Samir Chaudry's Recent LinkedIn Posts

It's never been easier to say something. Audio, video, text. It's only getting exponentially easier. There's been a lot of advice given on how to say something, and a lot of focus on the performance of a thing you said.. but as we enter the abundance era, the focus needs to be a lot more on "what" you want to say. And that has to be honest. And if you don't have anything to say, that's ok, take some time, figure out what you want to say...what you need to share with the world. Everything will get created. Every strategic idea you have is currently in production by someone else. So pause, think about what you honestly have to say, and to share with the world. Have a POV. The last slide of my presentation at 1 Billion Followers Summit

10 Years into Colin & Samir this year, thanks Rolling Stone and CT Jones for spending time with us . Grateful for the story, and the journey. Thank you to everyone who's been following along 🙏🏾 Full article in the comments

"you have enough ideas to take down the company" Damn. That's good. I've always felt like i'm in the business of ideas, but to be in the business of ideas means to release the ideas responsibly and to understand timing. Ideas aren't a bottleneck, bandwidth is. This is especially true in a creator business where literally as the creators... we are the bottleneck.

Every time a new technology comes along, we often see posts and headlines declaring the old one dead. But as Zuck said in our interview: “new platforms don’t make the old ones disappear.” When we got phones, we didn’t stop using computers. The phone just became primary. Most likely the car you drove today has a radio in it, but you probably connected your phone to listen to Spotify. When short-form video came, long-form didn’t die, it just found a new role. So i think we end up talking a lot about Ai and exploring what it's replacing, but I think it's a good practice to think about it as an "and" not an "or" There are some things that are just purely timeless - good storytelling, in person connection, comedy etc.. I think the definition of what the primary form of media is for everyone will be unique and subjective.

The fragmentation of fame has redefined what it means to “make it.” According to YouTube, 47% of Gen Z say they’re fans of something that no one they know personally is a fan of (Thanks to Kevin Allocca and team for that stat) That means culture isn’t being broadcast from the top down anymore... it’s being built from the bottom up. Niches are the new networks. The creators who win aren’t chasing mass appeal - they’re serving specific communities with depth, consistency, and identity. You don’t need to be famous to everyone. You just need to be important to someone.

For the first time in a long time, Colin and I are experimenting again. And it's pretty uncomfortable. We’re playing with new formats, shooting videos that may never see the light of day, spending entire weeks making things just so we can look at them and decide if we like where they’re heading. It’s exciting. But it’s also… disorienting. One day we’re excited up thinking, “This might be it, this is the next chapter of Colin and Samir" And the next day we’re asking ourselves, “Is this even good? Are we wasting our time? Should we just stop?” Turns out there’s a name for this feeling. James Clear calls it The Valley of Disappointment. It’s the stretch of time where your expectations of progress grow faster than your actual progress. You kind of know you’re improving… but there aren't really any positive results... or results at all so that gap creates doubt. I've been in the valley before, a few times. It's is long, undefined, and uncomfortable. It’s where I see a lot of creators quit.. and I get it. It's hard. But when I look back every meaningful creative leap we’ve ever made has come when we've pushed through the valley. A lot of our experimentation is going to take place on Instagram and Spotify by the way, those platforms feel much lighter weight and lower stakes to experiment on than YouTube. And because we're experimenting, i'm writing more, hence why i've been posting more here. So if you've made it down here to the bottom of this post... thanks, appreciate you.

I think we’re heading into an abundance crisis in the creator economy. Demand has never been higher. Blue-chip brands are finally here. Audiences are spending more time than ever on platforms. But supply has exploded. And not just the supply of creators, the supply of good creators and good content. And it’s only going to explode from here. so when both supply and demand are high, the scarce resource stops being attention. It becomes curation. Who should I care about? Who is actually influential? Who is doing something different? Who should my brand invest in? Because in a world where everyone is big, just being big isn’t that special. Creators will start investing in marketing to tell their story, they will need to communicate what they stand for beyond their metrics. Viewership and reach won’t be the differentiators of the abundance era, narrative and brand will be.

some thoughts on making good creative work that lasts.

“Creators are the startups of Hollywood.” – Neal Mohan So what does that actually mean? We’ve sat down with hundreds of creators on The Colin and Samir Show, and I’ve started to write down a four principles that embody this idea. 𝟏. 𝗪𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗠𝗩𝗣𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘀 — 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁. Startups test minimum viable products to find product-market fit. Creators do the same — we test for content-market fit. Adam Faze built a show called Bodega Run. It got 40 million views on the first episode, then started to taper. Four weeks later, he canceled it. He went from concepting, launching, finding an audience, and shutting it down faster than it takes most Hollywood meetings to get set — and it cost him just $3,500. Not because it failed, but because it taught him what didn’t scale. Creators launch, learn, and move on faster than traditional studios ever could. Making a show today requires an idea, a phone, and an internet connection. That’s basically it. 𝟐. 𝗪𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗳𝗹𝗮𝘄. Steven Bartlett told us he has an actual “failure team.” Their entire job is to experiment, fail fast, and extract insights. That mindset is the opposite of how big studios operate. In Hollywood, failure ends projects, because it's too expensive and too high risk, so it's avoided. For creators, failure informs the next project. The faster we get there, the better. And because of how long we've all been on the internet, embarrassment is just part of the deal. So trying and failing doesn't feel as risky or scary. 𝟑. 𝗪𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺. In traditional media, you make a show, release a season, and hope people like it. Creators do the opposite — we co-create with our audience in real time. KSI’s Reddit series is a perfect example. His fans post feedback, memes, and stories — and he reacts to them in the next video. The audience isn’t just watching; they’re shaping the content itself. That collaboration builds something more powerful than viewership — it builds community, and a sense of ownership over the content. 𝟒. 𝗪𝗲’𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗵 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮-𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝘂𝘁-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻. Every creator we’ve interviewed knows their numbers — retention, click-through rate, average view duration. We study audience behavior the same way a startup studies user data. But data alone doesn’t make great content. The best creators pair what the numbers say with what their instincts feel. We’re authentic members of the internet and the platforms we create on — which gives us the instincts to understand what makes something worth watching. That combination of intuition and insight is what drives innovation in this space. Creators trust their gut to take creative risks, then use data to see if those risks paid off. If you’re creating media today, these four principles are absolutely necessary to compete.

This year we put a big emphasis on producing Memorable Minutes. Not views, but the minutes audiences chose to spend with you: not scrolled into, not autoplayed… chosen, and remembered. Those are the minutes that matter. This year we published more content on Spotify than on YouTube, and the way audiences showed up for the show honestly surprised us. Grateful for everyone who chose to spend their minutes with us.

AI’s impact on video, audio, and writing is obvious. But one area that doesn’t get talked about enough is its impact on Collaboration. I’ve worked with creative people for the past 15 years, and one of the hardest skills to learn is how to actually collaborate effectively. How to give notes. How to ask for revisions. How to disagree without killing the energy in the studio. Now, when I use AI for a task, it’s so easy. I can ask for 100 variations of something and it just does it. No pushback. No emotion. Just output. If I asked one of our editors for 10 variations of creative work today, they’d probably roll their eyes...and that makes sense, that would be too much and probably doesn't make sense. I've been in that position as an editor and as a creative - it's annoying, especially when you don't agree. Creative people should have a point of view. That’s what makes the work better. But I worry that we’re going to lose the ability to communicate and collaborate. Mostly because it'll be too overwhelming to have the conversation. That as AI becomes the most obedient collaborator we’ve ever had, human collaboration will start to feel... inefficient. Messy. Too emotional. And I think friction is required to make good work. Anyway, just a thought i've been having...let me know what you think.

Ok so this is a clip of me talking about how the internet & YouTube has shifted towards perspective over the past few years. But.. there's something more interesting in this clip The last few seconds are John Coogan delivering a very short Figma ad read, and the end card says the clip is brought to you by Figma. The TBPN boys have innovated in a lot of ways, but the way I think we should all study is how they've approached their ad products. Super interesting... The show features the presented sponsor static on screen the whole time (Ramp), and has a Chryron that shows all the sponsors rotating. They do 20 short ad reads per episode with each sponsor, and then each clip rotates between all sponsors. Recorded an episode with them that'll hit the feed soon, but truly such a fascinating approach to sponsorship. It's more like an F1 team than a news show.

OpenAi just bought the Rolex of the Creator Economy. Wrote about my time with TBPN back in February. John Coogan and Jordi Hays are some of the best brand builders i've ever seen in media. They have been laser focused on the brand, the audience and the show. Of course TBPN is a show, but these guys are a major asset to OpenAi's marketing and comms team. The job is to make the tech cool, and they proved they know how to create cool and how to create a Luxury feel. That's worth a lot.... at $30M in ad revenue in 2026... hard to imagine the price wasn't in the 9 figures.

The creator economy is projected to hit $43.9B this year. But a recent survey showed nearly half of creators make under $10K/year. Most make less than $50K. Did some writing on the creator economy wealth gap and where I think the money is headed.

Started The Colin and Samir Show in 2017 when we were probably at our most confused and lost. Eight years later, we just cracked the Top 20 Podcasts for the first time. You never know what can happen when you Press Publish.

I've said we're now in the abundance era of the creator economy. and a byproduct of abundance is market re-organization. As we enter the abundance era of content, a luxury tier is emerging. One defined by craft, intentionality, and identity. Reading, watching and listening to these shows signals taste in the same way wearing a Rolex does. We wanted to understand how this tier actually gets built. So we sat down with John Coogan and Jordi Hays of TBPN to understand how they created a breakout show, their unconventional approach to advertising, and why they’ve chosen to embrace “anti-scale.” Thanks Dylan Abruscato and team for hosting us at the Ultradome

Elections are a glimpse into the media landscape. If last November was The Podcast Election, this November was The Instagram Election. I tallied up viewership from Instagram show appearances for both Mamdani and Cuomo starting October 25th, when early voting opened: Zohran Mamdani: 177.4M views Andrew Cuomo: 6.7M views elections reveal to us where attention really lives. What's amazing is that in a short year the most popular talk shows / video podcasts have fully shifted to instagram and more specifically - to NYC related instagram shows. Instagram is "Conversational media" - each piece of content is meant to shared in the DM's, the comment section is built for discourse (civil or not) and the length currently fits our attention spans. If I was building a podcast / talk show starting today, i'd build it for instagram first. #CreatorEconomy #Election

Reid Hoffman told us that we were default dead. And I think it’s one of the best articulations of what it means to be an entrepreneur or a creator. When I was younger, I assumed that once we “made it,” we’d reach a place where things finally got easier. A place where the channel runs itself. Where momentum becomes protection. But it’s just not true, especially when your entire company is two guys with their names on the door... (Colin & Samir) So basically what Reid was saying is that an idea is dying unless you are pumping air into it constantly. Every morning, you have to assume your idea is default dead. And your job, before the day ends, is to breathe life back into it. It’s not easy. And it’s often exhausting. But it’s the most accurate framework I’ve heard for being a creator or a founder. If you’re lucky, you eventually build a system around the idea, a team of people who believe in it enough to spend their days keeping it alive with you. In the episode Reid said: “Every day you’re tending towards a death and trying to change the probability curve to being alive.” It will sound grim to some, but I think it's probably exciting and validating to others. I definitely felt seen when I heard it.

👋🏾 We’re hiring a Story Producer at Colin & Samir This is honestly what most of my days look like: – Exploring media stories I find interesting – Asking why it matters – Zooming out to understand the bigger narrative – Then translating those ideas across different formats And Colin and I are looking for someone to Join the team to help us build stories, context, and ideas across YouTube, podcasts, newsletters, and whatever comes next. If you’re curious about the future of media, and interested in working directly with creators, Apply here (or send to someone who should): https://lnkd.in/gEz6BswY