 Worldstar! Worldstar! Hello internet and all humans and alien life forms that are watching this video. You are tuned in to a Small Empires Hangout. We are joined by Alexis Ohanian, awesome startup founder dude if you don't know him you should Google his name. We are here with Kirk Larson and Stephen Greenwood who made Small Empires and this week was one hell of an episode. We got to see who is the man behind Worldstar and if you don't know what Worldstar is you may or may not want to go to Worldstar. It's worldstar.com, worldstarhiphop.com. Worldstar is a website that features primarily fight videos, a lot of sexual videos and music videos, exclusive music videos. Alexis and the gang did the episode on one man. He has a one man show who now has nine other employees with him. You guys talk about the episode, tell us what it's about, who the founder is and your thoughts on his small empire. One thing I think to add, Worldstar recently has been doing long form documentary actually like about as, it seems like about as in depth as the Small Empires episode and those have been pretty interesting as well. I just think that's worth noting. They are sort of like cultural, they just like go to a space and check everything out. They are cool, I like them a lot. And it's original video? Yeah. So Stephen, Worldstar. Yeah, this was like an easy episode to arrange just because I think Worldstar is not like a lot of traditional companies that we typically focus on. And so it was actually kind of a process to first of all track down how to get in touch with Q, the founder, because he does have a very small team and a very tight team. There's not a lot of publicity out there on like the press kit for Worldstar or like a media inquiry section of the site. So that was a really interesting process and we always kind of just went into it thinking that this is going to be a sit down conversation with Q himself, a little bit different from the episodes that we normally do because that is reflective of the way that we do things. And so I think from the episodes that we normally do, because that is reflective of the company that he's built. He's done a lot of this by himself without outside help from VCs or from any mentors. That was one of the surprising things to me when we sat down with him. Alexis asked him about what kind of mentors and people have helped him along the way and he really hasn't had many of those. He's figured it out all by himself and kind of just taking the challenges as they come, which is really impressive to me. And I think it's probably the most special episode to me this season just because it's rare that you get to tell stories like this and show that it can be done with one guy with a lot of determination. It's really cool. So for those that haven't seen the episode, it was, what's his name Steven? He goes by Q. His name is Lee O'Donay. So Q was one guy, again for those that haven't seen the episode, he was one guy that started this website and it wasn't even what Worldstar is today, right? Correct. It was a mixtape site. It was kind of an evolution of, if you've been in New York City you see guys trying to sell and hand out their mixtapes, right? It was just an extension of that. We even discussed it was kind of born out of the bodega scene in New York, right? This was many years ago too. He said like 2000… Like 2005. Basically he partnered with DJ Who Kid who he knew and started selling Who Kid's mixtapes on the site and then realized he was traveling as well because I think he was managing some bands or managing some artists or something and he would travel and then get orders and not be able to make it back in order to fulfill the orders and people would get mad so he was sort of like, oh shit, maybe I should put all this online. And then Arrival site hacked his site and took it down and when he came back it became Worldstar. Okay. And now… Rose from the ashes like a phoenix. And now they're huge. They're really, really huge. Worldstar is huge and it's crazy. It's a small team and Q is like the man himself. He seems like he does just about everything. And by far one of the most interesting things about his business and this was directly addressed in the episode but it's like he made Worldstar and then he was like advertisers, if you like want to advertise for me, let me determine all of these deals. He's like the person at the gate determining all this stuff and it's even interesting that he can get advertisers as it is because of what the site is. It's interesting that there is that discussion where it's like build the audience and then figure this shit out later. And I think that a lot of times that's done like okay, eventually advertisers will be interested and it almost seems like Q was like didn't give a shit and then advertisers were – I mean this may have just been the way he presented it but it seemed legit. They just came in and were like we want our face on your thing. Please. Yeah, no one has ever paid me. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so Alexis, you want to talk about the first time you found out about Worldstar and then the process of this interview as well? I don't remember the first time I found out about Worldstar. Did I have a story there? No, I was just curious. Oh, no I have no idea. I don't know. There is a great Worldstar subreddit. I just want to throw that out there. Oh really? Yeah, best of Worldstar. There is r slash best of Worldstar. I think – A whole community dedicated to best of Worldstar. But it's funny because like I think navigating the Worldstar site sometimes can be a little overwhelming just because there is a lot of stuff on there. And so it's funny because I found that the best of Worldstar subreddit is the easiest way for me to kind of check on updates on the site because it's in a format that I kind of resonate with, right? It's easier to consume that way. Anyway, that's subreddit. Yeah, I feel like I don't even know how I found out about Worldstar either. I feel like in college it sort of was just like people were sharing – and I graduated in 2012 so this was pretty recent. People were just sharing Worldstar videos like on Facebook and stuff and even talking about them and people like at parties if there were like – I've seen a lot of fights at Rutgers and people would just be shouting Worldstar like whether or not people were recording