Jan 16, 2023 · 1h 24m · how-i-built-this
Complexly: Hank and John Green
Hank and John Green · 45m spoken Guy Raz · 28m spoken Hank Green (Song recording) · 8s spoken John Green · 3s spoken Fred Figglehorn (Lucas Cruikshank) · 2s spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Hank and John Green about their transition from early YouTube vloggers to founders of Complexly, a pioneering educational media company. The brothers discuss how their commitment to open-access learning, creator-first business models, and radical sincerity enabled them to build sustainable multimedia enterprises and philanthropic ventures.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 38.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.0 Guest teaching 1.5 Guest disagreement 0.4 Guy pushing back 0.2
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:12:43 Reframing youth influencer ambitions
John rejects Guy's alarmist framing about kids wanting to be YouTubers, noting that every generation had similar status ambitions like wanting to be rock stars or athletes.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 1:11:52 Guy challenges the ubiquity of influencer cultureGuy acknowledges he might sound cynical but firmly presses the guests on whether a culture where millions of kids aspire to be internet famous is socially sustainable.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:06:00 Hank on value creation vs. value captureHank counters Guy's suggestion of selling off their content library by explaining the economic principle of maximizing uncaptured public value over paywalled monetization.
Guy holds their own ▶ 25:28 Guy recalls early YouTube cultureGuy playfully challenges the guests by bringing up niche early YouTube culture references like 'Fred' from memory to illustrate the chaotic early days of the platform.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Promotional Message for The Great Creators Podcast | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Segment consists of standard promotional ads and the host's narrative introduction to the episode. | |
| John's High School Years and Social Growth | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | John gently corrects Guy's premise that his parents sent him to boarding school, explaining he requested to go himself, before detailing his high school social development. | |
| Hank's Childhood and Early Fascination with Science | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Hank and John recount early interests in science and creative writing, as well as John's sobering experience serving as a hospital chaplain. | |
| Finding Routine and Perspective at Booklist Magazine | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | John demystifies the romantic view of writing novels, candidly describing his inefficient process and how reviewing books gave him the confidence to start. | |
| Early Publishing Milestones and Modest Successes | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Guy provides publishing industry benchmarks to contextualize early sales figures for Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines. | |
| The Early YouTube Era and Digital Experimentation | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | Guy attempts to recall early YouTube creator 'Fred,' mistakenly claiming he had red hair, prompting playful banter from the brothers. | |
| The Birth and Rules of Vlogbrothers | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | John and Hank describe the daily video exchange format they developed in 2007 and how early communities like librarians found them. | |
| The Viral Harry Potter Song and Seeing YouTube's Future | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The brothers reflect on Hank's viral Harry Potter song and explain how they recognized early on that YouTube was a paradigm shift akin to the printing press. | |
| Mid-Show Break: From Passion Project to Enterprise | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Hank details how a near-deal with Scientific American fell apart during the 2008 financial crisis, nudging them to formalize their digital ventures. | |
| Choosing Sincerity and Rejecting Cynicism | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Guy questions how Gen X cynicism fit into their brand, and John articulates why they deliberately rejected snark in favor of vulnerable earnestness. | |
| The Release of Paper Towns and Direct-to-Consumer Reach | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy and John discuss the commercial breakthrough of Paper Towns, highlighting how their direct relationship with YouTube subscribers superseded traditional media PR. | |
| Bootstrapping DFTBA and Creator Merchandising | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Hank explains the foundation of DFTBA merchandising, focusing on creator-favorable economics and slow, bootstrapped growth without outside capital. | |
| Launching VidCon: The First Creator Convention | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Hank details the logistical and financial risks of founding VidCon in 2010, including personally guaranteeing hotel blocks and securing a last-minute Cisco sponsorship. | |
| Expanding Education: The Genesis of Crash Course | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | John and Hank describe partnering with YouTube to launch Crash Course, negotiating to retain full intellectual property rights under an advance against ad royalties. | |
| The Global Phenomenon of The Fault in Our Stars | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | John reflects on the extraordinary success of The Fault in Our Stars, detailing his personal connection with late fan Esther Earl. | |
| Mid-Show Break: Scaling Complexly and Content Ethics | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | When Guy suggests Complexly could build massive valuation by selling its archive like other media companies, Hank reframes their mission around creating open value rather than capturing it behind paywalls. | |
| CEO Leadership and Middle-Class Creator Economics | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | The brothers push back against focusing solely on top-tier viral earners, advocating for economic tools that sustain middle-class digital creators. | |
| Youth Aspirations and the Realities of Internet Fame | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Guy presses his concern that today's youth aspiration to be influencers is unsustainable, but John rejects the premise by comparing it to 1980s aspirations to be rock stars while focusing on the need for creator mental health support. | |
| Enterprise Revenue, Modest Salaries, and Radical Philanthropy | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy explores Complexly's business scale, and the brothers reveal John's modest $27,000 salary, their profit distribution to charity, and joke about recruiting Guy as CEO. | |
| Hard Work vs. Luck and Structural Privilege | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Answering Guy's standard question on skill versus luck, Hank and John emphatically credit structural privilege and luck for their business trajectory. | |
| Selecting Time-Capsule Videos for Future Civilizations | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Closing lighthearted segment where Guy and the brothers pick time-capsule YouTube videos for future civilizations. |
Statements from this episode (29)
John Green: Flawed books make storytelling mechanics easier to analyze
“The thing about books that aren't that good is you can see the strings of the puppets a little easier.”
