: Sorry and good quest.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we have wages to pay.
Speaker 8: The first way we did it in the early days
Speaker 8: was by inviting our members to pay an annual subscription
Speaker 8: fee to either be pro or patroon level, and for
Speaker 8: that they get yummy features like their annual stats around
Speaker 8: who you're most watched actors and a map of the
Speaker 8: world that changes color as you watch her film from
Speaker 8: each part of the world. And then we brought an
Speaker 8: advertising and if you don't want advertising with your letterbox experience,
Speaker 8: you can upgrade to prow a patron.
Speaker 7: So that.
Speaker 8: Advertise descriptions, advertising and campaigns, mainly campaigns with a.
Speaker 2: Lot of studios and distributors.
Speaker 8: So the thing we have at letterboxes people's emails and
Speaker 8: their taste in film and their film watching history. So
Speaker 8: someone might come to us with a film and we go, cool,
Speaker 8: these are ten other films that are like that film.
Speaker 8: We will find you the members and the part of
Speaker 8: the world that you want to focus on, and we
Speaker 8: will find the members who have watched and rated four
Speaker 8: stars or above these other films. So we based ou
Speaker 8: tastes rather than demographic and it's it's much more effective.
Speaker 8: We have fifty eight percent open rate in general in
Speaker 8: terms of our campaigns.
Speaker 3: That we do with studios.
Speaker 6: Yeah, amazing, and they.
Speaker 4: Go, are you getting it's interest from working with stars,
Speaker 4: working with actors and actresses who could come on and
Speaker 4: do sort of like a Reddit Asked Me Anything type thing,
Speaker 4: a live engagement to sort of see what their their
Speaker 4: fans are talking about and asking them.
Speaker 7: We would love to.
Speaker 4: Do that out the celebrities want to do that.
Speaker 5: Are you waiting out there?
Speaker 7: We've got a lot of people joining.
Speaker 8: We just had Michael Mann join, We just had them,
Speaker 8: vendors joined, Mattin Still says, who became a member last year.
Speaker 8: We could certainly run a live Q and A if
Speaker 8: they wanted to.
Speaker 7: We haven't done it so far, but we'd love to.
Speaker 3: Well, so how do you get that involvement, because that
Speaker 3: to be would sound like that makes sense right in
Speaker 3: the environment we live in, especially since you have celebrities
Speaker 3: or movie makers or actors that are part of the platform. Yeah,
Speaker 3: have you reached out, like how do you make that
Speaker 3: next out?
Speaker 8: I mean, what we've been focusing on is our four
Speaker 8: favorite Films series, actually, and so that's the great thing
Speaker 8: about that. I mean, absolutely we would love to do
Speaker 8: Live ama Q and as that will come in the future.
Speaker 8: But I think what's really taken off is the simple
Speaker 8: idea that on the app, the first thing we ask
Speaker 8: members to do is when they're setting up their account
Speaker 8: is say their four favorite films.
Speaker 7: So there's four slots, right, and.
Speaker 2: You can pick your full fair you can change them
Speaker 2: up whenever you like.
Speaker 7: It's a feature of the app.
Speaker 8: We started asking people on Red Carpet that question, and
Speaker 8: somehow it took off, and so that's I guess that's
Speaker 8: our quarterstone feature at the moment.
Speaker 5: And the wonderful thing.
Speaker 8: About it is, yeah, like fifty people have said the
Speaker 8: Godfather or the Godfather too, but then they say beautifully
Speaker 8: obscure films like just here today, here Snoop Dogg was
Speaker 8: like Superfly, the mac Dolomite and Scafface, which is so cool.
Speaker 8: So then we see when we post those four favorites,
Speaker 8: we see the watch list spikes, so members are like, interesting,
Speaker 8: I haven't seen that.
Speaker 7: I'm putting it straight on my watch list.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So like AI can be a useful tool in all
Speaker 3: of this in a big way.
Speaker 2: Maybe. Yeah. Jemma, thank you so much, really enjoyed this.
Speaker 2: Thanks for finding time Jemma Gracewood.
Speaker 7: She's the editor in.
Speaker 2: Chief of Letterbox. Right here at screen time, Gemma.
Speaker 1: Thanks, you're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch
Speaker 1: us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern
Speaker 1: Listen on Apple car Play and then Broyt Auto with
Speaker 1: a Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: So we want to get back to Bloomberg's screen time.
Speaker 2: As you can hear a lot going on around us.
Speaker 2: It's a little loud, but.
Speaker 3: It is all about content creation, how we receive it,
Speaker 3: who's involved in it.
Speaker 2: It's being disruptive. There's a lot of innovation, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of technology in it.
Speaker 3: Our next guest has really first hand seen the impact
Speaker 3: that technology can have on creators and how we create this.
Speaker 3: She's former VP of Creative plat Experience and Engagement over
Speaker 3: at Adobe.
Speaker 2: She was involved in the building of something we.
Speaker 3: All have a lot about Photoshop and probably have used
Speaker 3: her background span such company as Flicker, Yahoo, Mail and
Speaker 3: We were Common. She's also the founder and former CEF
Speaker 3: Tom Collery, which was bought by Yahoo one decade ago.
Speaker 3: Let's bring in Kako Shrivastava. She's the CEO right now
Speaker 3: at the music creation platform.
Speaker 2: It is called Splice. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Hello.
Speaker 7: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Well, it's great to have you here when it comes
Speaker 2: to music.
Speaker 3: You guys offer up tools when it comes to music
Speaker 3: creation to us, our audience may not so familiar what
Speaker 3: exactly you do.
Speaker 9: So Splice is the world's largest marketplace for samples, which
Speaker 9: are the lego building blocks that are of sound that
Speaker 9: are used to build modern music. Right, so you hear
Speaker 9: all those beautiful layered sounds and pop music can even
Speaker 9: country music that's built using samples like the kind.
Speaker 7: That we provide.
Speaker 9: One of the things that we've been working on is
Speaker 9: because we have this incredibly rich library of sounds that
Speaker 9: we collect from all over the world. So even now,
Speaker 9: we have a team in South Pallo really going deep
Speaker 9: on the stream culture there, understanding music, how music is
Speaker 9: being made, and capturing those sounds for our libraries.
Speaker 2: Because we have this library, we can build this next
Speaker 2: generation of AI based tools, because.
Speaker 9: We have a very clean training set, which is essential
Speaker 9: for building AI sokay of the sample library that people
Speaker 9: can play around with. We have the sample library, but
Speaker 9: we also have creative tools that people can use that
Speaker 9: are AI powered to create their own music. So, for example,
Speaker 9: you can start on splice. You can upload a musical
Speaker 9: idea that you have a guitar riff that you've been
Speaker 9: working on, or you know, the musical, a little bit
Speaker 9: of a song that you've written, and we will help
Speaker 9: you ussemble the track around that because we have the
Speaker 9: samples and we can use our AI technology to match
Speaker 9: to listen to what you've built and match the right
Speaker 9: complimentary sounds that go a lot with them.
Speaker 4: Pretty cool, cool for us to hear. But if you're
Speaker 4: a musician, if you're a musician who yes, these her living,
Speaker 4: they're living creating music. Yeah, are you scared of tools
Speaker 4: such as these?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 9: No, no no, I think that's actually what makes us
Speaker 9: of a very different player in this space are target customers.
Speaker 9: The people who pay us money are musicians, and so
Speaker 9: resually focus on how do you take the toils out
Speaker 9: of their work?
Speaker 10: And if you watch people create music, especially in samples
Speaker 10: based music, you see them click through and listen to
Speaker 10: forty different drum sounds to find the right one.
Speaker 9: Because we can get you in the right ball car faster.
Speaker 9: You can just bring that into your whatever creative tool.
Speaker 5: You use to sort of get to the next level.
Speaker 2: CaCO, who owns it?
Speaker 6: Though?
Speaker 3: Like I'm thinking about all these sounds that you are
Speaker 3: pulling in from around the world, which sounds super cool.
Speaker 2: Right, But who owns it?
Speaker 9: That's a great question, that's a really and it's it's
Speaker 9: a question that people should be asking all the time, right,
Speaker 9: because creators should.
