 San Diego, which of course in Spanish means St. Diego, is home to things like Navy Tech, Bio Tech, Fish Tacos, and Q, the founder of World Star Hip Hop. Not a lot of people in tech talk about this startup and yet it affects millions of people every day, even the phrase World Star is itself a meme. This is the front page of all the stuff on the internet you won't find anywhere else. And now that Q has developed this huge following, I'm here to find out what is he going to do next. I'm Alexis Ohanian, startup founder and Y Combinator partner. Over the last year I went on a 200 event book tour and met people building small empires all across North America. Now I'm back with a new season revisiting some of my favorite stops from the tour. Entrepreneurship is not typically a solo endeavor. Many startups are founded by duos and even trios. And even solo founders usually have experienced advisors and investors to ask for advice and give them direction as the company grows. However, some founders like Q, the creator of World Star Hip Hop, choose to go it alone and brave the challenges of starting a business by themselves. And that can really pay off. Namely, when you don't have anyone's opinion to sway you in one way or another, you can take big risks and create exactly the type of company you want on your terms. If I got this right, you started the website for like mixtapes? It was a spin off from my original website, NYC Fat Mixtapes, which I created in 2001. And it was a mixtape download website. How did that turn into like World Star? What was it that really kicked it off and made you realize, forget mixtapes, this is the future? We got hacked. I was down literally for like eight, nine months. Instead of packing up and saying forget it, I was like, I'm going to come back and be 100% video. When you were coming up in Queens, did you expect to be doing this? I thought I was going to be a stand up or definitely do acting. And that was my first passion. I never thought I'd be doing internet stuff. Instead of being in front of the camera, you're the guy who's built the network that everyone wants to be on. What has inspired World Star? I think World Star established itself as an internet phenomenon with its content. World Star! Oh my god! You know, no one was giving that in your face news. But I felt like it was my duty to give awareness to everyone, you know, like the Ferguson situation. And I felt like, you know, camera is great. Is it a positive or a negative with it? But you know, you have to look at the good, the bad and the ugly in one page. And I noticed that this is our community. This is what's going on. What are the things you think people don't understand? The people who don't get it, what are the things that they don't understand that they should understand about what World Star does? So we like to give what's happening on a daily basis of what's going on in music, entertainment, sports, funnies. We show it all. We're not just going to show 100% fights or 100% music videos. We felt like entertainment, just like cable TV. You got all types of entertainment. It's what suits you. I tell the people that you have the control of the remote. You can either watch someone fighting or you can watch someone, you know, picking flowers. You know, it's your choice. To point me out just because I'm hip hop, I'm black, I think it's biased, you know what I'm saying? Because I didn't create fights. I didn't create porn. I didn't create none of this stuff, which everyone seems to blame me and point fingers at. When you look at how far World Star is coming, it's a phenomenon, right? You hear people say World Star, right? It is a meme on camera now. It's a battle cry. Yeah. World Star! World Star! World Star! Yeah, yeah, World Star! Damn! Yeah, yeah, World Star! How does that make you feel? Like shit, man. Really? I feel like, you know, it feels good. It feels good that, you know, that World Star became like a battle cry, you can say. World Star! True knockout. True knockout. True knockout. True knockout. True knockout. True knockout. World Star! World Star! World Star! And also, for something funny, like if you slip and fall, like, ah, World Star! So it's not just a fight and about to go down, you know, I feel like it's a compliment. How's that for badass? Woo! World Star! World Star! It started out as initially you. How many people are working on it now? Right now we have 10 staff, workers. Still pretty lean. Yeah. And where are they? Oh, we have them all spread out the country, man. I mean, you've been able to manage and grow this entirely remotely? Yeah, remotely. No office. How do you build a culture in a company? How do you build accountability? Yeah, it's mentally stressed, you know, because I can't monitor them. I don't have a supervisor. I try to find self-motivators. Those are driven to want to work and very passionate. And I'm known for firing a lot of people, you know what I'm saying? I have a no-nonsense policy, man. I'll treat you like family, but as soon as you disrespect the company, brand, you're walking into Disneyland. We're already established. We've already been number one five years in a row in BET hip-hop. So I just tell people to come in with great passion and really want to work hard. Whenever a video gets uploaded to Worldstar, is anyone reviewing or it just goes up? Yeah, we have a staff, a few guys that just look at the videos and pick and choose which one, which makes sense. We want to constantly look at the videos because there's a lot of sick stuff out there that we don't want to put out. I've had someone fight and grab a gun. I swear like this. People want to complain about the fights. Fighting is not the answer, but some people need to just squatter out to get that aggression