How do you build a streaming service from scratch' On this week's Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel speaks with Sam Reich, the CEO of Dropout, a comedy streaming platform that's found success eschewing the growth-at-all-costs model of the mega streamers. The two discuss the pre-YouTube days of online video and how Reich acquired Dropout, formerly known as the internet site CollegeHumor, for $0. They talk about how comedy has evolved online, how to build a cinematic universe of content, and whether Reich sees Dropout as a feeder for places like Saturday Night Live. Reich shares his philosophies on how to make things that people love and why he steers away from the venture-capital and big-media playbooks. We are living through an era of pretty remarkable media consolidation'the streaming wars started out scrappy, and they have landed in this place where we now have this constellation of increasingly expensive apps and media catalogs. It's a kind of an on-demand reconstruction of the...
learn more