Speaker 7: Own their music, or you should.
Speaker 9: Do the right thing in compensating creators to use their music,
Speaker 9: whether it's for creating libraries or for other things.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 9: So, our library entirely is built on having relationships with
Speaker 9: the artists directly. Who are the sample equators, the sound designers,
Speaker 9: the artist musicians all over the world to work with
Speaker 9: us to bring their sounds to our platform.
Speaker 3: So are they are they initially compensated once or every
Speaker 3: time somebody uses it and uses it in their own composition,
Speaker 3: they get some kind of fit.
Speaker 9: Yeah. So we work with the artists themselves on the
Speaker 9: to bring the sounds in and we have different kinds
Speaker 9: of deals. Some people are like, yeah're gonna just take
Speaker 9: a flat fee right now.
Speaker 2: That's what's important to me.
Speaker 9: Other people participate in our network in some way marketplace
Speaker 9: in some way. On the other side, the customers who
Speaker 9: subscribe to the sample library, just who subscribe to Splice.
Speaker 11: The way that works is when we are loyal to
Speaker 11: free so that you know, regardless of how you use
Speaker 11: the sound, whether you use it for something for your
Speaker 11: own personal creation that never sees the light of day,
Speaker 11: or you end up having it show up in a
Speaker 11: hit track with Sabreta Carpenter or the Espresso song which
Speaker 11: happened recently with a Subsplice samples.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's.
Speaker 9: Fine if you're totally free to do that and you
Speaker 9: use the sounds in your repreation.
Speaker 4: It's sort of related about copyright safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: If somebody wants to use the tools to develop something
Speaker 4: that would be used for commercial purposes, how do you
Speaker 4: ensure that the sound what it was trained on is
Speaker 4: copyright saved.
Speaker 7: That's a great question.
Speaker 2: I think that's a much.
Speaker 9: More important question for people who are doing generative AIS
Speaker 9: right they're creating news sounds. All of the sounds on
Speaker 9: splice are human created, human curated, So we have those
Speaker 9: relationships with the artists directly.
Speaker 4: When do you get to the point where you are
Speaker 4: doing jenai sound, You.
Speaker 2: Know, we're looking at it really carefully.
Speaker 9: Our belief, and we feel this pretty strongly, is that
Speaker 9: the way that generic AI should be used is not
Speaker 9: actually to create content, but rather to create tools to
Speaker 9: allow human beings to create content.
Speaker 4: Okay, so explain the difference between those two things.
Speaker 5: Sure.
Speaker 9: So one is okay, I've typed in a bunch of
Speaker 9: words and proof a song comes out, and that's an
Speaker 9: interesting thing.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to something that would be.
Speaker 9: That's very a very first version Jenei experience that everyone
Speaker 9: is like they're buzzing about right now. Another example is
Speaker 9: something we actually just launched yesterday, this new integrated experience
Speaker 9: that is right inside the main creative tool that people
Speaker 9: use for We've been a partnership with the company call
Speaker 9: Studio one, and there's a splice plug in that's integrated
Speaker 9: deep into the thing, and so user is creating something
Speaker 9: and we're able to listen to what the user is creating,
Speaker 9: or the user is able to say, you know, find
Speaker 9: something that matches this sound, and by looking at what
Speaker 9: the user's sound is, we're able to assemble human created,
Speaker 9: human created sounds to help.
Speaker 2: Them come completely. That is not jen AI.
Speaker 9: But it's the kind of tool that builds on that
Speaker 9: kind of AI memor.
Speaker 3: Cause we get into some of the business and getting ready,
Speaker 3: we have a bat a couple of minutes left here.
Speaker 3: How many users, what do they mostly use it for?
Speaker 3: What's the engagement? You know, I feel like I'm always
Speaker 3: stuck asking the question one of us is how do
Speaker 3: you guys make money? Like, how do you wear a
Speaker 3: subscription business? We have over half a million subscribers who pay.
Speaker 5: Us every month.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're sticky, they stay with you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, kind they do well.
Speaker 9: We still have people who've been started with Slice five
Speaker 9: years ago, six years ago, so definitely, and that comes
Speaker 9: from us focusing on people.
Speaker 2: Who are serious music creators.
Speaker 9: So we know people who are really investing in their
Speaker 9: their livelihood or their passion, their hobby, what's.
Speaker 7: The growth in users?
Speaker 2: Are you profitable?
Speaker 7: Like, we are profitable.
Speaker 9: We are profitable and we are growing. So the poor
Speaker 9: business is incredibly.
Speaker 5: Powerful and incredibly strong.
Speaker 2: Over one hundred thousand users come to our site every day.
Speaker 9: Over a million sounds are downloaded every day, so we're operating.
Speaker 2: At meaningful scale.
Speaker 9: The creator tool, the AI stuff is new and we'll
Speaker 9: all see where that goes.
Speaker 3: You're new to the business, relatively music business. I can
Speaker 3: say you are stage technology. You've just got about thirty
Speaker 3: forty seconds left here?
Speaker 2: What are you learning?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 2: What's kind of surprised you? And how difference this world is?
Speaker 9: And so I've spent my entire career focused on creative people.
Speaker 9: You have to describe some of my background earlier. Musicians
Speaker 9: music creators are just like other there's like software developers,
Speaker 9: they're like graphic designers. They want the time and space
Speaker 9: to focus on their craft and they want their tools
Speaker 9: to get out of the way right because they want
Speaker 9: that idea in their head to come out in terms
Speaker 9: of vibrations that will hit our ears right, and getting
Speaker 9: out of the way is our job that just want
Speaker 9: to do this to their craft.
Speaker 2: Yes, couple, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: For starting.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate Kako Shrivastfa.
Speaker 3: She is CEO at the music creation platforms WWICE, joining
Speaker 3: us right here at screen time.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
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Speaker 4: Well, our next guest is looking to revolutionize the film
Speaker 4: and television production post production using jen Ai. Kubrick is
Speaker 4: a platform, and what they aim to do is reduce
Speaker 4: the amount of time that it takes to build virtual
Speaker 4: worlds in film.
Speaker 2: And You've been talking about this a lot.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we're looking to reduce it by ninety percent.
Speaker 4: So traditionally what happens to, you know, a team of
Speaker 4: people who build these things like gaming worlds, It takes
Speaker 4: them weeks and it costs hundreds of thousand dollars. Now
Speaker 4: Kubrick says they can do that at a fraction of
Speaker 4: the costs and interfraction of the time.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you that Tim has been talking about this
Speaker 3: a lot, because he is actually doing a panel on
Speaker 3: this later with our next guest.
Speaker 4: He's like a little warm up here, okay, a little
Speaker 4: warm up for our panel. It really pleased to be
Speaker 4: joined by a fanar se Han Demer doc. She's the
Speaker 4: CEO of Cubrick. She joins us here at screen time
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles. I explain this, but it's the type
Speaker 4: of thing that I think people can't understand unless they
Speaker 4: actually see it happen. You're used to giving the elevator pitch.
Speaker 4: How do you describe this for people who can't see it?
Speaker 12: Be does absolutely, this is a background and this is
Speaker 12: an actor.
Speaker 7: In order for it be believable.
Speaker 12: When the actor moves left, the back noun needs to
Speaker 12: in real time render left correct. So that is the
Speaker 12: reason why this cannot be a flat image. This needs
Speaker 12: to be a dimensionalized image, or this needs to be
Speaker 12: a game engine, so every time the actor is moving left,
Speaker 12: the game.
Speaker 7: Is rendering left.
Speaker 12: That is the reason why Hollywood and many other productions
Speaker 12: across the world are using game engines in every scene.
Speaker 12: So if you take into account that you need to
Speaker 12: make a game per scene, that means that your environment
Speaker 12: building costs per scene start in the low end of
Speaker 12: one hundred and.
Speaker 7: Fifty thousand dollars per scene. Since there is thirty to.
Speaker 12: Sixty environments per picture, that means that you can start
Speaker 12: saving in a high six figure or low seven figure
Speaker 12: per picture.
