Sept. 22, 2022 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
01:02:03
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Alright hold. | |
| Lee? How? Uh, we... | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are live from NASDAQ right here in Times Square. | |
| I'm Dave Rubin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is The Rubin Report on location at our early-feel live streaming on Rumble. | |
| I got the logo behind me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I got the CEO, Chris Pavlowski, right here. | |
| And we just went public! | ||
| Do I have to ask you any questions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Or do you just want to talk for a while? | |
| Whatever you like. Whatever you like. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, me and Peter were working on this for the longest time. | |
| We were like, if anything, we need to see it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But we were doing it for a reason. | |
| We were doing it for a reason. | ||
| We wanted to make a great big story of Rumble and then we'll get to what we're going to do with Rumble | ||
| and Locals. | ||
| Yeah, I know for sure. | ||
| I've been in it for two decades in this space. | ||
| And it was like 2010 when I started to notice that there was a deep prioritization happening | ||
| with all the creators, the small creators in particular. | ||
| And a real prioritization happening around 2010 around multi-channel networks, brands, corporations. | ||
| They just, they left the aunt, the uncle, the friends and family behind on these incumbent platforms. | ||
| So by 2013, I was like, let's build something for the small guy and really help the small creator. | ||
| Give him the same monetization tools that everyone can get, the same playing field, just keep it fair. | ||
| And we started- I mean, 2013. | ||
| Yeah, I saw it when YouTube did this pivot to multi-channel networks. | ||
| You probably remember Maker Studios, Fullscreen. | ||
| They used these companies to start preferencing content and they really started deprioritizing the small guy making the viral video. | ||
| And then, you know, I kind of stepped on the gas pedal in 2013 thinking, you know, it's time to get back in. | ||
| And we did. | ||
| Just bring in the monetization tools, like simple things, like just an equal playing ground. | ||
| You know, you can monetize your video as soon as you upload, doesn't matter how big you are. | ||
| You'd think that would be normal. | ||
| Basic stuff that we all kind of thought. | ||
| But that doesn't happen on YouTube. | ||
| It's not something that happens there. | ||
| So we did that, we started in 2013, and then by 2020, you know, everything hits the fan. | ||
| Shit hits the fan. | ||
| You can say shit, we're on romantic. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| So like in the middle of, I would say late summer, We had, you know, I'm a Canadian. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And we had the ranking member of the House Intel Committee sign up to Rumble and want to jump on a call with me. | ||
| And I'm like, holy shit, am I under some kind of investigation? | ||
| Like, what's going on? | ||
| And it's Congressman Devin Nunes. | ||
| And he asked me a really simple question. | ||
| He's like, Chris, if I come to Rumble and I search for my name and my content, are you going to show up? | ||
| And I'm like, Guys, it's going to show up when you put the name in, right? | ||
| Thinking he's looking for some kind of censorship. | ||
| And just a basic, yeah, of course it's going to show up. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| That's what should happen. | ||
| He's like, well, that's not happening on any of the platforms. | ||
| And I kind of knew that already, because I knew of the preferencing and everything else. | ||
| So he comes on. | ||
| And then following that, subsequent to that, is when Dan Bongino signs up and comes on in late September. | ||
| And then from there, you know. | ||
| Everything's history. | ||
| Six months later, we had a huge political segment on Rumble. | ||
| Six months after that, we attracted people like Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic presidential candidate. | ||
| Tulsi Gabbard in the middle of summer with along with Glenn Greenwald onto the platform. | ||
| That was huge. | ||
| And by the end of the year, we had people like Russell Brand signed up unsolicited, | ||
| just totally signs up to the platform. | ||
| I think it was in September of 2021. | ||
| I didn't find out two weeks later. | ||
| And then we get to 2022. | ||
| We had this like Bitcoin conference get de-platformed by YouTube during the live stream. | ||
| We were there to help them out. | ||
| Then you had Oliver Stone's movie get removed. | ||
| And then you had left-wing activists like Susan Sarandon start tweeting Rumble. | ||
| And this starts blossoming. | ||
| And then you get to the summer. | ||
| Something happened over this late summer that I've never seen at Rumble. | ||
| We've seen lots of growth really fast, but then we exploded. | ||
| In June, we had 35 million people in the United States on Rumble. | ||
| In August, we had 63 million in US and Canada. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Crazy, crazy. | |
| Just to put that number in perspective, what does YouTube have in the United States on a monthly active user basis? | ||
| What does Twitter have? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Well, YouTube's roughly 200 million. | ||
| Twitter's roughly 68. | ||
| We're at 63 in US and Canada. | ||
| So, like, how close are we? | ||
| We're very close to the size they are in the US. | ||
| And Twitter's doing a little something with bots. | ||
| Well, yeah, if we're going to talk about bots, I don't know what the number is. | ||
| But, like, think about that. | ||
| That's the major market for revenue. | ||
| That's the major market for all these players. | ||
| When they say 300 million, they're counting countries where our app's not even allowed. | ||
| Like, we haven't even launched in India, in these large markets. | ||
| It's very easy to launch in India and get a lot of users, but... | ||
| Getting 63 in US and Canada, a million monthly active users, and that's not including locals, that's not including the OTT, that's also not including video embeds. | ||
| So when someone takes our video player, which we could monetize, and embeds it on their site, that's also not included in that MAU. | ||
| So these are MAUs just on web and app, primarily. | ||
| It's a lot. | ||
| 63 versus 68 on Twitter. | ||
| I just gotta keep saying that because like, and Twitter was not growing when they hit, the last time they reported 68, which was in 2019. | ||
| There was like consecutive quarters between 60 and 70. | ||
| So, you know, when I look at that, I really, you really kind of get a feeling of how big this really is. | ||
| And then going public, ring in the bell. | ||
| You know, I, You're a cool dude, man. | ||
| You really just sat there, ding ding. | ||
| But we needed to do that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Free speech is going public. | ||
| We would not be able to defend free speech, we would not be able to defend freedom, if we did it from the sidelines. | ||
| We have to go right in their playground, and we gotta play with them, and we gotta push back. | ||
| And that's what we're gonna do. | ||
| And no company, at least that I know of, has ever started and gone public with the mission of free speech. | ||
| I mean, that is our mission. | ||
| When you, me, and Asaf sit down and we talk about all this stuff, that's what we're talking about the entire time. | ||
| That's what we're talking about. | ||
| All the time. | ||
| It's like core, it's ingrained in every person we hire. | ||
| It's across the team. | ||
| Freedom of expression, free speech, freedom in general is something that we're all standing for from the top all the way to the lowest levels. | ||
| And, you know, when Elon was talking about buying Twitter, I always said, like, It's not built the same way Rumble is built. | ||
| You're not going to have that strength from top to bottom. | ||
| You're going to have a lot of problems after the acquisition. | ||
| How that's going to look, I don't even know. | ||
| But you're going to have an exodus. | ||
| You're going to have a lot of good engineers leaving. | ||
| Every engineer on this team is all in on the mission. | ||
| They're in. | ||
| And they're going to work twice as hard because they care. | ||
| They care like I do. | ||
| They care like you do. | ||
| So it's like, that's... | ||
| That's the real magic in what's happening. | ||
| I couldn't wait for this day because I thought somebody was going to stop us from happening, but the fact that we're here now and we've raised the amount of money that we raised, approximately $400 million, Now's the time. | ||
| We can push. | ||
| We can push now. | ||
| So I can ask you the easy ones all day long, but actually in my locals community, people were asking tough questions. | ||
| And I said to you, Chris, I'm gonna ask you some tough ones. | ||
| You said nothing's off the table. | ||
| So the main thing that people are asking is, okay, so now we've defended free speech well, rumble allows, plurality of voices, all sorts of political opinions. | ||
| As you said, you got Glenn and Tulsi on the left. | ||
| You got Bongino on the right, okay, so be it. | ||
| We got Russell Brand. | ||
