Karl Mak: Viral Memes Founder, Price of Fame & Hepmil Media Evolution - E447

Karl Mak, Cofounder & CEO of Hepmil Media Group, and Jeremy Au talked about three main themes:

1. Viral Memes Founder: Karl shared the story of how SGAG was born out of boredom during his university days at Singapore Management University (SMU) where he and his co-founder Adrian spent time creating side businesses. The breakthrough came in 2012 when Singapore's McDonald's ran out of curry sauce, a rare headline that inspired them to create a viral meme. This led to the creation of SGAG, a Facebook page where they posted memes that quickly gained popularity. They realized the potential of their reach when they saw that their memes were engaging millions of Singaporeans weekly. They initially monetized by selling t-shirts but soon found it unsustainable. They got inspired by BuzzFeed and Vice and shifted to integrating brands into their content, leading to their first big break with Scoot Airlines.

2. Hepmil Media Evolution: Despite challenges, such as a failed M&A with a large media company in 2018, they persisted and reimagined the business, leading to significant growth, with the company now employing 200 people across six offices in Southeast Asia. Karl described how they expanded both geographically (from Singapore to Malaysia and Indonesia, reaching 15 million young people) as and with new verticals like Hepmil Creators Network to support young content creators on platforms like TikTok. This led to a successful Series A funding and by 2021, they ventured into social commerce, leveraging their network for live streaming sales in Vietnam and the Philippines.

3. The Price of Fame: Karl reflected on why people want to be famous and the challenges that come with it. He categorized people into three groups: artists with a creative itch, those who become famous accidentally, and those seeking recognition for vanity reasons. He highlighted the downsides of fame, such as loss of privacy and the pressure to constantly post content, leading to burnout and identity crises. He also stressed the importance of mental and physical well-being, advising creators to take breaks and maintain a clear separation between their personal and online personas. He shared his own coping mechanisms during COVID-19, such as running and cycling, which helped him manage stress and maintain his mental health.

Jeremy and Karl also discussed the impact of accidental fame, the evolving nature of media consumption, and strategies for mental health and well-being for content creators.

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Supported by Evo Commerce!

Evo Commerce sells premium affordable supplements and personal care electronics, operating in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Stryv brand sells salon-grade quality products for home use and using direct-to-consumer channels through its online retail channels and physical shops. bback is the leader in hangover remedies in over 2,000 retail outlets across the region. Learn more at bback.co and stryv.co 

(01:34) Jeremy Au:

Hey, morning, Karl.

(01:35) Karl Mak:

Good morning.

(01:36) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. It's great to hear from you. Could you share a little bit about yourself?

(01:39) Karl Mak:

My name is Karl. I'm the co founder and CEO of Hepmil Media Group. We are a new media digital company that is headquartered in Singapore. We have operations around Southeast Asia, and I started this business with my co-founder in 2015. We have three pillars to our business. The first pillar is our content and publishing business. That's where we started from day one. We started SGAG out of Singapore, expanded that into the region into MGAG Malaysia. We acquired a company called MRCI Indonesia, and that's our pillar of content and publishing. Today, we reach about 15 million young people through that business. And in 2020, that business evolved and we started into a second pillar, which is known as Hepmil Creators Network, HCN for short. It is a creative network that really helps young content creators coming up on new platforms like TikTok. We help them to monetize, get opportunities, and help them to get bigger and just grow as a creator. So that has really allowed us to expand our business overall and in 2021 because of the expansion of the creative network we were able to raise our Series A and so that was a unique opportunity in time for us.

Business has grown from strength to strength in the last couple of years past COVID. We recently, in the last six to nine months, launched a social commerce arm, which forms our third and last pillar. Basically, we find some of the largest personalities within our network, and we get them on to live streaming channels, be it on Shopee, TikTok Shop, etc. And we bring merchants and brands onto these channels to help them sell very much like what's happening in China. We're doing that across Vietnam and Philippines. So all in all that's our business today. We have about 200 employees across six offices in Southeast Asia.

(03:17) Jeremy Au:

Wow. Amazing. We have to start from the beginning, which is basically, how did you get started? I understand you started in university days. How did it come about?

(03:25) Karl Mak:

Yeah, it was very, very random. My co-founder, his name is Adrian and two of us attended university together. We were in Singapore Management University SMU and we were bored. To be honest, we were not very engaged with school. We were running our own side businesses. And so we always knew from day one that we were not going to go through the corporate route and we knew that we were not going to get those banking internships, consulting internships. So we spent a lot of our time building our side gigs and businesses. So in class, we were often very much distracted doing other things, not very interested in certain modules and we would bid for mods together as well.