Speaker 4: You're forty bucks a month.
Speaker 6: When we take.
Speaker 2: Forty bucks a month? How much one hundred?
Speaker 7: We are business to consumer and business to business.
Speaker 4: So the businesses to consumer is forty dollars exactly. Business
Speaker 4: to business? How much is that we.
Speaker 7: Offer custom solutions?
Speaker 12: Because businesses have a variety of different needs like on
Speaker 12: prem solutions, higher image generation, or ethical AI models, So
Speaker 12: it depends what they are looking for.
Speaker 3: I would say that I love watching movies, streaming, whatever
Speaker 3: it is, but if it doesn't look realistic to me,
Speaker 3: it really takes right.
Speaker 2: It makes me like I'm done.
Speaker 3: I'm done, So tell us about how you make sure
Speaker 3: it sounds like your cost effective solution.
Speaker 2: But it's gotta look good. How do you get there?
Speaker 7: Absolutely? So what makes cubreck special.
Speaker 12: Is that we can augment, elevate dimension jump a two
Speaker 12: dimensional flat image like images in your.
Speaker 7: iPhone are flat, right right, they don't look.
Speaker 12: Realistic if they are backgrounds, they're flat. So what we
Speaker 12: are capable of is to extract the depth out of
Speaker 12: a flat image and make it dimensionalized. So image generation
Speaker 12: by using generative AI is one of our functions. But
Speaker 12: if you prefer, you can upload your own map painting.
Speaker 12: You can high an artist to make a realistic environment
Speaker 12: and we turn it into a dimensionalized, believable scene.
Speaker 4: Take us into the technology what you're training these models
Speaker 4: on for the gen AI in videos GPUs.
Speaker 12: Yeah, Nvidia is one of our biggest champions. They also
Speaker 12: significantly contributed to our early days. And yes, our inferences
Speaker 12: are on n video picasto cloud.
Speaker 4: Whose cloud are you paying for those?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 12: AWS is our bare bones and Nvidia is our organs.
Speaker 4: So you're paying AWS to do the image generation, do
Speaker 4: the rend now that is n video? Should you pay
Speaker 4: in video directly or does AWS have the video technology?
Speaker 12: So let's think about the chassis of a car and
Speaker 12: an engine and then seats and a wheel.
Speaker 7: Our chassis is a WS.
Speaker 12: We pay them separately, and then all of our functions,
Speaker 12: all of our AI functions. Every time a user pushes
Speaker 12: a button, it is done in the Nvidia cloud.
Speaker 7: So we paid two different people.
Speaker 4: So you don't have to buy the Nvidia GPUs yourself.
Speaker 12: Yeah, Nvidia has given us a lot of reading room.
Speaker 12: We are very lucky.
Speaker 5: We are.
Speaker 12: So they started this program called Picasso. We were CUBRIC
Speaker 12: was one of the first six companies that they involved.
Speaker 12: They gave us so I don't know, you must now.
Speaker 12: Of course, it's called the startup killer. So if you're
Speaker 12: a bootstrapping startup, like at the early days of qubric,
Speaker 12: you need to If we were forced to reserve several
Speaker 12: different GPU clusters, we had.
Speaker 7: To estimate how many users we would expect. If it
Speaker 7: were too high, we would go backrupt.
Speaker 4: If it were too low.
Speaker 7: We would miss an open.
Speaker 12: What Nvidia gave us with their Nvidia Picasso platform is
Speaker 12: that we would pay as we go.
Speaker 7: We pay for every push on the button.
Speaker 12: So that's why we could financially model an estimation of
Speaker 12: how much our users would be pushing buttons. And the cool
Speaker 12: thing is that cubric is one of the only tools
Speaker 12: that let you work with AI unlimited.
Speaker 7: We don't have token system. My background is an arts
Speaker 7: I'm a creative.
Speaker 12: I hate the idea of being limited, So once you
Speaker 12: enter CUBRIC, everything is unlimited.
Speaker 3: So if you look at the financial model, I'm trying
Speaker 3: to understand because it sounds like you're getting an a
Speaker 3: system Nvidia and they've been a big supporter.
Speaker 2: You're using cloud.
Speaker 3: We talk so much about anything with generative AI, large
Speaker 3: language models, and it sounds like you're involved in that
Speaker 3: to create incredible backgrounds that it's expensive.
Speaker 2: It uses a lot of energy. I am curious about
Speaker 2: the financial model. Is a sustainable going.
Speaker 7: Forward for a studio, for you guys.
Speaker 2: For what you're doing, or for studios tapping into.
Speaker 12: Yeah, absolutely, let's think about financial model of flying to
Speaker 12: Antarctica to.
Speaker 7: Take a shoot, to make a shoot?
Speaker 12: Yeah, how much would it cost your entire crew? How
Speaker 12: About you want to mimic Mars?
Speaker 7: How about you need to stop the traffic in New
Speaker 7: York City? What would that cost? And you're a crew
Speaker 7: in China? You need to shoot in English? And like,
Speaker 7: let's talk about the mathematics all that.
Speaker 12: Actually, one of our users, it's a you know, we
Speaker 12: went to market as a background acceleration tool for filmmakers,
Speaker 12: but our users surprised us from animation, gaming and fashion. Actually,
Speaker 12: there's a fashion company that did a shoot on cubric
Speaker 12: and they did like they're quite nerves about the carbon
Speaker 12: footprint calculations. They gave us a report without us asking
Speaker 12: about how much kubric could save them on their carbon
Speaker 12: footprint by not flying to Antarctica.
Speaker 4: Interesting, Okay, that's I haven't thought about it looking at it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that way, I'm wondering about the business and how you've
Speaker 4: been able to bootstrap this. I was pretty shocked to
Speaker 4: find that, you know, you're not a look, i mean,
Speaker 4: sixty billion dollar valuations, so, like you know you were talking,
Speaker 4: fundraising that you've done is pretty much zero at this point.
Speaker 4: It's all bootstrapped more or less. Give us some insight
Speaker 4: into your financials and now you've been able to build
Speaker 4: this company on a shoestring.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 12: The pre seed was given by personally financed by me
Speaker 12: and my late husband who was the co founder of Kubrick,
Speaker 12: and we have raised our modest seed round in order
Speaker 12: to make version one of cubric. Currently we're in version one.
Speaker 12: We are in BEDA and as you know, we're getting like,
Speaker 12: we're very grateful for all the attention and usership that
Speaker 12: we have been adoptability that we have been getting. That's
Speaker 12: why we are raising funds for our seed round in
Speaker 12: order to create the version two. Because we have listened
Speaker 12: to filmmakers. You know how scrutinized their difficult their demands
Speaker 12: are and we have a roadmap that is exactly to
Speaker 12: satisfy the needs of filmmakers, and we are ready to
Speaker 12: execute our roadmap.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm curious about our filmmakers.
Speaker 3: The major studios were here in Hollywood, but there are
Speaker 3: content creators all around the world.
Speaker 2: But I think, are they lining up to use your service?
Speaker 2: I'm just curious.
Speaker 3: What's the communications you're having with them? Are they customers?
Speaker 7: Absolutely? Yes.
Speaker 12: One of the major studios is are the very first
Speaker 12: company that one of the major studios is the very
Speaker 12: first license holder of kubric And we're in talks with
Speaker 12: several they are it's okay, do you think I can,
Speaker 12: but I need to meet the finer.
Speaker 2: I know how that works.
Speaker 4: Do that before a panel, okay, because you know how
Speaker 4: it sometimes takes the established, additional part of that world
Speaker 4: to buy in.
Speaker 7: So my background is not filmmaking. That was the background
Speaker 7: of my late husband, the co founder of Cubrian. So
Speaker 7: my background is in generative AI and creativity. I am learning.
Speaker 12: The detail of filmmaking since two years, and what I've
Speaker 12: discovered is that most of the film studios don't make
Speaker 12: the movies. They hire the people that make the movies,
Speaker 12: production companies, digital effect studios, production designers, previous companies.
Speaker 7: They need the tools.
Speaker 12: So there are several ways to go about an adoption
Speaker 12: in the filmmaking world.
Speaker 7: You either go top down.
Speaker 13: You show it to the film studio executives and they understand,
Speaker 13: like they run the numbers they do ROI, and they
Speaker 13: tell them they advise the companies that they're hiring that
Speaker 13: it will be advisable to use that too.
Speaker 7: Or you go a grassroot.
Speaker 12: You identify like the previous artists, the production designer, the cinematographer,
Speaker 12: and you show the difference and user views and accessibility
Speaker 12: that your tool provides, and then they bring it to production.
Speaker 7: Companies that they would like to instead use this tool.
Speaker 4: The strike, I think is still fresh in the minds
Speaker 4: of a lot of people employment and who this type
Speaker 4: of thing displaces. If a film was spending hundreds of
Speaker 4: thousands of dollars and now needs to spend a fraction
Speaker 4: of the what people are affected by that?
Speaker 7: Sure, thank you for this question.
Speaker 12: I genuinely believe that me and all the other AI
Speaker 12: companies are we have a responsibility to public if you
Speaker 12: have a responsibility, like we are responsible of creating a
Speaker 12: major change in industry, and it is our duty to
Speaker 12: open conscious contemplations about what is happening and what will
Speaker 12: be happening.
Speaker 7: So there are jobs like imagine the way you create.
Speaker 7: I mean, I'm a creator. I know how I create.
Speaker 12: An idea comes and then it takes me time to execute.
Speaker 12: Some parts are very rewarding, like ideation vision having one
Speaker 12: hundred different options in front of me, or being stuck
Speaker 12: to one option and putting so much time with a tedious,
Speaker 12: treacherous work.
Speaker 7: In executing that option.
Speaker 12: A tool like Kubrick gives you the possibility of having
Speaker 12: one hundred different options, spending less time in executing one,
Speaker 12: and spending more time in having a more dialogue.
Speaker 7: With your director.
Speaker 12: So you know that there's a especially after COVID, there's
Speaker 12: an insane rise in extraordinary content. And you also know
Speaker 12: very well that the budgets are shrinking. So this really
Speaker 12: does like I always make the joke like, so who's
Speaker 12: gonna make that content? Will my lawyer stop being a
Speaker 12: lawyer and be a v infix artist? Like we need
Speaker 12: different solutions for the industry. There comes tools like Kubrick
Speaker 12: and others that are there to provide more automation in
Speaker 12: the industry.
Speaker 3: You know, we just had a director on You're Gonna
Speaker 3: Remember the name, and I'm gonna involved in Ring of Power,
Speaker 3: uh and said her whole life, what she wanted to
Speaker 3: do is work on epic film production. Yes, loves this
Speaker 3: going in and when a lot of people at an
Speaker 3: incredible location sheet.
Speaker 2: So I am curious, Charlotte.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 3: So I'm curious because your background is creative, Like, are
Speaker 3: you getting the creative folks on board who say no?
Speaker 3: In order to really make it real, I've got to
Speaker 3: be on location with a million people, and that's what
Speaker 3: really makes it so wonderful.
Speaker 12: Yes, absolutely, Just like anything like, there's no such a
Speaker 12: I don't believe that there's such a thing as AI.
Speaker 7: There's technology, and there's advancemental humanity.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 12: One can debate the fact that is social media good
Speaker 12: for humanity or bad. You can have half of the
Speaker 12: population say that it affected greatly the self confidence of
Speaker 12: their daughters, and the other one can say that they
Speaker 12: can sell x amount of goods by using social media stores.
Speaker 7: So just like, if you look at it.
Speaker 12: In a conscious contemplation manner, it can truly accelerate and
Speaker 12: make you marvels that you could never afford before. But
Speaker 12: if ever you approach it as like a competition or
Speaker 12: it's going to replace you, it's gonna kill you, it's
Speaker 12: gonna take it over from you, that will be the
Speaker 12: reality you will be manifesting because you will lack curiosity
Speaker 12: and wonder that that will let you approach it and
Speaker 12: make it useful for you.
Speaker 4: Canard, do you think we get to the point where
Speaker 4: it's kind of a novelty and it's special, Yeah, exact Well,
Speaker 4: directors to use film, right, Yeah, it's next. So a
Speaker 4: movie comes out and it's like, oh wow, this is
Speaker 4: the whole thing we shot up film. It shows the
Speaker 4: commitment of the producers and the director because it's more expensive.
Speaker 4: So we get to the point in a few years
Speaker 4: where a movie makes a point of saying there was
Speaker 4: no generated AI used in use.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sure, going all.
Speaker 12: To school here absolutely, Like I know of fact, twenty
Speaker 12: twenty two, out of the thousand pictures that make it
Speaker 12: in the big screen, nineteen ninety six of them were.
Speaker 7: Shot on digital. Four of them were shot on film.
Speaker 12: And you know, last year the film that was shot
Speaker 12: on film won the Academy Award for Best Picture. So yes,
Speaker 12: but like AI is going to be like it's like
Speaker 12: saying like in two years, if ever you say that
Speaker 12: your platform ATA, it will be like my device has
Speaker 12: Internet and now we gotta go.
Speaker 4: Canarsa Han Damer Dog, CEO of Kubrick here live at
Speaker 4: screen Time.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Can't you
Speaker 1: just live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern
Speaker 1: Listen on Apple car Play and then brought auto with
Speaker 1: a Bloomberg Business act or what's just live on YouTube?
Speaker 3: All right, we've got a great person from screen Time.
Speaker 3: Today we're gonna talk about City Football Group. They have
Speaker 3: set a new benchmark when it comes to the global
Speaker 3: sports industry, building a soccer machine that runs from England
Speaker 3: to the United States and more so here that talk
Speaker 3: about what they're up to.
Speaker 2: Is that Nuria Tare.
Speaker 3: She's chief Marketing and Fan Experience Officer and City Football
Speaker 3: Group joining us.
Speaker 2: Nuria, it is so great, Maria Greata have you here
Speaker 2: with us?
Speaker 3: Tell us about what you are doing as you expand
Speaker 3: the imprint of can I say soccer versus football?
Speaker 2: You can't say soccer as you build it out.
Speaker 3: In the United States and what's the expectations in terms
Speaker 3: of what you can do here.
Speaker 14: Well, in case anyone missed it, soccer is actually growing
Speaker 14: very fast in the US. It's outfacing the growth of
Speaker 14: any other sport at the moment. And the good news
Speaker 14: for US is why is that. Well, there's probably plenty
Speaker 14: of things. It's been growing for a while, but there's
Speaker 14: clearly an acceleration over the last two years. Some may say,
Speaker 14: you know, it's a messy effect, but it's just really
Speaker 14: the next generation. It's really appealing to younger audiences. Participation
Speaker 14: in the sport is growing as well. And what's great
Speaker 14: for US as well is one in three soccer fun
Speaker 14: has still to choose their favorite club. So that's where
Speaker 14: we come in because in the US we have actually
Speaker 14: two big properties. One is a New York City Football
Speaker 14: club based in New York is part of the MLS,
Speaker 14: but of course Manchester City part of City.
Speaker 2: Football Brook parts our big you've.
Speaker 5: Heard of them.
Speaker 14: Hopefully it's our most global property in our portfolio and
Speaker 14: of course has huge ambitions of growing in the US
Speaker 14: market as well.
Speaker 4: All right, let's start with NYCFC growth plans within New
Speaker 4: York City. What's the plan? What are you doing?
Speaker 5: Well, fantastic plans.
Speaker 14: I mean, as you know, we've been in the market
Speaker 14: for ten years now. We've been looking for a permanent
Speaker 14: home and we almost got it in Queens. So we've
Speaker 14: announced actually plans for new stadium. As you know, we
Speaker 14: are hoping to break grounds very soon. Can't say much
Speaker 14: more about that. We're hugely excited. We're planning to be
Speaker 14: in Queens, great sports area in the city. So we
Speaker 14: want to have a home in the Five Boroughs and
Speaker 14: I think we've found abot place.
Speaker 3: How do you engage with fans who are like you know,
Speaker 3: there's just so many different things that can do different
Speaker 3: kinds of sports, you know, hearing, viewing things and streaming
Speaker 3: or traditional media.
