YouSaid · the spoken record

Sam Reich

lines on the record: 102
first: 2025-09-22
most recent: 2025-09-22
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

“You are also hugely responsible for and inspiring in the creation of weird stuff for the internet. You're also inspiring insofar as you just like our so prolific in terms of the amount that you do.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wish that I could plant a forest full of weird trees on the internet. I wish that the internet was still a place where just like there was really fun mysterious, hopeful stuff that existed, a URL away. I would hope that dropback can just be one of those things.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100%. You and I have connected a lot on the topic of Home Star Runner over the years. Home Star Runner may be like hugely responsible for my career taking the direction it has. It was incredibly influential on me. And something I loved about it was it felt like a walled garden of weird that existed at a URL. Like I could. And I think about how sometimes like.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interesting Is there on the list of reasons that you like this or want to do this? We talked about those before, but let's end here with this. Is on that list just that people aren't doing things weird enough and you want to do things weird? You want to like show that like...”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I honestly like, you know, nepotism, I'm sure, served me even ways that I'm not fully conscious of and like all sorts of ways. But one thing that is really useful is that my dad modeled fame for me. So I do have someone like very close to me out there in the world who's also a public person who by virtue of his job deals with controversy at least three times a year, which does, it probably thickens my skin a little bit.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Becoming quickly used to the fact that you can't please everybody and that you will have to make decisions that are unpopular sometimes. And that's okay. I actually, you know, some people particularly entertainers need to be liked by everybody. And I think some people worry about me in that way because they think that my affable nature means that I would really dislike being unpopular. And I am actually like totally okay if some people don't like me.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Portend as if dropout or I have it all figured out that we are an exceptionally moral company or that we are an exceptionally idealistic company because I think that that tension between like running a company and being good to people inherently exists so so we are What I've claimed to be the case, and I really do still think is the case, is like I consider myself a highly creative person. I'm trying to make content that says like innovative and interesting and funny as possible. And I hope people hold us to that standard. And otherwise, I'm trying to like set maybe some new standards for decency. But I would underline that word. I am also, as you have coached me through a lot over the months and years, Hank.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes and no. I mean, I think that. When I say work in progress, I guess that applies not only to this meta question, but also sort of like the way I look at Dropad in general, which is like perfect isn't impossible to achieve standard. And I try, at least when I'm out in the world, to really as much as possible convey that I am like a comedy person who inherited this thing, who is trying to do things novely and experimentally, but that I don't even know as much about this kind of stuff as like Adam Conover does as like part of my peers do. So when I say work in progress, I really mean that like we are trying things and we will make mistakes. And what I'm specifically not doing on social media or anywhere else for that matter and in conversations like this on panels is to.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that the dropout audience in part because of, I mean, there's like a demographic thing here, but there's also, you know, they're responding to and signing up in part because of a halo here that you're helping to create by doing things well. Their expectations are going to be high. You got some high expectation crowd. And I've seen some examples where, you know, they feel as if you're not maybe living up to your values.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Carl Icon. You're not ruthless businessman. You're like trying to do this the right way. And one of the things my brother and I called us the perfect person problem that if you tell people you're trying to do Do things well, and you're trying to do things right, then people expect you to do it perfect. And there's no such thing as perfect, and there's always things that you're balancing. And how do you imagine and manage your own public perception where you want people to know that you really are trying to do things better, but you also are not trying, you also need to convey to people that you will not be perfect.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then you're also on screen talent. But I think there's another thing that and creative and writing and all this. But there's another thing that you are that... I think that this is not that unusual. There's always a public facing role to a CEO. Beyond that, you really like not only do you have a public facing role as the CEO and on-screen talent and kind of founder, depending on how you want to count that, that you kind of embody what dropout is trying to be and a strength and I think a potential problem is that you're trying to be a good guy while you do it. Like you're not.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it's such a big operation. And lately, Game Changer makes some noise have sort of become its own department as well”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have, for instance, one very talented person whose job it is simply to, there's not all they do, but it's a big part of what they do to watch every episode to make sure that there are no glaring issues with it before it posts to the website, to the platform. I think that's about it with like one or two straggling design with one or two straggling departments that features one person or two people.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and paid and email and everything else that falls into the world of marketing. There is tech, which is pretty small but does exist. There is production. There is programming as it is independent from production, which are the folks who not only handle our content as it's related to metadata, but also are responsible for maintaining our programming schedule and putting stuff up into the platform. Also QC is a part of that department, meaning quality control.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we decided pretty recently, like within the last year, is that I should have almost no direct reports, like basically just the C-suite. And then everyone else should follow, should fall under someone else. That's pretty new”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No. We tried. People don't realize this. The first rendition of Dropat was built on Vimeo OTT's API, but it was our own product. And we employed something like eight sophisticated engineers at IAC to build our own product around it. And it was brutal, which is to say it's just a very hard to do very well. And these were great engineers.