So we ended up just surfing the internet in a very particular class that was super boring, very dry. And we saw that, there was this really interesting news that Singapore's McDonald's had run out of curry sauce and being in a very small country like Singapore, we don't get very many sort of big headliners from time to time. And there are days that are super dry and that day, for some reason, the curry sauce news was headlining every single major news outlet. And so we found that quite funny. We're like, man, it's quite a unique kind of moment in time. And we were actually planning to go to McDonald's after class to get nuggets.

And we were like, "Wow, there's no nuggets." Everybody's freaking out. And there were a lot of keyboard warriors just joking about it. So we made a meme and back in 2012, this meme called "Why You Know", this rage meme template was very very popular. So we created this meme called "Why You Know Nuggets McDonald's" and we posted it, we created a new page called SGAG, brand new. We uploaded the meme and we shared it on our personal profiles while we were in class. And so the guys and girls sitting next to us in class saw the memes and they started sharing and soon it caught fire within the uni and a lot of young kids just started sharing it and it went viral.

And soon enough we were like, wow, that's awesome. A lot of young people engaging with the meme, couple hundred likes and comments. This was early Facebook days, right? And so the very next day, I believe the Singapore MRT system broke down, and this was a series of breakdowns that was happening sporadically across a couple of weeks. And so we started making memes again. And to even make things more happening, we were in the MRT when one of the breakdowns happened. So we made memes from within the train, and the memes would just go viral. And soon enough, we were completely hooked. Everything from EPL matches on the weekend to happenings on ground in Singapore. The haze was coming in from Indonesia. We would make all sorts of memes. And that just got us really, really hooked. And soon enough, Facebook launched analytics. We logged into the first iteration of Facebook Analytics one day. And just by posting a couple of memes every other day, we were reaching about a million Singaporeans without any paid media, without any marketing dollars, a million Singaporeans a week and for us, that was insane. The first thing I did was to search what was The Straits Times subscription. And they were back then, they were like 1.2 million. And I was like, wow, like just two kids posting memes we were reaching the national newspapers numbers in subscription. And I was like, surely there is a business behind this. And our first business model, when we decided to go full time to do this was to sell t-shirts, right? We did what any other young aspiring entrepreneur would do. We took the easiest low-hanging fruit and we made t-shirts. We sold 6,000 t-shirts, I think within the first two days of launch. And it was really nice because that gave us a nice seed funding to have a runway to continue to iterate and figure out what we're going to do with that money.

But we soon realized that selling t-shirts was really not something we were good at because we're talking about 6,000 orders, different size, different color, addresses, And we were a mess. We didn't know how to pack it properly. We got the orders wrong. We had customer support issues because people were complaining missed orders and we were sitting on the floor, just packing t-shirts every day for two weeks and we were like, man Surely there's another business model around this. We can't be selling t-shirts to, to this massive community. So we gave up on the t-shirt business model very, very quickly after the first run, and we were trying to figure out what were we going to do with this massive reach that we had. And so I was looking a lot at the West this year in 2014, when we sort of deep dived into it full time.

And I know I looked at Vice, BuzzFeed in the US and they were booming. They were just growing like crazy and I realized they were making money by integrating brands into their content. And I watched a lot of their content and I was like, "Hey, there's nobody who's doing this. There's nobody who's really integrating brands into this kind of viral content that we were making very much like what BuzzFeed was doing."

So I started thinking about the possibility of selling memes to brands. Would brands buy memes? After all, we were, every meme was reaching about two, three hundred thousand Singaporeans. Surely that was more than magazines. That was probably more than a lot of maybe even radio channels. So we started selling memes, but obviously it was not very successful because a lot of decision makers were very much from a different generation.

They didn't understand why would I ever buy a meme? And so business was very slow. But we got very lucky. There was one particular day, a new airline from Singapore Airlines called Scoot was being launched. They were trying to be this cool and hip airline that was different from their parent company. They were trying to be cool, yellow color branding with caricatures and cartoons fronting their art, their brand and art. And we saw that they launched a flight to Seoul, South Korea, during the peak of the tensions. I remember that week the North Koreans fired missiles into the south islands, and then there you have Scoot launching a flight at the same day.

And so we made a meme what are you doing? Why are you sending Singaporeans into the war? And usually when we make memes about companies, the PR department freaks out. They would usually block us or ignore us on or just not respond. But for the first time, Scoot responded. A brand responded and they were very cheeky in their response. They were like, "Hey, that's a gag." Why are you guys so scared? If you want to go, if your fans want to go, we'll give you 10 pairs of tickets. That's it. And they honored it. They emailed us on the back and they said, Hey, here are 10 quotes you can redeem with your audiences. And I was like, wow, these guys are cool. And the CMO was like, Hey, why don't you come in for coffee? And we thought we were in trouble because when people invite you for coffee in Singapore, usually some bad thing, she met up with us and she was like, what are you, who are you guys, right? What are you trying to achieve with this page that you have?

And we were like, we're trying to make money and we're trying to figure it out. And she revealed to us, Hey, that one meme you made for us, it gave me so much viral attention on social media that smashed all my KPIs that I set for my team in a matter of hours. And she was like, what if I gave you my entire marketing plan for the next six months? Every route that I'm launching, every campaign and discount, everything that I'm doing. And what, why don't you just come up with memes and make fun of me and I'll pay you. And she was like, how much would it cost? 20 minutes for the next six months. And I was like, a thousand dollars a meme. So we made 20K for that first campaign. She signed off and we did make fun of them and they disappeared after that. Just radio silence after we completed the six months.

And I remember cold calling a lot of clients again Hey, you want to work with us? And nobody said yes after that campaign, but there was one day I came to the office Monday morning. I received probably 15 emails of thereabouts from potential marketers. I had Pepsi. I had Resorts World. I had all these amazing brands that wrote to me and said, Hey, we want to have a chat about working with you and congratulations on the wins.

And I was like, " What did I win? Congrats for what?" And they told me, Hey, you won five marketing gold awards last Friday night at the very prestigious marketing awards in Singapore. Winning one goal, that's hard enough. You won five of Scoot and we were like, what? Nobody told us, are you serious? Like, why didn't they tell us? And so it's true. We called Scoot up and they're like, yeah, great. We won. And the team actually, because of the wins, they got promoted or they left because of those five wins. We were able to just open up this new business model, which was what I wanted to build with Scoot and with BuzzFeed's models. And that changed the rest of our history. We have been still doing that business model. We integrate brands into not just memes today, but videos and creators content today. So that's how we got started as a business, which is a very unpredictable and almost random story.

(11:25) Jeremy Au:

Wow, what an incredible story. I mean, it almost sounds like a second founding of the business, right? The first time obviously in the meme side, but the second one on business model perspective. What's interesting is that, you made a decision to, start out with memes and, you went on to explore the business. Did you ever were like, let's do something else? Was there ever a time when you were like, should I continue with SGAG? Because there's a meme and then you're discovering the business model. You did a t-shirts , how was it thinking about saying, I want to continue with kind of SGAG and the whole group as a business.

(11:54) Karl Mak:

Absolutely. I mean, I found this journey. It's filled with ups and downs. I remember this happened to me in 2018 late 2018 through halfway of 2019. We had actually been very close to a M&A in 2018, a very large media listed media company in Singapore approached us and they said, Hey, we have all these old media that they were a multi-billion dollar organization.

They were like, Hey, we need your audiences. We need your traffic. We need your ideas. We need your publication, if you call it. And we went through due diligence. We were a small, smallish team, about 40 people back then. And they said, Hey, you're profitable. You're not that big in revenues, it's a good size for us to buy. And they had a track record of M&A. If you are separate, you'll probably know who I'm talking about. And so they had amazing revenue multiples that they would do M&A in. And I was like, wow, it's not very sexy to work for you, but you pay good multiples. And we were kind of like three years in to the business. We did the interview with the CEO back then. We met the board, met the COO, CFO, Cobb Dash. We did six months of due diligence and we were going to be locked in for five years. That was their term. For five years. Wow. Sure. Sure. National service. We'll consider this national service. Let's do it. And they agreed. In principle, we had an evaluation range that we wanted. They agreed. That's why we went through that process. On the day of the deal, they slid the term sheet over. It was so far away from what we had agreed on, that the guy who gave us that offer couldn't look us in the eye. And he just said, I'm sorry.

And we were so disappointed. We were, I still, I think we were probably still, maybe just in our, we just turned 30 that year and literally on the verge of tears. We didn't even say no, we didn't say anything. We got up, we stormed out of the abort room and we left, we went back defeated. And for the next six to nine months, it sent me personally down a spiral where I was like, Maybe this is not worth my time anymore. Maybe this is the end of the road. Maybe I should do something else. Our revenues low single digit millions, although profitable, it didn't have that kind of uplift that I was looking for in 2018. 19 was a tough year. Revenues were slowing down. And so I was like, maybe I should go work for a tech company. Maybe I should work in San Francisco, get some experience and do something else. Maybe I'm not good enough. There was a lot of that in my mind. And I told my team, give me a couple of months. I just want to go into the cave, as you would say to just think about what's next and think about the company.

And I remember coming to work. I would just sit in one of these meeting rooms every day and just surf the internet, watch YouTube videos, read. And I didn't want to do client meetings. I don't, I didn't want to do management huddles. I just wanted to think. And I kid you not. There was one moment I was like, wow, why are you being such a whiny founder?