John Green: My writing process requires deleting almost the entire draft
“I have a very inefficient process in the sense that I write a draft, and then I delete almost all of it, and that's the only way I know how to write a story.”
John Green's second novel sold just 125 copies in its first week
“Similarly, I think Catherine's sold a 125 copies the week it came out, so not great,”
Green: Early YouTube creators were driven by peer connection, not money
“YouTube was very much that way, where there, it was very experimental, and the thing that was driving people forward was impressing their peers, and connecting with people, and having a good time.”
Green Brothers: Neil Gaiman's Blog Mention Brought in Early Vlogbrothers Audience
“Neil Gaiman, the author, mentioned us on his blog a couple months into the project. That brought in a 50 or a hundred people.”
In 2007, YouTube's homepage was curated by human editors, not algorithms
“Back then, the front page of YouTube was curated by a human”
Online video is a cultural shift equivalent to the printing press
“This isn't like TV. This is like the printing press.”
Vlogbrothers produced 200 videos before reaching 200 YouTube subscribers
“I mean, we, we'd made 200 videos before we had our 200th YouTube subscriber.”
Hank Green: Vlogbrothers reached 70,000 to 80,000 subscribers by late 2008
“And then by late 2008, we were at 70 or 80,000. Which was, you know, one of the bigger channels on YouTube.”
Optimizing for views and revenue ultimately harms the health of your community
“Optimizing for views is And optimizing for revenue does not optimize for the health of one's community, necessarily.”
Earnestness is the most underrated quality in contemporary human experience
“Earnestness is the most underrated thing in contemporary experience, I think.”
All Green brothers' ventures have been bootstrapped and profitable from inception
“We've never taken on substantial investment for any of our things. Everything that we do has been profitable from the beginning. It's grown with its own, I guess they call it bootstrapped where you take the profit and use that to grow the company rather than t…”
Green: YouTube refused to sponsor the inaugural VidCon in 2010
“Yeah, I mean, we were on the phone with you two telling them what sponsorship number we thought made sense, and. And they were telling us, no, we will not sponsor this janky convention.”
Green: A $20K Cisco sponsorship made the first VidCon profitable
“I remember the actual difference between making money and not making money that first year was that I said on a Vlogbrothers video, if anybody knows anybody who would like to sponsor an online video convention, please email me. And the daughter of an executive…”
Green: The first VidCon generated around $10K in profit
“Yeah, I think it was like, 10,000 dollars of profit.”
YouTube gave Crash Course a $450,000 advance without taking IP ownership
“Yeah, I think they gave us 450,000 dollars. Yep, that is right... So it's sort of an advance against advertising royalty. So they recouped via advertising revenue, but we got to own the IP.”
John Green presold 150,000 books by promising to sign every single copy
“When it became an Amazon bestseller months before it came out, That was for two reasons. One was that I announced that I was going to sign the entire first printing of the book. So that was a 150,000 copies. And then the second reason was that I read the first…”
Green Brothers: Advertising Is Complexly's Main Revenue, Supported By Grants and Crowdfunding
“That's definitely the biggest piece of the pie. And then the rest is crowdfunding and grants. So organizations that are like, hey, you're making this and you're making it for free. Like, we'd like you to make an episode, like a series on this particular topic,…”
Green Brothers: Businesses Always Capture Only a Minority of the Value They Create
“What your actual business is, is creation of value. And that there's always a majority of that value that isn't being captured by you. It's being captured elsewhere.”
Complexly's catalog lacks acquisition value because it can never be paywalled
“So obviously I think that there's a lot of value that it creates, but I don't know that it's that valuable because you can't pay wallet. Right. Because that's outside of the promise that has been made. All of the content is free. So it's creating the value, bu…”
Hank Green: Vast majority of creators make under $15 per hour
“The vast majority of people who are working really hard to make interesting content that entertains people, or educates people, or captures people's attention, are making less than, you know, 15 dollars an hour or something.”
Hank Green: Tens of thousands of creators can earn middle-class incomes with better monetization
“And so our interest is really in those tens of thousands of creators who will be on that journey if only we have better monetization tools.”
Creator careers resemble professional athletics: short lifespans with no post-career support
“You know, it, it's almost like a career as a professional athlete. It lasts a couple or three years and then you're 30 years old and you've only ever Done one thing, and you, it's hard to figure out what to do next.”
A sock subscription is by far the Green brothers' most successful venture
“It's by far the most successful thing we've ever done. It's true.”
DFTBA is a $25 million company operating on very narrow margins
“So you can say that DFTBA is a, I don't know, twenty five million dollar company, but a lot of that money is going back. And it's very narrow margin business, as is complexly.”
John Green takes a $27,000 annual salary from his multi-million-dollar businesses
“I think I make 27,000 dollars a year. Yeah, John takes a very small salary.”