In this episode of The Next Next, host Jason Jacobs talks with Gregg Spiridellis, co-founder of JibJab and StoryBots, about his innovative journey from investment banking to digital entertainment. Gregg discusses how technology, particularly AI, is revolutionizing the creative process in storytelling and production. He shares insights on his current ventures, including an upcoming animated family feature based on Perry Grip's music catalog, utilizing AI for production efficiency. Gregg also touches on the broader implications of AI's expansion in Hollywood, the evolution of content creation, and the balance between professional ambitions and family life. The episode delves into the highs and lows of an entrepreneurial career, the importance of iteration, and embracing new technologies in creative fields.
Navigating AI and Creativity with Gregg Spiridellis In this episode of The Next Next, host Jason Jacobs interviews Gregg Spiridellis, co-founder of JibJab and StoryBots. Gregg shares his journey from investment banking to digital entertainment, discussing the evolution of his creative process and the impact of new technologies. He highlights how he and his brother are using AI to revolutionize content creation, including their latest endeavor to build a feature-length animated film based on Parry Grip's music. Gregg also touches on the challenges and strategies in navigating Hollywood's power dynamics and the significance of balancing career ambitions with family life.
00:00 Introduction to Gregg Spiridellis
00:05 The Journey from Investment Banking to JibJab
00:51 StoryBots and Netflix Success 01:10 New Ventures with Parry Grip
01:46 Exploring AI in Creative Processes
02:52 Introduction to The Next Next
04:48 Gregg's Current Projects
05:11 Building a Family Franchise
08:00 The Evolution of Creative Formats
11:58 Challenges and Iterations in Creativity
13:33 The Impact of Technology on Media
21:24 Failed Ventures and Lessons Learned
25:31 Collaborating with Parry Grip
27:19 Exploring Creative Origins
27:46 Building a Business Around Animation
28:44 Involving Gatekeepers and Developing Content
30:44 The Pixar Playbook and Technological Advances
34:06 Phases of Production and Financing
36:30 Embracing AI in Creative Processes
44:26 Industry Disruption and Future Implications
45:08 Philosophical Reflections on Legacy and Innovation
49:30 Final Thoughts and Future Plans
55:55 Conclusion and Parting Words
Jason Jacobs: On today's episode of The Next Next, our guest is Gregg Spiridellis. Gregg is an interesting guy. He started his career as an investment banker, got his MBA at Wharton, decided banking wasn't for him. Any longer and he was gonna embrace his inner weird and alongside his brother. He launched JibJab back in 1999, which was a digital entertainment studio based in LA that first achieved widespread attention during the 2004 US presidential election when their video of George W.
Bush and John Kerry singing this Land Is Your Land became a viral hit. Now they were initially known for political and social satire. They also produced commercials and shorts for, for a long list of clients before focusing on their now flagship personalized e-card and messaging service. After JibJab, Gregg and his brother went on to launch story bots and Story bots as an educational platform aimed at children, and they've since produced two Netflix series, asked the story bots and story bot super songs, both a claim for their engaging in educational content, and they actually won 11 Emmys.
Believe it or not. Now Gregg and his brother, again, are partnering with Parri Grip, who's a well-known songwriter, singer and musician who's also the lead vocalist and guitarist for the pop punk band, nerve herder. And anyways, Parry has a. Large collection of music. He owns the rights to all of it. And in that music is a bunch or a bunch of characters.
And Gregg and his brother decided, again, embracing their inner weirdness, that they're gonna bring these characters to life in a feature length film. And ultimately, if they can do that successfully, they'll go on to launch merch and a bunch of other things, around these characters. And they're using AI ton in the production.
Process now, in this episode we talk about a lot. We talk about what motivates Gregg. We talk about being a creator and what that process looks like and how that's evolved over time, and how much of that process has been consistent from format to format as the formats continue to evolve and how much has to change.
As new formats change the game, we talk about power and gatekeepers and Hollywood and what's been happening in Hollywood and how that's been evolving and what the implications are for creators and what the independent route is starting to look like. And we also talk about how Gregg and his brother have been using AI to build and what the implications are, not just for them as writers and producers, but for.
All of the other stakeholders that, that are affected by and involved with the creative process and producing short videos, long form videos and film. This is a great one. Hope you enjoy it. But before we get started.
I'm Jason Jacobs, and this is The Next Next. It's not really a show, it's more of a learning journey to explore how founders can build ambitious companies while being present for family and not compromising flexibility and control, and also how emerging AI tools can assist with that. Each week we bring on guests who are at the tip of the spear on redefining how ambitious companies get built, and selfishly the goal is for this to help me better understand how to do that myself.
While bringing all of you along for the ride, not sure where this is gonna go, but it's gonna be fun.
Okay, Gregg Spiridellis, welcome to the show.
Gregg Spiridellis: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
Jason Jacobs: Thanks for coming. The way I got to you is funny. I saw, so Katie Stanton tweeted, I know Katie and I've known her for a long time and she's great. And I saw her tweet to someone who, or Exed or whatever to, to someone who was looking for advice or something, and she mentioned your name.
And then I looked at. Looked at your profile and I was like, oh, like he's actually relevant to some stuff that I'm thinking about. And then I asked Katie to put me in touch, but I didn't realize that you and Katie were an item and she didn't tell me. She just made the introduction. Yeah.
Gregg Spiridellis: We've been in item for nine years. Lucky me. I'm,
Jason Jacobs: yeah, so obviously I don't know her that well.
Gregg Spiridellis: yeah I punched above my weight class. No doubt.
Jason Jacobs: But we had a great first discussion and I truly enjoyed it, and so I, I just wanted to think of an excuse to get you on the show, and you are doing some stuff with ai, so I can justify it somehow, but mostly I'm just here to talk to Gregg Spiridellis
you're an interesting guy.
