YouSaid · the spoken record

Gregg Spiridellis

lines on the record
128
first
2018-01-17
most recent
2018-01-17
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “I felt bad for my investor. We had sold this bill of goods. I was like, this is not going to work. And so I found in American greetings 10K, they had an $80 million a year business selling subscription e-cards. And that's where we said, okay, let's go do this and make these things not suck. And so that's also combine it with cool new technology. That's when we did personalization. So you could actually combine the content and the tools, put your face in it, and then share it on Facebook. And also you did.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Well, I had just raised six and a half million dollars on the premise of helping brands do this, and I said, oh my God, like I felt terrible. It was the holidays and I was just in a panic.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “Verizon to sponsor it. We were on the Tonight Show with John Landis. Verizon did this whole big thing. We made zero money. It took me like six months of my life. Yeah, went back to Nasty.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “When I was a teenager, so that was, you know, that was our shelter from the storm and the dot-com crash. So we did that and we did books. We had a top-selling Disney book where we sold a children's book called Are You Grumpy Santa. We did a book with LL CoolJ. And then we did. And then when YouTube was going to kill the licensing business for good, we raised money because we had this global brand, literally, one of the earliest brands. And I knew my business model was going to go poof and I needed some capital. So it took six and a half years. We raised our first round in 06. And we're going to do branded entertainment on YouTube. The idea was we go help brands make funny stuff on YouTube. We spent six months with John Landis. You know, John Landis and his brothers. All kinds of, I mean, yeah, trading places and classic. And we did a sketch comedy competition.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “But we did toys. I sold it. We had a popular cartoon called Nasty Santa. And when the dot-com crash happened, I went into Spencer Gest. You know Spencer Guist? Yes, of course. All those dirty boots.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Greeting cards, even the Blue Mountain Arts people. Yeah, so we, so again, talk about iteration after the game crashed. They sold out to excite a lot of money. They did, you know.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “That's an old Joe Mankowitz. So it all collapsed as predicted. And then we went through a bunch of things we did toys. It”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Yeah, we were out in Brooklyn at the time, and I flew out there on the summer of 2000 or 2001. And I remember I called my brother and I said, hey, we've got, I'm in this place. It's amazing. They're great snacks, the best looking people I've ever seen in my life. The fish tank's amazing. I have no idea what the fuck anybody is doing. Right, right. Millions to be made.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Yeah, well, that was a Yes, yes. So we were in Los Angeles and it was, I mean, the first wave was just insanity. It was, if you don't know if you remember like den.net and pop.com, which is Ron Howard's and Z.com.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “I'm only early in things that don't matter at all that don't generate 10 billion percent returns per year. That's what I'm early into.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Comedies, I mean, we knew that from the beginning. It's social. You're very early to everything. You've known all these things from the beginning. Yeah, I know. We've been. How early were you?”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “I think they came in 07 or late. Once YouTube proved that there was like a big audience frontline video and it was doable, I think Funny or Die came around. And comedy.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Which was back then it was licensing our stuff anywhere we could and kind of bridging into exclusive licensing deal so this was pre-YouTube so you could build a comedy brand and then you could do exclusive licensing deal so we had Yahoo as an exclusive licenser meaning they could distribute and and we would on our site with MSN yeah or they would pay us big advances and it was great and then all of a sudden came YouTube and it was like the uh”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “We thought they were childish back then. That was the whole joke, which I'll explain for you. Yeah, yeah. So it was nuts. It was amazing. And we kind of spun that into cobbling together business model around it.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “It still plays really well. When we go through and we show clips and we're talking about the company, it holds up really well. But it was a more innocent time for politics.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “In the first shot, we open on George Bush sitting at his desk. It was a parody. So to this land is your land by Woody Guthrie, and it was George Bush calling John Kerry a liberal wiener and John Kerry calling George Bush a right-wing nut job. Probably holds up. Does”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “Yeah, exactly. Well, that was part of the problem you had to be good at tech back then to actually ship content. But we, you know, we held it together. It was a really surreal experience. We were on a week from thinking we may have to give up the business. We're on the couch with Jay Leno getting emails from soldiers in Saddam Hussein's palaces telling us that the Pentagon had blocked jib jab because the soldiers were flooding the networks watching the cartoons.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “And then with that, it was overnight. It was just insanity. We did 80 million views back in 2004. There was no YouTube. We needed to string together like a global network of mirroring sites because we had a $400 a month shared server in Texas.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “It was Frog and the Blender. It was probably that one? Frog and Blender? Joe Cartoon? Okay. I was a little closer to Dancing Baby. Dancing Baby.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “Yeah, exactly. Yeah, with the chop jaw mouth, you know, which makes it look like anybody, any three-year-old could make it, but it was a really just an amazing style that was constrained by the limitations of the technology. And we launched this land. So it was five years. We launched this land. We're at the point where it's like, this internet's never going to be used for entertainment. We're about to give up, but we knew that election cycles were really big for comedy. So we're going to make one more shot at it. And we put this land online and it was just gangbusters from the moment we released it.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “You keep sending me pictures. Oh, that was later. That was later. So originally it was just about producing short form comedy and was iteration. It was people loved politics and contemporary issues. And then we figured out music worked really well and everything had to be short. And then we tapped into photo collage animation as a style that my brother did with politicians. And that resonated really well. Just fling their heads.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “Another spirit, Ellis. I saw an internet, a cartoon on the internet. My brother was really interested in making television shows. And I said, why are you, you know, banging out horseshoes? You've got the Model T over here. Take a look at this. Make some animation using Flash, vector animation. You could make animations with 300K and ship them around the world on a phone wire. And so he started playing with it and we started kind of riffing back and forth. And when I graduated, I thought, you know, this is going to be, this internet's going to be something. Someday it's going to be used for entertainment. And it took almost five years before we did this land. So people said this is jib-jab guys overnight success.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “Who was your first funders? So we went six years without funding. So my background was I was in investment banking. I went to Wharton did my MBA. My brother was in art school. And while I was doing my MBA.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “Yes, exactly. It was a GoPro, no, flip cam or something. Flip. Yes, flip. Yeah, I remember the interview was arranged and my VC was very nervous. I just got funded. They said, Kara's coming. Cara's coming. It's going to be really tough. And I said, get a red chair. How talking it be? And you walked in the door and you said, George Lucas says, you know, the internet is a wasteland creativity. Puppies on the highway. And you guys are basically worthless. How do you feel about that? Nice to meet you too, Tara.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Maybe 10 years ago, earlier. I remember the 90s. Maybe. What did you start your company? We started in 99. Yeah, like dial update. Right, y I did a crazy video. One of my crazy walked around with videos and bogs.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “I met you. Years ago, maybe 10 years ago. Earlier. Real early. In the 90s. Maybe yeah. Where did you start your company? We started in 99. Yeah. We were in dial up days. Right. Yeah. And then I think we met then. And the next time we met was in 2006. I did a video.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “As a guest, it's very bad. You don't get to sit in this shit. He's just saying that. He's in a career highlight. This is a career highlight.”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “running the country somewhat experienced politicians it was known for the creator of the educational brand storybots and lots of things Greg you've been around the block lots of things too yeah since 99 we're going to talk about humor and viral videos and where everything's going so by the way”

    2018-01-17 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gregg Spiridellis, CEO, JibJab · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT