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All right, guys, welcome back, Eyl. We have special guest. This is always good comm stations when we get to talk to people in the media space and cultural space in the business world, because that's kind of our niche as far as you know, looking at the business behind what people actually see. So everybody's familiar with Complex. You've built a tremendous brand in the world of culture, sports, entertainment, anything that really does with media, New age media. They
definitely have led the charge for a long time. So Marksha Fitzgibbons.
That's me, Yes, for like you build it a you know, Indian name, and I learned maybe a year ago that in India it's a woman's name. So like I've been running around, you know, my whole life. You know, at least I'm the only one, right, I've never met in business another Marsha. So this is the first, the thankful part of it.
But I always think, what does it mean?
It would be smilar to like Elijah, like you know, sort of.
A freedom the woman version of Elijah.
Yeah, or Emmanuel or something like that.
Yeah, very none of these people that your name are women. Emanuel Elijah.
Correct.
Yeah, I wouldn't say. I'm you know, huge on Indian culture, no expert, but uh, you know that that's what I've been told that it's you know, not traditionally used as a man's name. So anyway, what kind of makes it interesting?
Yeah, the first Mosca we've had on the show.
Probably the last, depending on how this goes. No press me too incendiary.
So President of Complex, Yeah, so you're I'm sure you have a lot on your plate now you guys are gearing up for a Complex car. Yeah that that's always a good time. I think we've been to at least one we've been.
Yeah, we went to Long Each Long Beast two years ago.
Yeah, Yeah, that was cool. Who was there at that time?
I feel like Asap might have been there. He's always there, He's always no you know what it was kit Cutty.
Kit Cutty, He's also done in a couple of Yeah.
Kit Cutty was was one a headliners, the headliner. Yeah, yeah, I just remember the sneaker of the year because that's important to me.
I was actually I actually had it on as they announced.
It and Gary Vee was Yeah, but I think I should came through to it was big.
It was big.
I mean every time, it's going to be a lot, a lot bigger this year. We As you guys know, Complex was sold to BuzzFeed a few years ago. I think it didn't sort of fit within their ecosystem and as a result, you know, I would say the business side of Complex eroded a bit or wasn't nurtured to its best degree. Fortunately, they they did a good job keeping up the audience and growing that side of things.
But one thing that I think like kind of suffered was Complex con They just didn't put the investment into it, and we are putting a huge investment into it this year really with sort of the thought that like we need to really like kind of establish to the community, to the fans, to the creators, to the brands that like Complex is back, It's back to its core. And you know that's where you see like this investment, Like Travis is creative directing it. He and playwhere doing sort
of headlining nights. He's doing this whole sort of like micro con within it called Cactus Con, and you know it's just like you know, obviously a lot of complications and sort of pulling that all together, but we really think it's like the biggest marketing moment for the brand and sort of sets the halo effect for the brand overall. It's pretty unique when a media company can get sixty sixty five thousand young people to buy tickets, fly out,
commute to this physical destination. You know, there's there's really very in my mind, very few media brands that can do it. So it's a it's a special relationship we have with the audience. And you know, just based on the sort of the historicals with BuzzFeed, it's you guys should come out it's going to be much more impactful and meaningful than years before.
And the yeah we went it was in a long beach, but this year it's actually moving to Vegas.
Yeah, what was the idea thought process behind all?
Right?
We one of the things we see in events is you have something that's established in one place and it's working there, keep it there, but you're moving it.
Yeah.
So it was, you know, it was based on the investment the BuzzFeed was making in it. It was you know, it was shrinking, right, it was it needed an invigoration, and Vegas being like the entertainment capital of America, we felt like, you know, all the clubs, Live, Zook, et cetera. Everyone the city will program around it as well, like they'll really embrace it. I think there's like eighty or ninety thousand young people that travel to Vegas every day.
You know, it's very close proximity to southern California, and we just felt like we needed to make a big, bold statement. It's in the new Convention Center, which is attached to the Fountain Blue. You know, you've got Live in there and whatever, Poppy Steak and all these things that are creating energy, and we felt like, you know, just we could also excite the artist community, and I think that was like part of like, you know, sort
of getting Travis involved. Was like, hey, it's new, it's fresh, it's never been done before. That generally excites people, but it's definitely a risk. I was, you know, I won't lie. I was concerned about it. I was like like our you know, brands don't usually say that Vegas is a priority market, but like to you know, my sort of I guess delight. Everyone's been really supportive of it, embracing it, and if you look at you know, we put the
flyer out the other day. It's a mix of amazing artists and great brands, and we're we're super excited about it. I think it's going to be very impactful.
So okay, so let's talk about complex What you did at the beginning.
Yeah, I was there from my first job out of college. I worked at this magazine called The Source, which you guys obviously now of course, So you know, I started out, like, you know, getting coffee and all like the administrative stuff that you would do back then. And you know, I like, you know, I grew up like single mom. She never made very much money. So, like, I was very hungry
to like make money. And I would see all like the sales guys, the ad sales guys, like you know, they all had like benzes and roll exes, and you know, Dave gave them like source chains that Jacob the jeweler made if they hit their number. And I was like, man, you know, like twenty three, twenty two years old, I'm like, you know, I want that. So I begged them every day, give me accounts, give me accounts, give me accounts. So like maybe a year after working there, they started giving
me like streetwear accounts. And that's how I met Mark and Seth who owned Echo and Limited. Yeah, and you know, selling them ads essentially, and they're like, hey, we're going to like create this magazine, you know, but it's gonna be a digital magazine and we're going to distribute it on Sony mini discs if you remember those on the hangtags of the apparel, like super bad idea in hindsight. That failed quickly and then it pivoted to physical magazine,
which you know published for quite a long time. So I was, yeah, I was one of the very first employees. I was the first salesperson, and I was there from two thousand and two through twenty seventeen. We sold it in twenty sixteen and then I stayed through a sort of a transition period. But yeah, it was a great ride and a lot of you know, sort of like
figuring out print magazine businesses and making that work. And then we had was two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, you had the recession which literally like killed our print business, like went from twenty something million in revenue down to like six in like eighteen months. But fortunately we had really started to work on digital, and digital went from like six one hundred thousand to twelve million, and we were like, oh, we need to you know.