Gregg Spiridellis: I appreciate that. Thank you so much. And pretty much everything I'm doing is touched by AI right now I think we'll have a lot to talk about.
Jason Jacobs: Great. Of course I want to talk about the backstory and your journey, all that, but for starters, what are you up to now?
Gregg Spiridellis: I'm up to a wide range of projects right now, and I think it ties into your own adventure after selling JibJab and another company, I started with my brother called StoryBots. We sold that to Netflix and in 2023 we were done with both of those. And so I've taken on. Along with my brother, a really big creative endeavor.
We're working with some very awesome exclusive music rights to build basically a family franchise, an animated family franchise. And for those who don't know, story bots was an animated series that we independently wound up selling to Netflix as one 11 Emmys. So now we're
Jason Jacobs: I was worried you struck me as a kind of guy. I would have to drag that kind of stuff out of that doesn't talk about your own accolades, so I'm glad you mentioned that
Gregg Spiridellis: I, I typically don't, but in podcasts it's like, people don't know who I am. They're like, why am I listening to this guy? So it's we've made content that's worked. We can leave it there. We don't need to go deeper in that. Just try to get some credibility with your discerning audience. And so now we're.
Thinking about how do you build a franchise from the ground up in this new world? And what does AI enable not only in terms of speed and cost, but also in terms of new creative tools, things that actually help you on the in the creation of new ideas as well. So we're excited about that. I'm consulting with Google Labs.
An AI product is my second journey. And then I've got a startup that provides an AI. Tool set to therapists, so AI tools for therapy and journaling that I'm also building. So lots of lots of projects in the hopper right now.
Jason Jacobs: You're confusing because if you look at your background at one point you were an investment banker. You've done some internet startups, you did some Netflix stuff. Now you're doing I think, is it a, so when you say fra when you say franchise, is it a, like a full length film or what are we talking
Gregg Spiridellis: Yeah, so we're talking about it's based on the music of a guy named Perry Grip, and if you have a kid in the. In the eight to 12-year-old zone, there's a high probability you've heard the song Reigning Tacos or Space Unicorn or one of his other genius genius songs. And we're working with Perry to turn his library of hundreds of songs into characters and narratives that form their own universe.
And the first project we're working on is a feature film.
Jason Jacobs: Very cool. So getting back to the, your confusing part, like in i investment banker, internet founder, media guy, Netflix stuff, and now feature length film. Like how, what if someone said what are you professionally how do you answer that? What do you identify as?
Gregg Spiridellis: I just I think my, I don't remember what my, I think my LinkedIn just says entrepreneur because I just couldn't figure out what bucket to put myself in, but I think of myself as. An entrepreneur, an author, a producer, creator, product guy. It really, it covers the gamut. I like to do a little bit of everything.
Jason Jacobs: And when you think about the different chapters, are there commonalities? Is it a logical progression in your mind
Gregg Spiridellis: it's, the commonality is what I've always been fascinated with was how technology enables new kinds of storytelling. And that is absolutely the single thread that runs through it all. In this career I was in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, bear Stearns, and did my Wharton MBA, and I had this kind of prior life, but when I was at Wharton in 97.
To 99. I discovered the internet and the capabilities to stream full motion video over the internet. And my brother was an independent animator and filmmaker doing all sorts of amazing experimental work with early digital photography and animated content. And so when I was at business school, I showed it to him and before we knew it, we just started riffing and making really fun little shorts together.
So when I graduated from business school, I said, this is what I want to do. I wanna work with technology and storytelling and build a media business with my brother. So we started JibJab in 99. And back then it was, the web and email is a distribution channel and flash animation. Vector animation that could fit over a phone line.
And then over time things evolved. It became social media. We could do more intense productions with with broadband rolling out. We could do personalization with Facebook integrations and do things like Elf Yourself was another project we did. So all of these ways. That technology unlock new form, new formats, new creative formats of storytelling like Elf Yourself couldn't have existed in a pre-Facebook, pre broadband internet world.
And also how do you use these new technologies to. Produce efficiently and find business models that can support the creation and production of that content. For example, with JibJab we started doing ads and sponsorships. It evolved. We were one of the earliest companies doing subscription content with with greeting cards.
I've always found that piece of it interesting. So now as I look, story Bots was the same way. We started Story Bots on YouTube. We wound up spec financing the first season of that show because we made a bet that Netflix was gonna need original content. And so we took. $3 million of cash flow from JibJab.
We said, let's put it over here and just make our show the thing you're never supposed to do in Hollywood, which is produce your own show. We produce our own show, but we weren't just creators saying, yay, let's make a show. We were like, we. Netflix is coming on strong, they're gonna need original content.
This is a bet that's worth making. And it was. And so we did that. We licensed it. We wound up selling the company to Netflix. So it's always how technology is reshaping the media landscape, what kind of creative formats it unlocks what kind of production efficiencies you can get. And most importantly, how do these tools empower artists?
That is the key, like my brother is. The greatest wrangler of artistic talent in the known universe. And he's done it with flash and dial up modems. He's attracted the best talent. He's done it with Facebook and dancing elves. He certainly did it with story bots where we have artists from around the world who contributed to it.
And now we're gonna do it again with AI on this new project we're working on with Perry Grip.
Jason Jacobs: Who's older, and what's the age gap with you and your brother?
Gregg Spiridellis: I'm older. I'm three years older. Than he is.
Jason Jacobs: Huh And w were you guys very different kids growing up or
Gregg Spiridellis: yeah, we weren't very different. We were we were definitely like close, but we weren't the Coen brothers out in the backyard with a super eight camera making movies. It was not until. After I had my soul was almost snuffed out as an investment banker that and we started working together that you know, that we have this kind of collaborative relationship.
And now, JibJab was 26 years ago almost that we started the company and we're still creating new things and we're still having a blast and we're still working our ass off and love working with each other.
Jason Jacobs: And as the formats have kept evolving under your feet, do d does your process also continue to evolve? Or have you gotten into a rhythm that stayed pretty consistent as the formats have ha have been moving?
Gregg Spiridellis: I think it's constant iteration and constant exploration and constant innovation, certain things stick and certain things don't, but I think our back and forth has always been the same, which is I. What, it was really just about a ping pong of what if we did this?
What could this technology do? What if we, what if we tried to make a product that, that helped people do this? It's. It's a constant back and forth and iteration on ideas. So I don't think that's changed at all. And it's just, I don't think our enthusiasm for new technologies and the possibilities they unlocked has degraded at all over the years.
If anything, we're more excited about AI than we were about vector animation over a phone line 25 years ago.
Jason Jacobs: And you said that, and nobody should produce your own show in Hollywood why is that or why was that, and h how has that conventional wisdom been evolving as the power dynamics? Are evolving with more opportunities for for people to do things without gatekeepers in the picture.
Gregg Spiridellis: a hundred percent. It's a great question. It. What is the definition of a show? That's what it comes down to. And when we started JibJab, our rallying cry, the jolly Roger flag we were hanging was the gatekeepers are crumbling. We can reach an audience without any middleman and create things. That we want to create, and if they resonate, the audience will share it for us.
We don't need their distribution. The first thing was the audience was the network. This was pre-Facebook, pre TikTok, pre everything was like, the audience is actually the distribution channel, and if you create something of value, they will distribute. In it. So that was the kind of the founding premise of JibJab.
And so now that's even more true. And now we used to have to stand up our own servers. Like now you just upload it to YouTube. Now the game has changed, like creators can create and the tools and the software and everything that's supporting creators is better and easier and more turnkey.
So by all means, if the show is something you can run and gun and produce yourself or with some other people, and get it out there. Oh yeah. That is the way to do it. It's what we did with StoryBots to begin with. We started it on YouTube when I was saying jokingly before that you never invest your own money in a show.
This was a format of half hour television series that ran multiple millions of dollars that had no clear buyer on the distribution side. And so when you're producing those sorts of shows, there's a handful of places you can put a 30 minute kid show, and it's not on YouTube. You're not gonna get an ROI on YouTube.
You're not gonna get it on TikTok or Instagram. That's what I meant. But it, but by all means intellectual properties should be developed on, on digital channels for the most part. I think especially if for like new up and coming creators.
Jason Jacobs: Huh And the creative process itself I'm curious how it. It differs for you from the shortest form, like these little clips or scenes or stories to the other extreme, which is a full feature length film, but also how your process has just changed over time in general.
Gregg Spiridellis: Yeah, I would say at the very beginning, it was very spontaneous. It was, let's make this, we make it, we put it out there, we iterate or we learn. And then the next time we do something, we take those learnings and we do it again. So looking back on the earliest. Days of our creative partnership.
We would make little shorts and then we would learn, oh, music works. Oh, contemporary theme, like themes that tie into topical contemporary ideas work. Oh wow. When we make fun of politicians, when we use a photo collage face that really works. Marionette puppetry works. So you have like comedy, music, collage, animation, all these things we've learned, and then you create.
Which was our big hit, our big breakthrough was an animated satire called This Land Is Your Land. It was one of the first kind of truly produced viral videos on the internet in 2004. And people, the thing we've decided our, when we write the story of our career, the name of the book is gonna be, you guys Must have a lot of time on your hands because everyone used to say to us when we did this land.
By the way, it took us five years. We started in 99, this time was 2004. The thing we heard more than anything else was, boy, you guys must have a lot of time on your hands. No, we actually had no time on our hands 'cause we were iterating and it iterating. So that was the early days. And I would say, we learned a lot and we applied it.
And now let's look at the extreme of today, which is we just got done with an 18 month process. Or actually let me now go to Story Bots, which was writing a television show, right? Going from short form stuff to television. And then the creative process became less about what's this funny thing we're making and more about, okay, like what's the structure of this thing?
How are we gonna set this up in a way. Where we can create a lot of content that's, that fits under this umbrella. Okay. Who are the characters? What are the goals of the show? In this case, it was a learning show, so I think it was a very a much more kind of structured approach to building the world.
And then we had a very specific way of producing because it was like every Story Bots episode teaches a kid, how does a cell phone work? Why is sky blue? So it became very much about breaking down the lesson, working with an educator to approve it, and then creating around that. And now most recently we've been writing a screenplay for 18 months and it's been the hardest, most challenging.
Project creative endeavor either of us have ever undergone, we felt like imposters the whole time. It's been the highest highs, the lowest lows. And after 18 months, we're finally there and it's okay, this is a great script and
Jason Jacobs: And there's no, is there any feedback loop during those 18 months or.
Gregg Spiridellis: The feedback loop is us and we have one story artist who is critical in the development process. So we are hypercritical hyper hypercritical about our own work. And so there's really no exter there's for the development of this script, there's really been no external sources.
It's been us packaging it. Now we're at the stage where, yeah, now we're gonna start to go out. We're gonna make it, we're gonna bring new artists in on it. And we can't wait to see what other people with fresh eyes see, because, we're 18 months into this thing. You start to get, you start to get blind to it to a certain degree, but you also.
When you work on a piece of creative content for a long period of time and it still makes you laugh or still inspires you, that becomes your best signal. Like when we're actually able to read the script for the 1500th time and read it through and at the end of it go, that was good, that worked.
