Love Letter #4
Love Letter #4: Which Creator Products Make More Money?
Dear Creator,
What makes creators more money: a physical product or a technical product?
Last week I was at The Lighthouse x Slow Ventures* Creator event.
Finally met Kevin Espiritu in person! Love Epic Gardening. That is the model every creator should follow.
Caught up with my client Zach Miller who is President of Bucketsquad is the GOAT growing out Jesser’s business. And met Dan Levitt who is MatPat’s manager as well as Jesser and Game Grump’s former managers–he sold his company LongHaul to Wasserman and is OG and super smart when it comes to 360 growth of a creator.
I saw a great conversation between two creators who have two drastically different businesses.
Gohar Khan has a GREAT business where he reviews college application, essays by using current college students at the Ivy League.
Jonathan Katz-Moses has a woodworking YouTube channel and he sells woodworking tools. He is one of Slow‘s recent investments and he gave such great insights as to how to work with factories in China and why Chinese factories are just better. He tried manufacturing in the US and it just was not comparable to the speed, the quality and the cost of Chinese factories.
If you want to get to the punch line: without a doubt, a technical product is going scale and 10x way faster than physical products.
I’m in the process of spinning out one of my client’s apps and we will probably be able to sell it for $10 to $50 million. Now we don’t have to sell his YouTube channel.
Physical products are way harder and you can never scale in the same way. You have to deal with customers, returns and customer satisfaction.
Not to say you don’t have to with technical products as well, but the goal is to build a product that’s as close to perfect as possible.
You build it once and sell it 1 million times.
Now, you have to have a great developer or CTO, and make sure you contract properly. I recently had to exit a developer for one of my clients and it was so painful.
Like crawling through broken glass.
Here’s advice if you have money to pay a developer or give equity in cash to a CTO/cofounder: please pay upfront it.
If you offer a situation where you’re going to do a share of revenue, and the app ends up being wildly successful, you might regret the rev-share.
I really leaned towards physical products until two failed product launches with my clients which took a lot of my time and investments, with no returns.
I’m about to launch a product that I’ve been building for a year and delayed by perfectionism. I have almost 1000 creators on this waitlist and I am excited to launch.
I will be announcing it at VidSummit when I’m speaking- so excited to be on the stage again. Derral Eves runs the best creator conference with MrBeast who co-owns VidSummit. Derral is the only one that records every session. None of the other ones do it. His attention to all detail is so appreciated.
The first hundred creators will receive a discount and I open up the waitlist for 48 hours before I open it to the public. Join the waitlist here.
*Slow Ventures is interesting for creators because they recently raised $60M dollars to invest in creators’ channels and businesses. The fact that PE funds and VCs are interested in investing in creators is a great sign. The creator economy is quickly becoming just “The Economy.”
Why I Write These Letters
For 15 years, I protected Hollywood studios.
For the past 18 months, I’ve protected creators.
But only the biggest creators could afford me.
That never sat right.
So I started these Love Letters to give every creator the same playbooks my top clients rely on.
Because you’re not just making videos.
You’re building an empire.
And empires must be defended.
With love,
Tyler
The Creators’ Attorney
Content is King. IP is Queen.
Own the board.
If you have a question or want to share a paint point–reply to this email and say LOVE LETTER (or contact@tylerchoulaw.com) and I will reply. I read EVERY reply.
I have 3 questions for you:
I am experimenting to see if a Sunday newsletter is a good day. Can you let me know? I know some other creators send their newsletters on Sundays. What is the best day of the week for you? I will always be your guinea pig, like this community that I am launching. More on that soon.
Also, this was one of my LinkedIN posts from the week, I write there 2-3 times a week, do you follow me there? Did you see the post already from LI? Yesterday I wrote about whether creators should have managers. Please give me a follow on LinkedIN. It is THE most powerful platform to be on right now. Are you on LinkedIN?
Would you be interested in a small think tank Zoom session with me before I launch my community? I want an intimate conversation to make the community a great experience for all creators. If yes, reply to this email and share where you are in your creator journey and your 3 biggest pain points.