And also the friction with the audience, which we didn't really because we have been sort of like print magazine people. We didn't really realize that we're like, make a beautiful thing, put it out every month, put it on newsstands, send it to subscribers. Like that was like the model where digital the internet is so much more democratic. There's no friction.
You can reach consumers like almost instantly. Maybe more challenging to make that sort of like physical like long term impact with them, but there's so much more of an ease to scale audience. So that was super exciting for us. We were like, oh wait a minute, Like there's such a bigger audience on the Internet versus a print magazine which has all these distribution limitations. And so that was
a super trying time. Like, you know, Echo's core business also had a lot of financial issues at that time, so we had to go independent and raise some capital and then you know, sort of the blog era happened and we were monetizing that way, and then sort of that is a consumer behavior changed and we pivoted into digital video and social and now the pivot into e comm experiences and you know, sort of premium content, having them all come together to make a more durable, long
term business because being solely ad dependent, if there's a big recession moment, you know, it's so.
Those talking about that thing. So Okay, you guys have a media company, right, You produce content, You have shows. You had Joe Biden was every day struggle, every day struggle and academics, right, and.
Yeah, she's amazing.
So you guys produced content, you do shows, you have the Instagram thing. You got a sneaker situation but all right, so the business, how does the business make money? You make money through advertisers. Yeah, what you're saying that you don't want to be solely with depending on it. So you're talking about the verticals.
Yeah, so there's how that actually makes money. So there's three verticals currently that we're focused on. So you think about premium content, and largely there the monetization is ads or sponsorship or integration.
What's there? What is the premium content with you guys?
It shows like three sixty with Speedy, Mormon idea Generation sneaker shopping, and a whole host of other shows. Like I would say we probably launch pilot somewhere around twenty shows a year with the hopes that you know, ten to twenty percent will become successful and become like another three sixty with Speedy, Like I don't know if you saw the episode last week he had Go Go you know, two days did fifty million views, crazy.
Fifty million two days wow, across.
TikTok reels and YouTube, you know, mainly in the shorter firm. That's why I was asking you, guys, abook sort of your strategy there before. But you know, there's a couple of days there you went on reels or TikTok and like fan pages are picking it up, commentary pages. I just saw her on I think Angel Reese's podcast or somebody else podcast. She asked her about that, like, Oh,
what's your type of guy? Like, Oh, it's not speedy, and like it's like it was like a whole thing, you know, So that kind of content that you know, it's high production value. It's episodic, like it's programmed like Sneapker Shopping comes out every Monday at noon, so fans can expect it. It's also good for the advertising community because they can like sort of similar to like linear cable TV, they know it's coming. That's one part of
the business. The other part of the business is e commerce, so Complex through all of its channels, has just over one hundred million followers.
And just get back to the first part of the business. That's part of the business. How do you monetize that. You monetize that through ads.
Yeah, there's traditional ads and then the probably forty percent of traditional ads, and then sixty percent is what I would call bespoke advertising. So integrations like you have this you know, water bottle on the table now it could be Sprite, and then Sprite would present this episode and there might be a Sprite I don't know, hot take moment or whatever that kind of moment is. It's like
an integration yep. And then a smaller subset of that is more in depth creative development, where let's just say another Coke brands, say just Coke zero. We might work with them on creating content that's totally new to the world that has our hosts in it, but like they sort of like co create the IP with us.
So you're getting the sponsors before you greenlight the show, as opposed to green lighting the show and trying to pitch the show to sponsors.
We go both routes. So we are constantly launching shows with the intention of getting another you know, sneaker shopping and other speedy and other hot ones, like shows that do tens of millions of views with every episode. But sometimes we're getting you know, requests or briefs from you
know whatever, Apple, Samsung, et cetera. They're like, Hey, we have something so specific we want to achieve that it can't fit creatively within one of our shows, So we will work with our development team to build something totally
new to world that fits their business goals. Those shows are obviously much harder to go viral and be organic, but they satiate, you know, the brand's needs to be like you know, uber specific around I don't know what financial literacy or whatever they would want to be talking about.
So when you're creating a strategy to approach to brands, obviously you have mega brands now, but go back to the beginning stages, even from the source up until this point, what was your strategy when approaching a brand from a I guess from an ad standpoint, from I guess, integration and until you just spoke about.
So like the first part, I think what we were trying to communicate to advertisers around Complex and still do is this notion of convergence consumers. You know, youngish people that are just as interested in sort of traditional sports as they are action sports. You know, they're just as interested as in hip hop as they are reggaetone. They like streetwear as much as they admire coutore, where most of the media before Complex was like you like hip hop,
it's the source. You like men's wear, it's GQ, You like action sports, it's thrasher and skateboarder. There wasn't like a cross pollination. And you know, obviously Mark, you know, sort of growing up the way he was like, you know, he loved everything. You know, he's making shirts for a tribe called Quest, and he was skateboarding, he was you know, doing graffiti, and he was into gaming all these things.