Oh, this piece might need to change. But you start to get more confident in the creative, I think the longer you sit with it.
Jason Jacobs: It sounds like so much of what you've done along the way is just constant. Experimentation and iteration. It also sounds like there's been long periods without that kind of dopamine hit of validation. How do you manage your own psychology as you're going through that? And I ask because although I'm not writing any scripts or the building in public is a form of that.
And I struggle with it constantly.
Gregg Spiridellis: It is so hard. It's the hardest part about being an entrepreneur. I have, there's this great cartoon like panel by, I think it's called Gaping Void. And it says, my life is an entrepreneur. And it's 20 little squares with a guy in it, and it goes, oh, fucko fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.
Hell yeah. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. It's worth googling. That's it, man. Those dopamine hits, sometimes they come in. In bursts, but for the most part, they get like really spread out. And in those spread out periods, you start to question like, am I any good? Did I get lucky?
Am I wasting my, am I wasting my time? Should I be building this all of those like dark thoughts that keep you up in, in at night. They're hard, man. They really, they fuck with you. They really mess with your head. And at the end of the day, it's just, is your conviction in the idea and what you're trying to birth into the world stronger than the voices in your head telling you that you sucked and you're, you got lucky and this one will never work.
Jason Jacobs: Have there been cases where your gut was strong that something would work and it didn't? And and then the opposite, have there been cases where your gut was strong wouldn't work, and you didn't even wanna put it out there and then you were blown away in a positive way? And if so, to either of those, like what has that done in terms of your confidence in trusting your own gut?
Gregg Spiridellis: Yeah, I can't think of an incident where we didn't think something would work and it did. I had a failed venture in after story bots in between the projects I'm working on now called Hi Ho. And it was a platform for asynchronous threaded video conversation. Reddit meets TikTok. You could start a conversation, people could reply with video clips, and you could basically build a branching tree around it.
And man, it felt like the right time. This was right at the beginning of the pandemic clubhouse had come on board, be real. There were all these new social formats that people were experimenting with and I didn't. Create it because I, oh, that's a trend. I'm gonna do it. It was like, this was natural.
It was like, why aren't people communicating and have our conversations with video? Like we have this toxic waste dump of like anonymous text. What if you see people's real faces? And so I we built it and I raised money and and at the end of the day it didn't work. And I learned a lot of lessons as to why.
But the format I still believe in, and I still harbor this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna Frankenstein monster, that thing back from the dead someday. 'cause the format was great. And the people who used it loved it. We, I just couldn't get the I just couldn't get the kind of network effects kicking in and I know why now.
So
Jason Jacobs: I ask?
Gregg Spiridellis: she ask why, or, okay. Yeah, let's talk about it. It was a social network, right? The LA a consumer social network. The last big consumer social network, many real meaning is Snapchat chat from 2011. What I did wrong was I tried to create a horizontal platform. I tried to create a place where anyone could come and talk about anything, and that was the big mistake because there was no.
There was no overarching context for the, for people to engage around. And so what happened was we'd have people come in and then they would spread around and like the, it would dissipate on the network. And so someone wants to talk about this and someone wants to talk about that. I had, like Gary V was an investor, Adam Grant, Tim Ferriss, like they brought communities in.
But the community dissipated. I couldn't fix the churn. So we actually wound up repurposing the platform around the context of all things of it was called sober Together. And it became like an AA meeting, which was you would check in every day and people would check in and they would support each other.
And it was video and it was incredible. It was just this incredible, and when we narrowed the context, the format worked. So I think like my big thing, my big mistake there was, yeah, was was having a broad horizontal platform versus something that was contextualized and then also no single player mode, which was like, you it didn't have utility outside of like the conversation.
So you needed someone else to be engaged with, for it to actually deliver some value to the user. And it was also pre-chat GPT. I'll say I shut it down at the end of 2022. And the last thing was people talking on video. It takes a very long time to consume that information. With had GBTA or, with LLMs, I could have summarized those long transcripts and give people a signal on the product as to what the hell is this three minute video about?
Is it worth my time to watch it? So anyway, those are my three. My three things I would've done over if I could.
Jason Jacobs: It is sober together, still carrying on.
Gregg Spiridellis: It is not, we had to wind it down, unfortunately. It was one of those things where it really worked. I couldn't, I had a bunch of venture capital in, I couldn't see how to build a model in that space without, a lot of the businesses in that space become very exploitive around lead gen around like all sorts of.
Stuff. And I was just like, you know what? Like I just, this isn't and it's just not my passion. It's like I loved building the media product for that use case, but I didn't have the expertise or the drive to go build a product in the recovery space. And the business models I saw were, that would not make me feel like a, I like building things that make people happy and add value and those felt a little exploitive to me.
Jason Jacobs: And so how did you get to the franchise idea and when did you get to the franchise idea?
Gregg Spiridellis: So after so my brother and I have worked with Perry Grip for. He started, we started, we literally started story bots on YouTube with an a, b, C series, series 26 videos musical numbers for each letter of the alphabet. And Perry wrote those for us. So we've been working with Perry for over a decade.
He had his own original library, which is enormous, 30 million listeners a year, 250 million music streams global, over 60% of his audiences. Is outside the US and they're all character based. He's got, it's space unicorn.
Jason Jacobs: Is it is this a normal thing for, for artists like Perry to own their own library, how does
Gregg Spiridellis: No, not at all. Like Perry is unique in that he owns publishing and master and everything else, so he's self distributed, his own work. Fun fact, he was also in a group called Nerf Herger, which was a famous alternative band in the, eighties and nineties. He's just an amazing guy and his music is just awesome.
And Evan and I. L have always loved his music. It wasn't about, Hey, go make kids music. It was like, no, like we drive around listening to like space unicorn and now it was cool when our kids were young and now they're embarrassed by us, but we just love this. His music, we love the spirit of his music.
We always say it's like baby shark, as an earworm, but like really good. It's it's that kind of thing. When we were done. With our overall producer deal with Netflix. So they acquired our company in 2019 and we became producers for Netflix through 2023 and after we delivered the last Story Bots episodes were like, okay, let's go make a wor, let's go make a universe out of these songs because the characters in these songs need to be brought to life.
And that was the inspiration.
Jason Jacobs: And where did that. Idea even come from are there corollaries is making a universe out of characters and song something that's been done before.
Gregg Spiridellis: I don't know. It's just going back to what do you think of this? What do you think of that? We had all these ideas and one of 'em was like, what's go, de la Soul? Apparently, we had an introduction, intro to De La Soul and one of the ideas was, let's go make a movie with de La Souls.
Three feet high in Rising catalog or we wanted to do all these projects. But at the end of the day look, animated family features are a huge business. Huge business like these movies. Make a lot of money and these franchises basically drive value for the biggest media distributors out there.
If you look at the top, the most viewed, the most viewed movies, if you look at like the amount of time spent these franchises are really big business and we. And Perry has this incredible library of IP that we could build on and bring all the artistic talent, like again, my brothers, all that artistic talent to bear with all these new technology tools, with this great music and our experience in now producing at scale for for these big channels.
It felt like the right move.
Jason Jacobs: Okay, so you had Perry and his library and you had your brother and you with your experience in track record and connections. How much had you, did you flesh out from the outset in terms of. How to involve the gatekeepers. In what way? To involve the gatekeepers, was there intentionality about not involving 'em in certain ways?
What's the typical way and what's been your path so far, and how much of that was planned versus just figuring it out as you've gotten into it.
Gregg Spiridellis: We're just getting started now, turning it into a business. So we spent, we, the value we bring is in developing and forming the creative. Product. And so we've spent 18 months writing a script putting together a television show concept as well. And,
Jason Jacobs: and this is all without knowing that it's gonna be purchased, but hoping that you
Gregg Spiridellis: oh, yeah, no, we don't wanna purchase, we don't wanna purchase. So a lot of times when you do these deals someone a streamer or someone will just try to buy the ip. We're not selling a script. We're not selling a show. We're not selling a movie. Our vision is to finance this as a company to actually build a franchise that then ultimately would probably wind up getting bought by a Disney or a Netflix or a, an NBC or Paramount or something
Jason Jacobs: Is this the Story Bots Playbook again, just with a different format.
Gregg Spiridellis: No, it's very different than Story Bots Playbook. So the Story Bots Playbook was develop the audience on YouTube. And then invest in a show because there was this new buyer coming online that was gonna need IP called Netflix and streaming in general was gonna be this new market. And so now all of those markets so that playbook doesn't work.
Like I would never go build an animated series on YouTube. And I should also say kids viewership when we started in 2011 on YouTube was. Enormous. There were videos with billions of views and it was total crap. Like no one was investing in kids' content. So we had audience, we had really a low bar for kind of content quality, which we could go well above.
And we had the streamers coming online who were going to need new ip. So that was a completely different, I would never do that again. What I would say we're doing now is the Pixar Playbook. The Pixar Playbook, which is. Build really rich, deep, awesome characters, great narratives and what it and bring that franchise to life in a feature in the format of a feature film.
And what enables us to do that now, that was never before possible. Is these tech is, are the technologies like the ability to actually produce a grade, a animated feature for $10 million? That is now possible where I would say when we started StoryBots, that was not and that, that's really bringing, that's about doing what we've always done, which is like, what are these new tools?
In this case, all AI. Almost all AI into production tools like Blender and then bring this incredible global network of talent we have to the table around a great story with great characters. And so the playbook is, really different. But again, it's all just storytelling and technology and, and creative talent.
Jason Jacobs: What are some of the. Biggest things that are different now that make that 10? I was gonna say affordable budget. 10 million is still a lot of money, but but that make the 10 million number possible where it once wasn't, like what changed? And then any examples you can give to bring that home for listeners and for me would be
Gregg Spiridellis: Yeah, so what's changed? Like I. Ai, generative, generative images, generative video, all of these tools and the power they're putting into the hands of creators to be a hundred x creators. You always talked about the 10 x engineer or the, if you're in the technology business like.
We are talking about tools that 100 x the creative powers and the production output of great talent. So again, how do you put those tools into the hands of the very, very best talent in the kind of, in the animated storytelling world? So the tool side it be, look, there's, the faster, there's the cheaper part of the story.
That's never been interesting to us. What's interesting to us is like, what is the literally world class best in class talent in the world? What can they do with these tools and how can we help them learn how to use them and learn from them on how to use them and cross pollinate all of that.
That's what we did at JibJab. That was story bots. That was like the studio. We had a hundred people in a studio in Los Angeles. Like it wasn't all just about sitting there. It was about what we learned from each other. So I think. That's, what's changed. And then in terms of an example flow used a production tool called Blender.
Open Source 3D animation. It won an Oscar, it beat Pixar, it beat Disney. It beat Ev, so it beat every studio in the world, a $4 million budget. In the hands of a small team of amazing artists. That's what's happening right now in this world. And that's like where we wanna bring everything we've built over 25 years to the table and go win that, and go and go make a movie.
That just blows people away for a budget that is, would've been impossible, 10 years ago.
Jason Jacobs: And how are there distinct phases? So there, it sounds like there's the. Early creative process, and then there's the fleshing out the story, and then there's the getting the you know getting the characters or the experts involved and then, working with the tools. But it's do you graduate from one chapter to the next or do they blend together?