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Indie streamers. And I think it behooves us to have that group be larger because it means better resources for our business as well. You know, we depend on third-party technology in order to power dropout. And, you know, if there aren't enough streamers to use Vimeo OTT or, you know,”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, sure, sure. I mean, I do think that as is the case on the internet when you're browsing TikTok and you learn about someone with 9 million subscribers or followers who you've never heard of before, there are plenty of examples in our industry of businesses that are just running a little bit under the radar that are doing very, very well. I think Nebula, for instance, is one of those businesses. And, you know, in the last couple of years, maybe a little bit inspired by us, maybe not, depending on the specific example, but try guys have launched their answer to this. Critical role have launched their answer to this. But my hope is that there are more people that follow in our footsteps because I think it's only better for dropout if there are more examples that people can point to to say, I subscribe to this small collection of...”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I haven't expected it. Like when you when Dropout first hit for me, I was like, oh, two years from now, everybody's going to have one of these things. And that has not really happened. And people have tried to launch some that have been less successful.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It feels symptomatic of this world of content that we're living in. And so it's a fair question like, well, why not more? And that's a good question. I think”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, okay. Y And it, yeah, it just feels like it would head in that direction and that the different segments would each get their own. Little world, which will, of course, continue to alienate us from each other because no one's watching the same things.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that simplifies this process. And I think that what Vimeo is betting on there is that this niche will occur. But I think when you look at the people who use that, it's a lot of individual creators or people who have a workout, like a thing, you know, they're like lifestyle influence type things. I think that maybe the Rupal streams.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so Vimeo basically lets you build a streaming platform. And it have a version of it that's, it all integrates with itself and it can be in the app stores and it can be on Roku and all the PS5 or wherever, you know, for sure.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, everything keeps fracturing, right? Like, so like, you know, it. More and more nicheation of everything. And why wouldn't this happen to streaming platforms? And we haven't even talked about the fact that Vimeo enables this with a pretty low lift. So you use.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I mean, like, it's very weird to be for most streaming platforms that have been launched by big companies to have a million subscribers would be a tremendous failure. And showing that that, it seems like a little bit, in terms of like macro media ecosystem thing, it seems like this is a totally inevitable thing and that it should have happened more already.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's more that's not me. I mean, I do feel like I'm on a little bit of an island where I get to be sort of like, you know, the mad trickster king of my domain.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How to make hard choices. A lot of the important decisions are pretty, it's pretty clear what direction to go. And then with the difficult ones, you sort of have to decide what you're voting for, like what you're optimizing for. And so if you have your priorities in order, oftentimes the right decision will emerge, meaning, again, hopefully our business is like pretty simple. There are a lot of factors that we have to incorporate in those factors are something in between like the content itself, the experience of the audience, the welfare of the cast and crew, our financials, what's, you know, personally, creatively exciting to me. And if I have those... Roughly in they're not in that order. I don't exactly know what order they fall into off the top of my head, but if I have those in the right order, I can usually make the right decision.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I... There's a terrific TED talk on decision making which talks about how when you're faced with a difficult decision, it's usually because there's pros and cons that feel roughly equivalent to each other. And so it kind of doesn't matter. So, like, just pick one.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're going. But I just love, you know, weird and unusual stuff. And when I think about like what I want to leave behind in the world, it's more of it.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a really unique ecosystem to be a part of, and I think it means that we can create some uniquely cool stuff. And I love that. My favorite part. I'm an art, I'm an arts knob at the end of the day. I mean, I've been to the Edinburgh fringe now, like three years in a row. And this year.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So very Yeah. Yeah Interesting, I don't feel, I feel a little bit of a sense of obligation. I wouldn't say that's my primary driver. I think that I feel very aware and very grateful for the ability to create things under a unique set of circumstances where I don't have I feel uniquely under the TWA. Uniquely lower than TW Uh huh. And I think that's a very”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could really easily do this round. Oh, please give me. Oh, I mean, I feel a strong sense of obligation to the things that I have made and the people who I work with. I feel a strong sense of obligation to the audience. And I also very rewarded by making things sometimes. Like obviously there are some parts of my job that I do purely because of the obligation. There are some parts of my job that I do because I get paid to do it. And there are some parts of my job that I do. And this is like, you know, different amounts in every column and different activities. But sometimes I'm doing it because I just freaking love doing it. It's so fun.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, of course. There's operational funds. There's play money. We want to try new things. Yeah, try new things. So, all that money's going all sorts of different places, but there are no shareholders to satisfy, which means us being a more and more and more profitable every year is not necessarily our first priority.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No one like when we say profit share, we're not even talking about the whole profit. Right? Some of that profit goes to me and I see.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They ascended Twa. They made that critical error. Going up from Troi And right there, number four, number five, number six, depending on the company, is the shareholders. And that means that there are people like basically by hoarding money. You are satisfying someone. Which We don't have, there's no one to satisfy.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is like royalties are harder, which is why we do profit share because it's like a much simpler for us from an admin standpoint. I think that other companies don't do this because it is not standard and because they can get away with not. The big one is probably this, which is that they have people that they need to satisfy a whole category of people they need to satisfy who we don't have because we brought the total company.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And also, why is it hard? I don't think it's hard. I don't think what we're doing is that hard to say nothing about our brilliant finance team who does it. But specifically the reason we're doing profit share and like not, I don't mean like it's legit.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are trying to position ourselves as everyone's favorite second job. Unless they don't have a first job, in which case, you know, they are very, you know, happy to be working with. We want them to be very happy to be working with us even so.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for sure. Keep your hair the same length, keep your nails the same length, you know I mean, that's tough. Exclusivity is really tough for folks who are grateful to be working with this business in this business at all and so have very little negotiating room. So our attitude about it is if we were not accommodating of people's other work, we would simply be forcing them to make a choice between us and the other work, whatever it is. So the fact that we don't ask for exclusivity of any kind means that Lou Wilson can work with us because otherwise he is full-time at Jimmy Kim Alive.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe it takes them like nine months to pick up another season of your show. For that nine months, you are not allowed to do other streaming things, which is a huge, you know.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know how much people know about exclusivity, but I think this stuff is so interesting where it's like if you are signing up to participate in a project, let's say Apple TV comes and wants for you to be in their show, you will sign a contract with Apple TV that's like you are committed to X number of episodes over a Y period of time. You're usually signing up for multiple seasons. But as a part of that contract, it's like you can't do other things, usually in that category, which is to say like you can't do other streamers shows, for instance, without Apple's permission. But then imagine for a moment that Apple takes a long time to pick up a second season of your show. And those times are built into your contract.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's also like, I mean, this is a big, this has been a weakness of a lot of YouTube companies. BuzzFeed is the best example where you have employees and then they get a really popular show and then they're being paid as an employee, but their show is making the company a bunch of money. And they're not being paid as talent. And so if Seinfeld gets popular, Jerry Seinfeld gets paid more. But if the try guys get popular, how do the try guys get to negotiate a three times higher salary this year? It's sort of not how business works. And so the tri-guys start to feel pretty uncomfortable being part of BuzzFeed and maybe want to go do their own thing. And this from the very beginning of YouTube, a big problem. And I feel like this model of just like listening to how Hollywood has worked in the past. And you're creating a lot of value.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely, and which is why, by the way, profit share and which is why, by the way, like so many of the things that we do, we bend over backwards to make working at Dropbout a positive experience for folks. I think that Hollywood is a system where people are used to this and expect this to a degree. There are all sorts of inherent sort of benefits and drawbacks to the full-time equation. Like we did have full-time talent for a long time. The benefit there is security for both of us, right? Like we know that we have people that we can turn to and they know that they have that amount of job security. And then the downsides are that we have to make use of those people and only those people because we have to derive that amount of value from them. So it means that the pool gets smaller. And then the downside for them is that they can.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On And those people do feel a lot like part of the team, especially because in terms of dropout kind of cast members, those people are mostly not employees. They are kind of the folk that people imagine when they imagine what dropout is. Like there's just sort of a bunch of recurring comedians who come in and are seen as dropouts.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are 40? On a full time basis, but that really doesn't account for so many people who are such major contributors to what we do. Right. Because there are so many contract players involved, the crew side, on the talent side.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, okay, the other reason are out there too, right? Like, if we just license anything under the sun, does it dilute the brand? We're not trying to be a utility. We're trying to be more of a brand play. But I would say that we are interested in potentially hosting content on the platform that we could power its social content. And so we are having some of those conversations because we think it'll be an interesting experiment. But we're being very, very, very choosy about it, obviously.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For sure, for sure. We have, we are. I think the reason why it's tricky is because we consider social marketing to be a big differentiator in terms of how we do things. And if we were to go license a mainstream show, there's no way that they would allow us to power their social channels.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anything, Sam. Yeah, I mean, we have not exactly formally canceled, but we have sort of paused production sidelined, put on the back burner shows. That are not didn't collect audience as well. The most popular shows on the platform are Dimension 20 and Game Changer. And then the second most popular shows on the platform are Some Combination of Smarty Pants, very important people and make some noise.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, no show that's currently on the platform doesn't have its own hardcore dedicated audience. You know, if a show isn't collecting audience.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say so, yeah. A bit of a self fulfilling prophecy there, where it's like the most popular shows, the most washed on the platform tend to have the biggest social channels, tend also to drive the most viewers, yeah.”
2025-09-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT