Thread by @ryanhashemi_

I built the $50M company that forever changed YouTube.

It's called Jubilee and it's clocked 5 BILLION views and 9M subs on YT.

100's of channels have copied us, and MrBeast tried to poach half my team.

How much $$$$ it makes, how we constantly go viral, and how I built it 👇🧵

7 years ago, Jubliee Media officially launched.

Since then we've grown to 13M+ total followers and generate $8-figures / year, growing 100% year-over-year.

Our top 10 videos have 200M views. Half the people in the U.S. have watched ONE of these ten videos.

in 2016, the US was fiercely divided and living on social media.

We saw an opportunity to make an impact.

Create content around polarizing topics, provoke conversation on both sides and go viral while increasing human understanding.

We did crazy video ideas to spark semi-controversial discussion on both ends.

Like bring flat earthers and scientists together - can they agree on anything?

Or.. seeing if people could guess who among them is black, while blindfolded - through Q&A. How we stereotype people is on full display.

+ Exposing dating-app swipe culture, by making people swipe left and right on others, TO THEIR FACE, and explain their choice.

In 2017, we started as a rag-tag team of 5 +interns, taking massive pay cuts to start this thing.

How did this inexperienced, underpaid team of "nobody's" build a generational company?

We had a secret sauce:

OUR IDEATION and CONCEPT TESTING PROCESS

To come up with good ideas, I proposed we shut down the whole company for a day and run a 24-hour guided brainstorming.

In 24 hours, we came up with 800 show ideas.

Most were bad, but one amazing idea was worth all the effort.

These 24-hour hackathons have shaped our creative culture.

We learned there are no wrong answers, to think outside the box, and ignore what's been done before.

(us after the first hackathon 👇 half asleep...)

When we found a winning idea we'd make an MVP - ask our team to produce this concept in a rough way with coworkers/friends/strangers and spit it out in 24 to 48 hours.

This forced us to quickly gut check our ideas. We would go on to produce the ones that passed the gut check.

Our first truly Viral Video was when we launched the "Versus 1" love format. It went on to hit #2 on YouTube's Trending list.

From that point on, everything changed for Jubilee.

We knew our ideation process was working and we went full experimental mode.

In a way, we built a venture lab for media.

1. We'd invest minimal resources in creating an MVP format,
2. Test a pilot on YouTube,
2. Double down on the successes,
4. Kill the rest.

We were putting out 3 videos a week and launching new show pilots every month.

Over time, the winning formats compounded.

Middle Ground, Spectrum, Bottom Line, Odd One Out, Versus One, Ranking, etc .... every single show averages 2M+ views per video.

Our viewership has grown exponentially with multiple formats scaling to 200M monthly views 👇

We obsessed over making sure everything we made maximized both our mission and savviness (mass appeal).

Let me tell you, that's HARD. But it made all the difference.

Seeing our success, Netflix reached out to help develop their YouTube strategy.

MrBeast DM'd our creatives and tried to poach half the team lol.

(love you too, Jimmy ❤️)

Our formats worked because they intentionally:

1) Pique extreme curiosity
2) Have high emotional stakes throughout
3) Designed with a pay-off at the end (for max retention)

Draw the click and keep them watching.

YT told us we're one of the most binged channels.

YouTubers took note and started ripping us off. lol.

Sidemen, the largest YouTube group in the UK, copied us.

Dozens of videos with our exact same thumbnail design, same concept.

This guy's entire playbook is just to copy our formats to a T. (But hey, it still takes a good artist to copy well!)

We've handed 100s of millions of views and millions of dollars to other channels.

Airrack's new media company's strategy is to be Jubilee. He came to our office and let us know ❤️

Other big creators, like CodyKo, are headed in that direction - they're reaching out to me.

People are catching on: strong concepts + storytelling create evergreen success on YT.

There is a whole genre of people recording themselves reacting to our videos. Hundreds of millions of views. Crazy.

PewDiePie (world's biggest YouTuber until 2022) has an entire series called "Jubilee React".

It's crazy to see the total impact on YouTube.

The cultural impact of our videos has been extraordinary.

In 2019, Berkley started teaching a course on Middle Ground and the importance of dialogue and understanding, to their students.

Their whole course was inspired by Jubilee's "Middle Ground" format.

We've received thousands of emails from teachers & students that our formats are being used in schools to facilitate important conversations.

Jubilee is not just a media brand, it's a mission empowering others to create change.

Scaling content and impact was just step 1.

We are out to build the 'Disney of Empathy', leveraging Walt's infamous strategy map:

1) Start with media to reach as many people as possible
2) Build a passionate community around the content & mission
3) Make $$$ from the ecosystem

I literally have Walt's map posted on my wall..

Jubilee's compounding, multi-generational, media empire could become a $1B brand some day.

Currently, the company makes $8-figures / yr.

1. Consumer Goods
2. Business Partnerships
3. Film and TV
4. Dating tech
5. Community Experiences

1) Consumer Goods: ($10M opportunity)

As our first test, we launched a lifestyle brand: goodhuman.

I set up a partnership with @ZackHonarvar & @YesTheory's co. to execute ... and in year 1, every collection dropped sold out within days.

2) B2B ($50M opportunity)

I built out our biz dev team and scaled partnerships with companies who wanted to partake in our mission with content on YouTube (and IRL).

B2B partnerships have since driven $millions to our bottom line.

3) Film & TV ($100M opportunity)

We produced our first major-budget feature film "Accepted." It premiered at @Tribeca Film Festival, was acquired, and got nominated for an Emmy.

Major studios & names such as Jobs, Guggenheim, and Boardwalk Pictures wanted to back us.

4) Dating Tech ($1B opportunity)

Modern dating is broken, so we launched Nectar.
We've clocked 1,000,000 users (+ emails).
This alone is a $1B opportunity.

5) Experiential ($100M opportunity)

People are HUNGRY for deep in-person experiences.

We launched paid events focused on love, connection, vulnerability... all inspired by our gamified formats making it fun and familiar.

The feedback is insane - we're taking this nationwide.

Here's the crazy part.

Jubilee is just getting started, and yet I've decided to step down from running the business at the end of this year.

I've become obsessed with helping other businesses build a $50M+ media asset on YouTube to drive long-term revenue growth.

I love helping entrepreneurs, and I just so happen to be good at it 👇

https://twitter.com/2646428635/status/1704561649011605917

This is my life's work.

So if you enjoyed reading, please retweet the first tweet.

Follow 👉 @ryanhashemi_ 👈 for more about YouTube, business, and growth.

https://twitter.com/1583947938505506817/status/1730275641986314465

On Twitter I teach people how business owners are leveraging YouTube to build massive empires.

Here are some threads I've written 👇

1. How Ryan Serhant sold $2B worth of properties because of YouTube

https://twitter.com/1583947938505506817/status/1707433805836136563

2. How Alex Hormozi is building a media-led PE juggernaut to become a billionaire

https://twitter.com/1583947938505506817/status/1722663934505935028

Follow 👉 @ryanhashemi_ 👈 for more about YouTube, business, and growth stories.

P.S. - this was only possible because of my amazing team and the man behind the mission: Jason Y Lee.

HIRING TIP:
- Don't look for 'YouTube experts' for your creatives. Hire talented story-tellers, instead.

Much easier to teach talented creatives YouTube than other way around.