Speaker 2: How do you can beat with us eyeballs? What do
Speaker 2: you have to do to get us there?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's really interesting. Take Manchester City for instance.
Speaker 14: Right, So one thing is winning, and of course we've
Speaker 14: been winning a lot, yes, and.
Speaker 5: You know we like it or not.
Speaker 14: Winning gets people's attention, right and we get the share
Speaker 14: of mind if you want. But on the other side
Speaker 14: of the pitch as well, we see ourselves as a
Speaker 14: sports entertainment brand, so we invest very much in media,
Speaker 14: in content production, and I think i'd like to say
Speaker 14: we've been pushing the boundaries in the way soccer clubs
Speaker 14: would be acting normally.
Speaker 5: Just to give you a few examples.
Speaker 14: For instance, six years ago, which is like long time now,
Speaker 14: but just yesterday, we were the first soccer brand to
Speaker 14: do all or nothing on Apple, so we really open
Speaker 14: the doors show how it wants to operate a soccer club,
Speaker 14: how it is to win. Since then afterwards, we've been
Speaker 14: on Tatlasso as well several you know.
Speaker 2: What is that for you?
Speaker 7: Something like that?
Speaker 5: I mean, I feel like we all see.
Speaker 4: You had that question we were.
Speaker 6: Talking to us.
Speaker 15: I did.
Speaker 5: Obviously we got in season one.
Speaker 14: We didn't even know whether it was gonna walk right,
Speaker 14: but we could see the story was interesting.
Speaker 5: It was very much focused for the US market.
Speaker 14: Of course, it's a global part of really appealing to
Speaker 14: the US market.
Speaker 5: And it's been great because we were big.
Speaker 14: Aspiration was doing against Manchester City and playing Manchester City,
Speaker 14: so it's been great for our brand.
Speaker 4: What's what's the media story here in terms of being
Speaker 4: able to watch games. I think it's so tough for
Speaker 4: customers in the United States to understand where they need
Speaker 4: to go to watch different teams, whether it's a local
Speaker 4: blackout as a result of just some old media rights
Speaker 4: issue where there are blackouts because two companies don't get along.
Speaker 4: In the US, you can't watch your favorite sport, your
Speaker 4: favorite team. How are you navigating that?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 5: You rather as a challenge.
Speaker 14: But on one side, the MLS is doing a fantastic
Speaker 14: job now on Apple as well.
Speaker 5: You know, subscribers keep for following. The quality of the.
Speaker 14: Product and the production is improving, so definitely getting a
Speaker 14: growing audience. And when it comes to the Premier League,
Speaker 14: I mean the audience has been phenomenal in in the
Speaker 14: last couple of years.
Speaker 5: NBC is doing a brilliant job in the mornings.
Speaker 4: Ever, Wordmili money, would it ever be worth going direct
Speaker 4: consumer and bypassing Apple, bypassing.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm trying.
Speaker 14: We're gonna try not to get into that because I'm
Speaker 14: gonna be in trouble with our broadcast to friends and
Speaker 14: try to be friends with them.
Speaker 5: We collaborate a lot.
Speaker 14: But I think in the US market, still having you know,
Speaker 14: reach an audience and being able to to have innoll
Speaker 14: visibility is still important.
Speaker 3: You guys do some really novel things like pop up stores,
Speaker 3: and I just do think about how how you think
Speaker 3: about expanding the brand and again engaging with you know, viewers,
Speaker 3: people who come in matches.
Speaker 2: What else are you guys thinking about doing.
Speaker 14: So, As I was saying, we see yourselves as a
Speaker 14: sports entertainment brand, so we try to look at it
Speaker 14: not only from the game, like from soccer, but also
Speaker 14: there's there's a soccer culture if.
Speaker 5: You want that we're trying to be part of.
Speaker 14: So we invest in merchandising, retail, popup stores. As you say,
Speaker 14: we had a pretty successful pop up store in near
Speaker 14: Rockefeller Center actually New York, and now we're looking for
Speaker 14: a permanent location because it was so great that we
Speaker 14: want to stay in New York.
Speaker 5: We're probably going to be looking at LA.
Speaker 14: And other places around around the US, and also looking
Speaker 14: at relevant collaborations with content creators, collaborations in retail. As
Speaker 14: we are merchandising to be appealing to the US market
Speaker 14: if you want in a relevant way.
Speaker 3: I am curious just twenty seconds left your fan base
Speaker 3: is it young, is it old?
Speaker 7: Is it What can you tell.
Speaker 5: Us we are the fastest growing soccer brand in the US.
Speaker 14: It's very young. It's too young. People choose the club
Speaker 14: seventeen year old just to say so, excuse young. And
Speaker 14: we have the youngest fani base actually, and.
Speaker 3: Those young fan bases and parents which we spend a
Speaker 3: lot of money, which.
Speaker 2: Is interesting to advertise.
Speaker 5: You said, I know that, Lauria.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Naria TOA.
Speaker 3: She's a chief marketing at fan Experience officer at City
Speaker 3: Football Group.
Speaker 2: Sounds like she has some fun in her job.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
Speaker 1: each weekday. He's starting at two pm Eastern on Apple
Speaker 1: car Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App.
Speaker 1: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
Speaker 1: flagship New York station just say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 6: Hey.
Speaker 4: One thing here at Bloomberg BusinessWeek that we like to
Speaker 4: do is really help understand who and what should be
Speaker 4: on your radar. Who should be on your radar The
Speaker 4: people who are blowing up TikTok, those who are drawing
Speaker 4: massive crowds and music festivals. They're creating genre bending art
Speaker 4: and even expanding their culinary empires. They are the ones
Speaker 4: to watch.
Speaker 3: They are, indeed, and Carlo Eduardo Espina is certainly in
Speaker 3: that category.
Speaker 7: He's got more.
Speaker 2: Than check this out, ten million followers on TikTok.
Speaker 3: He's become one of the leading names when it comes
Speaker 3: to Hispanic political voices in the United States.
Speaker 2: The New York Times calls him a one.
Speaker 7: Man Tolman Day.
Speaker 4: His videos, almost all of which are in Spanish and
Speaker 4: which routinely get hundreds of thousands of views, favor by
Speaker 4: commentary on policy and politics. They've even got the attention
Speaker 4: to White House. He spoke at the DNC, and he
Speaker 4: can made videos with President Biden. Carlos, Welcome to Bloomberg
Speaker 4: Business Week. Congratulations on being named one to Watch. Thank
Speaker 4: for your Business Week. Your pretty recent law school graduate. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think a lot of your classmates are probably out
Speaker 4: like sitting at desks right now.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're trying to find jobs with big mom. Maybe
Speaker 4: how would you find yourself making TikTok videos and bringing
Speaker 4: in a couple million bucks a year.
Speaker 6: Well, it was kind of something that started out as
Speaker 6: a hobby. Like many content creators. I graduated college in
Speaker 6: May of twenty twenty, and my goal was to work
Speaker 6: for a nonprofit organization doing immigrant rights work advocacy, but
Speaker 6: because of the pandemic, that fell through. So while I
Speaker 6: was at home figuring out what to do with my life,
Speaker 6: I started making content on social media. I started doing
Speaker 6: citizenship classes one hundred questions when you want to naturalize,
Speaker 6: and that started blowing up really fast, to the point
Speaker 6: that by the end of twenty twenty I had over
Speaker 6: half a million followers, and I was like, hey, you know,
Speaker 6: I can start doing this more consistently, and it became
Speaker 6: my job and I love it.
Speaker 4: We'll get to more of the TikTok and the contentation
Speaker 4: first before, but first I want to talk a little
Speaker 4: bit more about your story because you mentioned citizenship, I
Speaker 4: mean something that you're intimately familiar with, having come to
Speaker 4: the United States when you were five years old.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so it's a little my My personal story is
Speaker 6: pretty long. My parents were already living in the US
Speaker 6: before I was born, but my mom got deported in
Speaker 6: nineteen ninety seven, so she had to go back to Mexico.