| There's a big plurality, but what do you do now that you're public to make sure that all of the people and the companies and the voices that get people de-platformed and get, you know, what are we going to do about that? | ||
| So it starts with all your employees. | ||
| They have to be aligned. | ||
| And every brick we add to Rumble is aligned on this mission. | ||
| Secondly, management, the board, all of them are aligned. | ||
| They all really care about the free and open internet and protecting that. | ||
| And third, legally speaking, it's on our corporate site that our whole mission is to be anti-cancel culture. | ||
| Our whole mission is to restore and protect the free and open internet. | ||
| So if I were to do something contrary to that, I have a huge liability to all the investors. | ||
| And when it comes to investors now, now that we're public, you have to remember that I have roughly, I think, 85% vote control. | ||
| You're doing all right. | ||
| You're doing all right. | ||
| It's going to be very difficult to change the way I'm going to think. | ||
| And you're definitely not going to change the staff that we have on Rumble. | ||
| We all think the same. | ||
| And you're not going to change my mind. | ||
| I could have sold this business. | ||
| I didn't. | ||
| And I didn't because it really matters to the kids out there. | ||
| It matters to people out there. | ||
| Freedom. | ||
| I didn't think I was going to be defending freedom, but we have no choice. | ||
| What's happening out there right now, people not allowing to be said, saying what they want to say. | ||
| Guys like Steve will do it, getting the platform, but we don't even know why. | ||
| This is way bigger than me. | ||
| It's way bigger than you. | ||
| It's way bigger than all of us. | ||
| We're now in a playground where we can actually push back, and we're beholden to The team that we have, the management that we have, the investors that we have. | ||
| And, you know, everyone always asks the question, like, if you go public, are they going to be able to, like, is some huge company going to come in and invest and be able to influence you? | ||
| Well, they don't have 85% control. | ||
| So my answer to that is how can they? | ||
| Technically and legally speaking, how can they? | ||
| If an investor wants to invest in this company and wants to change the mission of this company, I'm going to go tell them this is not the company to invest in. | ||
| Don't invest in us. | ||
| If you want to invest in us, here's our mission. | ||
| You need to be aligned. | ||
| And by the way, we don't need money right now, right? | ||
| We don't. | ||
| We raised approximately $400 million and whoever wants to invest in Rumble, they need to believe in what we're doing. | ||
| And the people that don't believe in what we're doing, they're not going to invest in us. | ||
| And if they try to try to influence us, I'm going to be like, this is not right for you then. | ||
| Like, look, this is what we're doing. | ||
| Yeah, plenty of other companies. | ||
| I got a liability to my old staff and to the rest of the investors out there that this is what we're doing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We can't change that. | |
| I'll look at the camera for this one. | ||
| I can tell my audience that having partnered through Locals with Rumble and with Chris, every single thing that Chris has said to me Over the last two plus years that we've been doing this, you were laying out crazy things all along the way, and every single thing that he said came true. | ||
| This has been a plan. | ||
| I believe in this guy. | ||
| I believe in what we're doing, obviously. | ||
| Let me just ask you one other thing, because you've got a lot of people you've got to talk to over here. | ||
| On the cloud side, can you just talk about that part of the business a little bit? | ||
| Because I think a lot of people still think of Rumble as sort of a YouTube replacement, something like that. | ||
| But there's much more here, and I'll get into some of that with Asaf in a few minutes. | ||
| Yeah, you think of Rumble as a good vehicle for information flow. | ||
| People can get their voices heard. | ||
| But you can't have information flow until you have the infrastructure that can support that. | ||
| So it's really imperative that we do that, and we've made a lot of progress on that. | ||
| We launched one of the largest and fastest growing apps out there, which is TruthSocial, flawlessly onto our cloud. | ||
| We also launched Tim Pool as well onto the cloud. | ||
| And by late 2023, we plan to make this public for everyone. | ||
| For state governments, for governments that believe in our mission and our cause, for universities, religious institutions, small businesses around the world. | ||
| This is a huge market. | ||
| So this is going at Amazon AWS? | ||
| Yeah, head on. | ||
| Because we have a different value set than they do. | ||
| And we believe that the market believes in our value set more than they believe in theirs. | ||
| And I really, really believe that. | ||
| Yeah, I do too. | ||
| You can kind of see it in the numbers in Rumble. | ||
| Like I said, 63 million people in the U.S. | ||
| and Canada, they're not all just watching politics. | ||
| I can tell you that. | ||
| They're not. | ||
| We were 35 to 63, and that's because we retracted a large portion of the Gen Z. And they're not looking at political videos. | ||
| They're looking at, like, cool fun videos. | ||
| That's what they're looking for. | ||
| So it's completely different. | ||
| But yeah. | ||
| And Big Tech is knocking off the guys that aren't purely political. | ||
| We got Steve from the Milk Boys over here. | ||
| He's gonna jump on in a second. | ||
| It's like, he got booted. | ||
| I grew, like, we grew this thing. | ||
| Without spending enormous dollars on marketing. | ||
| This is because of people losing trust in the incumbent platforms and it's imperative that we never lose that trust. | ||
| It's absolutely imperative because that's the core. | ||
| And if we ever did anything that was contrary to our mission, we should lose the trust. | ||
| It's on us. | ||
| As a business, it's on us to do well and be good. | ||
| Chris, you have been a man of your word throughout. | ||
| You want to stay here for a few minutes while Steve jumps in? | ||
| Let's bring him in. | ||
| Why don't we get Steve in? | ||
| Steve from the Nelk Boys. | ||
| Steve did it! | ||
| Steve did it. | ||
| He's got the 420. | ||
| I don't know what that means. | ||
| Come on, Steve. | ||
| We're going to get you on over there. | ||
| Oh, he's posting. | ||
| He's posting. | ||
| He's posting for the show. | ||
| All right, so we'll go a little longer. | ||
| Steve's going to come in just a second. | ||
| He just pounded a couple of champagnes. | ||
| I saw him do five or six of them. | ||
| Just boom, boom, boom. | ||
| I have water. | ||
| I have water. | ||
| You got nothing. | ||
| How do you feel? | ||
| Just on a personal note, how do you feel about this? | ||
| Because this was your baby. | ||
| And what we did today, what you did today, this is the dream of everyone that builds a company. | ||
| Truly, to press that button, that bell. | ||
| Wait, it was a button, right? | ||
| Yeah, it was a button. | ||
| It's the dream. | ||
| It's the dream. | ||
| Yeah, kind of the dream, but not really. | ||
| Like, this is just, to me, it's kind of, you know, it's not the real work. | ||
| It's cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But it's not me. | ||
| Like, these fancy parties and stuff like that, I really care less. | ||
| But it's cool. | ||
| I think, like, getting here is really important to do what we need to do. | ||
| But the real work's ahead of us, like, you know. | ||
| And my game face is on more than ever now. | ||
| Like, it's... | ||
| I don't want to downplay today or anything. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| No, I can tell. | ||
| You want to get back in the office. | ||
| I'm more excited to do what we need to do. | ||
| That's more meaningful to me. | ||
| You know, all this, you know, Times Square, our logo up there. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| But like, you know, we haven't done it until we really push back against these guys and everyone kind of like, we tilt the market back to where it's supposed to be. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, that's all I really care about. | ||
| When I do that, that's when I'm going to celebrate. | ||
| But I'm not there yet. | ||
| Every time we almost got him. | ||
| Every time there's somebody kicked off one of these platforms, at this point are you | ||
| basically licking your chops? | ||
| Because we get a text going and it's like, all right, hey, they can join us. | ||
| I'm kind of like, what are they doing? | ||
| I never thought we would continue to grow because they continue to accelerate it. | ||
| I'm ready to use a large portion of this. | ||
| Right, they're doing our work anyway. | ||
| We raised $400 million in an effort to really try to compete against them and go and bring | ||
| on creators, and they're just giving it to us for free still. | ||
| I'm not licking my chops. | ||
| I'm kind of disappointed more than anything. | ||
| I don't want to win like that. | ||
| That's not good for society. | ||
| Isn't it weird you can freely admit that knowing that they're not gonna fix the problem on their own? | ||
| No one at YouTube or Google or Facebook is gonna go, you know, Chris is on to us, Rumble's on to us, and let's reverse course. | ||
| I thought it was done, like, last year. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, it got worse this summer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Way worse. | ||
| And I don't know if you know this, but we got an election coming here in America, so I sense it might get worse once again. | ||
| Well, it's accelerating as we speak, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Alright, we're gonna get Steve from the Nelk Boys. | ||
| Oh, he's got the handheld! | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| He's Steve from Rumble now. | ||
| Steve from Rumble? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Steve. | |
| Steve. | ||
| Look at that jersey, eh? | ||
| Hold on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wait, wait, wait. | |
| You gotta show off the jersey, though. | ||
| The best part's the back. | ||
| Steve did it. | ||
| He knows what he likes. | ||
| Steve did it. | ||
| He knows what he likes. | ||
| Steve did it. | ||
| There you go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Steve did do it. | |
| Why'd you jump in on this crazy adventure? | ||
| This crazy Rumble adventure? | ||
| I love making content. | ||
| I love changing people's lives. | ||
| And, you know, I got, you know, Canceled for whatever reason. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you know why you got? | ||
| I mean, it's basically because you talk to a certain guy, right? | ||
| It's an orange guy. | ||
| I couldn't tell you why. | ||
| That is a big thing. | ||
| I talked to an orange guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I gave an orange guy a nice watch. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But to me, I really don't know why I got cancelled, because I got cancelled for a URL to a website, the .com, and that website you're allowed to openly promote on YouTube, show you're playing, show you're on that website on YouTube, so I really don't understand the true reason behind it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Getting cancelled for a website that's allowed on the platform, they just don't allow .com, so it's very mind-blowing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Considering I've never even showed the website on my main channel. | ||
| It was a second channel that gets 100k views per video. | ||
| And I, you know, I get 4 million views per video, but they shut out my main channel for that. | ||
| And it's like, I would kind of understand if the website was not prohibited on YouTube, but you're allowed... | ||
| To say, hey, I'm playing on this website. | ||
| Hey, live record the website. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I got banned for having the dot com of that website you're allowed to use. | ||
| Yeah, I got it. | ||
| I got it. | ||
| There's no rhyme or reason. | ||
| It's kind of like, you know, when you just say it for what it is, you know. | ||
| What was that moment like for you when you see the thing blow up and you see the bands coming and you're going, yeah, I got a business too. | ||
| I mean, it's not just you having fun, right? | ||
| It's fucking mind blowing because like I said, It's a mindfuck when you get banned for something that they allow on their platform. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's like on your second channel, it's kind of like... Yeah. | ||
| You just feel like... And then, dude... But what about on the business side? | ||
| I mean, it's your life. | ||
| It's your life, too, right? | ||
| Yeah, the business side, thank God. | ||
| I have great partners. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| This guy. | ||
| But besides, thank God I have someone like Chris that, you know, calls me and, you know, gives me a fantastic deal and welcomes me with open arms to rumbles. | ||
| But thank God I have... | ||
| If I didn't have, like, Kyle, John, Sam, the Nelk boys, and everyone, like, I would be absolutely fucked, and it's just, like, for no reason. | ||
| And they don't have to give you a legitimate reason, and it sucks. | ||
| It sucks how it works, man. | ||
| Well, now you're in the fight with us. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Pretty sweet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Pretty sweet. | ||
| It's nice to just be able to upload a video and be proud about it and go to bed and just know it's not getting deleted because I would always go to bed on when it comes to Instagram and YouTube and just be like, fuck, like you don't know, right? | ||
| You just don't know. | ||
| And you're not going to censor this guy no matter how many f-bombs he drops on the Rubin Report. | ||
| The difference between Chris... You've definitely set my show record for F-bombs. | ||
| Oh, I love saying fuck, but fuck's part of my fucking vocabulary. | ||
| The difference between fucking Chris and fucking YouTube is that he'll give me a call and be like, hey Steve, what you're doing is fucking wrong. | ||
| Like, you gotta change it up. | ||
| And YouTube never gave me a call or let me know. | ||
| They called me the day of deletion and it was a girl. | ||
| She seemed pretty stoked I was getting deleted and I was like the the sex Yeah, it seemed happy and I was like I was with me and my editor and I'm like we're like bro like she's happy Like she like like you're giving someone like the worst news possible and you're doing it in a way to where it's like Like I fuck like you're happy. | ||
| It was kind of just fucked up and I I wish I recorded it, but it was a mindfuck, you know? | ||
| That's messed. | ||
| I have a feeling you're not gonna get that call from this guy. | ||
| You're gonna be alright. | ||
| No, if I get a call, it'll just be like, hey, like, yo, dude, you're doing this wrong. | ||
| Like, let's change it up. | ||
| This is our policies, and it's like... That's... | ||
| That's what I wanted from YouTube, but they didn't respect me as a creator, considering they didn't give me a 100k plaque. | ||
| I got the 100k plaque, and they don't like me that much! | ||
| You get 100,000 subscribers, you get the plaque, you fucking hang it on your wall, you look at that shit, you put it in your bathroom, you take a shit, you look at it and be like, yo, I did that shit. | ||
| You get a million subscribers. | ||
| I got the million. | ||
| You look at that. | ||
| You know, you're chilling on TV. | ||
| You look at them and be like, yo, that's me. | ||
| They didn't give that to me. | ||
| And it's like, so they were against me from the beginning. | ||
| Because you got to think, I got a million subscribers in a month. | ||
| So it's like, from the very beginning, they were against me. | ||
| Because I got that shit. | ||
| I got 100K subscribers. | ||
| Did we give plaques? | ||
| We got to start. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're going to start. | |
| All right, we got it. | ||
| I am going to have. | ||
| You get the first plaque. | ||
| When I get a million subscribers on Rumble, which is going to happen, | ||
| I'm going to have the sexiest plaque in the world. | ||
| and it's gonna just... | ||
| Fuck YouTube. | ||
| It's gonna be fuck YouTube. | ||
| Because they didn't give me one. | ||
| It's not a cheat code to get a million subscribers. | ||
| You can't cheat and get a million subscribers. | ||
| I got a million subscribers because a million people genuinely liked me. | ||
| And I felt like I deserved it. | ||
| And they said, as YouTube, we get to choose Who we give the plaques to it's like hey like what it's kind of fucked up like why you know like if I was a makeup artist I would have got that millions the million subscriber pack like like that but the fact that I was just like this guy that appeals to like high school college kids and just like I'm kind of like | ||
| Dark humor, goofy, do my thing, which I think dark humor and goofy is acceptable in this world, I feel like. | ||
| Yeah, it's acceptable in this world. | ||
| I feel like that's a thing that should be accepted, and they didn't see it. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| I always think politics, but at the same time, I'm not very political. | ||
| But I did give Donald Trump a Rolex, and I feel like that fucked up my entire career. | ||
| I think it fucked up everything that I had going. | ||
| I gave him a role. | ||
| I feel like you're not the first person to say that. | ||
| It has nothing to do with politics, but this guy makes me laugh. | ||
| He's funny, dude. | ||
| Anyone that makes me genuinely laugh, I'll give them anything. | ||
| There's not a lot of people that can make me laugh in today's age because everything's so censored. | ||
| There's only a few comedians that are actually dark humored. | ||
| That can make me laugh, and they're so rare because it's so censored. | ||
| And I consider Donald Trump a dark-humored comedian, honestly. | ||
| I wasn't political. | ||
| And YouTube, I guess, took it as me being political. | ||
| It's like, no, I think this guy's funny. | ||
| Like, I think... I think locker room talk's funny. | ||
| I would like to thank YouTube for what they did for you, because they brought you over here. | ||
| I have a sense this is a slightly different NASDAQ conversation than they're having on the average day. | ||
| Yeah, no kidding. | ||
| Yeah, I think everything happens for a reason, and you know, when I got my shit deleted, it was like, what the fuck? | ||
| Like, I've spent my entire life, you know, I lived for a long time, I would make, you know, just between us and this fucking livestream, you know, I would make a million and a half per month. | ||
| And I would spend a million and a half per month towards just random people. | ||
| You know, that was my shit. | ||
| It was like, and I just never in my head, I was like, I'd never thought about being canceled. | ||
| So it was like, okay, I'm going to do this. | ||
| I'm going to devote my life to this shit. | ||
| And then, you know, we're going to build brands, sell it. | ||
| And it's like, I'm going to change the world. | ||
| And it was like, oh, you can just get canceled like that. | ||
| But it was like, I literally thought in my head, like, hey, I'm going to, Devote my entire income to helping people in the world and then build brands while I'm doing that so I'm not a loser at the end of it. | ||
| I could sell it and get a hundred million dollars. | ||
| Get the island. | ||
| We'll do that. | ||
| But it was like, I guess you can get cancelled for using a .com on a website that the platform allows you to play on. | ||
| It makes no sense. | ||
| When you get into it... You know what? | ||
| You don't have to worry about it anymore. | ||
| It's all good. | ||
| No, you're good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're good now. | |
| It's truly fucked up when you say it out loud, what it is. | ||
| Like using a... Like showing the URL of a website that you're allowed to... | ||
| Promote and play on the platform. | ||
| Well, they were just looking for a reason. | ||
| I know, but it's upsetting. | ||
| It's like when I get deleted and then the girl's like happy about it with the tone of it. | ||
| It's like I just can't like... It's like a mindfuck. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's, you know... All right, Chris. | ||
| We got to make this guy a lot of money so that he can do good things in the world so he can get that island. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Sorry, I was rambling. | ||
| Get this guy a freaking island already. | ||
|
unidentified
|
His first video is going to be probably in a month or so from now. | |
| I'd say- I'd say- I'd say in one month- And it's gonna be the greatest video that he's ever made. | ||
| It's gonna be the most life-changing, beautiful video in the world. | ||
| And you know, the thing is, I'm gonna sleep like a goddamn fucking baby that night. | ||
| I'm gonna sleep like a fucking- you know what I'm saying? | ||
| I'm gonna sleep like a baby. | ||
| Yeah, I get it. | ||
| The only- I'm gonna be a little worried about Instagram, because I'm a pro at Instagram, but I'm gonna go to bed knowing that that video is gonna be fucking live the next day. | ||
| And if there's a problem, I'm gonna get a phone call and be like, hey, there's a problem. | ||
| We're not gonna just get- Canceled out of the blue. | ||
| So, this is very exciting for me and... Exclusively on Rumble. | ||
| Yeah, I am exclusive on Rumble. | ||
| I'm gonna leave you two. | ||
| Alright. | ||
| And, Dave? | ||
| Thank you so much, Chris. | ||
| Chris, you did it, man. | ||
| You changed my life. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Steve did it. | ||
| Steve did it. | ||
| I'm just so happy this guy came on. | ||
| Thank you so much, Chris. | ||
| This is where you present me with the Rolex, right? | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm afraid to give out Rolexes because you made me cancel Rumble. | |
| Shazia would be fine. | ||
| A lot of viewers on Rumble. | ||
| Well, you're awesome, man. | ||
| I'm thrilled that you're part of this freaking thing. | ||
| And this is just the beginning. | ||
| All these strange allies just pop out of the woodwork, you know what I mean? | ||
| If you would have told me that we'd be sitting here a month ago, I'd be like, what the hell are you talking about? | ||
| And yet here we are. | ||
| Yeah, and it's a beautiful thing. | ||
| I'm so just about positivity and spreading that, and I'm so not political. | ||
| So it's kind of cool to just have a platform that's just like, Doesn't give a fuck if you're political or anything. | ||
| I could be the most liberal left-wing guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| On Rumble, and I will be allowed to do my shit. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| That's the beauty of it. | ||
| That's why I fucking... We got Greenwald. | ||
| But that's why I love it. | ||
| Because Chris could give me the deal that he gave me, and then I could be like, yo, buddy, I'm fucking the biggest Biden supporter in the world. | ||
| I'm gonna rep this shit. | ||
| He wouldn't give a fuck. | ||
| It's not about politics. | ||
| It's about content, entertainment. | ||
| Like, YouTube is content, entertainment. | ||
| It's for the people. | ||
| It's like, why do we need to get in this adult politics shit? | ||
| Like, no one gives a fuck. | ||
| Like, I don't give a fuck. | ||
| My fans don't give a fuck. | ||
| I mean, I'm speaking for my fans, but I truly believe that my fans that are 16 to 30 years old don't truly give a fuck that much about politics. | ||
| And they're basing... It sucks that you have to base the entire world and every tech company around politics, you know? | ||
| Not anymore, man. | ||
| Not anymore, but I just hope... I just hope that it stays... That Rumble stays the thing because, you know, it's a fucking war out there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Like... Rumble could get... Like, I don't know. | ||
| No, no, we can't get deleted. | ||
| We got... No, it's a war. | ||
| So, like, for you guys to even go public and do all this, it's like... You guys are, like, kind of winning that war. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| The insurgency is here. | ||
| Yeah, so I hope... Thank you so much. | ||
| I'm glad to be partnered with you on this thing. | ||
| I'm glad to be on it. | ||
| I'm glad to make videos. | ||
| All I'd like to do is make videos. | ||
| Go get yourself some champagne, man. | ||
| I'm gonna get champagne, but... If you guys are watching, I'm gonna make videos in, like, two to four weeks from now, and it's like, I love making videos. | ||
| I love changing lives. | ||
| I'm gonna say this right now. | ||
| No disrespect to YouTube, but fuck you, YouTube. | ||
| No disrespect, but, like, you banned me for a website that you allow on your platform. | ||
| Like, if you're gonna ban me for a website on my second channel that gets 100k, like, at least not allow it on your platform, you fucking communist fuckers. | ||
| Like, ban me because I did something wrong. | ||
| Don't ban me for a fucking .com on my second channel that gets 100k views for a website that you fucking allow! | ||
| You allow this website! | ||
| We'll just say it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Alright. | |
| You're gonna be alright. | ||
| I'm gonna be alright, but it just pisses me off and, you know, New Opportunity and YouTube, you fucked up. | ||
| You fucked up. | ||
| You fucked up. | ||
| You- you- I have real fans, YouTube. | ||
| You don't have real fans. | ||
| You're a bunch of commie bastards. | ||
| Fuck you. | ||
| I'm so sorry. | ||
| Is this live? | ||
| But you know what the beauty about Rumble is? | ||
| You can make mistakes. | ||
| I like that you're getting closer to the camera. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like really, you know... Oh, but the thing is, you guys... | |
| Banned me for a website that you allow on your platform. | ||
| Like, let's like, let's let that sink in. | ||
| Can we let that sink in? | ||
| I hear you, man. | ||
| They've been, they've been hitting me for a long time. | ||
| But imagine like, all right, we'll just. | ||
| I'm not keeping Rolexes out. | ||
| We'll say it for where it is. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Hey, my name's YouTube. | ||
| Hey buddy. | ||
| How you doing? | ||
| Um, you can, um, there's this website called steak.com. | ||
| You can play it on, on our platform. | ||
| You can show you playing it. | ||
| You can say, hey, verbally, hey, I'm on stake at the best gambling website ever. | ||
| You can say that, but if you have that .com, that is fucking bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You are promoting a bad website. | ||
| You are a scumbag piece of shit. | ||
| If they see that .com, you know what, you're gonna get people to gamble. | ||
| But you know, the thing is, you gamble on that website, tell them that you're playing on that website, say where you're playing, show them that you're playing. | ||
| But if you show that .com, because all these guys are idiots, they don't know how to get to that website unless there's the .com. | ||
| They just think steak. | ||
| They're gonna think, like, ribeye. | ||
| But that's what I'm dealing with. | ||
| Makes no sense. | ||
| So I love you guys. | ||
| I'm probably getting calls from from my business partner saying, hey, you need to chill the fuck out. | ||
| But I love you guys so much. | ||
| Big videos coming. | ||
| Steve will do videos going live. | ||
| I love you guys. | ||
| Thank you for so much for having me. | ||
| Thanks, brother. | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I can't tell there's a screen. | ||
| OK, this is the camera. | ||
| OK, I love you guys. | ||
| Steve will do a sign out once a week. | ||
| Steve, that was definitely the most colorful thing that has ever happened at NASDAQ and I think indicative of what's going on over here at Rumble. | ||
| The whole point is that nobody, if you're a dark comic, if you're giving Rolexes to Trump, if you're a lefty like Glenn Greenwald or Tulsi Gabbard, Or you're a crazy right-winger like Dave Rubin or Dan Bongino, you are welcome to be on this platform. | ||
| Free speech is going public. | ||
| That is the purpose of all this. | ||
| That's why we're doing this from NASDAQ right now. | ||
| That's why the company went public. | ||
| Everyone has an opportunity to get in on it and stick it to Google and YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and the rest of these things that made us the product when we thought they were the product. | ||
| It is pretty awesome. | ||
| And speaking of awesome, I'm going to bring on now, now we will We're going to ease up on the foul language, I think, for just a moment. | ||
| I am going to bring on the co-founder and CEO of Locals, who also happens to be my brother-in-law. | ||
| I let him marry my sister, Asaf. | ||
| Hello, Asaf. | ||
| Nice to see you. | ||
| We'll shake hands. | ||
| So for my audience, We started, they've been with me forever. | ||
| They heard the adventure of let's start something, let's build something, all of that. | ||
| And I went to you and I was like, Asaf, can you build me my own, basically a Patreon replacement? | ||
| Can we build a subscription model here? | ||
| Can we do it? | ||
| You built it. | ||
| And then we were like, let's build a company. | ||
| And now it's about two and a half years later and we merged with Rumble and we're public. | ||
| Quite a journey. | ||
| You know, it's funny because when you think about it, exactly three years ago, September of 2019, was the time that we launched the Rubin Report community. | ||
| And yes, Dave came to me At the time you were with Patreon, if you remember, at the end of 2018, and you said, Asaf, I need a solution where I'm going to control my audience, where I will be the boss for my own business, because I cannot rely on those big tech. | ||
| And we started to do it, but it was one element that we added to the mix here, that we said that it's not only that we wanted to build a solution when you own the data, And you own your user, but also a place where your user can connect to one another, and we build it all under a community. | ||
| And three years ago, we launched the Rubin Report community. | ||
| And I think the power of the community that we discovered is much greater than anything else. | ||
| Because the Rubin Report community allowed us to hire the key employees that we have in the company. | ||
| Yeah, we got, I mean literally, you're not making that up, I mean we got some of our key staff members, there are people like high up, that were up there celebrating that were fans, they were literally fans of the show, they reached out to me and were like, how can I get involved, this is my skill set, I want to throw some dollars in, whatever it might be, they're part of this operation, and that's the point of the community. | ||
| That's the point of the community. | ||
| We got some investors to back it up, and we built the product with one thing in mind. | ||
| We said, how can we support free speech, and how can we build a solution where we think about the creator first? | ||
| And then you connected me to some really interesting creators that had a similar problem, and we started to give it to more and more creators. | ||
| And we discover a need in the industry. | ||
| And the need is that the creator wants to have full control and connect directly with the audience. | ||
| But I think what we see recently and why we are now with Rumble, the entire media landscape is changing in front of our eyes. | ||
| If in the past you needed social media to basically have a distribution channel, today distribution channels are people like yourself that already have an audience. | ||
| And we are betting big time on creative independence and we want to help more and more | ||
| creators. We saw Steve will do it, that by the way, his opening is on Locals Community. Steve | ||
| will do it at Locals.com. | ||
| Oh, not bad, not bad. | ||
| That it's going to be available as well. We want to see more people like yourself, | ||
| more creators successful because you guys are the future of distribution. | ||
| And it's interesting also because not only so we build a good product, | ||
| but our mission was the same mission that Chris was building with Rumble the entire time. | ||
| So when we sat down with him, which was only basically a year and a half ago, and we were trying to figure out, could we just work together? | ||
| And basically he was like, forget working together. | ||
| We need to join forces. | ||
| We need, we need to be together. | ||
| And it happened pretty quick. | ||
| It happened pretty quick. | ||
| I have to say that in the beginning when we went to people, and you know that we had some investors that missed the opportunity. | ||
| There's a lot of people eating crow today. | ||
| Because when they heard that we support free speech, it was like something very bad. | ||
| People got nervous. | ||
| They thought free speech was some right-wing thing. | ||
| That was always the worry. | ||
| And we kept saying, no it isn't. | ||
| They're coming for everybody. | ||
| This isn't about politics. | ||
| The lefties can be on here. | ||
| But a certain amount of people are always afraid. | ||
| Yeah, so we got the right investors and I'm very proud of every investor that joined Locals and I think it's a celebration day for them as well. | ||
| But when we met Chris, it was the first time that we met a tech CEO that thought in the same way. | ||
| That he said, you know what, we can have a platform where we allow people to share their opinion Regardless if we agree or disagree with them, as long as they obey the laws of the United States. | ||
| And the synergy was perfect. | ||
| We started with a partnership, and I think quickly after, we got the offer to join Rambel. | ||
| And for us, I think not only that it was a great success, working together for the past few years, it was a fast ride to get to the moment that we are ringing the bell together with Rambel, But essentially, what we are doing, we are taking free speech public. | ||
| And I'm here in the United States for almost 10 years. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think there is one value... A new citizen of the United States, by the way. | ||
| A new citizen, thank you very much, yes. | ||
| And there is one value that is unique to the United States, by the way, and it's freedom. | ||
| And as long as I'm here, and as long as I can, like, you know, help to contribute to this, I'm going to fight for freedom, and I think that's what Rambel is doing at the end of the day. | ||
| You know, I know you've only done a couple interviews, but that was a nice one. | ||
| I'm learning from the best. | ||
| That was nice and tight, my man. | ||
| You really tied that thing together. | ||
| Is there anything we can hint to the people that might be on the horizon? | ||
| You know, my locals community, and obviously probably all of them are watching right now. | ||
| It's a big day. | ||
| They're always asking me what's next, what's next. | ||
| I've been hinting some things that we're working on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| And we've improved our video live streaming tremendously and a whole bunch of other things. | ||
| Is there anything we can hint at maybe? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| We're going to give a few. | ||
| So first, livestream is something that we're going to be very bullish and we're going to keep on improving it more and more. | ||
| The reason is because it's the most authentic form of communication that you have. | ||
| But what we want to do now, and that's going to come in 2023, we want to see how we can involve the audience as well. | ||
| I think that you always say that your community, and you learn a lot from your community as well, You want them to be more involved in the live stream, and we are going to develop some features that will allow them to be more interactive. | ||
| I call it interactive media. | ||
| And that's really where we're going to go. | ||
| The second thing that we released actually this month was articles. | ||
| Because what we understand is that creators not only want to produce videos, they also want to have written content. | ||
| So now you can also write articles on Locals, and you can expand the type of content that you have. | ||
| And the third thing that we started in the past few months, we started to sell movies on Locals. | ||
| And we have some tremendous success. | ||
| I mean, we did 2,000 mules through Dinesh, and he absolutely crushed it, to say the least. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And what Dinesh proved is the locals' mission. | ||
| What Dinesh proved was that he can take a movie that he produced, and he can go independent and do it himself. | ||
| And the results that he got was mind-blowing. | ||
| And I think now we're going to open it up. | ||
| So in the near future, you guys are going to hear about it as well. | ||
| It's something that we call Content Plus. | ||
| Essentially, we believe that every creator can create their own on-demand service on their platform, where they can sell movies, they can sell articles if they want, they can sell podcasts, and we want to more empower you guys to build your own business. | ||
| That's something that we're going to be committed for, to keep empowering our creators to be independent, because we think that they are the future of media. | ||
