In 2009, I went to NewTeeVee Live, a conference put on by the GigaOm people, because I was starting my own online media conference and I wanted to see the sort of things that were being discussed. It was, as many of these conferences are, fairly underwhelming but with little spurts and sprinkles of valuable insights and a couple of really excellent, memorable conversations.

That’s really how we used to think about it! TELEVISION! HA! What does that word even mean!?

One thing I will never forget was a panel of venture capitalists…four rich guys on the stage who were each asked, “What, if anything, would you definitely NOT invest in right now?”

Every. Single. One. Said. “Content.”

Now, this was upsetting to me, an (arguably) professional content creator who was about to start a conference that focused on content and creators. It filled me with doubt about things that I had never even thought to doubt. That was scary, so I was angry.

Their answer, it turned out, was the best thing in the world for me.

And it was good for them too! They absolutely shouldn’t have been investing in content. Content, at that moment, needed minimal investment to stand above the crowd and the kind of oversight (and overhead) a VC investment would require would have strangled any video production on the internet. Indeed, overhead devoured nearly all of the productions from that era that did more than attempt to buy Top Ramen for the director / editor / writer / talent / everything else person (or pair of persons) who produced it with no outside help.

That was a great time in online video. We were not making money, but it was a lot less complicated…

A couple years after that conference, VidCon was doing well, Vlogbrothers was growing, and we were selling merch for a bunch of YouTubers through DFTBA.com. Profitability was starting to actually seem like an achievable goal for a lot of people who started this as just a creative outlet. I was sitting on a couch after a friend’s wedding in Winter Park, Florida talking to Barry Blumberg, a terrifyingly smart guy who has run the business side of SMOSH for years. He refers to Ian and Anthony (the SMOSH side of SMOSH) as “The Guys.”

“The Guys”

“The guys are so genius,” I’m paraphrasing, “They‘ve always known that they can’t look like TV. They have to look just a little bit better than what the average person can do.”

I got what he was talking about immediately. There’s something exceptional about watching a video and simultaneously thinking “That was genius!” and “I could have done that!”

I have always admired Ian and Anthony as a businesspeople and creators. And I respect Barry all the more for giving credit where it was due (exceedingly rare, especially in the early days of online creators working with Hollywood people). Barry was, for around 10 years, the president of TV animation for Disney, so that will give you an idea of his prescience and interest in new and valuable things.

If you look at the (ingenious and astoundingly steady) history of SMOSH, Barry is absolutely right about this strategy. From day 1, “The Guys” were just a little bit better than (pretty much) everything else on YouTube. At first they were a little more over the top with their lip sync videos (a lot of YouTubers, embarrassingly enough, got their start this way. I, in fact, may have done one or two…*sigh*.)

I am 34 years old and I still think this is hilarious.

Then they spent a little more time than anyone else was willing to commit to something so trivial as a YouTube video. Then they started actually spending money! Who would do that!? Then they started HIRING PEOPLE! LUDICROUS! And yes… eventually, they even took investment and got acquired. One of only a handful of native online video content companies that has had a traditional exit.

Now, in 2014, there is mainstream excitement about online video. YouTube is a significant piece of Google’s bottom line, Disney has paid some crazy amount of money for MAKER and people want to be YouTube stars. They see it as a thing that you can become, rather than a thing that just happens to you. So yeah, there’s a lot more competition.

‘The Rule of SMOSH’ still applies, though. You still only have to be just a little bit better than everyone else to get noticed. But a little bit better is getting to be quite a lot — enough that you’re going to have to lay down some cash and some plans before you get started. And maybe you need even more than that. Maybe you need a bump from a big YouTuber or a bit of a marketing budget. And, yeah, maybe all of this is going to require an investment…along with the necessary connections and savvy to acquire and manage that investment.

You see where I’m going here.