So it's like, let's pull all these things together. And really, you know what now is sort of very typical millennial cultural and culture and gen Z culture, Like they're consuming things from all different passion points. That wasn't so much the case then, So we're really educating, Hey, there's this new consumer who's interested in all of these things. And then we also had you know, complex was always about you remember the magazines was like half entertainment and then
half purchasing as a buyer's guide. So our argument was like, hey, we are reaching a consumer who is literally wallet in hand or credit card in hand, like there's a direct connection to the lifestyle and to the products they purchased, thus making the roi on marketing to them stronger. For the brands.
Well, I mean the advantage point you speak of is it's pretty interesting, right you start out the source you watch double XL even vibe, those aren't here anymore.
Yeah, complex is still here. How does that?
I mean looking at back now, how did you learn from the lessons from I guess not the failures of them, But everything has its time span. How do you guys create the longevity after watching what happened to done?
Yeah, I think the one thing we're pretty obsessed about is winning the youth. Like we're constantly challenging ourselves to like not rest on the fact that, like we've won the twenty five to thirty five year year old audience, because pretty quick they're going to be forty five. So if you're not winning fourteen to sixteen right now, who admire the twenty one and twenty two year old, You're going to have a really hard time as a media brand.
And I think you see that in other sectors too, Like I think you have to be obsessed with youth culture and what's next in reaching younger folks, otherwise you're going to age out. And I think that perhaps is what happened to those or maybe they're you know, like also the print work, you know, they didn't adapt from print where we pretty you know, not perfectly but we pretty aggressively adopted digital than video, than social, you know, now AI trying to figure out formats that we can
deliver you know in an AI universe. What does that look like in the future. And if you're not aggressive about that stuff, it's you're gonna get left behind.
So you didn't get a chance to finish what was the second and third leg of monetization for you guys.
So the second leg is e commerce. So we are like, if you go to Complex right now, there is a shop Complex tab right now, it's a drop specific. So we'll launch like a you know, a New Balance collaboration or you know, Takashi Marakami artwork, whatever those kinds of things are. It's all like a limited time only launch.
But next month it will become more of an omnipresent e commerce marketplace where they will be not just these limited time only drops, So that the ideas that we basically leverage the scale those one hundred million plus consumers we're reaching every month to not only super serve them on the content side, but serve them up the products and leverage our channels to serve up the products that they want to buy, so that you know, adds is one piece. E Commerce is the other piece, and then
the third piece is experiences. Complex Cone is now twice a year Vegas and Hong Kong. We're doing other experiences, so that within that becomes ticketing revenue and other merch revenue, Like you know, the merch store around comp con is A is a standalone pretty successful business. And then we've got the store in La where you know, every weekend we're doing pop up shops with different musicians and different athletes.
It's not a huge business, but it's successful and it's something that we can roll out to other markets as we grow.
Okay, so how vitally important is sponsorships to Complex car.
In terms of like the profitability or.
How profitability ability to actually throw the event? Yeah, because you said, like you know, you didn't want to rely too too much on that from the content perspective, because you know you're thinking of yeah.
If yeah, it's super important. So if you didn't have the mix of sponsorship revenues, merch like commerce revenues on site and ticketing, it would be impossible to make it profitable, like doing it on ticketing alone or merch. You know, just the cost of production on this thing is in the tens of millions. You couldn't. It's not like you know, rolling out great business. But it's like a couple of stages.
They're not you know, it's not all these like super hyper developed experiences that cost you know, millions of dollars to build. And you know, without without the sponsors, it would be you know, impossible to make it a profitable business. And the same without the ticketing revenue or without the
merch revenue. So it has to all come together. And that's sort of my point is like before Complex was on one legged stool, just like ad revenue, and that's why it you know, sold a couple of times, right, And we really have a vision to making a three legged stool with content, commerce and experiences feeding into that three legged stool, thus making it more stable. And you know, Complex I think twenty two ish or twenty one years old now, but we want a future proof it for
the next fifty years. So it's a strong, vibrant, thriving brand.
Any subscription model in there.
Not currently, but down the road we want to do we want to do. We want to build a business for like the super fans of Complex around access, like early access to e commerce drops special access to things like complex con or activations we might do at art Basel or f One. Also, you know, it could even be things like, hey, if you're part of this membership cohort, there's a special track of programming and special ticketing price for invest Fest or things like that that we could
do with partners. But it'll all be about like we were talking about before, access, Like this consumer thrives for access either like they want to experience the content to sort of get that like intellectual like ammunition, so they like, okay, yeah, I know what's up with that? Or they want to buy something, so it's like badging and it's like proof that you experience something. And then in the in the you know, in sort of the physical space, like they
don't want to wait online. As we were talking about before, it like you want, you want to get you want you know, you want the guy at Disney that's walking you in front of the whole lines, right and you know, and that also creates social ammunition for you. I feel like, oh, like I got in right away, I had this amazing thing and I got the merge. Like then you return to the you know, working around the water cool or at school or whatever you're doing, and you have like
the story that you can tell about it. You've got the physical badging, and you had a great experience. That's the wind for consobers.
You brought up two great words, sponsors and partners. And to me, when I think sponsors, I think short term relationship partners. I feel like this longevity whether you're going to be at complex con or wherever event it is, three, five, ten years. How do you guys approach brands when you're thinking about that, Like, this company is up and coming, this might be a good sponsor as opposed to that brand has been here, We need to partner with them to figure out how to build this.
I would say that we I think we look at it along those lines. Right there there, there's a group of brands and people that buy advertising that what they're doing is very tactical. You know, they're trying to promote tune in for their TV show or their streaming show this Friday.
Right.
Like those people, I would say, are like more in the sponsor arena.
Right.