these videos. It's become like a very mainstream – that's like also part of the thing. It's like it is now a meme. Saying Worldstar is like an adjective. It's a noun. It's a website. It's a thing. Yeah. And it has a lot of cultural significance. I remember I heard about Worldstar back in like 07 because I used to go on Nike Talk a lot. No way. Yeah. I feel like Q – I don't remember if it was Q himself but like somebody was posting a lot of Worldstar videos on Nike Talk and that was how I started to get into Worldstar. It's fun to watch the site change while basically being the same site. Right. Right. Boom. Now he gets like exclusive music videos like people are breaking news on the website because they have a huge readership. Yeah. Basically all of Rick Ross' new album was premiered on this site. All the hood billionaire stuff that just came out like two days ago and that was – it seemed like almost exclusively pushed on Worldstar and Instagram. Yeah. It was also really interesting his approach to getting these videos shared. His only concern was with those watermarks and it's like so simple but so effective. Who else did that? E-bombsworld did that. Who else? 9gag. Very few people do it. Yeah. I don't know. He seems to be like – most of the time when that happens I guess everything is terrible does it. I'm trying to think of the other watermarks I see. There's also SB Nation GIFs always like on Reddit. Most of the sports are just on SB Nation or on Reddit from SB Nation. Even before we were affiliated with SB Nation at all like I would always see their stuff on Reddit. I'm like who is this SB Nation? Here we are a few years later. Who's this guy? Yeah. It's a great case study. Yeah. I am – I just – wow. Wow. I fell down the rabbit hole of that particular Reddit forum and wow. Yeah. There's – geez. You've seen some shit? There's some stuff. You can't unsee this stuff, man. I definitely – I sourced all the B-roll from Worldstar myself. Wow. There is some like – it's crazy because there's some amazing stuff. People doing shit that I can't believe like very choreographed dances amongst many people or just very talented people that looking at them you wouldn't expect to be talented like 60-year-old women singing beautiful songs. Then there's like a woman getting her nose broken like in an instant. There were some things that we just didn't even put in because they were too crazy. Is there a parallel between Worldstar Hip Hop and LiveLeak? Yeah, I think that – LiveLeak doesn't have a brand though. Right. It's the stuff that doesn't go on YouTube. Yeah, LiveLeak doesn't have a brand or a community and it doesn't seem to have moderators. You're not going to see someone getting murdered on Worldstar. You're not going to see anyone getting shot on Worldstar. That's the difference between like if I'm on Reddit and I see a LiveLeak link, I just assume – I've seen comments that say the same thing. You just assume you're going to see blood, a head cut off or someone dying if there's a LiveLeak link. Yes. It's interesting because it's sort of like a viral site also but Worldstar feels like it's just mostly like fights and things kind of that have to do with hip hop. So it's cool that both of those exist in the space of the internet. Well, and I think that there is an editorial process for Worldstar. So all of the – correct me if I'm wrong, but every video that makes it onto the site has actually been posted by – And it's been watched and – Yeah, like you submit a video to Worldstar and then there's – I think Q said there were two or three guys who basically their job is just to watch everything submitted to Worldstar and then decide what goes up. Because if you look, there's only about 10 or 15 videos put up a day. So it's not like YouTube where there's thousands and thousands of millions. It's actually – it's highly curated. So yeah. So you were there at Q's residence, right? Because there's no – he doesn't even have an office, right? Yeah. Is he – how is he as like a guy? I mean he seemed pretty nice from the video but you guys like work with him obviously. He was so nice. Yeah, he's great. He's very welcoming. Yeah. Total family guy, just wants to be in a beautiful place where he can raise his kids in a nice environment. Yeah. I chose San Diego. His son schooled us at Horst. Does he have a basketball court too? I don't see a school. We've got the video evidence. He was very nice. We got to see his kids who were really super cute. Yeah, nice house. It's good because like when you see what Worldstar is, you never know who the founder is or what he's like. He really went from rags to riches and he did it himself. So it's like – it's your non-traditional like startup founder story and it's like he did it. He made it. Yeah. Yeah. Alexis, what was your take away from the actual interview that day? I – excuse me. I was most floored and I've only watched six minutes into the episode but when I asked him about advertisers, right? Because like he's got Walmart. Did this make the final cut? Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah. You never know. He's got advertisers like Walmart and it's hard on any user-generated content website to win advertisers over because the last thing brands want, they're very risk averse, especially big ones with big money, is to see anything negative about their brand or anything just negative next to their brand. That's like full stop. That's just a reality in the advertising world. Yeah. So I asked him and what just blew me away was like one, they didn't care. They were cool because they wanted to get in front of this audience but two, his relationship with them was basically the exact opposite of every publisher's relationship with their advertiser. To give you the specific example, normally they pay net 30 or net 45. This is industry standard. This is like if you drop a ball, it will fall. What is net 30, net 45? You get paid 30 or 45 days after the fact. Okay, yeah. Obviously, that's beneficial to the advertiser from a cash flow basis. It's a pain in the ass if you're the host, if you're the publisher. Also, there are frequently numbers that you have to hit in order to get that net 30. Again, that's like a law of gravity. That is just a law of advertising online and what I thought was an indisputable thing like you drop the ball, the ball falls at 9.8 meters per second. What