Speaker 6: Then my dad would go visit her. She got pregnant
Speaker 6: with me. I was born in Uruguay and then we
Speaker 6: were able to come back. But my mom became a
Speaker 6: citizen in twenty fourteen, so I remember helping her study
Speaker 6: for the citizenship exam, and in high school I volunteered
Speaker 6: for a nonprofit teaching citizenship. So that's why when I
Speaker 6: was like figuring out what to do with my life,
Speaker 6: I was like, well, I can always do what I
Speaker 6: like doing, just you know, helping people out. Started making
Speaker 6: content around it, and it worked out pretty well.
Speaker 3: Carlos, what do you think is a smart conversation to
Speaker 3: be had around immigration?
Speaker 7: Right now?
Speaker 3: It's such a big part of the upcoming US election
Speaker 3: where just you know, a.
Speaker 2: Few weeks away, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 3: But anytime I bring up immigration with someone, they have
Speaker 3: very strong feelings one way or another. What do you think,
Speaker 3: having seen it firsthand, gone through it with your family,
Speaker 3: what do you think is a smart conversation that we
Speaker 3: should be having around that?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 6: I think the best thing to do is really, you know,
Speaker 6: challenge the narratives and the perceptions that people have already
Speaker 6: made up, because a lot of times people have this,
Speaker 6: you know, either hate towards immigrants or negative sentiment, but
Speaker 6: they because you know, someone else has told them to
Speaker 6: feel that way, whether they've seen it on the news
Speaker 6: or whether you know they've read some conspiracy or whatever
Speaker 6: it may be. But when you really got down to
Speaker 6: the human level and start meeting people around you, you
Speaker 6: realize that immigrants are all around you and in many
Speaker 6: ways they make your life better. And I think once
Speaker 6: you start, you know, having that personal connection, meeting one
Speaker 6: on one and realizing that the issue is much more
Speaker 6: complex than what it's made out to be. And yes,
Speaker 6: I mean there's real issues that need to be addressed,
Speaker 6: but the reality there's millions of people in this country
Speaker 6: who don't have an immigration status, who have been working
Speaker 6: here for ten, fifteen, twenty years, paying taxes, contributing, and
Speaker 6: it's just illogical, you know, to try and apport all
Speaker 6: these people now, So why don't we find some more
Speaker 6: humane solutions and you know, really get to the human
Speaker 6: side of the issue.
Speaker 4: You said, The New York Times called you a one
Speaker 4: man Telemundo really interesting profile there. We have a great
Speaker 4: profile of you in BusinessWeek. You're doing this by reaching
Speaker 4: people on TikTok and other social platforms. I'm wondering what
Speaker 4: you think the mainstream media gets wrong about the things
Speaker 4: that you cover on your social channels.
Speaker 6: Well, I think, you know, there's pretty good coverage in Spanish,
Speaker 6: I think just because of like the general context, something
Speaker 6: that's talked about more often. But when it comes to
Speaker 6: English media, a lot of times, you know, we talked
Speaker 6: about immigration or Latino issues in general, it's very oversimplified
Speaker 6: or it just focuses on one aspect and the reality
Speaker 6: is that it's very, very complex when you talk about immigration.
Speaker 6: You know, right now everyone's talking about the border, the border,
Speaker 6: but it's much bigger than the border. It's about people
Speaker 6: in their home countries. It's about those who are already here.
Speaker 6: So I guess really understanding the issue beyond the headlines,
Speaker 6: and you know, looking beyond, I guess what the current
Speaker 6: narrative is. Because you have these trends in immigration, it
Speaker 6: becomes a hot topic, then people forget about it, then
Speaker 6: it comes back and you know, I'm someone who lives
Speaker 6: in every single day, so I have no choice right
Speaker 6: to just pay attention when I want to, And I
Speaker 6: think that's really important having journalists, having people who are
Speaker 6: paying attention to the issue day in and day out.
Speaker 3: So important to what you do is your ability to
Speaker 3: reach people on TikTok. You could certainly school Tim and
Speaker 3: me and how to get something internship reach.
Speaker 4: You should be tiktoking us right now. Yeah, just drown
Speaker 4: it out there man.
Speaker 3: Having said that, part of the narrative to is a
Speaker 3: potential ban on TikTok.
Speaker 2: If that happens, what does that mean for you and
Speaker 2: what you do?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: So obviously, like I said, it started as a hobby,
Speaker 6: but now TikTok, social media in general is my business.
Speaker 6: It's my job in many ways, and obviously there would
Speaker 6: be if TikTok were to get banned, which I don't
Speaker 6: necessarily thing will happen. I think that they'll sell it
Speaker 6: or whatever. But even if that were to happen, you know,
Speaker 6: there's no guarantee that the platform will stay the same,
Speaker 6: and I think it will hurt a lot of people,
Speaker 6: not just myself, but mostly the people who consume the
Speaker 6: information on these platforms because people have become so dependent
Speaker 6: on social media platforms like TikTok to be educated, to
Speaker 6: be informed, and right there's this perception that TikTok is
Speaker 6: just a bunch of you know, crazy dangerous trends and
Speaker 6: nothing useful. But that's completely, very far removed from reality,
Speaker 6: at least how I see it. So I think it
Speaker 6: would be a big damage not only to content creators,
Speaker 6: but those you know who use TikTok for positive things,
Speaker 6: to learn, to be educated, to engage with other stuff
Speaker 6: they otherwise wouldn't really know about.
Speaker 4: Hey, I kind of very delete a little bit at
Speaker 4: the top, sayd that you make a couple million dollars
Speaker 4: a year. Yeah, tract, we got to get the details
Speaker 4: on this and and help people understand we're Bloomberg. We
Speaker 4: love talking numbers, the y y Yeah, help people understand
Speaker 4: how you're making that money.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So as a content creator, you know, for me, it
Speaker 6: was like a very big learning curve because like at
Speaker 6: the beginning, I was just making videos for fun, and
Speaker 6: then I started realizing, yeah, you can monetize off of
Speaker 6: social media, and so there's really the main way, the
Speaker 6: most common way is just off to video views. So
Speaker 6: each platform, for example TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, have some
Speaker 6: sort of rate they pay you for every amount of
Speaker 6: views that you get. It really depends, you know, on
Speaker 6: who's watching your videos, the kind of content you make.
Speaker 6: But beyond that, there's also paid collaborations. For example, in
Speaker 6: my case, I've done a lot of work with like
Speaker 6: immigration attorneys or that kind of stuff. You know, it
Speaker 6: really depends on your audience. If you a makeup creator,
Speaker 6: obviously you work with makeup brands that kind of stuff.
Speaker 6: And then there's also you know, what has been the
Speaker 6: most successful for me is making your own brand. So,
Speaker 6: like I mentioned, I've been teaching citizenship classes for a
Speaker 6: long time, and I took a class in life copyright
Speaker 6: and I learned that everything the government puts out is
Speaker 6: in the public domain. So I was like, hey, you know,
Speaker 6: these citizenship questions are like, why can't I just make
Speaker 6: my own citizenship questions so people can study? And I
Speaker 6: started making them and selling them for ten dollars each
Speaker 6: and I've sold over like one hundred thousand sets, like
Speaker 6: the flash gars. So now people run into me in
Speaker 6: person and like, oh, I have your flashcars as a
Speaker 6: study for the naturalization exam. So I sell them cheaper
Speaker 6: than anywhere else, and then at the same time people
Speaker 6: are able to benefit. I go on live stream and
Speaker 6: I'm like studying with them, and I'm like, hey, if
Speaker 6: you want to buy them, you can just go right
Speaker 6: here in this link.
Speaker 4: And yeah, then we should know you're also using your
Speaker 4: money to work on profits. And get back to the
Speaker 4: community before we get to that. When I hear you
Speaker 4: talk about the way that creators are paid, I also
Speaker 4: wonder about misaligned incentives. You think of a platform like
Speaker 4: X for example under Elon Musk. It's been well documented
Speaker 4: what has proliminated there and what you're able to do
Speaker 4: is actually make money by people seeing your posts on
Speaker 4: X exactly does that provide an incentive for people to
Speaker 4: come out with false and misleading info because it inflames emotions,
Speaker 4: People share it, people interact with it, more people see it,
Speaker 4: and then it creates a cycle where you're getting paid
Speaker 4: more because you know what resonates with people, whether that's.