And then there's brands that you know have you know, they share a similar consumer they're trying to target. They're trying to do interesting things in the space, something like a Nike or Adidas, where you know, you can take it a bit deeper and you can become real partners, and you know they're not They're not coming and saying, hey, guys, we need to do this thing in the next ninety days. Here it is go execute for us. They're actually bringing us and say like, hey, this is our product roadmap
for the next three years. What do you think can you help us with consumer insights? Can you help us build out a plan to make you know, air Force one vibrant again, or whatever that case might be. So I think it's you know, some brands will never be in the space that they share like a com and kind of DNA as you and I mean, obviously they're very different. But like brands that want, like I would say, like Sprite back in the day was a brand that
really wanted to participate in our space. So like that was a brand that made a lot of sense to be a partner with and be long term with. Where you know, maybe like some of the water brands are just coming in and out of the market. It's that's that's not going to be a long term partnership.
So okay, so complex. It's an interesting timeline here. It starts in two thousand and two too, and then it sells in twenty sixteen with three hundred and.
Four million twenty eight three.
Hundred and twenty eight million in twenty sixteen. Then in twenty twenty one it sells for two hundred and ninety four million, BuzzFeed buys it, then it sells for one hundred and nine million, and twenty twenty four intw network, you network. Okay, so from three hundred from twenty to two hundred and ninety four to one hundred, and what's happening here? It's selling from drastically lower every couple of years.
Yeah.
So when the first exit in twenty sixteen was definitely top of the market in terms of media company valuations. You know, there was a ton of hype around like brands like Vice raising crazy amounts of money. And you know, fortunately for us, as you know shareholders in the business were you're able to exit because I think if your exit later it would have been really challenging. We're kind of the last media brand to exit. In that era, the business was pretty strong and stable, but you could
see when BuzzFeed bought it. It did buy it, you know, relatively similar revenues, but the multiples had compressed because the marketplace changed. And then when BuzzFeed owned it, I don't believe. I think their model of approaching audiences and approaching advertisers and monetization is just so dynamically different than complexes approach, like they are super mass, super transactional, where complex is about like depth of connection, depth of conversation, creating real
partnerships with brands. And it just didn't fit. So they didn't nurture it super well. They then spacked. They got caught up in all that that didn't go well and widely reported. You know, there was I think they're on the NASDAC. I'm not totally sure on that, but whatever exchange they're on that they were. There was like the issues around potentially getting delisted and all of this stuff.
And you know, we were just super persistent about like, hey, if there's an opportunity and you're in a cash need environment, you know, we are interested in and e merging it with network. And at first they weren't interested, and I think as their conditions didn't improve, that presented an opportunity and we bought the brand back in February. And Who's
Network Network or what is it? Or who Both Network is a live streaming e commerce platform where the world's best creators and brands come to sell their most highly coveted products in a livestream e commerce environment. It was started by Jimmy I Bean and a couple other folks that were sort of associated with Complex. I joined there, I think late twenty eighteen, early twenty nineteen something like that. We built it up pretty successful business. Livestream shopping didn't
scale quite as quickly as we thought it would. We were looking to how amazing it's doing in China and Brazil, and we thought like, hey, like this is going to be like you know, the Echo boom in North America, and you know, so as we were looking to like, okay, how do we make this business stronger? You know, we're looking at things like our CAC and we're spending you know, multimillion dollars a year on meta to drive downloads and
drive engagement. And you know, we all of us were kind of like ex Complex people, So we're trying to super serve that same audience, but just through a commerce perspective. And when this opportunity, it just totally made sense. It's like, hey, we the audience is there, the brand strength is there. We can transition from network to shop complex. It's a much stronger name, it's a it's a bigger name, more reputable.
The audience is there, so we don't have to invest as much into like all the digital ads on Meta and you know, we thought we could make a much stronger business solve for the issues on the complex side and then solve for the issues on the network side.
And Mark Ecko was a part of the network.
He was not originally known, but Mark is on the board of the new company.
Yeah, so you guys, you guys, you exited in sixteen, Yeah, stayed on eighteen. You joined there when you guys, when the team is trying to team building and maybe we'll get into that a little bit, but it's vitally important to this. But as you're watching it, it's almost something that you helped create and you're starting to watch your.
Devalue devalued value.
How long or how long would the discussions to say we need to go back and try to acquire this thing.
Well, you left, you left for a point in.
Time, right, from Complex.
Yeah, yeah, eighteen.
Yeah, so yeah, I left in eighteen. Yeah, I left at the top of eighteen. I think I joined Network and the top of nineteen. I might have the dates off a little bit there, but it was definitely early days for Network. But you know, like we were on fire, especially during COVID e commerce, Like we were like we thought we could do no wrong. We were, you know, raising money like it was you know, things were good.
And then you know, as everyone sort of got out of COVID, things started to turn back to normal from an e commerce perspective, from an experienced perspective, so you know, we faced some of those headwinds and we were navigating them and you know we I mean just quite frankly, we always had an admiration for Complex, Like, you know, we built the brand, we loved the brand, we admire it, you know, we we love the audience, and we felt like, you know, it's so hard building a new consumer brand.
If we could just merge the sort of innovation, the technology, the e commerce, the spirit of entrepreneurialism with Complex that had the audience and the cachet and the credibility, we could make, you know, a media company of the future, a marketplace and e commerce business of the future that looked like no other. So that was really the aspiration. And to answer your other question, I think it took about a yearish to convince them to do it, uh meaning BuzzFeed to sell it.
Yeah, I mean it's very rare that you do exit a business and get the bus back and at.
A lower evaluation.
So well, there's a lot of examples of that. Like Dan Gilbert sold Quicken Loans, he bought it back, you know, made it multi billion dollar business. Alan Shapiro I think bought and sold Dick Clark Productions like three times, and each time he sold it for a billion dollars and then bought it back for like one hundred million or something. I mean, those numbers might not be exactly right, but like, you know, his thing was like I know how to run that business. I'm gonna sell it to these guys
that they don't know how to run it. They're gonna mess it up. I'm gonna come back and.
So buy so sell high by law, you.
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Was that, Yeah, you guys sold it for three hundred and twenty four million and then brought it back for one hundred million.
Yeah.
I wouldn't say it was intentional, but it worked out that way. Yeah.
Right, So but that's some level of foresight, right, Like, was there any foresight or that was just that was just a coincidence. You kind of knew that they was going to ruin it.
I would say that, you know, you all wouldn't know this better than me. But there's a there's always a stat out there about like murders and acquisitions failed majority of time, right, So, you know, selling Complex to the first to like a Verizon and Aharst. I mean, we were independent, so it's like okay, like we're operating separately, but still things got a little weirdish. And then you know BuzzFeed just I mean, like just think about it
on paper, does that make any sense. There's no intersectionality of those audiences, Like they're not even interested in the same thing. Like BuzzFeed's making videos about like exploding water melons by putting rubber bands around them, and cats on roller skates, and like Complex is talking about like nuances within streetwear and hip hop and art culture. It's just like, I don't know, it just didn't make a lot of sense.
How about retention of talent twenty sixteen, you have every day struggle. Yeah, Joe Budden obviously now one of the leaders in media. You have academics and another guy who's leading in the media. The lessons that's learned from them not being part of Complex anymore, but having a guy like Speeding who has been super creative and great for the brand, Joe with with with Stekers shopping obviously hot Ones.
The lessons that's learned from losing talent but retaining in the future, retaining talent that it's going to be able for to bring.
Yeah, it's uh, it's a that is uh, you know, an everyday focus. You know, it's it. I wish I could say it's super easy. You know, Complex is I think super I would say we are. We're really happy that we've been able to like incubate a lot of talent and give people, you know, a lot of younger people, like a Speedy coming up like their initial platform, or Emily Oberg who now has like a super successful fashion brand. She was like one of the first you know, anchors
on Complex News. And sometimes those people are so entrepreneurial, you know, they're so motivated, you're you're never going to keep them. And then some people are like Complex Family, like Joe and Speedy, who like they really value being associated with Complex. They want to be in the mix.
They want to build new shows, Like we just built a new show with Joe called On Display where he goes into celebrities homes and then he basically interviews them about like their collections and a sort of like their obsession. So like you went to Dapatista's house and he collects lunch boxes and bicycles, and like the big insight was like theves like I couldn't afford any of this, can I swear or no? Of course He's like, I can't afford any of this shit when I was a kid,
So now I'm buying it now. And he's like you know, it's like and it kind of dawned HI me. He was like, Wow, it's like, you know, sort of all about this fandom culture. But I was like, what, like kind of a powerful message, right, like that like once he obtained prosperity, he could unlock all these things that he couldn't get as a kid. And I thought, like, you know, I was kind of uplifting sort of subtexts there, But you got to give my little bit of a
pivot here. But you have to give the talent new opportunities, right, You have to invest into them. You have to say, like, you know, hey, Joe, like you've got sneaker shopping bona fide it, you've got the sneaker podcast.
Hit.
What else are you interested in? Oh, I'm interested in collectibles and uh sort of like architectural digest type content. Okay, let's build something around that. You have to give them the opportunity to be creative and flourish, you know, otherwise they're gonna go do their own things. And sometimes they're you know with like you know, you know other people you mentioned before, they're so entrepreneurial that like that's just
a force. You're never going to be able to like, you know, keep it, keep it inside the building, and I think that's great, Like, you know, arguably they have the number one podcast in the world amazing or you know, in the space and that that's that's great. So I think and then you know, the other part is like we always should be an incubation engine for new talent.
And that gets back to my point about like really being obsessed with winning the younger audience, because oftentimes these creators, they find their audience and then they super serve them. Like the sneaker shopping audience is a very specific male consumer and they're super serving them. But you need to bring in other talent to super serve other parts of the audience as well.
So, okay, how important is the content creation side of what you guys do as far as Instagram TikTok. It's a very nuanced skill set and it changes a lot. Like so at one point in time, you know, rails was everything and then Instagram changed it to car ourselves and you need to have to stay up to date with this with these things, and you guys do a
good job as far as staying in the algorithm. So how important is that to make sure that your content team is up to date and uh well prepared to tackle the new challenges on social media every day.
It's it's everything. If we're not engaging and growing audiences, the rest of the business will suffer.
Right.
If we're not growing and engaging audiences, we can't put things on the e commerce side in front of that audience. If we're not engaging audiences, the advertising business will suffer. For not engaging audiences, ticket sales will be soft to complex cons So the most important thing we do and you know, led by Aria and Noah, like they just
do a super good focused job. I'm continually to press to grow the socials and having dedicated talent because you know a lot of people think like, Okay, I'll just have my YouTube shorts person do tiktoks and they'll do reels. Well, they're completely different approaches, right, Like reels is feed based still algorithmic as well, TikTok is one hundred percent algorithmic. I can't really figure out shorts yet, but like someone
will figure that out. But like you need dedicated people that are experts on that, and they just tend to be like younger folks, right, Like you have to invest in younger people who really understand those platforms, who understand and snap or whatever it is, and then tailor the content in appropriate way to reach those audiences.
People. Do you have on your content team.
I don't know exactly, but over one hundred with freelancers.
Yeah. When Staying Fresh and Staying Youthful.
