The Ledger, every show

“To be clear, we've had people from China, CCTV, tell us to go to Xinjiang and talk about the culture and the food.”

“But we also had people from the State Department tell us, hey, why don't you make videos about China and how bad it is?”

“There's no such thing as cancel. You cannot be canceled on the internet. It isn't, the algorithm has no emotions. You think the algorithm is like right wing or left wing? It doesn't care. You create content, it's interesting enough, it shows it to people. So y…”

“In the Middle East, more politicians died From making peace than from making war. I'm gonna say that again. More politicians died from making peace than from making war.”

“One, ditch your existing friends, because you're about to enter a whole new industry, and two, surround yourself with new types of friends that are from the creative industry. The ones that don't shame you for screaming in front of a video.”

“Advertising-based content creation is a flawed model, and I would dare say it's a fraudulent model. This is the model that has been working, but it will not work in the future.”

“No, there isn't enough advertising, and advertising-based content creation is a flawed model, and I would dare say it's a fraudulent model. This is the model that has been working, but it will not work in the future.”

“At some point you will not get more famous. At some point you will saturate every single person in India that could potentially like you. Then you'll have this amazing and sad decline, and then the platforms want to show a different face, a different podcast, …”

“The best interest of YouTube is to have a new Mr. Beast every five years.”

“I made a video calling for peace a week ago, and I got a hundred death threats.”

“I lost a million dollars from making that video from a brand deal,”

“In the next two months, it will be just as good. It'll be so damn cheap.”

“On Instagram reels, the title doesn't matter. Thumbnail doesn't matter. In fact, no one should be stressing over this at the beginning. Just stress over the 1:03 seconds of the video. The first sentence that you say in the video. So on TikTok, thumbnails don't…”

“Do not start your career by making long YouTube videos. It will ruin your dream. There's no discoverability engine. In this, like, just like, this is only when you're big enough. For now, focus on TikTok, Instagram.”

“You cannot build a company reliant on your face, because creators come and go every five years. Every five years, somebody's hot, somebody's not. So my face is temporary. I must migrate from my face to a company.”

“You cannot build a business on top of social media. Impossible. And so, so this idea that Facebook will be my livelihood, and I can build an empire for the next 30 years, thanks to Facebook's algorithm, is, is a dream that will never materialize.”

“To be clear, we've had people from China, CCTV, tell us to go to Xinjiang and talk about the culture and the food... For me, that was a step too far, so I said no.”

“In the future, there is a room for a 195 more Hollywoods to be created. The days in which the whole world is watching Will Smith on TV and Tom Cruise for the 55th movie are done.”

“So, and I, we've never worked with Israeli government to be clear, but one thing I've realized is that this whole what's taboo and what's not is very relative.”

“My compass is very different from an American perspective compass. And that's what many Americans need to realize is that the world does not center around America and American interests.”

“But that doesn't exist in Singapore, in the UAE. They're so intertwined. Like you, I have a business in Singapore. We all love Singapore, right? But the government knows everything about every business and works with every business, right? And so like, yes, yo…”

“We are at one percent of the way there with how many content creators we need, similar to how many software engineers we need. We are at one percent of the way there because monetizing videos has been very, very new. So we're just at the beginning.”

“In the future, there is a room for a 195 more Hollywoods to be created. The days in which the whole world is watching Will Smith on TV and Tom Cruise for the 55th movie are done.”

“I'm a runner. I start a community for a hundred people. I create content for a hundred people, and each one of them gives me 10 bucks. I'm already making a thousand bucks a month, so you can create new jobs, and that's where the future is heading, in my opinio…”

“I found out that the American way of building companies is very different than the Asian way of building companies. The American way of building companies tells you, build one product, make that product really big, go on IPO, and just like continue working on …”

“There's no such thing as influencing. No one here has done any influence. Influencers are the fathers, the doctors, the mothers, the teachers, they influence children. We've done creating of content. We created content, and it has impacted people. But influenc…”

“There's even classism between platforms. If we are a TikToker, a Facebooker, a YouTuber, or an Instagrammer, it's like YouTuber is like class one citizen, then Instagrammer, then TikToker, then Facebooker.”

“We're going to have a creator president very soon. We almost did with Trump, but yeah, like a YouTuber president is going to happen.”

“Most creators are actually introverted, that I realize, which is shocking. They only like talking to a camera. They don't like talking to humans.”

“As a creator, if you get cancelled or pushed back, you have cracked it. You are finally relevant enough to hate.”

“So unfortunately, in social media, every year there's roughly like six to seven opportunities To go guaranteed viral. Guaranteed. Any video you make about a topic, it will go viral. Unfortunately, a lot of people utilize that just to get attention.”

“So if I get a thousand view, a thousand dollars from American audience, I get a hundred dollars from Indian audience.”

“The only and the best way to get distribution today is to make YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels that are 59 seconds exactly, which is the one minute guy. And I think short content gets you reach, and after you get the reach, you should go deep b…”

“You should read the quarterly calls of Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, and from listening to the CEOs of the social medias, you can guess where the tides are going to go, because these guys control the tides.”

“Like if I was starting a seven year career now, I would probably want to start as like, AI creator or a Metaverse creator, because in six years, you are going to be at the right place at the right time.”

“When you begin, it's only quantity game.”

“It's much more ruthless for women than men.”

“So all in all in all, I think this month, so I have two companies. The combined revenue of that is roughly now 900,000 dollars to a million dollars a month.”

“80% of my revenue now comes from these 400,000 emails.”

“My second belief was if I can get the attention of a million people, It is very easy to make a million dollars. I just need the attention of a million people. Views as a currency is more powerful than dollars.”

“We've never worked with Israeli government, to be clear”

“Yes, you can do that separation in America, but you really can't do that separation in many countries around the world.”

“We are at one percent of the way there with how many content creators we need, similar to how many software engineers we need. We are at one percent of the way there because monetizing videos has been very, very new.”

“The American way of building companies tells you, build one product, make that product really big, go on IPO, and just like continue working on that product for the next 1020 years. Like Slack. Slack is a one product company until it got acquired. Perfect. Rig…”

“So last year's revenue for all of Nas company is eleven million dollars. Seven million dollars was for the production, the Nas Daily. Then the four million the majority of it comes from Nas Academy.”

“My ambition is to build similar to Virgin, but I'm gonna build products that bring people together in technology, media, travel, So the way I envision the next 10 years is NAS Daily, NAS Hotel, NAS I.O., NAS Summits, you know, NAS Foods, NAS Venture, NAS whate…”

“I'll tell you what, they're not going to invite Tanmay for this. Too risky.”

“Especially podcasts. It's impossible after one hour podcast. This is who you really are. That's why presidents really don't go on podcasts more than one hour or two hours. It becomes, you know, the third hour is like, that's where you make the mistakes.”