Patrick Lee
Appearances
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
I remember my reaction to hearing at the time was like, brother, we don't make no money. Where are we going to get a million dollars for you from? We don't sell ads. But, you know, it's a symptom of you created this culture where you empowered 100 people
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
to be the lifeline to the entire product and then like when those people decide to use their leverage you're in deep shit that's sorry like that's that's your problem like you you hitched this entire thing on you know 20 21 year olds who at any point could just decide like actually like we're not getting paid for this we can go anywhere else and like their audience will come and they were right you know
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
I mean, just using a CPN calculator right now... CPN, if you've forgotten, is how much money brands would be willing to pay a creator based on how well their videos performed. Somebody that's driving you maybe half a million views on a singular video, that's a $12,500 video. And you're looking at creators that are generating... 12.5 K in potential impressions per video.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
They're uploading it three times a week. They're doing that for four weeks during the year. You're already looking at about $150,000 a month in like just a standard CPM on impressions that run rates over a million dollars a year. Like that's like one and a half million dollars. And they're asking for a million dollars for their video.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
existence on the platform so to not think that from a vine perspective you can squeeze that out of them if you can squeeze profitability out of paying them a million dollars is like just at the time if the industry wasn't there i just don't think the foresight was there to say yeah these people are worth a million dollars i think the audiences were well worth a million dollars and they just didn't they just didn't click that i just i don't think they had that perspective i
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
The true conversation that was happening was like, everybody sub that tier was fucking pissed. We were like, why them? Like, they don't push the bounds creatively. At least at that point, that wasn't there. It was, you know, videos that are still memed today. But like, it was stuff that, you know, we're like, oh, really? Like, that's your idea?
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
Like the idea that some other smaller binder had six months ago with like a slightly different twist. Yeah. I think everybody was just pissed. We were like, you know, the immediate aftermath was like the fact that that meeting even took place. It just felt like this weird succession style summit.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
Like, you know, it's like the evil geniuses getting together and like, you know, controlling as Illuminati. It just felt weird. And we were just kind of like, yeah, this is the ecosystem that we live in where, you know, everybody else who's like getting together and throwing vine parties and, My entire group of friends in LA at one point was, like, 25 people deep. Everybody was a Viner.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
And, like, it was just, like, this is the community you're ignoring versus those people who, like, talk shit on each other left and right and have beef in the comment sections. Like, come on. So yeah, I think it was just disappointment and frustration from a lot of people after that meeting took place.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
Jason Topp, the GM, left. We had an interim GM for a moment and then we brought in the last person who was GM, this woman named Hannah. And I remember we did...
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
this, like, off-site, and part of it was some stupid exercise where it was, like, you write down your fears about the product, and then, like, you know, we're going to put them up on the wall, and then, like, you know, we'll let them go, whatever. I don't think I even did it, honestly, but a friend of mine, what she wrote was, like, it's too late. Like, you blew it, basically.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
That's what happened. That's the most Silicon Valley thing I've ever heard of, like, everyone write down your fears. I know. It's interesting because I don't think she was from Silicon Valley. I think she was from New York, but that's the thing that we don't do here.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
Even today, culturally, there's a very big difference between New York tech and California tech, and this is one of those things that I would categorize as California bullshit.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
Oh, big time. I still have the email because it was so insane. So I knew something was happening. I assumed that they were going to do layoffs, actually. I didn't assume they were going to shut it down. I assumed that there was going to be a pretty big layoff, and then maybe they would, like, fold it into Twitter or something like that.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
And it was to the degree that, like, I was pretty confident it was going to happen. I was already, like, I was planning to leave. I was, like, ready to... I was already, like, halfway out the door. And it's funny, like, literally the night before they did, um...
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
uh layoffs i was looking to find um uh the gm because i was going to tell her like you know if we could just be above board for a minute i'm not sticking around so if there's layoffs you know one of the other guys on the team like he wants to stay you should keep him and you should let me go because i'm not sticking around but i couldn't find her and so then uh the next morning we had an email it was like hannah used to do these like
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
Yeah, like this is very common. Like GMs or heads of company do like their weekly like top of mind thing, whatever. And her thing was called the Tiger Times. Something about like her. It was like part of her brand, like calling herself like the tiger or something like that. I don't really remember why, but it was like. Hey, dudes, like got a really important meeting tomorrow morning.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
So it'd be like super cool if you guys could jump. It could be like in the office tomorrow. And when I saw that, I knew that meant like, OK, like we're all like this shit was going down. But it was like such a bizarre, like this, like weirdly like excited way to be like, hey, gang, you're all like you're all about to get shit canned. And so then we showed up to the office the next morning.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
She did some announcement that they were basically shutting down the app and that like a handful of people would be asked to stick around for three months to like sunset it basically. And then we all did like one-on-one conversations with like her and HR or whatever.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
I thought it was more funny than anything. Like, oh, this is just like, this is wild. I had already started talking to Instagram at this point. So I knew I was out. So I wasn't angry or anything. You know, the thing was already over. I should say, I do like actually kind of have some sympathy. I think she was put in a really difficult position.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
I don't think she did a particularly good job at the role, but I don't know if there's a good way to do it. We all left, we went to this bar around the corner, like this like shitty Chelsea, New York bar. It was like not a cool place. We went there probably at like 11 in the morning, you know, noon maybe or something like that. And it was just two or three like regulars.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
And then all of a sudden, you know, like 40 people walk in. And we're all like hanging out getting drinks and stuff. And there's like a TV on. And then while we're there hanging out, the TV announces...
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
Like, the news is on, and they're like, oh, Twitter's shutting down, fine. And, of course, the bar is like, what? Yeah, this is us, you know? But it was, like, the super surreal moment of, like, I'm sure the people who were there were like, oh, I guess this is them, you know?
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
Do you remember the day when they turned it off?
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
And I was like still tight with like a couple of the guys who were like some of the backend engineers there. And so I messaged them and I was like, is it possible? I could like squeeze in one last Vine before you shut down.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
Yeah, I knew that it was going to happen. I had heard rumblings of what the amounts, what the figures were.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
At the time, I thought it was ridiculous, not from like a worth perspective, because I thought that the net worth and the sheer amount of views and metrics that you get to deliver a brand from a marketing perspective, that number was warranted. But I also understood how unprofitable and like how big of a debt Vine collected as a company in an operation.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
There's got to be a middle ground of like, you know, there's no creator funds in that day, and I still don't think creator funds are necessarily a good idea. I don't think they're equitable, but... that should have been day one of creator fund, which is like, what if we paid everybody a small salary of $35,000 a year to create Vines?
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
And then you get bonus incentives for working with our brand partners, bonus incentives for talking about Vine on Instagram. Like there was frameworks that I think we were even talking about as creators.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
7. The Battle of Vine Street
And they, of course, they went to the table with like, you know, give us the yacht.