You spoke about AI earlier, talk about how the ideas and the team around that. I know you had the Slim Shady eminem cover incorporating that, So how you guys looking to implement that.
I would say, it's the way of the future, but it's of the now.
Yeah, So that was a good example. That was our first piece of it. And for the listeners that don't know, pretty smart idea by Noah and team. They programmed or fed a large language model all of like the Slim Shady lyrics and references over time to train it up on what that personality would look or act like. And then they had Slim Shady interview Marshall Mathers and obviously it played into the whole theme of the album. And then visually we brought that to life in them in
like a Thelma and Louise moment on the cover. You know, sort of like driving off a cliff kind of thing. But like, you know, at least as far as I know, that was the first time ever sort of the antry personality of an artist interviewed them in an AI format. So like, you know, pretty pretty I think, you know, pretty good use of the technology, pretty innovative, definitely not cheap.
But you know, other things we're looking at is like, okay, so as perplexity starts to disrupt Google, right and it's sort of AI search, how do we create formats that show up in that area. We're looking at a lot of things like how do we take things that are super successful in the text format, like oftentimes like our rankings and lists of you know whatever, top fifty sneaker or hip hop albums. They create a tremendous amount of virality and debate. It's very easy for AI to just
steal that content and not give us any attribution. So we're thinking about, like, okay, how do we turn that into vertical video? How do we turn that into long form video? Because we think there's more of a mote with video than there you know, than there is with tech certainly, So it's I wouldn't say we have it solved.
I think it's super complicated. Uh, you know, the AI tools are going to continue to progress and make probably business more challenging for content publishers and definitely not less. So you know, it's like, you know, you can't bet against youth culture and you can't bet against technology, right, those things will always win, so you better lean into them where you're fucked.
How important is data collection to you guys?
Business on the e commerce side, super important, you know, because that you know, you're you're doing the drip campaigns and you know, recidivism campaigns and you know, all kinds of things to get consumers back into the store. It'll be super important when we launch membership. Obviously on the
advertising side, it depends on the brand. Like some people are super interested in that, like who they're reaching, how they're reaching them, and then others are like, like they're pretty familiar with complex and they're like, okay, yeah, got it, eighteen to thirty four multicultural, you know that's what you're super serving.
Well, one of the things that you're passionate about. We talked about culture. We talked about music is art and I know everything complex and comiss all of it.
But on a personal side. They're an art collector.
Ish, I mean, did the passion come from the work or was that something that you already had passion for?
Yeah, I think, like, you know, I was thinking about on the right up here. Like when I was a kid in Tennessee, we lived on like a commune. So I like had like very like hippie parents that commune, like you know, communists in a true form, right, So it made me really like appreciate art and individuality. And there's a lot of musicians in that space, and it
just gave me an appreciation of that. But it also gave me like a staunch appreciation for capitalism, right, So I like ran away from it, but still kept those things. I think part of that, like you know, we'd like share houses with musicians and all these things and artists, Like my home space always reflects that. And I like
to support the art community, you know. I'm I'm you know, I'm part of a group at the pres Art Museum that that helps you know, sort of new artists get exposure in the museum and we fund that and it's more of you know, kind of I don't know, it's it's an interesting space for me. It's it's a space I you know, I admire artists because I'm not one, so it kind of gives me like an entryway into
like their thinking and their creativity. And I think that that kind of like different friends almost like healthy tension, makes me better in business because I'm able to like sort of see things from their perspective and then apply it if I'm working with a brand or working internally. And you know, to your point, complex has always been you know, had an admiration for our you know, whether it's like Cause doing covers or us doing you know,
work with Marakami. You know, there are a number of artists that really break through from a consumer perspective, both on the music side and the traditional you know, sort of fine art side, and working with those folks makes for a much more interesting media product consumer product. And then you know, if there's like a physical product that comes out of.
It, is that how some of the verticals a building, especially from the digital side, it was just complex and we had complex sneakers, then we have complex sports. Yeah, is there like all right, we have a group there's a huge interest here. Maybe we need complex tech or we need complex.
Yeah, so they probably were a little scattered under the BuzzFeed regime, so we have retrenched it. So the categories are music, style, sport, pop culture which kind of catch movie, gaming, and food. So those are kind of the main verticals that we're focused on and really leaning deep into those. And to your point, there's very specific, dedicated teams that
work on each one of those verticals. So there's like ahead of sneakers, ahead of style, ahead of music, and they have teams under them that are both producing content and working the socials to engage the audience.
So what's the future for Complex, Like what do you guys have envision for their ten year model?
Ten year model in terms of so, I would say, we really want to continue to invige rate the brand with you know, super interesting content like the Eminem piece that we.
Just talked through.
We want to over the next few months, as you're watching or reading, you know, pieces of content like the Eminem, you're also able to shop it. You're also able to go to an experience tied to it. So we want to have that sort of like trifectave content, commerce and experience come to life around everything we want to build, or we believe we can build a really big e commerce marketplace business. You know, this is the first year we took Complex to eight or complex goneto Asia in
Hong Kong. That was super successful. So we want to continue to bring complex gon too other markets. You know, we really just want to build a super strong, dynamic business that is not sort of dependent on one source of revenue, that can flourish for the next you know, fifty or seventy five years. You know, I don't want it to sort of have the bumps and stumbles that
it's had over the last five years. I think it's it's all about making you know, a super healthy, profitable, current and sort of future looking business.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the expansion of complex con and especially going to Asia. What was experienced like because well you hear about obviously culture being exported, and sometimes it feels like, you know, they appreciate it more because it's not specifically there with the expectations the same in terms of successful the event when when you took it international.
You know, consumer, we didn't expect the same from like our consumer turnout perspective, but it was pretty good. I think it was thirty or thirty five thousand people bought tickets and intended over the two days, which which is pretty good. It was a bit of a lower investment than we would make in the US. It was our It was kind of very much a pilot, but we beat our expectations both in terms of attendance and the revenues it produced. So we're steam ahead on doing it again.
We've got a great partner in China and she wants to bring it to other markets like Singapore. It's pretty interesting. It's like she did it in Hong Kong, but like the majority of the people came from mainland China because of the access right, like Complex Com was giving them access sort of like in real life with the artists
and the creators, like sort of that community. But then to the products where you know, people in Japan have access to that stuff so easily, right, So it's kind of so it's it's kind of you're you're you're finding this need case for it, whether it be in Hong Kong or Singapore and popping up in those places, and you know, we're I would say similar, like we're looking to do one in Dubai. We want to do Paris
or maybe London. So I think it you know, there will be a time where there will be you know, complex con is almost this like traveling circus model, and it's popping up in these different places and doing really unique experiences and merch drops and live content and all of that coming together.
What's what's your thoughts on the creator economy. A lot of people are saying that it's like a recession for creators and a lot you have a few people at the top that's doing well and the vast majority of people that's making viral content never making any money. Yeah, so is it sustainable? Like where do we go from here as far as what has been coined as the creator economy?
Yeah?
Uh. I think you know, a lot of people flooded the zone, right, so there's a there's a dearth of creators out there. I think, you know, the people that are doing super well there they are they've found a niche in a positive way, and they're super serving that consumer and they're adding value. I think those people, you know, long term, will will flourish. They just have to figure
out how to monetize. I don't think the platforms, at least in the current state, are going to be that path like that's just to get you the exposure so that brands like you know, Samsung or whoever want to work with you. And then I think, you know, they just need people that can help them get brand deals and like explain to Samsung or you know, Meta or ray Band whoever, it is, like, Hey, this is why
she or he is super important. This is their audience, and this is how you can activate them clearly at the top to your point, you know, like the mister beasts of the world Logan and Jake Paul, like, you know, they're you know, even Shannon Sharp. I think he's you know, on you know, on well on his way to really dominate in this new sort of like content paradigm. Those people can branch out and do all other things, you know, launch CpG brands, launch candy bar brands, become professional fighters,
like they really figured it out. The middle, I think is the hardest part, right, Like it's like you're not niche enough and specific enough to be seen as like really corer an expert to whatever that community is. And I think there's a lot of people in that segment of like you know, the boyfriend girlfriend videos. It's like like I don't know who wants to sponsor that I don't can't figure out, like what's the value proposition?
Like how do you monetize that? Do you feel like it's too much content? Because I was just thinking about like even you know, previously you had sports and you had news, and then you had like movies and stuff. Right now now you have sports, you have news, you have movies, but you have twenty four hour content that's being produced on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. It's it's an unprecedented time in human history if you think.
About it, right, very democratic.
It's like a hurricane of content daily. Right, is this oversaturating the media market to where it's devaluing real, actual valuable content doesn't even mean thing anymore?
You could make that argument. I wouldn't make that argument because I think when you make really high quality content, it breaks through. Like we were talking about Speedy interviewing Gorilla last week. It broke through right like he designed that episode brilliantly creatively to have those moments where people that know were like they flirting? Was he like embarrassed? Was he cracking up? Could he not understand her?
Like?
He designed that whole thing to be a thing, right, And it broke through, and like people that do that I think will be successful. Is there a barrage of like just nonsense and your friends posting eighteen hundred stories that you don't need to look at? Sure, but the high quality content I think will break through. I really like all these platforms I think are for the betterment, right, and it's giving more people at all more I think.
So it's giving people more access. I mean, like, I mean, there's obviously there's obviously not nice people outs there.
Let's just be honest, right, the vast majority of content, it's like the vast majority of music, the vast majority of music is bad and it's it's detrimental. And that's why specifically hip hop music is going down, right because previously, like the Golden era, you had to really be talented in order to be heard. Now anybody can be heard. Now with that breaking up the barrier, you lose any level of nostalgic moments. Quality of music is going down, and it's hurt the entire genre.
Yeah, I can see the point you're making. I think the point I'm making is, like you have in content, you have these seismic consumer changes happening where like you know, the average age of like news programming on linear television is in its seventies.
Right.
That means there's someone like one hundred and four watching it if the average is.
Seventy, right, so I watch it to average seventy.
Average is seventy MSNBC is seventy years old, right, That means there's no one eighteen watching it? Literally no when not one person? Right, and all of these social tools, And I would agree some of it is not nice, and some of it is not good, and some of its low quality. But there are a lot of people that wouldn't get the opportunity to create content and break through. With there's such a reduction in friction that they can
have the opportunity to break through. And I do concur with your point that it is important that it is high quality, it's premium, it's scheduled, that it's done in a methodical way. I do think that's more valuable, it's
more trustworthy. I think brands matter. Like you know, I don't agree in this, Like you know, Jason Calacanis and Chamoth Polyopatia that like Cinnisen, journalism is like gonna be the thing, Like No, you guys are just all riding Elon's you know, like wave right like this not true, like citizen journalism. Yeah, maybe it's part of it. But like I want journalists I can trust, right, I want people with ethics.
Trust any journalists?
Can you trust anyone? But yeah, like I think nobody. I think honestly, there are journalists and the journalists I've worked with that they have boundaries, like you know, they they will quit at a principle, they will not do things out of principle. I think there are people that, like, there's certainly people that the other way, right, that they will trade you access to a famous musician to give them a favorable whatever, right, because they want that access.
