Interview with John Coogan

Sup nerds

How do you get to 300,000+ YouTube subscribers?

Last week, I interviewed John Coogan to find out.

Over the past 3 years, John has grown his YouTube to 300,000+ subscribers by making documentary-style videos about tech, startups, and politics. They’re some of the most bingeworthy videos on the internet (seriously, I’ve stayed up until 2 AM multiple times watching them).

And he’s done all of this while working as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Founders Fund. If you’re unfamiliar with Founders Fund, it’s a venture capital fund run by billionaire Peter Thiel, known as the contrarian of Silicon Valley for his unorthodox opinions and beliefs. So it should be of no surprise that John gave some excellent unorthodox advice.

Here’s John Coogan’s contrarian advice for growing on YouTube:

Reminder to read all the way til the end for my thoughts and takeaways.

JASON LEVIN: How did you start making YouTube videos about startups?

JOHN COOGAN: The content has been through a ton of evolutions, and I still don't have a super defined niche—there are way more niche channels that are "I review iPhones and that's what I do when there's a new iPhone, I review it, and that's it"—but I've always just been kind of doing it for fun and kind of exploring what's possible on video.

There's so many different choices from length and whether you're on camera or off camera, whether you're interviewing people or cutting things together, motion graphics. I got started during the pandemic, I wanted to have some fun, put something out on the internet and meet some interesting people and it's definitely worked in that regard. 

[That's how we met, hopefully I count as an interesting person]

As for the evolution in terms of content of what I'm interested in, I mean the early companies I covered were definitely more traditional tech—whatever was trending on Twitter and whatever people were talking about. I think my first video ever was about and then I started doing breakdowns on individual people, like the saga of Naval Ravikant and Chamath Palihapitiya and deep diving into people's careers. I still really enjoy doing that and I try to always focus on a person's story in the videos instead of just an abstract technology concept. I've gone through different eras from defense to the metaverse to AI, I never wanted to be just one thing, so bouncing around was pretty good. 

JASON LEVIN: I respect it. The best niches are your particular interest and the combination of them.

JOHN COOGAN: Yeah, it's not ideal for growth. I'd probably be growing faster if I was just the iPhone review guy or just the metaverse guy or just the AI guy, or just the defense guy because the audience shows up and then the audience is like, oh, I want to see another video and the exact same thing I want to hear the same thing. 

And you can see that with a lot of these really optimized channels, like they kind of wind up saying the same thing again and again and again. And it's just like, oh, really another Top 10 Productivity Tips. Like is it gonna be the same as last time? Probably. And that's just kind of soul-sucking. So I've stayed away from it, but it's the hurt growth of the channel—but I'm not super focused on growth of the channel at this point, so it's been fine.

JASON LEVIN: I mean, the channel has grown to 300,000+ subscribers. That's pretty damn good.

JOHN COOGAN: Yeah, but I mean, there are definitely people that lean into one specific niche and would be at a million easily. 

JASON LEVIN: Yeah. So what have been the biggest levers for growth thus far?

JOHN COOGAN: A few things.

One is picking broad topics that that everyone's familiar with at least in the title and thumbnail. So when you talk about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and Microsoft, these are things that anyone can click on because everyone knows those names. Not everyone knows Palmer Luckey or Clubhouse, those are kind of niche topics. And so if you want to get a lot of views, talking about the really broad topics like Microsoft, Facebook, you know, these general topics, those helped with growth a lot. 

I made a lot of videos about smaller startups, and I still do, but now if I do a video about a smaller startup, I try to put it in a broad context—but even then, it won't get as many views, there's just no way to make an enterprise SaaS founder look as intriguing as Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin is just somebody who everyone knows and is interesting. And so, going broad with the topics is important, making the content longer and deeper and more authoritative.

We have this model of like, I want to pick a topic that's really big, but I want to make the best video on YouTube about it—like I'll see what else is out there and I'll say okay, I'm going to make something that's better and hopefully it's the best video on that topic for years, because then it will keep getting views. And that's what I think I did with like the Xi Jin Ping video and the Putin video, like there were some videos about these topics out there, but they're like 10-minute video essays, summaries or just one angle on it, so for me, going lengthy, deeper detailed, that's definitely been beneficial.

What are the keys to growth? There's little minor things about being concise, being clear with your communication, the title and thumbnail, and then also, the way you structure the script, making sure you have a story and there's a reason that somebody would stay to the end that you're not rambling. And then better editing and music and stuff, just making it fun to watch.

JASON LEVIN: Yeah, I find the videos super fun to watch. Do you have a team that you're working with now or freelancers or contractors or anything?

JOHN COOGAN: Yeah, I have a team of a couple editors, a couple of people to help flush out stories, thumbnails, etc. And yeah, if anyone's reading this and wants to work with me, email me: [email protected].

JASON LEVIN: Are there any tools or software that you recommend for YouTube or anything fancy that the random person doesn't know about?

JOHN COOGAN: A lot of it depends on what you're trying to do. I think the best thing is just building a really reliable, lightweight filming kit to try and lower the barrier to turning on the camera. That's always been important. You don't want to be in a situation where if you're going to film, it's gonna be 30 minutes of setup.

