00:00This is digital Hollywood, right? And the management of top talent. It's interesting
00:06to grow through venture. What do you need the funds for?
00:10Yeah, we're going to use it for a few different things. I mean, we're primarily focused on talent
00:15management here at night, but we do have a venture studio. You know, we've gone on to fund things
00:18like Feastables and Tone with Kai Sanat. And so for us, I think like the thesis was always that
00:24talent of the future are born on the internet. That is very much still our thought going into
00:29the future. And so we're going to use that to be like what we think is the internet's media company.
00:35Which platforms right now are launching careers? I know that that is a broad question, but
00:41if we talk to the giants in broadcasting and streaming, or we talk to YouTube, right,
00:48they would all kind of accept that it is a battle for eyeballs, even if they're slightly different
00:52mediums. So which platform are you seeing launch the people that you hope to serve?
00:57Yeah, I think there's two that stand out to me, especially in my industry. YouTube obviously being
01:02the first, like we just saw that they announced they have almost 13% of connected TV watch time.
01:07So they're beating Netflix, they're beating Amazon, they're beating HBO. You know, the next one is
01:12TikTok, I think just primarily because of the discoverability of content through short form.
01:17Like it doesn't matter if you have 10 followers or a million followers, like a good video can get a
01:23lot
01:23of views and go viral. And so I think that has created a lot of career careers just because of
01:29that top of funnel that's created, regardless if you have followers or not.
01:33You are you've you've been at this a while, right? This is it's not as if night just suddenly came
01:38up
01:39about overnight. It's 10 years of work. I think now at this stage, the timing of the raise,
01:45what was this the strategy behind that read?
01:47Yeah, we've grown very linear over the last 10 years, you know, through signing different talent
01:53through the venture studio. It felt like a perfect time for us. You know, we feel like we've never
01:59been more right than we are right now in our thesis of internet native talent being the future of
02:05celebrities. And so for us, like the last 10 years, we're all about like, how do we educate? How do
02:10we
02:10continue to represent the biggest talent on the internet? You know, we think the next 10 years,
02:14like attention is the currency. You know, we think that individuals are more or consumers are more
02:19loyal to individuals now that more than ever. And so as we continue this thesis, you know, this is a
02:24company that hopefully I can run for the rest of my life. We'll see. But I think like, you know,
02:30the next
02:3010 to 20 years, like we still believe in this like internet first talent born on the internet. The future
02:36state of celebrity is born on the internet. And so it felt like the perfect time for us to make
02:41a larger move.
02:43You've done some M&A for want of a better expression. 2004, Knight acquires the Roost podcast
02:50network. Last year, Experiential Supply Co. Is this kind of the plan now? Like the $70 million can go
02:58towards some interesting properties like that? Yeah, we've done those organically off the balance
03:02sheet. Like we've always been a profitable company. You know, we've had a successful career. And so we
03:07bought the Roost from Warner Brothers when they were looking to sell that asset, really like building
03:13our media sales apparatus. Acquiring Experiential Supply was, you know, another thesis that we're
03:18going to continue to run after. Like we do think the world lives on the internet and we do think
03:22the
03:22future state of celebrities are born on the internet. But we also think that consumers value
03:26in-person experiences more than ever in the future. We are still bullish on live events and experiences
03:32for individuals. And so that was a lot of that acquisition. You know, the money will go towards,
03:37you know, buying things that make sense for the culture that we've built here over the last 10
03:41years. Businesses that we think intersect with the internet. And so a lot of what we're going to
03:46look at going forward is, yes, things in those categories.
03:50Reed, from Knight's perspective, how do you think about what's happening with Warner Brothers Discovery,
03:57the Netflix part, the Paramount Skydance part? You know, does it have some ripple effect in your world
04:02where the talent's heads get turned about the health of industry wide or it's just not a concern?
04:09No, it does. Like I think the issue is just the consolidation of all these companies provides less
04:15buyers in the ecosystem. And so you're seeing a contraction of shows getting sold. And we've now
04:20seen that over the past three to five years. I think that's just going to continue. I think the
04:25consolidation, you know, worries a lot of people like we are based in Los Angeles, although we
04:30aren't necessarily traditional Hollywood. You know, we do have shows and have sold shows to those
04:34streaming services. I think the interesting place where we sit as a company is that 90% of our client
04:41roster sees YouTube or being a large YouTube or TikTok creator as the end game for them. Like they want
04:48to be
04:49large Internet personalities. They want to control their intellectual property. They want to control their
04:54editing and have final cut and final say in the product. And so I think it affects us way less
05:00than it
05:00maybe affects the traditional talent management companies whose revenue concentration is primarily through
05:06entertainment services that's provided from a TV network or a Netflix where ours, like the primary
05:12revenue source is YouTube AdSense brand sponsorships. It's very different. And so although it does affect us,
05:19it's on a much smaller scale.
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