I ain't gonna work on YouTube's farm no more

Editor's note: Read Jason's followup to this piece, 'A YouTube Creators' Bill of Rights,' here.

Summary: I spent the last year as a funded YouTube partner and was one of the top ~10% of content creators who had their deals renewed in ‘cycle two’ -- and I turned down their money.

In this editorial I explain:

a) Why YouTube is an amazing platform
b) The five reasons I turned down YouTube’s funding
c) Why content owners investing solely in YouTube are investing in their own demise
d) How you can outgame YouTube and suck massive value from the ecosystem
e) Exactly how Twitter, Hulu, MSN, Yahoo and Facebook -- or a next-gen YouTube -- could each take on YouTube


Background
=================
Just over a year ago, YouTube asked me to pitch them on making shows that would take their service from a UGC (user generated content) juggernaut to a more advertiser-friendly platform.

They needed better-looking content, produced regularly, to get the big advertisers.

Also, to be frank, they needed reliable and appropriate content. Much of YouTube is comedy, and a lot of it isn’t exactly ‘sponsor friendly’ (see Shane Dawson).

They needed folks with experience in this space, so they reached out to people like me who had a track record in web content.

The deal was simple (according to public reports): we give you seven figures to make great shows, we sell the ads, we promote your content and then we split the revenue.

Great deal! What could go wrong, right?

Click to read more ...

I Started a Co-working Space in LA

 

I'm thrilled to announce that I’ve started a co-working space here in Los Angeles. Being an entrepreneur is sometimes lonely work, and having a bunch of founders around you makes it a lot easier.

We’re calling it LAUNCH Co-work, and it’s a 10,000+ square-foot, 30-foot ceiling space in Culver City with room for a dozen startups.

We’re looking for awesome collaborators to learn, share and generally change the world with. I might angel invest in some of the startups, have them on “This Week in Startups” or just talk shop in the kitchen.

Click to read more ...

Lynda Weinman Is Our Third Fireside Chat for LAUNCH Education & Kids June 26-27

Lynda.com -- with 2.5M members and nearly 100k videos across almost 2k courses -- has more than proven the market for learning software, business and creative skills online. Co-founder and executive chair Lynda Weinman will talk with LAUNCH founder Jason Calacanis in her fireside chat at LAUNCH Education & Kids June 26-27.

But this is not an overnight-success story. Lynda, a special effects animator and faculty member at the Art Center College of Design, founded the company with her husband Bruce Heavin in 1995 (see her full bio here).

Click to read more ...

Yahoo + Tumblr = Big Win, But Zuck + Tumblr = Bigger Win

Yahoo is going to buy Tumblr for $1B on Monday according to reports.

I will explain to you why the media is freaking out, why big companies need to make more bets like this, why Yahoo is the perfect home and why Zuckerberg should offer $2B.

Media... Freak Out!

Over 20 years in the industry I’ve learned that when something gets bought for $1B or more, people tend to freak out.

People can comprehend millions of dollars, because we all know folks who have a million or more dollars (or homes worth that). When you start talking about 100s or 1,000s of millions, people get emotional and some start lashing out.

Journalists are one of the first groups to lash out. Why? Because they have no chance of making big money in their jobs, and they have to fight for $5k raises while their pensions are replaced with 401ks. Also, they tend to have covered startups like Tumblr from year one and they can’t reconcile how something that didn’t exist five years ago is now worth $1B -- and that they don’t have to balls to create something.

F@#4k it, Yahoo Should Buy 10 Tumblrs

Here’s the truth: a billion dollars is nothing to a company like Yahoo or Google or Facebook or Apple or Microsoft.

If there were 10 startups like Tumblr, with 100M+ users and $50M-$100M in revenue potential a year, it would actually make sense for Google, Yahoo or Facebook to buy all 10.

At once.

Roll the dice.

Why?

Because those companies have tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap and cash, and if one in 10 of those startups turn into YouTube, it’s worth it.

Read the complete editorial on LinkedIn here.

Sign up for jason’s email list at http://jasonnation.com/

Fireside Chat with Daphne Koller of Coursera at LAUNCH Education & Kids on June 27

If you're talking about technology's impact on education, the conversation always includes MOOCs -- massive open online courses. That's why we're excited Coursera co-founder and Stanford computer science professor Daphne Koller will join LAUNCH founder Jason Calacanis for a fireside chat at LAUNCH Education & Kids June 26-27.

Coursera, which aims to make the best education accessible online to everyone for free, has more than 3.5M students, 370 courses and 69 institutional partners -- a 5x increase in students and 25x in courses since last summer.

Partners include top US schools like Stanford and Princeton, plus foreign institutions like the University of Tokyo and École Polytechnique. The company raised $22M total from Kleiner Perkins and NEA in mid-2012, less than a year after Daphne and co-founder Andrew Ng developed Stanford's first online education platform.

Click to read more ...