out. I mean, people love it. Our country is built by violence. We love watching violence. We love it. So I just think that I'm pointed at a lot or blamed because I'm black, I'm hip-hop. Us as a culture always getting blamed when they don't want to blame the community leaders or the parents. You know what I'm saying? It's like, why are you blaming me for? I'm just the messenger, you know? Recent American culture, last 20th century, now here in the 21st, has largely been black culture, which has been exported all over the world. That's still one of America's biggest, most influential exports. But oftentimes, more often than not, there was someone in the middle, usually a rich white person, who delivered that message and profited from it. What does it mean now that the creators of the culture are empowered enough to sort of control its dissemination? It's great that we are now taking control of our sound, our culture. For many years, we couldn't take control. Seeing the past and how it was, it made us smarter. Sometimes it just makes you more humble and appreciative now, today, of what you have. With technology today, we can all make it. You know what I'm saying? It's an even playing field right now. WorldStar gets a lot of traffic, and those servers cost money. Most sites with lots of traffic get advertisers to pay for those servers. But advertisers tend to shy away from controversial content, which is exactly what WorldStar is full of. They've embraced it. In spite of that, Q and his team have somehow managed to court some really big-name advertisers. You've managed to grow a really devoted following, lots of viewers. You haven't shied away from sometimes controversial content. And yet you've still been able to get brands like Walmart, big-money brands who advertise and want to partner. How do you do that? With the advertisers, I never wanted to reach out to them. I felt like if advertisers want to do advertising with a company, they have to go by our rules. You know, say, I don't need your money. This is who I am. This is what I like to be entertained by. And those that like it, come join. Advertisers felt like you can't beat them, join them. He's not going to change and they can't deny the numbers. So they just work around some of the, you know, controversial content. Who are your mentors growing this business? To be honest, I had no one help me. No one. You know, I had to learn on my own. It was tough, you know. I have that mentality. I don't like to owe anyone anything. So I don't like to ask for favors or ask for all my needs. I'm poor. I work to get out of it. I'm not the person that's going to put my hand out or blame the government or blame my parents. Blame, blame, blame, blame. And that's how I am. I'm just driven, you know. There's this whole world of tech now that everyone's talking about. Everyone's hyping it up, tech startups. But I feel like Worldstar hasn't been a big part of that conversation. What do you think of peers like BuzzFeed and what do you think of Worldstar not really being a part of the mainstream tech discussion? You know, we're like that black sheep. You know, we grew up fast. We did it differently than most. We didn't go that route that most do. I like to have my actions speak. I don't really need support or others to give me the thumbs up that we're doing okay. I just look at the scoreboard. I tell them, look up. But I feel like, yeah, we should be in topic conversation with them because we grew organically. We didn't have no capital investors. There were no VCs. Nah. A lot of these big companies have investors and they put millions into their projects. And I never took any, I turned down a lot of money. The most was 15 million. And a lot of them want to give me money, but then they want to change Worldstar and make it into a sugar coated site. And I didn't want to just sell out. And that's our attitude. It's like, it's controversial. It's fights. It's sex. This is who we are and we're real. We like to be reporters for the streets. You know what I mean? That's what Worldstar is. We're reporting live from the streets. The idea of building a brand first and a business second is not something you hear often in tech pitch meetings. But there is a precedent for this. Entrepreneurs like Jay-Z, Russell Simmons, and Diddy all built brands for themselves first and then built businesses around them. So what is next? Well, we have a movie with Paramount. Russell Simmons is seducing. How did that happen? It's been an over a year process. They've been talking to us about finding a good script and get a bunch of writers in. And I wanted something to be more 80s style where it had a good storyline. What are the ones in particular you mentioned during those production meetings where you're like, it's got to be like? I mean, I said Fast, High, Richmond High, Ferris Bueller, Porky's, Zap. And is this going to be the story of Worldstar? No, it's just one of those movies I just mentioned into a 2015 version where young kids today are on their phones and they're recording and thinking about, oh, I put this on Worldstar. What do you think it means to that generation to get a video on Worldstar? I mean, it's like the biggest stage right now for them. They want to be on it because they know all their friends on it. The audience is just so big. We have a big U stage. It's like the amateur night, the Apollo. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. And if you can survive Worldstar, the comments, which is brutal. They're going to, this hater is going to talk about you and push your buttons and you can withstand that. And if you really, really shine on Worldstar, you're a star. We got the hardest critics. So one of your users described Worldstar as like being back in the Barber Show. Why is it important to have these online forums for people to just freely discuss like they would if they were back in the Barber Show? Now you can talk about things, what's happening in the hood without even being in the hood. So now it's like, you know, the hood is still there. You know, you can get a picture, you can get a glimpse and what's happening, what's going on because, you know, a lot of people that leave the hood, you know, they, you know, their heart's still it. Like my heart's still hood, you know, I'm from the hoods of Queens. And you know, even though I live now in California, my heart's still, it's still that, you know what I mean? Like I love where I came from. I'm so thankful to come from that environment. So Worldstar keeps me there, keeps me in the loop, what's happening. So what was the moment, you know, the site was growing, but at some point it became a business. What was that point? I was getting calls from labels and they wanted to advertise more and more. And I'm getting calls from labels as well as artists to post their exclusive videos. And I started noticing that, you know, we're growing, we need to take advantage of this. So I know it was a business then. I was one of the first guys to tell advertisers that no net 30, no net 60, I want my money up front. Wow. And they said, okay. At first they were like, we never do that, you're crazy. We're not going to do that. And I was like, okay, then I guess you don't want my business. And I hung up. But then they'll call days later and say, okay, where do we send a check? So that's when I knew that, you know, I knew it's a business, but again, you know, this is my way, you know, you want to come to me. I don't, I didn't come to you guys. I didn't have a sales team. It was just myself and one other guy. And I was just doing business the way I wanted to. I said, you want to be on my website? Pay me. You know, simple as that. That's just the way it is in the hood, man. Man, and I mean, you know, the, the ad manager, the ad rep for Walmart probably had never heard that before. They don't, they don't get that. I have to ask, you didn't spend any money on advertising, but how did you start spreading the word early on? Cause it was, I mean, just you, right? So did you, were there any clever tricks that you used? Any things you did to spread the word? A key thing, you know, we, it's watermark. I'm really big on that. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, I was one of the first to always push that watermark, you know, it wasn't a hashtag, you know, whatever. It was more like the logo or your, your website in the bottom. And we were the first to really push that out there. And when you get these exclusive videos, you know, yeah, it's exclusive, but someone can easily take the video and embed it and put it on their site. So if we don't watermark it, then how does, how is that exclusive for us? So that was very important to me is always watermarking. And people see that logo, they, you know, automatically knew, okay, who is this guy? Who is, what's Worldstar? And they start coming to our site organically cause we watermark our stuff. You could be just about anywhere. Like you said, it's a remote team. Yeah. Yet you're here in San Diego. I love it. Is it, what is it? Is it the fish tacos, the weather? Why San Diego? It's a long way from Queens. Yeah, it's peaceful. You know, the beach is right there. You know, it's clean, fresh air. I love the city, you know. Really San Diego is just amazing to me, you know. So this is a lifestyle choice. Yeah, not too far from LA. And I think I'll be doing a lot of stuff in LA now, but now I can live away from LA and raise my children. And, you know, they have better schoolings here in the area where we live in San Diego. And it's a win-win, you know, cause I can work anywhere I want. So why not work somewhere where I have better schooling and for my children so that they have a bright future. Social media has clearly had an impact, places like Ferguson. What are your thoughts? I mean, how do you think technology will continue to hopefully empower like marginalized communities? Now we can document and now we can hold people accountable. Now everyone has camera phones. You're being watched. And you know, I'm trying to let people know with my website is bring awareness to everyone that, you know, be careful because everyone is watching, you know what I'm saying? You gotta be careful. You can't go how it was back in the days. You know, you can't kill somebody in the streets and not think about someone filming you. You know, it's gotta be very careful that with technology growing, you can't get away with much these days. And you know, that's the way it should be. You know, we might have a better future if you all kind of like just think twice now before doing something that you can make a regret. This makes you more humble and appreciative now today of what you have. Look at me, you know what I'm saying? I'm a black man. I did it. You know, I didn't have no help, no banks, no family help, no friends help. I did it by myself, you know what I'm saying? So I did it. I'm sure anyone else can do it too. Hugh is an entrepreneur unlike nearly any other I've met. He was born poor in Queens, was a high school dropout. He didn't have any kind of a network, didn't have any investors or mentors. Maybe because of that, he's been able to do business his way. And as a result of the success that Worldstar has had in advertising, merchandise, and now even a movie deal, it's clear that Worldstar Hip Hop is here to stay. I get nervous in front of the camera. Excuse me. All right. San Diego, named after San Diego. I'm sorry, I won't do it. I won't do it. I'm sorry. Let's do one. What's the...