Why are you being so weak right now? Because you have it within your control to change the course of this company. You have every power and every ability to turn this around and stop complaining. Get back to work, do something about it. Stop running away. And. That's exactly what I did. I started reading books. I remember just buying every top business book in 2019 and just reading and reading and reading. And there was literally a light bulb moment for me. I was like, what if we created a business network for creators? What if we created a network to help these new creators? And I was thinking about the impending explosion of TikTok. This was mid 2019. TikTok was just, they had just acquired Musically. And I was like, what is this crazy app with all these Gen Z's dancing? I didn't get it. But I was like, what if this was the next Facebook? What if this was going to blow up? There's going to be so many creators and brands and the whole ecosystem would be disrupted. And that's that light bulb moment that changed the course of our company and changed my course as a founder.

(15:29) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, amazing. What's interesting is that, you're talking about the business of creators, right? And there's also this part where people want to be creators. Could you compare and contrast those two things?

(15:39) Karl Mak:

Everybody wants to be famous. I think in this new age of social capital. Having followers, having a community and audience is really powerful, from very basic things of you getting free stuff. A lot of people want it because you get free stuff, right? If you get 10,000 followers, you get free stuff. And it comes with a whole set of privileges, if you will call it. At the same time, having high followers doesn't mean that you are going to be successful financially as a business or being a creator. And I remember telling some of my early employees who became famous accidentally because they started appearing in SGAG videos and we started tagging their personal Instagram profiles into our videos and over the couple of months, a couple of them got very decent following.

And so I looked at them and I said, Hey, there is an opportunity where you can be a full-time creator the next year. But being a creator, you really need to understand what's going to pay the bills, because we live in Asia. The Asia model of being a creator is very different from the US. For example, in the US if you are very big on TikTok, YouTube, or even Facebook, big meaning very high traction in video content, the CPM, which is the amount that these tech companies pay you per thousand views, is very high in the US. We're talking about $10 to 15 US dollars per thousand views. But once you come to Asia, you get a dollar in Indonesia. You get $3 in Singapore for a thousand views. And we are also living in a small country in Singapore where getting thousands of views is very, very challenging. And you multiply that with a very low CPM rate. Basically, you can't make money from these tech companies versus in the US, like big tech reviewers like MKBHD, just millions of views per YouTube video, you can probably make a million dollars a year. And so, that is their only business model. But in Asia, because of low CPMs, you need to have other sources of income. And that's how I would distill it into multiple revenue streams. We think of it like a multi-layered cheesecake or kek lapis cake, if you will call it in Asia. You need to have multi layers. The first layer is your CPM, which is not going to pay the bills. Honestly, it's very low. You expect to make a few hundred dollars a month, if you're very successful, if you're lucky. But almost always you need a second layer. And that second layer more than often is your brand deals. Your brand deals are going to form the majority. I'm talking about 90+ percent of your revenue and working with brands requires a special skillset, requires a whole different mindset because you're talking about working with marketers, advertisers, who are professional, they're always rushing, timelines are tight, they expect a certain service level delivery which many young creators cannot provide.

(18:05) Karl Mak:

And that's exactly the gap I spotted. Young creators just want free stuff, usually, they just want to make great content. And they are not going to do deep dives into reporting inside. They're not going to submit things on time. Usually, they're not going to rush things for you. And more than often, there's a lot of conflict and tension, which is why many marketers are like, I don't want to work with these KOLs or influencers because they're a headache. And so that's not true because there's an opportunity for a service to be provided. And that's us. And that's the difference between the business side of being a creator. There's a lot of work, heavy lifting, boring, dry stuff.

There's also administration. Today, many governments around the world are looking at content creators going, that's a great source of tax. They're not paying income tax. They're not declaring income tax. Every tax department in Southeast Asia has been talking to us going, tou need to make sure your creators pay taxes because they are making significant incomes and not declaring it in a traditional sense. Many creators don't know how to go through that. And in countries like Vietnam, Philippines, it's so difficult to do that. You need proper accounting, you need proper documentation, receipts, and creators don't have that. So that's another real big headache that we spot and we solve these problems for creators versus just being a creator, doing fun stuff, getting free stuff. A lot of misconceptions there. That's how I would break it down.

(19:17) Jeremy Au:

I love to take it in two different ways. I'm sure people, there are two groups of people out there, right? One group of people is, how do I become famous? Like you said, and the other group would be, how do I make money as a creator? Maybe we'll start with the first one, right? Which is, why do people want to be famous from your perspective? I mean, you've seen people become famous. You've seen people who want to be famous. You see people who are famous now, are used to being famous now. So but from your perspective, i'm sure you have a different perspectiveabout why do you think people want to be famous?

(19:44) Karl Mak:

That's a very interesting question. I've never been asked that before in all my years and I think about it a lot. I distill it down to two broad categories, maybe three. The first is I would consider this group to be artists. They are people with ideas. They are people with inspiration. They are people who love to create. And many of the guys I work with are artists. They have that itch. They have that creative itch, and they share their ideas. They want to share their ideas to the world like a traditional artist. painter, like a sketch, somebody who sketches. The current form of art, I believe, is content creation, right? And so there's that creative itch, they scratch it by expressing themselves on social media, on a platform, on a trend, and they get famous because people recognize them for their work, people recognize them for their craft.

The second group, I think, are people that get famous accidentally. Like my co founder, you don't intend for it, You sometimes just try it out for fun, you accidentally post something or you just want to learn about social media, put something up and then boom, you have a whole bunch of followers. Recently, one of my employees who was not a creator in the traditional sense, not a cast, we went to his profile on Instagram and he has 75,000 followers. And we're like, what? He's a video director, back end guy. We're like, wait, what? And we realized he was just vlogging daily thoughts about his sugar cravings, battling self-confidence issues. And he was just having a monologue everyday and just sharing his thoughts to the world. He gathered 75,000 followers in a very short period of time. So that's the second, a bit more accidental.

The third group, I would classify them into a bit more for the one get famous for more narcissistic reasons. They want to be pretty, they want to be handsome, they want to be recognized, they want to be popular. No doubt, there are plenty of them, right? And I think these are the three broad categories that I would classify them.

(21:24) Jeremy Au:

What's the downsides of being famous?

(21:26) Karl Mak:

At a very extreme level, you look at LeBron James. You look at maybe even our prime minister, Lawrence Wong. You can never walk around the mall with your family without being bothered. Firstly, you can never sort of be unrecognized, fly on the wall in a room and nobody knows who you are, which is quite a interesting feeling that they miss. You always have people looking out, whispering oh, can I take a photo? You lose your sense of privacy in that sense. I also think the more unspoken part of this business or being famous is you lose your sanity because there is this dopamine hit. You need to keep posting, getting engagement, this cycle, and over a long period of time, you hear this a lot, they burn out. They burn out personally. They burn out from a creative side. They go into almost a spiral of identity crisis where your real identity is blended into your onscreen identity. And who am I, really? It almost becomes also a very bad habit where everything you need to document. If you go for a meal, if you go for a holiday, if you go for your honeymoon, everything is documented.

You're always filming on your phone and people around you do get annoyed, to be honest. I'm not a very public person on social media, but most people around me are. And every time we go out for a meal or we go for a trip, everyone around me is filming and filming and filming. And I'm like, Hey, I just want to have a conversation. And can't do that because everybody's sorry, I need to edit. I need to post. I need to comment. I need to do this, right? So it becomes a very tedious and almost all consuming cycle of social media, which is hazardous. If you are unaware, unclear of how to step out and reset, you will spiral down. And I've seen that happen so many times.

(23:01) Jeremy Au:

It almost sounds like the opposite of zen buddhism, where you're supposed to be present with yourself, and now you always have I don't know a representation of an audience an eyeball that you're thinking of in your daily thoughts. How do people deal with that? Because, that means they're always thinking in two minds, right? Like I'm eating this sushi and what would my audience think about me eating this sushi? I'm sure people complain about it or people think about it.

(23:23) Karl Mak:

The advice we give to our creators and we realize, Hey, besides Tax 101, we need to really educate our creators on how to do this sustainably as a business. How to do this authentically as a human being, and how to take care of yourself, right? Many of our guys are young, many of our creators, we have 1,600 creators on our network, and we have regular workshops on how to really care for yourself mentally, physically. I think it's important to be able to draw the line that you as a person, that's your true value. Your value is not your profile. Your value is not your followers. Your value is not your numbers and business numbers. Your value is you as a human being. And that is first and foremost, the most important thing.

Second is you must be able to take breaks just as any job requires 21 days, 14 days of leave, you need to be able to switch off, mentally reset, and be present with things that matter. Loved ones that matter, yourself even. Go on these retreats that you shut off and take a break, and we will tell clients that you are out, right? So we almost always educate them that you need to do this. I think next is really being able to put your phone away, being able to go on airplane mode on a maybe daily basis, because literally, they would be, many of us, not just creators on social media, if you're not careful, you are scrolling before you sleep. The first thing you do is to check on how your post performed the night before, and then you're going out and about on your day, just checking your social media. And there are side effects to long term use of social media at such high intensities, right? Like we are still learning about the side effects, but sure, there's a lot of already documentation, research about the harmful impacts of this, especially in the young mind.

And so we have to make sure they are able to switch airplane mode on, off notifications, switch off. And if they run into a crisis, creators sometimes run into crisis mode where maybe they were insensitive, they said the wrong thing. That's where our team steps in. They come in, they sit you down, they counsel you and they really help you navigate what are your next steps. Legally as well, some of our creators get into legal issues, we come in and we really act as a partner to them, help them navigate because many a times, creators are like solo entrepreneurs. They don't have a team. They don't know what to do and they're just completely lost and they spiral and they go out of sync and that's very sad to watch. So we come in at that support network to help them and that's how we advise them.

(25:35) Jeremy Au:

And what's interesting is that you've definitely built up the business over time, right? In terms of like you directly making memes yourself to, working with a team to do that, then distributing, then partnering, then now supporting new creators. You've also, I think, evolved the business quite significantly over the past year and a half. Could you share more about that?

(25:52) Karl Mak:

Yeah, sure. We started making memes and funny videos in Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, but we realized that there was a high barrier to getting it to scale, like what we achieved in Singapore, because I think ultimately having a very influential social media page in a foreign country that is foreign owned this in itself is a risky thing that a lot of local governments, foreign governments would not like, right? Although we are not political, and we don't do opinion articles. We're not serious in that sense, there's still inherently some risk. And so I think it's We can't really scale up to that significant level that we achieved in Singapore, and that was also not because there was somebody pressing us down, for example.

Inherently, it was just very difficult. We also faced this challenge almost like our SNL cast, right? After three years, they all want to go independent. Or they all want to do something else, try something else. Sure. It's normal part of human nature. And as unfortunately or fortunately, as founders, we have to stick it through. We have to go through the next batch and the next batch. So if you're changing, like your football team is changing 11 players every three years, and we are still the coach and the manager of the team, we have to always reset and go for championship material again. It's hard, right? It's very hard.

So I was like, man, this business model is so challenging because of the inherent structure and nature of it. We need something else. And as I mentioned earlier, when they leave, many of them are like, I became super famous with you guys, but after I leave, I feel so alone. I lose the entire engine of brainstorm, administrative support, just having a team behind me. So many of our early cast were left, inspired me to go, what if you left our screen time, but never left our network? What if all the engine of what made you successful, made us successful, was still accessible to you? What if we did that for you? And so that's how the Creator Network came about.

That simple thesis of you get access to all that we've learned, all that we've built. You're not an employee,but we e will help you succeed exclusively and non exclusively. And I didn't want to build an influencer business because I really don't like that term. But when we saw the success of TikTokers, we realized many of them share beautiful stories, great ideas. We can help. We can help you monetize. We can do the heavy lifting of the boring corporate stuff with clients, tax departments, administration. And so, would this take off? And so we started this right and smack January, February of 2020. COVID hit home. We couldn't film our videos on our first business during COVID.

(28:14) Karl Mak:

So this was a very natural evolution. We caught our clients. Hey, we have 30 creators. They can take over the campaign, launch it from home. Would you say yes to that? 30 percent said yes. 70 percent said no, but TikTok continued its exponential rise. And yeah, the rest was history. This business today is 70 percent of my entire business. In a short span of four years, it overtook my original business and the business model is very different. We are like the API at the back end. That plugs in all these different services, data flows to help you succeed as a creator. We're your business partner that enables you to be successful. And you don't see us in the back end where that invisible force pushing you along, but many of our creators in Singapore, for example are powered by us. So I like that tech analogy we're the API that enables you to do something. And that's how our business model evolved a lot more scale, right? A lot more ability to go across 150 creators. We can do multiple things at the same time, cover multiple events, cover multiple launches across countries. So that's how we've evolved our business.

(29:16) Jeremy Au:

Amazing. And when you think about this evolution, what are some, like myths or misconceptions not about being a creator, but about the business of managing, supporting, leading, organizing, syndicating creators.

(29:30) Karl Mak:

Yeah. First of all, a lot of people in business or investments, they think influencers and creators are just going to be like a one, one, one shot, one hit wonder, right? They come and they go and it's not sustainable. Sustainability of revenue, sustainability of business is often a big myth. The way they see it is, what's the next thing? Is it watching virtual influencers? Is it watching, robots play games, right? A lot of different thoughts about that. My thinking is a little bit different. I think you and I maybe come from the same vintage, where we have watched linear satellite TVs before.