Speaker 9: True or not.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well the next TI I'm not too familiar. I'm
Speaker 6: on the platform, but I don't use it to great content.
Speaker 6: I just use it to like look at news and
Speaker 6: that kind of stuff. But it definitely is like a
Speaker 6: real feed YouTube TikTok people. I see it a lot
Speaker 6: where like you know, obviously, once you get to a
Speaker 6: certain amount of followers, people are watching the content that
Speaker 6: you make. So if you make consistently like fake content,
Speaker 6: you know you'll get flagged, you'll get banned eventually. But
Speaker 6: there is you know, an incentive to perhaps you know,
Speaker 6: put out information that's not true that you know will
Speaker 6: catch people's attention. Like for example, right now, I could
Speaker 6: go outside and say, hey, I just got assaulted in
Speaker 6: LA and there's no truth to it, like, but people
Speaker 6: won't believe it because I'm saying it. Obviously I don't
Speaker 6: do that because I have some sort of like ethical code,
Speaker 6: you know, But there's.
Speaker 4: Other people the narratives, yeah right now about California exactly.
Speaker 6: Yeah, or so like people can go to the border
Speaker 6: and be like, oh, I just saw a criminal come by.
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't, like, there's no proof, but if
Speaker 6: I were to go say that, it would go viral because,
Speaker 6: like you're saying, it feeds into people's negative perceptions and
Speaker 6: you do see a lot of that. And I think
Speaker 6: I say this as a content creator, I do think
Speaker 6: there needs to be more regulation all these platforms as
Speaker 6: far as I you know, what is allowed to be
Speaker 6: put on there. Like obviously I believe in free speech,
Speaker 6: but when you're going into the terrain of just making
Speaker 6: a fake news or stuff that just isn't real, I
Speaker 6: think that's really dangerous and harmful to society.
Speaker 3: Well, certainly real I want to bring it back to
Speaker 3: the election just as we get ready to wrap up.
Speaker 3: I mean, Latinos, how do you think that they will?
Speaker 3: And I hate to kind of love everybody in a.
Speaker 2: Group because we're just that's.
Speaker 3: Not who we are. We are multi dimensional. But how
Speaker 3: do you think the Latino citizens will impact elections potentially
Speaker 3: this November?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Well, I think Latinos are the ultimate swing voters
Speaker 6: in the sense that you know, Latinos as opposed to
Speaker 6: like other you know, communities, we don't have a set
Speaker 6: party identity. I mean Latinos in general. I voted Democrat
Speaker 6: over the past few decades, but that's not necessarily like
Speaker 6: set in Stone in a sense, like I've met other
Speaker 6: people from other communities, like, hey, I vote Democrat because
Speaker 6: my parents voted Democrat and my grandparents voted Democrat, and
Speaker 6: we have this long legacy of voting Democratic. Republicans use
Speaker 6: Latinos since we're relatively new and many sense, at least
Speaker 6: the majority of us as country, we don't have those
Speaker 6: same attachments to one party or another, which makes us swing.
Speaker 6: But I do think ultimately the majority will go demograph
Speaker 6: But I do also see those trends that there are
Speaker 6: a big number shifting Republican in twenty seconds?
Speaker 2: Where do you want to in I don't know five years.
Speaker 2: Where do you want to be? Twenty seconds?
Speaker 7: But quickly?
Speaker 6: Well, as you mentioned, so when I do on social
Speaker 6: media as I make money and then I use it
Speaker 6: to help others. So I want to run my own
Speaker 6: nonprofit organization, do a lot of community work, do soccer stuff, hey,
Speaker 6: do citizenship, do English classes, all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 6: and continue giving back.
Speaker 2: Carlos, thank you so thanks for giving us some time.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast.
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Speaker 4: I want to say that Mike Marheim, there's a thing
Speaker 4: or two about gaming. It would be a real understatement.
Speaker 4: He's co founder and former CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, the
Speaker 4: company behind games such as Warcraft, Yablo overwatching war Now.
Speaker 4: He's back at it with dream Haven. It's a video
Speaker 4: game developer and publisher. He started back in twenty twenty. Mike,
Speaker 4: Welcome to Bloomberg Business Week. Welcome to screen time.
Speaker 7: Thank you for how are you. I'm doing great.
Speaker 4: Good, It's really good to see you. Look, you've been
Speaker 4: doing this for more than three decades at this point,
Speaker 4: the vast majority spent it play.
Speaker 2: I think you took a deep and side there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it sounds like it's a long time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you could have just been done. Yeah, you could
Speaker 4: have retired, spend as much time gaming as you wanted to,
Speaker 4: But instead you come back with Dreamhaven. What are you
Speaker 4: trying to do there that's not being done elsewhere?
Speaker 15: Well, I mean, we really believe in the power of
Speaker 15: games to bring people together in positive ways, and so
Speaker 15: and I think also we're we're trying to create an
Speaker 15: environment for game makers to be able to do their
Speaker 15: work and be able to focus on the player experience
Speaker 15: and the quality of these games without some of the
Speaker 15: corporate pressures that you may find at other companies.
Speaker 5: And so I think.
Speaker 15: I think that's really what motivates us, is kind of
Speaker 15: trying to show that there's a better way of.
Speaker 5: Making games and if you.
Speaker 15: Put the player experience first and the quality of the
Speaker 15: games foremost in the process, that that is a path
Speaker 15: to success. And I hope it.
Speaker 3: Still is I love your altrumistic mission here, but when
Speaker 3: you say some of the corporate pressures to me, it
Speaker 3: says one of those corporate pressures.
Speaker 2: Is probability, right and having a sustainable business. So can
Speaker 2: you do what you're trying to do and be a
Speaker 2: sustainable business?
Speaker 15: Finance, we need to be a sustainable business, otherwise we
Speaker 15: won't have a business. So, I mean, that's very real
Speaker 15: what I'm talking about corporate pressures. I'm talking about the
Speaker 15: short term pressures that prevent you from making the right
Speaker 15: long term value creating decisions.
Speaker 2: What are the term pressures that you saw in the past.
Speaker 15: Well, I think most public companies are under tremendous short
Speaker 15: term financial pressures to deliver quarterly growth, really, you know,
Speaker 15: and that doesn't always facilitate the best environment for game
Speaker 15: creators to make the right decisions for the games that
Speaker 15: could end up being a bigger value creating decisions in
Speaker 15: the long run.
Speaker 3: Before we talk about your process, then, so does that
Speaker 3: mean long term you will not seek to go profit public?
Speaker 7: Is that not? Part of It's unlikely we would go
Speaker 7: public because there's.
Speaker 2: So much you can do when you're a private company.
Speaker 15: I think that definitely there's a lot more freedom and
Speaker 15: ability to navigate some of the difficulties as a private company.
Speaker 15: I mean, I think that when we were so I
Speaker 15: sold when I was at Blizzard, we sold three years in,
Speaker 15: so very very early, and we were a small part
Speaker 15: of large public companies for a very long time. And
Speaker 15: actually that was a very comfortable place to be.
Speaker 4: You stayed with it for years for years, yeah, and
Speaker 4: which very rare for a years.
Speaker 15: So when we sold the company, we sold to Davidson
Speaker 15: and Associates, which was really controlled by Boba Jan Davidson,
Speaker 15: although they were public, but the agreement was that basically
Speaker 15: they would give us full creative autonomy and ability to
Speaker 15: continue running the company just like we were, which I
Speaker 15: guess a lot of companies when they acquire companies maybe
Speaker 15: they say that we were very naive. So we didn't
Speaker 15: know that. It's that was kind of what I signed
Speaker 15: up for. And the first year after the acquisition, we
Speaker 15: came out with Warcraft Orcs and humans and then Warcraft two,
Speaker 15: you know, and then.
Speaker 4: You're still innovating a lot.
Speaker 7: We were, and we.