And what are the key phases in bringing something like this to life?
Gregg Spiridellis: I love this. Like honestly,
Jason Jacobs: I'm just looking to learn for free. 'cause I don't come from this world at all. And I'm like, oh man, I get to learn from this like 11 time Emmy winner that I, now I know the number.
Gregg Spiridellis: now you got to say, I think the process of how you go about creating these media properties needs to be as innovative as the storytelling and the creative and the formats and everything else. And so every era has been a different strategy for how do you take this and you bring it to market. And so for us right now.
We've created we have this library of music, which is insane with quantifiable metrics of global mass audience appeal. We have my brother and my reputation as creators and producers. We have the work product of that reputation for 18 months, which is a script which is ready to go, which is really hard to create.
So that's that's, and we've probably spent about a hundred thousand dollars of our own money in kind of this development process. So okay, now next stage. Let's get some money in so we can hire some artists and we can start to realize this a little bit, but not too much money. 'cause we don't want to dilute ourselves too much.
Okay, great. Now we're working with WME. We've got the best age, literally the best agents in the business. We went in through our Emanuel. Now let's go get an A-list celebrity attached to this. Okay, now we've got the music, we've got us, we've got this. The script, we've got all the art we've created.
We've got Aless Town, now you go finance the remaining, seven, $8 million to get this thing done. Because you could do that with project financing. You get production debt, you can do non-dilutive equity, you can do non-dilutive financing for the project and continue to own the franchise. That's the playbook now, which I think, I love figuring that part of the whole thing out as well. 'cause that's just like a puzzle, like telling the, telling the story and writing the script. I.
Jason Jacobs: Did, do you, do you see a wide discrepancy amongst the most talented people in each of these key roles that are involved in bringing this type of production to life in terms of their views on ai? Because it, it seems like if you look in, I mean if you look in software engineering as an example, what I'm hearing anecdotally from lots of software engineers and engineering leaders and founders and heads of product and stuff, is that there is one school of very talented engineers that is embracing these tools, that's eager to experiment with them, that's excited to incorporate 'em into their flow.
And then there's another school of them that couldn't be bothered that see them as in the way that find them annoying and that want them outta their face is the same thing happening in Hollywood.
Gregg Spiridellis: a thousand percent. Let's break it down. If you're an artist you have every right to be scared because quite frankly, throughout human civilizations, artists have been fucked at every stage, at every technology like innovation, right? So there's a right to be scared and we see, and there is a lot of that.
But the best artists are embrace. It's just a tool. It's just a tool. There were purists with paintbrushes who would never pick up Photoshop. Photoshop is just a tool. The question is, do these tools help you realize your vision faster, better, cheaper? Do they inspire you? That's the difference about this technology revolution versus Photoshop, and these technologies, it's a conversation, right? Something may come out of a model that inspires you and you take a different vector. Yes, everyone is scared because traditionally artists are, are taken advantage of and they and if they don't evolve careers end. But to me, like this is a whole new.
Opportunity for artists to do more, to go farther, to take their visions further than they ever could have before. And the best artists are gonna run to, and we always say you've gotta run to this, you gotta run to, or you're gonna run over by it. It there's two choices here because the genie's not going back in the bottle.
So if you're an artist, you can either say. I'm going to use this as a tool to make better art and to better express myself. Or you can say, I'm not gonna use this. This isn't real art. And guess what? It's really like it. It's not a bright future for the folks who don't embrace these new technologies.
Jason Jacobs: A related question, but it sounds which again, back to the coding analogy, it, it seems like in software engineering, the tool tools add value for people like me that don't code at all. But where they had the most value is they had the most value for. People that already understand coding and architecture, and it can give them leverage.
They're already strong
Gregg Spiridellis: Totally.
Jason Jacobs: And it can give them leverage. And it sounds like that's how you're getting the most value from these tools as well. How do you think about the future? WI mean, is there a world where these tools also enable people like me who not only don't know engineering, but don't know filmmaking either to become filmmakers or is it really that the experts are gonna continue to carry the day?
Gregg Spiridellis: I think there's just always, whether it's engineering or art, there's always gonna be a distribution of talent. And the top tier talent, which is who we work with. If you're, you're building a startup, the engineering talent you wanna work with, like they will look at these tools and say, I can do 10 x, I can do a hundred x more than I would've been able to do without these tools.
And that's not the engineer who says. I'm gonna pump this into cursor because I don't want to do the work. Or or someone who says, I'm gonna pump this into AI and get an image. 'cause I don't want to think about it. No, I think like the best in breed in whatever craft you work in is going to be wildly empowered by these tools.
And yeah, again, it's it's like a run to it or get run over by it kind of thing. But I think the best artists or the best engineers, you get there because you're passionate and you're curious and people are passionate and curious, looking new tools, and they don't go, oh no, this is gonna hurt me.
They say, what can I do with this? And I think that's the same if you're an engineer or you're an artist.
Jason Jacobs: And the fact that this is not just giving you and your team leverage, but it's giving what every other team, or at least the ones that are embracing these tools, leverage as well. What does that mean in terms of competition, in terms of discovery, in terms of longevity, in terms of, any of the key metrics that you might think about when determining whether a production is successful.
Gregg Spiridellis: Yeah, I love it. It democratizes the making. It democratizes the production and the best ideas, and the best stories and the best characters are gonna win. It's it's the ideas that that resonate the most are gonna be the ones that stand out. And, in early JibJab days, in 99, it was.
The gatekeepers are, we can go beyond the gatekeepers because I can distribute this piece of content on into browsers over a phone line. Distribution was democratized. Now we're seeing like production and creation tools being democratized, and that may mean that someone who never could have realized their vision in a visual sense.