But then there's journalists that are hyper critical, right, and and you know they won't bend those things. So I think, you know, I do think the critical journalists are super important. You know. I don't want to just see like you know, uh, flattery of people, like you know, the podcas has to I think it's called like founders or acquired one of them, and they bring business people on, but there's no critique. It's just like they're just lathering them with how great
they are. It's like, well, it's not journalism. That's just you know, just a hype piece. It's just a biopic in an audio format.
So and that theme, how do you stay youthful when it comes to content creation?
Right?
You have Speedy be at a certain point and Speedy's great, it's going to be a.
Demographic younger one. Yeah, right, So like that, even Speedy pushes us, he does.
I think he's amazing.
But Speedy is critical of us around like who's the next? Yeah, or hey, guys, how come you're crushing it on reels but TikTok's not doing as well. You got to you gotta go to get in there tinker with it. And then they'll be like, hey, you're killing in TikTok, but why are you killing in shorts? Like he's honest about that. And I would say all the people that are, you know, sort of on the content side, they tend to be of that you know, you know, mid to late twenties
cohort the are you aware of that? And they are pushing that agenda like they're you know, you know, sometimes it's you know, makes this maybe be a little squirmish, you know, but like they are pushing that, and I think it's right you have to be obsessed with the youth or you're gonna lose it.
Do they ever does it get to a point where it's you seeing telling it and they're like, wait, that's the person, that's the person.
Can we build around that person?
Sure? Like, are you guys familiar with them? She's new Gillian. She's a new on air anchor for us on Complex New. She's pretty new, like in the last couple of months, but you know, discovered her totally organically. She was a producer behind the camera. Cornell who used to be our head of video. He now works with Kendrick at a pg lang. He's like the president of pg lang and he hit us up, Hey, we're doing the pop out.
We're doing this music video. And Compton. She happened to be home in Compton, got her friend to hold the camera right then, never been on camera before? Does this content? It does like first day ten million views, second day twenty million views, whatever? Right, she did like a ton of content and we're like, oh, wow, you're a star, Like we need to we need to get you in front of the camera instead of back of the camera, and we need to, you know, help you. Hone and
sharpen your skills. But we're constantly you know, Aria and Know are constantly looking to find and develop new creators and on you know, on screen and talent and like you know, like you tell who's another one of our on screen talent? Like Cornell got him out of like flight club. He went into flight Club and the kid was like just pitching him hard on like whatever the shoes were, and he's like, huh do you want to
do like a screen test? And then like you know, he's been with us for the last you know, three four years.
Now, Well, there you have it. Appreciate the conversation.
Yeah, nice meeting you guys. Thanks for having me.
There's a plan.
It's a pleasure.
Can we end with some list? You love albums? You love sneakers? Well, Illmatic was your favorite album?
Yeah, that's my favorite album? Well yeah that in't like uh component Noriega's first album was probably Yeah, that's probably my favorite of all time.
I haven't got my hands on the back.
Back in college, I had like a you know, like a tape deck, you know, in the car and it got stuck and you know how like it plays so many times that water is down.
What's your favorite song on the album.
I don't know. There's so many, but I always I always remember, you know, left rack is Iraq. That's like my favorite piece of it. I don't know that that album was like, so.
What's your favorite?
I think I got five mics and the source.
They revised it and went back and get it.
That was very that's a big debate.
My favorite song is Closer, but with which version? The original version? Serious? For sure, I don't care for the second version.
That's the best one.
No, it wasn't stick is my favorite one post and then l A l A Is a good one too, that's a really good one. Extended version.
Yeah, that's I think people will say the remix of the L A l A is one album. Yeah, but they switched to beat on some of the albums.
Well, only one album.
No, I'll play it, I'll play I'll play it for you. I'll play.
Yeah, they did it. A second version of.
Yah blood money t O n y I was a commercial song. I'm saying blood money for that was.
A good song.
The whole album.
It was a rare album that every song was like listenable, A good song.
Like when I work out, it has good replay value.
It's interesting though it does sound like at this point it doesn't sound modern, like yeah, but like I feel, for like a long time I listened to and I would never think like, oh that sounds like it's from a different era. But now I listen to him, like, oh wow, that that's I mean, what is that five years ago?
And I told him I was the Molly ma remix. The original has the West Coast beat, and then Molly mal did a remix.
On the album. Yeah, there's only there's only one.
The Molly remix, but there was originally just the L A L A just and debate, no debate that there's two versions. I don't remember, but i'll play I'll play it, okay.
I just remember the cassette getting down to like that sounded like it was underwater.
You know, like I let my take route to my tip pop.
You know, or just you know, my little Honda c r V. I couldn't, you know, afford to get a new whatever it was.
Pioneer, yeah, and then Prodigy. Little known fact about that album. He was supposed to he was supposed to be on L A l A as a verse he's on as a hook. But he gave his verse to nas for the it was written album.
Uh, I'm taking the song.
I feel like you guys could do another podcast.
It I feel like that the expectation is like, of course they can do that. Like it's like we could do one on sports. Of course they can do that. What we do nobody can do.
Yeah, but look, you've built the brand, why not create sort of you know, you have fans on the left and the right of the brand, create products for them. It's you know, like I would imagine there's a very specific brand and advertising group that wants to work with you guys, right, like around financial literacy, et cetera. Sports is everybody else, mus music is everybody else. I mean the two bigges passion points in the world are music
and sports. Right, So like, just you know, if you guys love money.
My friends over accomplix.
That's an idea, you know for sure.
But yeah, thanks for having me guys, just fun. We appreciate you rating on all your success.
Appreciateank you appreciate it.
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