is it, the acceleration or whatever. I'm bad at physics. That was just a thing. When those big brands called up Q, he said, no, fuck you, pay me. He didn't say it like that. He was like, no, you're going to pay me now. They were like, that's unheard of, right? When you drop a ball, gravity says it falls. Like, duh, don't you know that? Right. Then a couple days later, they called him back and were like, just kidding. You know what? We'll do it. It is unheard of. He's telling me this. I'm just like, I can't believe it. I've never heard in all the companies I've advised and all the experiences I've had myself running companies, that is unheard of. He just did it because he didn't know or really care what standard was because if you wanted to be a part of Worldstar, you're going to do it in his terms or not. That was just like, it was impressive to say the least. Yeah. I think that pretty much sums up this episode because it seems like at every juncture, he chose to do it his own way because he didn't have people around him clouding his judgment or advisors telling him what to do. He did it the way that he thought it should be done. I think it's beautiful. It's great to see a guy like that to be able to have so much success by himself and not have to share the equity with anybody or have tons of partners that can sway the direction of the site. It's very much his thing and he controls the destiny of it which is really cool to see. Does he have investors? No. He turned them all down. He just makes money on the advertising? Yeah. Wow. Does it seem like he's super well off? Is he making billions of dollars or he can afford to live a happy life and that's all he cares about. He wants to run the site. Pretty beautiful house. It seems like he's doing pretty well. Yeah. He only pays 9.40 and 10 including himself. Does it seem like he wanted to expand at all? Yeah, we were talking about the future of the site and he's got big ideas. They're going to be working on a movie with – Oh, right. Yeah. What is this? He drew some comparisons but I didn't really understand. He just wants to make a movie. Basically, Russell Simmons and he are working with Paramount to make a movie that it seems like – He used the World Star name but it's not about World Star. Right. It's like the post-show. It's like a buddy movie. It's not a movie about Cube creating World Star. He referenced all coming of age high school college films. I think it seems like the film will be about just like in acknowledging the reality of World Star as a place for moments of life to go and then having them be there affect you. That's what it seems like. Yeah, that it will be incorporated into the narrative as like a story element. Something will happen and it will be featured on World Star and then things will develop. Is the film – It was picked up and it's going to be released or – Well, it hasn't been written yet. It's in development. Yeah. So not 2015 probably. Probably not. Not given the way that films move. Right. But it's also like you heard earlier, creating his own content. Yeah. So – Definitely, it's – Yeah, I definitely see it like moving into its next phase where they're becoming more of a media brand because they are actually creating original content and kind of moving in that next direction. How much of the balance is there between their original content and the content they post from fans? Because I really rarely go on that website. It's unclear. The other thing is like a lot of people are now posting through the World Star app. Oh. So like that YouTube capture app kind of? Yeah, it's essentially like a version of that. So I don't know how much – I don't know what the numbers are based on like original premieres of like stuff. I don't – And their own original content and then user. I wouldn't be able to tell you. And so who – Do you guys know any of the other artists that have released stuff like exclusively on World Star? Is that like a big thing? Like Vevo exists for people like Eminem and Rihanna and Ed Sheeran and those humongous, gigantic artists. But there's definitely the hip hop and rap scene that probably benefits from a place like World Star to premier videos. So you were saying Rick Ross did it. Any other big hitters there? Trying to think of who else like lately has done stuff. Because it's like I feel like that could maybe – Should that be what people think of as World Star besides like this place to see like fight videos? But it's like oh, whoever the hell, Chief Keef is probably – Yeah, I think that that's – Basically it seems like that's a direction that World Star is moving at. I feel like that Q is trying to make it a place where you can still see the user submitted stuff but you can also see the original stuff and the exclusive premieres. I mean it's frankly not that much different than what YouTube and Vimeo are doing if you really think about it. Like you could just be doing it for longer. Vimeo just recently got into it with like high maintenance and that kind of stuff. But like it's just trying to bridge that gap between user generated and site generated. Yeah. But you know he really wants it to be viewed as a platform where people have a window into a world that would otherwise be marginalized. That it's a place where censorship shouldn't happen necessarily and that people can go to to see things that they wouldn't be able to see anywhere else. And I think that that's kind of like the most important tenant. It's just totally unfiltered. Yeah it's just like unfiltered and a place that you can get real stuff. Like you can actually see what is happening in certain places and certain communities. So I think that that's hopefully they hold on to that for a very long time. Cool. And with that we're wrapping up. We're out of time. Thanks guys. This was a quick chat. Unfortunately we couldn't get Q on but I think this was great. Thanks Alexis and Kurt and Stephen for joining as always. And we will be back next Thursday with yet another discussion and another episode of Small Empires. And if you're watching this and you haven't seen the episode yet go to theverge.com and find the episode or youtube.com. Youtube.com slash theverge and search for Small Empires. Or you could probably Google search Small Empires World Star and you'll see it. So that's it. We'll be back next week. Thanks for watching. World Star. Bye guys. World Star.