You sit there, you have no choice, you just watch. Then we evolved into OTT, where you can watch any show, anytime, wherever you want, on whatever medium Netflix, Disney Plus, all sorts of local players, regional players. But that business, as we know, is super expensive to build. Billions poured into it. Profitability remains a challenge, and many of them have struggled. We believe there's a third segment, which is domestic content cannot be always on OTT. It cannot always be drama. Domestic content, young people want to watch young creators. And young creators distribute and build their content very differently from drama series on Netflix or big productions like Netflix. We believe that there is this industry or sector that is going to be domestic, creator-led. That we already see massive consumer and audience numbers. The question then is what's the business model behind because a lot of this content is free. It's a freemium model and we see it evolving already today where it's going into live selling. Going into D2C brands like Prime, Feastables, you know coming out of the states where they're making building billion dollar businesses We have many iterations of that in Asia as well where creators are opening cafes, opening new brands. And we want to take that evolution with them. And I feel like creators content D2C or launching businesses is a natural evolution.

My young boy, eight years old, he watches YouTube every day. He doesn't even like chocolates. He never once asked me for Cadbury, M& M, Kinder Bueno. He never, ever asked me for chocolate, but when he started on Mr. Beast this past six months, every time I walk into a 7 Eleven or NTUC, he will tell me, Daddy, do they have Feastables here? And to me, that's crazy because he doesn't even like chocolate, but he loves Mr. Beast. He loves that Mr. Beast launched Feastables and is associated with this chocolate brand. That's all he thinks about. And his consumer journey is so different. And if that is the way of his generation, then it's time to build now. And that's how I think about it, which is. I think maybe not very popular way of thinking. Not many people think about it, but I truly believe in the power of content and that's going to shape the next generation of consumers of what's popular, what's trending, what should I buy? Where should I go? What should I do? How do I do this? All that is going to be informed by creators as we know, and that's a very powerful way of that's a powerful area for us.

(32:10) Jeremy Au:

When you look at the future, you see it coming, right? So you have a eight year old, I have a four year old, and she also loves YouTube whenever she can sneak some time in to watch Peppa Pig and so so forth so you know, you have this new generation, generation alpha, that's what our kids would be. What do you think the future of creators, slash consumption would be? Because there's AI, there's these like digital twins of personalities coming out. As this generation alpha comes into play, what do you think the future looks like for the next generation of this?

(32:40) Karl Mak:

You know, I've been doing this for nine years, going to 10. One thing's for sure. You cannot predict it. The technological change the shifts of the platforms, algorithm, consumer trends and habits. They shift every couple of years, right? And as I always referenced the mode of traditional media of print, radio, TV, was the same for 100 years, very minor changes by all we added color to print. We added color to TV. We put it digital, right? But fundamentally, the medium is still the same. I think for the next 100 years, we will see so many changes in the ways people consume, moat. Every five years, it's going to be a big shift. Instead of waiting 100, the speed of change is just so rapid today. I think one thing's for sure, creators are going to influence many different things. As I mentioned, popular culture, consumption habits. I'll give you an example. I just came back from South Korea with my Vietnam team. We flew six of our creators to a warehouse in Seoul and we sold cosmetics from the warehouse.

Live selling such a big thing there. And we have young people who sit on stream waiting for their favorite creator, waiting for their sort of favorite item to be listed. We sold 250, 000 SKUs across an 18 hour window with 7 million unique people buy. And as a Singaporean, I don't get it. I'm like, what, how did you get 30,000 concurrent viewers across the 18 hour window of a live stream. That's insane And people are actually waiting because they've been following these creators. The creators are like hey I'm going live from Seoul this week. I'm gonna sell the Samsung s24 at a record low price. So you gotta join and people react people respond on the flip side The consumers are just literally holding their phones and waiting for the vouchers to drop waiting for their creators And that's perhaps a glimpse of the future where decisions of what to buy, where to go what to wear, who to follow really determines the construct of your entertainment stack You'll be watching a lot of creators buying from them, hanging out with them, experiencing things that they create and build. And I think that's really happening in the world where a lot of creators, as I mentioned, are building businesses, building experiences, building cool things in the world, being entrepreneurial, and consumers are consuming them because that's the main media source that many young people are really consuming and going to consume more as creators get more funding, they get more opportunities to create bigger things. That's going to be continuously influencing, shaping minds, and hopefully for the better.

(34:55) Jeremy Au:

On that note, could you share about a time that you personally have been brave?

(34:59) Karl Mak:

Running a startup, being a founder is a first time. This is my second startup, but certainly the longest startup. My first business was only nine months. And through the ups and downs, I think one of the most challenging moments of being brave as a founder is really going into the unknown with your team and going, Hey, we got this. Don't worry, like we're jumping into the dark end of the ocean, not knowing what's going to happen. But as a CEO, as a founder, you have to assure them, I know what I'm doing, even though I might not be a hundred percent sure. I think back to COVID, for example, where literally we have then a hundred employees, there was payroll, there was uncertainty. There was a lot of commentary. There were some people that said, Hey, Two week thing. I had religious people telling me, my, my God is telling me it's going to be a one week thing. I had analysts saying it's going to be forever. We're never going to go back to the real world again. So there was a lot of uncertainty.