| I heard a rumor that Rumble might go into the email business. | ||
| Perhaps there's some messaging coming, some private messaging for the people on the local side. | ||
| There's all kinds of things down the pike. | ||
| There is a lot of things, and a lot of things that people also need to understand from Rumble. | ||
| One of the big reasons why we started to even talk to Rumble to begin with, we knew that we cannot be hosted on Big Tech. | ||
| And we knew that the big challenge with building our technology, if you remember, a lot of people came to us and said, where are you being hosted? | ||
| It's not easy to build this infrastructure. | ||
| And now I can tell you from the inside, the Rambel infrastructure team are world class. | ||
| Those are world class people and we are building more and more servers to basically support more people and that they can speak up. | ||
| So we build it on top of it. | ||
| But now it's going to be time that we are going to roll out more features, what you said, More communication, more messaging, more involving the community itself in connecting with the creators. | ||
| Asaf, maybe I'll see you for dinner at your place tonight. | ||
| I guess you're going to see it for dinner, but that was quite a journey, Dave. | ||
| Not bad, my friend. | ||
| It is only the beginning. | ||
| It is only the beginning. | ||
| All right, I'm going to talk to the camera for a couple of minutes here. | ||
| Thank you, Asaf, because you guys sent in a gajillion questions here. | ||
| I do want to get to some, and hopefully, I think probably Asaf and Chris answered a few of them. | ||
| Steve may have answered some of them in his own Special sort of way, but I'll just jump through a couple of them and as you can tell guys This really is just a great day putting aside That I that in a weird way putting aside that I have anything to do with this thing that I created locals that we merged With rumble the the message that I'm always talking to you guys here about on the political side that the only way we can make sense of anything These days is if we can honestly talk about it if we can truly hear what the opinions are if we can hear counter Opinions if we can figure out what's true and what is information versus misinformation | ||
| That's the mission that Rumble is on, you know? | ||
| It really is. | ||
| This was the company that I was supposed to end up working with through Locals, and that's the plan. | ||
| And I think it really is a piece of fixing all of the political stuff that I normally do a show about, and that obviously I will get back to doing. | ||
| So let me jump in a couple questions here from you guys. | ||
| Small says, aside from attracting new talent to the platform, how do you plan to grow the business. | ||
| So Asaf just hit on some of that on the features side. | ||
| But really, you know, doing the cloud services, really, you know, replacing, replacing or going right up against them, whatever you want to call it, Amazon AWS, Amazon Web Services, AWS, Amazon Web Services, you know, those were the guys that blew up Parler, they basically pressed the button, they said you have 23 million users, Doesn't matter if they're good guys, bad guys, or anything else. | ||
| We're taking you out because you're a competition. | ||
| That is what Rumble is really building, and there is a tremendous amount of infrastructure already, and a lot more on the horizon. | ||
| I don't know what I'm allowed to say, so we'll leave it at that. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Cobalt says, apparently Twitch is losing gaming creators to YouTube because of monetization policies. | ||
| I just heard a little bit more about this this morning. | ||
| Will Rumble try to attract some to join exclusively? | ||
| Also, when will Rumble ads start showing up for creators? | ||
| The ad thing is going to be laid out over the next little bit. | ||
| It's already in the works. | ||
| I've seen the beta testing on that stuff. | ||
| And 100%! | ||
| Yes, on the gamers. | ||
| The whole point of Rumble is that we're an agnostic platform in that sense. | ||
| You know, it's thought of maybe as a little bit political because, well, because I'm here, and because Bongino's here, and Crowder uses Rumble, and Tim Pool's using our infrastructure, and all of those things. | ||
| So that's sort of what's put the attention on it, and the media loves to write. | ||
| If you get a couple conservatives or scary right-wing people on something, the media immediately tries to label it that. | ||
| But the point of the platform is we don't care if you're a lefty YouTuber or a righty gamer or a gender-bending economist. | ||
| Which I assume is out there, probably. | ||
| You know, it's like, if you're doing something interesting and you have an audience, you should be on Rumble, and that's what you should be doing. | ||
| Janzy says, do you, Dan, talking about Dan Bongino, and the main players at Rumble, have a plan to always keep majority shares, to keep free speech free? | ||
| So that's what Chris, the CEO, addressed earlier. | ||
| He has 85% controlling share. | ||
| I know Chris very well at this point. | ||
| Like, this is a guy who not only I stayed true to his word the entire time we were doing the merger and all of the policies. | ||
| He's brought me and Dan in. | ||
| You know, I don't own the company anymore. | ||
| I don't own Locals anymore. | ||
| But Dan and I help guide the policy. | ||
| What can we do to make sure that we can be as open as possible so that all the wackadoodles on YouTube who don't like Dave Rubin and do these videos all day long, you want to do those videos on Rumble? | ||
| That's all right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's all right. | |
| We welcome you to do it. | ||
| That will be just great. | ||
| I welcome you people. | ||
| So we're gonna, we're gonna really, I truly believe this. | ||
| This is the first company that has gone public saying free speech, open inquiry, debate is in our ethos. | ||
| It is in the DNA of what we do. | ||
| And I don't think that's been done with any... well, it certainly hasn't been done with any of the big tech companies before. | ||
| In many cases, they've actually done the reverse, right? | ||
| They've said, okay, we have these algorithms. | ||
| How can we make sure certain people are either banned, or censored, or shadow banned, or algorithmically, you know, unpersoned, etc, etc. | ||
| So that is the challenge for us, but it is what we started doing and what we will continue to do. | ||
| Jay Paul says, what's the ticker symbol? | ||
| I don't know how this ticker symbol was not taken. | ||
| We got R-U-M, rum, as in I'm going to have a mojito with two shots of rum. | ||
| So we have R-U-M, which is now being traded on NASDAQ, and I assume doing pretty well today. | ||
| I'm in a giant NASDAQ room. | ||
| I don't see a ticker in front of me. | ||
| There's a lot of screens all over the place. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| David Moore says, so proud of you guys. | ||
| What was the one part of taking this public that was harder or easier than expected? | ||
| I can tell you that building locals, you know, one thing that probably is hard for you guys to appreciate or understand, and in retrospect, I almost think I was crazy for doing it, was like, we said, OK, we're going to fight big tech. | ||
| That's just nuts in and of itself. | ||
| And then I was like, all right, I'll build a tech company. | ||
| And Asaf was handling the tech side. | ||
| But I had to be in all the investor meetings. | ||
| And, you know, you go into meetings with people, you do, for every one investor you get, you probably have 50 that say no, right? | ||
| Maybe even more. | ||
| Our numbers were pretty good. | ||
| We had a great product, and because people knew me, it was a little bit easier for us than the average startup. | ||
| But I would say, honestly, 60-70% of my time of 2000 and 2001 were dedicated to building locals. | ||
| More than doing the show, in a way. | ||
| I always gave everything I had to the show, but every minute of time that I had outside of the show was on Zoom calls. | ||
| Doing the pitches, deciding what were our policies on speech and what were we going to do if this or that happened and all of those things. | ||
| So I would say it's a little sort of like youthful naivete in a way. | ||
| It's like now that I did this once I think we can probably do it again and I've got a couple other ideas on that front and I want to do a lot more obviously with these guys but the hardest part was The hardest part was just you just keep going. | ||
| A lot of people, people that you know and friends and you know I know people in the tech world that say no to you or ignore you or don't call you back after a great pitch and at some point you want to give up there's always those moments and you just go and you go and you go and I really believe if you have something good and you give it your all whatever that might be. | ||
| Tech, sports, you're a shoe salesman. | ||
| You can do it. | ||
| I really believe that. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Gail says, would you explain the business relationship between Locals and Rumble again? | ||
| Yes, we merged as companies. | ||
| So you can sort of look at it this way. | ||
| Rumble, which is now the public company, is the parent company of Locals in effect. | ||
| Locals is run exactly 100% the same way it was run before the acquisition, before the merger, as it was after. | ||