 So I have a pelican case that has a light and three tripods, three cameras in it and I can go by myself, set everything up, and do it permissionless; that's way better than the way a lot of people do stuff where they're like, oh, I'm doing a video podcast I need my film guy, and I need this and that and all of a sudden it becomes this big production. So just having a permanent established camera setup with lighting—like I have lighting that's bolted into the ceiling so it's super easy to turn on and I don't really need to think about it. That's probably been a good investment rather than spending the most money on the most expensive equipment that's that'll probably slow you down, focusing on the equipment that will like speed things up.

As for camera, I wound up going with Sony because you can record for hours. And it has an amazing autofocus and I'm not trying to upgrade, like I have these FX3 now that are there. I mean don't get me wrong like they're expensive cameras, but I could go higher into the Bronto or the FX6 the FX9 but it just gets heavier and bigger whereas the FX3 is the perfect camera for me because I can plug it into a USBC thing I have a I have like this one USBC brick that has three USB C cables on it. It can power all three cameras and it can just run off of USB C power forever which a lot of cameras that you need, like dummy batteries, extra stuff. So just like figuring out how to like slim everything down so that it's easier to reduce the friction that's been important.

JASON LEVIN: Love this [I have more thoughts on this I share after the interview]. Where do you see the John Coogan YouTube channel in 5-10 years?

JOHN COOGAN: That's a good question. When I started this, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna keep grinding this for 10 years and then I'll see where it goes. Because I was like, if I just keep posting weekly for 10 years, I think something cool will happen. And obviously it's like 3 years and a bunch of cool stuff has happened, so I'm ahead of schedule in that regard. 

But I don't know I mean, realistically, in 5-10 years, I doubt I'll be running a media company. I think more likely the YouTube channel will be used as a way to amplify or launch the next company. I love content and I think it's very entertaining and it's fun, but I didn't get into this for the fame, so I don't think I can feed off of it forever. I'm not constantly chasing a high of like, oh I gotta get more attention. And I think that's maybe what it takes to be like really, really big in media. But I think YouTube and media in general is a really, really great way to accelerate a go-to-market strategy on a new product.

JASON LEVIN: Yeah, Balaji has a line where he's like "money is like a stick of dynamite: leverage to blow up obstacles to achieve your goal" and an audience's the same thing, that distribution where whatever you want to do next you got a big ass channel that people are gonna see it right? 

JOHN COOGAN: Yeah, I don't even know if it's for sales. Like it could be for sales. It could be like, hey, buy this product, but it also could be just like, okay, it's my recruiting agent. Everyone I hire for YouTube, we met through content. In previous companies, I've tried to hire writers and it's been really hard but if I put out a call, like I'm gonna find some writers right now. So yeah, I think it's just generally beneficial. 

In terms of where the actual content goes, it's unclear. The documentaries are pretty labor intensive and pretty low value, like a Joe Rogan episode probably is the most profitable piece of media on a permanent basis, right? Because it costs like nothing to make truly, and he makes millions of dollars. And a YouTube documentary is kind of the opposite. It's like extremely expensive to make (we have full time editors working like constantly on it) and then the ad revenue is not that good. Like it's not really that great of a business.

Over time, I think there's two interesting things to explore: one is more personality—like I imagine that you're getting more out of this casual call then one of my videos and it just feels different, right, it feels like you're having like a real interaction with me. So I think unscripted is interesting to get into where I'm riffing and you get to know who I am as a person as opposed to now where I'm just like your history teacher. So there's probably something there and then also just having something that's less time intensive. That's where obviously a podcast makes a ton of sense where it's unscripted, me talking to my friends, and if you put ads on it or whatever, it can be much higher margin and it's something where maybe I'm not dozens of hours a week on it and instead I show up, I talk to some people, I do some prep work, but really it's a few hours a week as opposed to what it is now, which is dozens of hours and lots of time.

JASON LEVIN: That sounds like a dream. As Jack Butcher said, "build distribution then build whatever you want." 

My thoughts below ↓

OK, some rough thoughts from this interview:

1. “I want to make the best video on YouTube about it.” is such a banger. John legit looks at YouTube, finds the best videos on a topic, and then says How can I make one even better? That’s a true founder mentality: scour the market, see how you can beat competitors. TBH, I’ve never done this, not even once. I just write about my hacks, strategies, and adventures, and it’s been working out. But maybe I should try it lol.

2. A Joe Rogan episode probably is the most profitable piece of media on a permanent basis. Wow, I never really thought too much about this. I assumed John was making insane profit on YouTube, but for the documentary-style videos he makes, it’s a lot of costs. When you run a podcast or unscripted chill videos, it’s MUCH higher profit margins.

3. Focusing on the equipment that will like speed things up. Instead of spending money on the most expensive equipment that’ll probably slow you down and increase friction to press Record, get equipment that’ll speed you up. BOOM. You don’t need fancy-shmancy, you just need to press Record more. It’s the same thing with writing. No fancy software needed. I used Microsoft Word to write this post because I focus better than when I’m on Chrome! How long has Word been around for? Oh yeah, longer than I’ve been alive.

As always, create some cool shit this week.

Jason Levin