Speaker 15: Were doing it very successfully, and I think that gained
Speaker 15: us a lot of credibility with our parent companies. So
Speaker 15: when they ended up selling their company to another company,
Speaker 15: and so we had all these different corporate owners. They'd
Speaker 15: look at us, and we were consist distantly innovating and
Speaker 15: doing well, and even when our games slipped, we might
Speaker 15: miss a year, we might miss a quarter, they ended.
Speaker 7: Up doing even better than expectations.
Speaker 15: After that, they were like, oh, Okay, these guys know
Speaker 15: what they're doing, and they led us one to continue
Speaker 15: doing that. I think the challenge was when we became
Speaker 15: a very large part of a medium sized public company,
Speaker 15: then those pressures became a lot more disruptive to our process.
Speaker 4: I see, there's a really interesting anecdote about you early
Speaker 4: maybe childhood, just with an early platform that doesn't exist anymore,
Speaker 4: your sort of introduction to gaming. And I was thinking
Speaker 4: about that because here we are in twenty twenty four
Speaker 4: and I'm trying to understand so many people here at
Speaker 4: Screen Gammer, trying to understand what is the next platform.
Speaker 4: You had Mark Zuckerberg make that big investment in the
Speaker 4: so called metaverse ar VR, Apple's going in with a headset.
Speaker 4: We saw new stuff from Oculus recently, what a how
Speaker 4: are you designing for platforms of the future, Like who's
Speaker 4: gonna win. What's gonna be the platform where you go.
Speaker 15: So the approach that we take is really agnostic to
Speaker 15: that question. We're very small, so we're developing on platforms
Speaker 15: that already have a very large installed base. So that's
Speaker 15: to us, that's mostly PC and console. The game that
Speaker 15: we just announced today is called sunder Folk. It's a
Speaker 15: love letter to tabletop gaming, and it's basically trying to
Speaker 15: make some like the magic of tabletop gaming and make
Speaker 15: that accessible to like a wider audience.
Speaker 4: There are a lot of people who self screaming for
Speaker 4: people listening.
Speaker 15: So we're talking about sitting around playing board games or
Speaker 15: or things like Dungeons and Dragons or like gloom Haven.
Speaker 4: So these are physical games.
Speaker 15: Some of them are super deep and super complicated, where
Speaker 15: you know you might it might take you a couple
Speaker 15: of hours just to understand the rules before you even
Speaker 15: start playing. And we think once you get past the
Speaker 15: rules and you're into playing these games, there's so much
Speaker 15: togetherness that is created with your friends.
Speaker 4: Stuff we did before we had kids. I did kids,
Speaker 4: I don't know if you were.
Speaker 3: Clue was a big thing in my family and my
Speaker 3: my daughter obsessed and.
Speaker 2: Like, is there a clue?
Speaker 3: Version because it's just kind of sweet and fun and
Speaker 3: it's not Monopoly where you have to like give in.
Speaker 2: A million cal not talking clear, and I've just been reduced.
Speaker 15: So these are a little bit a little bit deeper
Speaker 15: of gaming experiences in deep, not at all, I'm.
Speaker 2: Just kidding at all.
Speaker 7: No, but I see, like, wait, like.
Speaker 2: It'll be fun to do, right.
Speaker 7: I think that.
Speaker 15: So what we want to do is make it so
Speaker 15: that you get to the fun right away, and so
Speaker 15: that fans of some of these what they're we're calling
Speaker 15: them like tactical role playing adventure games can have a
Speaker 15: tool to bring in their friends. And the way we
Speaker 15: do it is we use your big screen, your shared
Speaker 15: screen kind of to do all the stuff you would
Speaker 15: normally do on the table with the board, and then
Speaker 15: use your phone as your interface to the game.
Speaker 4: So that's how you're trying to bring people closer together
Speaker 4: using gaming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but use existing tools, right, It's all there, so easy.
Speaker 4: But what I'm not hearing from you is building for
Speaker 4: Apple's headset or building for some immersive world. You said
Speaker 4: PC and console and PC and console are old school.
Speaker 15: Yeah, so I mean this is where we're starting. I'm
Speaker 15: absolutely not opposed to looking at VR ORAR if those
Speaker 15: are the right platforms for future game ideas.
Speaker 4: You must have been hearing about VR for thirty years.
Speaker 15: Truly, Yeah, And I mean as a gamer, I love
Speaker 15: it and I think the stuff that Meta is doing
Speaker 15: is fantastic. And the way that they're incorporating their investments
Speaker 15: in AI into their mixed reality, you know, the new
Speaker 15: glasses that they just announced the Ryan, I think it's
Speaker 15: I mean, there's definitely something there.
Speaker 3: So when they talk about the Metaverse for to be fair,
Speaker 3: for a while, everybody was very skeptical.
Speaker 4: I mean there's still a lot of skeptics.
Speaker 3: I'm writing, people crushed the renaming of the company, like
Speaker 3: is this never going to amount to anything? But you
Speaker 3: kind of get you can start connecting the dots in terms.
Speaker 2: Of the gaming world or more broadly, well.
Speaker 15: So the Quest already is really there is It is
Speaker 15: a great gaming platform and there are some great gaming
Speaker 15: experiences on Quest, you know, and I think that more
Speaker 15: investment will go into doing that. I'm not sure you
Speaker 15: really have the killer app yet that is gonna, you know,
Speaker 15: make everybody go out and buy one. But the price
Speaker 15: points are coming down and uh and you know, they're
Speaker 15: doing interesting things with lip syncing and Ava avatars, three
Speaker 15: D avatars so that you can communicate with friends far away.
Speaker 15: It's very interesting and there are applications to games in
Speaker 15: you know, in that regard as well.
Speaker 4: Are you having help help us understand how much fun
Speaker 4: you're having at this company versus where you were earlier
Speaker 4: in your career.
Speaker 15: So I guess the biggest difference is maybe the level
Speaker 15: of stress is taken down a big notch.
Speaker 4: That's important.
Speaker 7: So you know, we're we're a team of a.
Speaker 15: Little bit over one hundred people right now, and we're
Speaker 15: at the stage right now, we're just getting to start
Speaker 15: talking about what we've been working on, and we're playing
Speaker 15: our games, and that's a very exciting time, all right.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna amp up the stress because we only
Speaker 2: had about a minute left.
Speaker 3: You know, I've got to ask you that why is
Speaker 3: so much gaming out there so graphic and violent? It
Speaker 3: can't be good for society, research and study, And folks
Speaker 3: would say it's not.
Speaker 2: Why does it have to be that way?
Speaker 15: I mean, we don't think it has to be that way,
Speaker 15: And so our games don't use realistic, rappable violence. And
Speaker 15: if we do if we do have shooting, it's animated shooting.
Speaker 15: It's it's fantasy, it's not sort of reality sim related violence,
Speaker 15: and we're going to try to stay away from that.
Speaker 2: Why it's a conscious decision.
Speaker 15: It is a conscious dess because I just don't think
Speaker 15: it's necessary for the fun.
Speaker 3: On a lighter note, sorry, it's just something that like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll talk about it a lot with kids.
Speaker 4: Ai is a huge theme here. We have thirty seconds left.
Speaker 4: How are you using jen ai right now?
Speaker 15: Yeah, so we're experimenting with jen Ai. It's not something
Speaker 15: we're really actively using in the games or the game
Speaker 15: development at this point. Although I think jen Ai is
Speaker 15: going to have a huge impact on all of our lives,
Speaker 15: including games and including game development, but we really still
Speaker 15: have to work out some of the ethical issues, copyright issues,
Speaker 15: you know, some of the legal issues of who owns what,
Speaker 15: and I'm sure that that will get worked.
Speaker 7: Out over it.
Speaker 15: But it's not going to replace us, right I can't
Speaker 15: see how it replaced us.
Speaker 3: I could maybe thank you so much for going all
Speaker 3: around the universe when.
Speaker 2: It comes to gaming.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much for having me Mike.
Speaker 4: Mike Morheim, co founder and former CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, Warcroft, Diablo,
Speaker 4: over Watch Anymore.
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