| So Asaf is the CEO of Locals. | ||
| He handles it. | ||
| We have separate offices in Miami. | ||
| Rumble is over in Sarasota. | ||
| So we're taking over the free state of Florida on both coasts, which is awesome. | ||
| But the companies are, they are one company right now. | ||
| Let's see, what else can I do? | ||
| A couple more for you. | ||
| Becca says, are there any further developments for bundle subscriptions for locals? | ||
| 5 to 10 adds up quickly if we want content from multiple creators. | ||
| Yes, this has been one of the things that you guys have asked about from the beginning. | ||
| It has been very complex. | ||
| To figure out how to do it, because you sort of have to tier out creators, and who is making the most, who has the most draw, who would be willing to take less to be in a bundle that's, say, a bigger creator. | ||
| We've been trying to figure it out. | ||
| We have a couple models on it. | ||
| I think we're getting close. | ||
| I don't want to over-promise at the moment. | ||
| But yes, the general concept of that. | ||
| You know, Asaf and I, when we started Locals, I kept saying, I want more people involved, even if we make less money. | ||
| I was very clear about that from the beginning. | ||
| And that's why when I get emails and if you're struggling financially or if you're a former member of the military or out of work because of some of the COVID nonsense or vaccinations, it's like I give people free memberships. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| I'm fine. | ||
| It'll be fine. | ||
| But we do understand that, you know, it adds up over time, right? | ||
| If you love 10 people on Locals and, you know, I charge $5 a month, But some people charge $7 or $10 or $12. | ||
| That's going to add up pretty quickly and that's not really the purpose of the company. | ||
| We want to defend free speech. | ||
| We want as many people to be involved in a better internet as possible. | ||
| Those of you that are watching right now in the live chat in my locals community, it's like that conversation is way better than what goes on in the YouTube comment section. | ||
| That's not a coincidence. | ||
| It's by design. | ||
| If you throw in a dollar to be involved in something, you will care about it a little bit more. | ||
| I used to joke with the entire local team. | ||
| I'd be like, you know what? | ||
| Forget about the money for now. | ||
| Why don't we just literally make it a quarter? | ||
| Why don't we make our monthly subscription 25 cents? | ||
| Because I think if people put 25 cents, it'll basically cause them to behave about 90% better. | ||
| And I still believe that. | ||
| There were a lot of logistical reasons we couldn't do 25%. | ||
| With stripe cuts and a whole bunch more. | ||
| There's a better thing happening. | ||
| There's a better thing happening than the meltdown that we see everywhere. | ||
| And actually, right now, why don't we bring in Matt Kors, who is a, can I call you a financial guru? | ||
| Is that, is that fair to say? | ||
| Guru? | ||
| Guru? | ||
| I think just a guy who maybe talks a little too much about stocks. | ||
| I mean, sometimes I get it right, sometimes I get it wrong. | ||
| Guy who talks too much about stocks. | ||
| Well, pretty much everyone in the sports world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They sometimes get it right and sometimes get it wrong, right? | ||
| I view it as the meteorologist of stocks. | ||
| If I get it wrong, I just move on to the next day. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| So I want to talk about the specifics of what's going on with Rumble here. | ||
| How did you even get involved in this whole thing? | ||
| You were streaming on Rumble right before the button was pressed or the bell was dinged. | ||
| So my involvement with Rumble, it actually was because of a very negative thing. | ||
| I was on a competitor platform. | ||
| I was on YouTube. | ||
| And not once, not twice, but three times my channel was taken down because I was harmful and dangerous. | ||
| And that's crazy, because I talk about stocks. | ||
| They're like, a little too much for us. | ||
| And maybe I was caught up in an algorithm, but I don't know. | ||
| And that's the point, and I'm sure with Steve being on earlier, there is no communication. | ||
| Yeah, no communication. | ||
| You file your appeal, and they're like, nope, we reviewed your appeal, and we're not letting you back. | ||
| I'm like, well, that's weird. | ||
| And then you read a little bit more into it, and you find out that the same thing that initially banned you is the thing that reviews your appeal, like the same automated system. | ||
| I'm like, that's crazy. | ||
| Especially for a sub part of a company, YouTube, a part of Google, that it is a thing because of the creators. | ||
| So to be treated like that, it's like, ah, whatever. | ||
| So I was banned once, terminated, harmful and dangerous. | ||
| Rumble reach out to me. | ||
| They DM me. | ||
| And I didn't, at that point in time, a little over a year ago, I had never heard about it. | ||
| And then it happened again. | ||
| And then that time Chris personally reached out to me. | ||
| He's like, Hey, like, I just want to talk about what's going on. | ||
| And then from there, it was one of those like light switch moments. | ||
| The light bulb went on and I was like, okay, I get what's going on. | ||
| Me talking about stocks, it's always risk reward. | ||
| I was like, well, why would I not be on multiple platforms all of a sudden? | ||
| all your eggs in one basket, and I see what you even personally do, you have to have multiple | ||
| distribution avenues. So for me, it was kind of a no-brainer. | ||
| And at first I was doing it, and kind of like my YouTube career, nothing, nothing, | ||
| nothing. And I have to say over the past month and a half, and maybe it's because it's in the | ||
| media more, and now I'm sure with the various announcements, exclusive deals with Russell | ||
| Brand, Steve will do it, I think it's just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. | ||
| And for me, the biggest thing is, like, I get it. | ||
| If I do something that's, whatever, illegal or clearly against the TOS, yeah, okay, there should be punishment and you can talk about it. | ||
| It's just more of like, you don't even know what you did. | ||
| It's like, tell me what to take. | ||
| Isn't it funny that that's the thing that's driving us all crazy? | ||
| It's like, we'll all play by the rules if you guys tell us the rules. | ||
| That's what I'm always thinking with YouTube or when I say something about gender or whatever. | ||
| It's like, but the rules are so amorphous and depend on who is saying it and when they're saying it. | ||
| And all this other stuff that that's the part that makes it you can't build a business like that. | ||
| And we're seeing it time and time again across the entire, I guess, really social media content creation world is sometimes it's as random as just that reviewer. | ||
| That time you're fine and whatever, and the next one doing the exact same thing. | ||
| They're like, nope, that's for me. | ||
| I went from no strikes to fully terminated. | ||
| I was like, what about strike one, two or three? | ||
| What's going on here? | ||
| So just from a business sense, I was like, wow, a company being presented to me where they're like, yeah, well, let's just say what you want to say. | ||
| Right now in the new digital age, I think people's voice and their opinions are important. | ||
| So now that there's a company who, I feel very fortunate, didn't get stomped out by big tech in its infancy stages and made it to this point, which is a huge rarity, that sense of protection, and I feel like you, Steve, and the other creators, it's just nice. | ||
| You're like, okay, cool. | ||
| I don't have to worry about that part of my business when I need to worry about other normal business, I guess, issues. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| It's a cost right there when you have to worry, oh, if I say this, I'm taken out. | ||
| You've got to figure out other ways to run your business. | ||
| So putting aside why you're happy as a creator on Rumble, they're not going to mess with you. | ||
| You can say what you want. | ||
| In terms of what happened here today and this company going public and free speech being embedded into that, can you talk about that a little bit? | ||
| Yeah, so there's various ways to hit the public market. | ||
| You have IPOs, you have direct listings, and one that really started the game steam in 2020 was SPAC deals. | ||
| It's a blank check company. | ||
| So basically... So this is what we did. | ||
| Yeah, this is exactly what Rumble did through Cantor Fitzgerald. | ||
| So it was trading under the ticker CFVI, and at that point, It's literally the best way I could describe it is a pile of money. | ||
| It's just sitting there and then they end up getting a part of equity of a private company. | ||
| So through that connection, a private company is trading on the public market. | ||
| But that's kind of the first step from there. | ||
| You get a big shareholder vote on if they want it to go through. | ||
| And last week on Thursday, that was the vote for CFEI shareholders of like, do we want to go through with the transition to Rumble? | ||
| They voted yes. | ||
| It was affirmed everything on Friday. | ||
| So on Monday of this week, RUM is the ticker symbol. | ||