As a leader running a PNL, we had to make all these pivots. We had to assure our people, we had to tell them we're going to make it through. And we did make it through although there were times where I had to shut one of my teams in a particular country because they didn't make it through. In Singapore, we were lucky that there was a lot of support, but in other countries, it was just flatline. And I had to look them in the eye and say, I'm sorry. I, I'm so sorry. I can't pay your salary. I can't do this anymore with you guys. And we have to let you go. And that's really hard because I had assured them. I had failed them. I had And then I had to sort of make whatever was best out of a very difficult situation. And I think that's probably one of the recent times that I had to be brave, put up a brave front, find courage deep within in a very, very uncertain period, and also break difficult news to a group of people I care about. And disappoint them in that sense. And I think that's something that comes to mind.

(36:42) Jeremy Au:

How did you personally take care of yourself as you went through this turmoil and decision making?

(36:49) Karl Mak: especially through COVID, all this, we were all trapped at home in a room. I'm a very active person. And pre COVID, I was traveling a lot for business. I like to meet people. I like to go out, being in a room for weeks to months, dealing with very difficult situations. I knew that I needed an outlet. If not, it would manifest in dangerous ways that would affect me negatively. And I saw that storm coming and I needed to do something about it and hope that that would help. I read a lot of articles and I picked up two habits. One was running and the two was I became a COVID cyclist. I bought a bike. I don't even like cycling, but I just cycle. So I ran every day and in the evenings I would cycle. And so I did a lot of outdoor kind of exercise, which was permitted and that really helped. I think mentally that was just this release two times a day. There was a lot of dopamine from exercise.

There was a lot of sort of that mental stress release. And that's, I think that saved me personally that helped me so much without really knowing it. Obviously I stopped cycling. I just looked at my bike this morning. It's rusty. I have not used it in years, but I would say that was my accidental solution to all of this.

(37:54) Jeremy Au:

Wow, amazing. And when you look, at your, younger self when you were out in university, if you had a time travel machine, you could travel back in time to that younger self. Any advice that you would give to yourself back then if you could take yourself out for coffee?

(38:10) Karl Mak:

Great question I was in business school. My major was in Economics. All my peers had great big internships investment banking treasury departments of banks when we graduated or even before graduation All the coffee chat, all the coffee chatter was always about which bank, which internship, which consulting, going to Wall Street, going here, going there. And I felt really lousy about myself. I wanted to do startups. Nobody wanted to do startups in business school in SMU, right? I was, I was the odd one out and I was in, I felt low. I felt lousy because was I on the right track? All my peers are earning massive incomes, nice suits, nice office wear, and here I was wearing flip flops, sitting in a coffee shop, trying to get free wifi. The first two years of starting up was just poor, right? No money. My salary was $300 a month and there was a lot of insecurity, self doubt, but I remember listening to Jack Ma, who was my inspiration back then. And he had a saying, which was translated to English, "young people think about a thousand paths they want to take, and they could take, and they wake up the next morning and they take the original path that they're already taking." And I remember that being like my mantra. That is me, cause there was so much doubt of whether I would succeed and I didn't succeed for a long time. And there was all this doubt, should I just get a job? Should I just, pay the bills and get a normal job and fall in most people would, but that mantra helped.

I held it and I was like, just grind it up. We will get there one day. And so if I were to go back, I would tell myself, you're on the right track, right? Don't compare yourself to your peers. Everybody has a different path. Your path is not better. Their path is not better. Choose your own path and be confident of that path, whatever that might be, being a founder, being a social worker, being a doctor, being a banker, it doesn't matter at the end of the day. I think it's really being true to yourself and not conforming to the ways of society, conforming to your peers. I think that is what I would assure myself and double down on if I were to go back.

(39:56) Jeremy Au:

Thank you so much for sharing on that note I love to wrap things up by summarizing three big takeaways to come from this First of all, thank you so much for sharing about the early founding journey for the memes about how you started out looking at curry sauce and then to the schools and so so forth. It's fascinating to hear about the early days.

Secondly, thanks so much for sharing about the business evolution not just about you know being a direct creator but also building out how you chose to become, um You know, distribution network, a syndicate, a support network for other creators in the space.

And then thirdly, of course, is thank you so much for sharing your own personal insights about yourself, creators, the business. I think there's a lot of learnings about why people want to be famous, why people burn out, how you took care of yourself, and how you had to make difficult decisions no matter what.

On that note, thank you so much, Karl, for sharing your experience.

(40:42) Karl Mak:

Thank you for having me.