| It hit the public markets and now it's trading as its own distinct company on listed on the Nasdaq. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And this was a rough year for SPACs, right? | |
| SPACs were really hot a year ago, two years ago, but this is, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is basically the cleanest SPAC deal of the year. | ||
| You are spot on. | ||
| I mean, Chamath Paliapatiya, billionaire multiple times over, he recently, actually a couple days ago, yesterday, had to pull out of some of his SPAC deals, like the ones he was sponsoring. | ||
| It's been a rough time. | ||
| Right now, his buddy David Sachs from the podcast is one of our investors and locals. | ||
| So he's got to be happy with me right now. | ||
| Yeah, definitely being able to pull it off. | ||
| And so when it all happened, like there's so many cool threads that you could look at this from. | ||
| And what I think is interesting, Okay, so SPACs, you're spot on. | ||
| It's been a rough time. | ||
| It's a rough time in the market. | ||
| We're not officially, as of yesterday's close, in a bear market. | ||
| And today, the last time I checked it, it is continuing. | ||
| So rough overall market where sometimes VC money dries up. | ||
| People are a little apprehensive, which really you should be doing the opposite, but that's a story for another time. | ||
| So rough overall market, rough time for SPACs and the connotation. | ||
| But then you see this one somehow, not just pull it off. | ||
| It wasn't like dragging itself over the finish line. | ||
| It, it ran through it. | ||
| Wasn't it 0.1%? | ||
| Uh, didn't go in on it from this back. | ||
| I think it was something. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then they didn't have the, it was, it was so absurdly good. | ||
| This thing, Usain Bolt through the finish line. | ||
| It was like, it was bragging. | ||
| It was laughing. | ||
| It worked out super, super well. | ||
| And to me that just shows the power of conceptually where this company is going. | ||
| It's a very easy pitch. | ||
| It is a platform that lets creators say what they wanna say with no fear of like, oh, did I say that word? | ||
| You've experienced it yourself. | ||
| If I say that word, I know the algorithm's gonna really mess this one up, so it doesn't promote it to anyone. | ||
| I mean, there's very- Sometimes, before I do my show in the morning when we're just going through the rundown, I'll be like, well, I know what we're talking about today, so today is a no money day on YouTube. | ||
| It's an odd way to run a business. | ||
| Today, there's gonna be no money from that same thing that I always do. | ||
| You have to get one of those happy, mad octopuses that you switch and you're like, it's a no money day. | ||
| You just put it on your desk. | ||
| But to me, it's cool because there's some energy about it. | ||
| I always think of it as sometimes you just stumble into the right direction. | ||
| And sometimes you stumble, stumble, stumble, and once in a while you take that right step and you can tell it's different. | ||
| And I'm sure you've had that feeling many times with your own business. | ||
| There's probably times where you're just like, it's not working, why am I doing this? | ||
| And then something happens one day, whether it's the right DM, the right VC, just something abnormal. | ||
| And this week, this time for Rumble, for me as a creator, for you, and just what this really means for the protection of any form of creator. | ||
| If you want to post viral videos of a dog, if you want to talk about politics or stocks or anything in between, if you just want to party like Steve and make funny videos, the sense that you're protected and you're not always worrying about this looming thing behind you, that weird tension, you just sleep a little bit easier. | ||
| It's the thing that we all thought the internet was going to be, right? | ||
| Wasn't that the promise of the internet 20 years ago? | ||
| When everyone first got on YouTube, we didn't know what it was. | ||
| And you're watching these cat videos and the woman falling, stomping the grapes and all of those things. | ||
| And everyone thought it was just like this open place and do your thing and have fun. | ||
| And then it became something very dark and twisted, but that creates a lot of opportunity. | ||
| Yeah, and like, for me, it's interesting. | ||
| So I'm 28, and I was speaking with my parents about it. | ||
| I'm like, ah, just things are tense. | ||
| And it's not even just political. | ||
| Like, in general, there's like a sense of unease. | ||
| And I was like, was it always like this? | ||
| I would argue it's spurred by politics. | ||
| I'm like, no. | ||
| It wasn't. | ||
| No, it wasn't. | ||
| This is a new, fresh thing. | ||
| I was like, all right, that's interesting. | ||
| And I'm of the mindset that one of the best things you could do is just talk. | ||
| How can you possibly agree or disagree with the other side or even your own side if we're | ||
| not sharing and pollinating ideas, whether good or bad? | ||
| My argument is just the idea should be out there. | ||
| I just want a company such as Rumble that is willing to back that up. | ||
| And great, as long as we're all following the rules that are very clear. | ||
| And on top of that, even if it goes sideways, they talk to you. | ||
| That's the biggest thing that I have never had with any other form of social media, of | ||
| like an actual human to human interaction. | ||
| So really, it comes down to communication, but on all levels across the board. | ||
| And I love it. | ||
| Now I'm going to see if you're truly a professional creator, because you can look at the camera. | ||
| You can look right over there and tell the good people where to find you. | ||
| You can find me on all forms of social media, just Matt Kors. | ||
| K-O-H-R-S. | ||
| But definitely check me out on Rumble. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Rumble. | |
| Yeah, definitely. | ||
| It's Matt Kors. | ||
| There's no at or under thing like that. | ||
| Just M-A-T-T-K-O-H-R-S. | ||
| And I'm happy to see you there. | ||
| It's going to be a blast. | ||
| Right on. | ||
| Thanks for joining me, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Awesome. | ||
| Guys, I should mention, by the way, because I know a lot of you are wondering, you do know that I was in Los Angeles last night. | ||
| I don't think I slept all day, so I'm also operating on like 36 hours now of pure adrenaline. | ||
| But I was in crazy California, in psycho Los Angeles last night. | ||
| I did Bill Maher's podcast at his house. | ||
| It was the longest podcast he's ever done. | ||
| He said it afterwards. | ||
| Well, he said a lot of things. | ||
| I don't want to give away too much before it airs. | ||
| But it was great. | ||
| And much of what I've talked about on the show for a couple years was we hacked at it. | ||
| We also didn't hack at it. | ||
| We built some bridges. | ||
| We also butted some heads. | ||
| But it was two decent people from slightly different perspectives doing their thing. | ||
| And that's what it's really all about. | ||
| So I relate that back to exactly what's going on here at Rumble. | ||
| Because it's all about that plurality of voices and finding a place where you can talk about all the stuff and not worry about getting banned. | ||
| Okay, I'm gonna just do two or three more and then we're good to go. | ||
| I probably should take a nap and eat something. | ||
| Let's get that on the agenda for today. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Ashley says, was it weird to wake up to know Mr. Burrito and Dr. Clyde? | ||
| Yes, this is the first day of my life since Justin has been born that I'm not seeing him and I'm going back in two days. | ||
| I'm on Gutfeld tomorrow here in New York City. | ||
| I do miss Mr. Burrito. | ||
| Clyde, I've traveled a little bit when Clyde's not around, but I do enjoy our morning walks. | ||
| Thanks for asking. | ||
| And finally, Kebby says, LA to New York City. | ||
| That's like going from the fire into the frying pan. | ||
| Good luck today. | ||
| You've all worked hard for this accomplishment. | ||
| Well, that sounds like a nice way to end it. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| And really guys, this is just the beginning. | ||
| This is so consistent. | ||
| This public moment for Rumble and free speech being baked into the ethos of the company. | ||
| I hope you got a little insight from Chris and Asaf on what we're trying to build. | ||
| And it's in direct assault of, or in response of, All of the nonsense from Big Tech. | ||
| And now we are going to assault them. | ||
| That is the plan. | ||
| That is the plan. | ||
| That may not sound like a pure business plan, but it's my plan. | ||
| I believe that Dave can beat Goliath, and I believe that Dave can beat Google, and I believe that we can do it together. | ||
| So why not, right? | ||
| That's the plan. | ||
| And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, pretty cool. | ||
| I mean, I'm doing this from NASDAQ in Times Square. | ||
| My face was in the middle of Times Square. | ||
| Giant billboard before. | ||
| I mean, nutty. | ||
| Nutty. | ||
| Absolutely nuts. | ||
| Thanks for watching, everybody. | ||
| We have no live show tomorrow. | ||
| I don't even know if we pre-taped anything. | ||
| No live show tomorrow, but I'm on Gutfeld tomorrow night and I'll be back in studio on Monday. |
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