We'll have a tool to do that. And I think at the end of the day, it's those underlying ideas that are gonna, that are gonna differentiate the the winners from the losers in terms of content creation.
Jason Jacobs: And as the machines continued to get smarter, there's talk of a GI and what that means and stuff like that. Do you think that the roles that you and your brother are playing are ever gonna be under threat?
Gregg Spiridellis: I would never say never. The pace of everything is absolutely blinding. All I can do is say I'm in this moment right now, and how can I use these to to create things that I'm proud of in this life. I think there will always, we've always, Evan, my brother and I have always thought of the work we do as the conductor of the orchestra.
And it's get the best product people, the best engineers, the best artists, and let's like, let's help orchestrate all of them to create something that none of us could create individually. And I think I think you're gonna all, even with technology, I think. That just becomes another player in the mix.
And how do you engage with the, with these technologies? They're no longer just hammers, but they're actually they're more they can actually do a lot more. And how do you help coordinate their efforts with human efforts to create like stories and characters that resonate with humans?
I haven't seen anything. Yet on the ai cre, pure true creation side, that's tells me that the machine is a, is creating something that I can emote with. Yet. Now, if I go into Claude and I say, Hey, I've got a character in this situation and I gotta get him here. What are five obstacles I could put in the way or gimme a whole list of obstacles that might make sense.
Like the models can help, like I think step by step, but or orchestrating these full. Experiences like a feature film, for example. From my experience of working with them, they are very far away from creating something that's unique and compelling and di and differentiated.
Jason Jacobs: And as the cost continues to fall dramatically and the experts resources go further and further. What are some of the implications that, that might not be obvious? For example, what are the implications on the, the big agencies that represent these actors? What are the implications on the big funders that tend to plow the big capital in when the big capital is not necessarily needed anymore?
Are there other stakeholders that are missing? Are there second and third order effects that could dramatically change the industry as we know it?
Gregg Spiridellis: Oh. I think the Indus, I think this is a, like a nuclear bomb in the middle of this industry, nothing is going to remain when this thing like reaches. Its I mean everything is going to change how content gets created, produced, distributed. Literally every piece of that pipeline is going to be radically changed by, by these technologies, how they empower new people to create new things, what formats those things get created in how those things get distributed. I can't imagine in five years we're looking back in five years the kind of, the structure of the industry looks anything like it does today.
Jason Jacobs: I, this is more of a philosophical thing, but one of the things I've been wrestling with is as the pace of innovation, not just in film, but in everything continues to accelerate, it just seems like durability. Building anything enduring is harder and harder to come by. And, I've always thought when I look at like the meaning of life and stuff, I wanna be a good dad.
I want to be a good husband, I want to be a good son. I want to be a good friend. But I also like, I wanna build stuff that lives on beyond me and I. Makes a difference in the world and it just seems like that's becoming harder and harder to come by. And so I think the thing that I'm wrestling with is, do you do you just try to get on a wave and know that I'll just get on and then get off, right?
Or do you just, it's like you just embrace the fact that you're gonna be irrelevant and we're all gonna die and be forgotten and that's it. And just live for the now or is trying to build something, enduring something that that it's still noble and. Maybe even realistic to aspire to do.
Gregg Spiridellis: Yeah. The Blues Traveler song won't mean a thing in a hundred years. I think that's just I think that's just honestly the nature of of everything. And so I think a lot about legacy. I. But I don't think about it in terms of the thing that I've created. So like for me, I look back and go, man, how cool is that?
We were in JibJab, we're doing like, we did some of the first viral videos and now it's this is what it is and and wow. We created a show that like hun, literally we're in 190 countries, 35 languages teaching kids things and that they watch with their families and laugh and. And I've got this AI therapy product I'm building and literally thousands of, notes every week where therapists are like, are better serving their customers because of the tools we're providing them.
I think I used to think about what's the, what's the big, how is this thing going to last? And now I just think, am I dropping little things along the way that like are creating joy and positive energy in the world when they're dropped? And then am I proud of kind of the exhaust as I look back on them all?
Jason Jacobs: How long are you gonna keep doing this and going this hard?
Gregg Spiridellis: Oh man, dude, I can't, I love this shit. I just, every day I wake up and I want to build, I want to like, create new things. I have trouble sleeping 'cause I can't wait to get outta bed and go write that script or go to that Figma file. My brother and I are. Working on, or, whatever it is, these or talk to my engineer or marketing guy about our therapy product and how we're, gonna make things better and help more people.
So I just, I love what I do. I don't think I ever stop. At some point, we all become irrelevant. Or we all stop having the ability to natively gr the changes and see around the corners. I think that's the thing is like I've. If I were to say the one thing I've been that's driven our career success is like I could, I've seen around the corners, I've seen the technology and I see this is the, this is where it's going.
The, where the puck's going. At some point, I'm sure just like that may, I may lose that ability, in which case I'll just produce a bunch of shit. No one cares about.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah, you just answered a question indirectly that I had wondered about earlier in the discussion, which is how do you and your brother divide responsibilities? But I think that was a good tell right there, that you're busy seeing around the corners and then he's busy staffing up for battle,
Gregg Spiridellis: Yeah, like especially I would say a lot of the early kind of high level ideation. We bake it all together. And then when it comes down to it, like mostly I'm doing product and technology and marketing and he's. Building the world class art and production teams. He's just he's got an, he's built an incredible network and he's an amazing creative leader who like inspires great artists to do their best work.
So yeah, that's, that. I could not do that work. And I think he would say he couldn't do my work either. There and we've got nice, we always say it's a Venn diagram. There's a really great overlap in the middle and the kind of the creative idea, creative side and ideation and what we're gonna do.
And then when it comes to production decisions, I trust him when it comes to product, technology, marketing. He he trusts me.
Jason Jacobs: So what are the steps and timelines look like from here? Would this, big effort and what does success look like?
Gregg Spiridellis: Yeah, timeline is now that we've got our, our original work, all of the kind of creative foundation for this film in place, we're gonna raise a little bit of equity capital to get the ball rolling. But once we do that, we're, we're, success is making a great movie that we're proud of.
That's always been it, like story bots. Was preschool. It was modern day Sesame Street. Like we did that 'cause there was nothing we wanted to watch on television with our kids. It was all crap. It was all processed crap. And so we said, let's make a show. That makes us laugh too. So we've always found the best way to be successful is just to make what we wanna see in the world.
And that's, that'll be success here too. And the secondary effect is, oh, someone wanted to pay us a lot of money for this movie and oh, hundreds of millions of people have seen it. So that's, first order first is just focus on what's gonna make us laugh and that we're proud of.
And every other time that's worked for us.
Jason Jacobs: And what do the timelines look like in terms of what, when we might be able to watch this someday?
Gregg Spiridellis: Ah, movies take a long time. So this will be 2028.
Jason Jacobs: Have you thought much about life beyond that, or is it just all manic into this until you get there?
Gregg Spiridellis: This is a franchise, so the feature film is the first piece. Once we get that into production, we're gonna be producing television shows or digital shorts. Merch, console games, licensing. We're building a business around the franchise that's a clear, that's a clear, every business, every single, every business takes five years to get a f that every business we've built five years to get a foothold and like another three to five to really.
Start to see its scale. That's been our experience. So I would say, yeah, the next five to 10 years we'll be making this a franchise as big as any Pixar franchise, as big as the Minions, as big as, anything you can think of on the kind of family entertainment front. And then on the AI therapy product called Moments.
I'm an avid journaler. I've been using AI in my journaling like. That's a business I just want to keep building till I die. Like I just wanna create like a really great product for people to be able to leverage tools for self-exploration and and live better lives so that one is less of a let's go make this the world changing, world Global Scale franchise.
That one's more let's, I wanna build a really cool business that I think that I'm proud of that delivers value to people at a different kind of pace and scale.
Jason Jacobs: So who's doing the coding for that?
Gregg Spiridellis: I've got a in this global world, I've got a, full stack developer who's doing all of my engineering on that one.
Jason Jacobs: Uhhuh. Yeah. You, I don't know if it was clear, but what I was getting at is it you
Gregg Spiridellis: Oh no. God no. I got enough to do. I can't code as well. I wish I could. I wish I deeply wish I had those skills, but no I
Jason Jacobs: I we're in the same boat and, people are like, just use rep or whatever. And the more I, the more I just keep coming around to look. Maybe some people like are passionate enough and they can bang their head against the wall long enough that they can go from non-technical to figuring it out for some little single player product with a few million in ARR or something, which I don't wanna take away from.
That's phenomenal.
Gregg Spiridellis: Oh no. That's what I wanna build, but the thing is we're doing like therapy stuff and like security, like architecture matters. I'm not vibe coding something that someone's like spilling their deepest, darkest secrets into. So we are, we take like privacy, security, encryption, like all of those things are like really important and so I'm not vibe coding that one.
Jason Jacobs: For anyone listening who wants to be in your seat? Someday what advice do you have for them? And is it, is it, how much of it is just personality and born with versus something you can pick up? And how much of that picking up is just through school of heart knocks getting your teeth kicked in versus how much of it can be taught, if any?
Gregg Spiridellis: Yeah, I don't know. First of all, be lucky enough to be born with a sibling that you really like, that you really respect. Who does something? At a world class level who is different than what you do, hopefully at a world class level. My circumstances on that front are probably 80% of the kind of the career success that I've had.
But otherwise, I'd say if I generalize it, man, I was 30 years old. I spent four years in investment banking doing high yield deals and leverage buyouts and equity derivatives. And I went to Wharton and I did my MBA and at 30 I just said, I'm just gonna do something different. And I think there's something to be said, like if I were to give my kids one piece of advice, it'd be like, find out what you think you want to do, go hard as hell at it in your twenties.
And then just open up your mind to like totally new vectors in, in your thirties. And that to me, I think for me was like the key difference was like, have the courage to walk away from the, the easy. It's not easy money. You work your ass off in that world, but walk away from money and follow the thing that you're really curious and passionate about as trite and kind of cliche as it sounds.
Jason Jacobs: Is there anything that listeners can do for you? Any homework you wanna give us? Any any words of wisdom? Anyone you know, any roles you're trying to fill or anyone you wanna hear from? I.
Gregg Spiridellis: No. Right now I'm just we're doing it. If you've got any you've got any interesting angles on on what I've talked about, Ms. In this interview with you in this conversation, I'm all ears, man. I can I'm just Gregg@spiritellis.com, Gregg g@spiritellis.com.
Jason Jacobs: Thanks, Gregg. Anything I didn't ask that you wish I did or any parting words?
Gregg Spiridellis: No, I think I think we covered it all. I feel like we covered like a big part of the journey and I love you, what you're doing as a dad. I think that was really important to me. A lot of my exits from my, from JibJab and story bots were very much about creating. A, like a degree of financial security and and space, mostly space, so that I could be more present with my kids.
And so I think as, especially as, I forget what you call this was geezers or the old guy entrepreneurs or whatever,
Jason Jacobs: Fogey founders.
Gregg Spiridellis: you found, or as that's it as you, as you start to approach the fogey founder era, it's good to think about, hey what's fleeting And it's usually that time with your kids.
So I'm, I see you doing it and I did it as well and it's I look back on it. Feel very fortunate to have been able to get out of the, get off the hamster wheel and, enjoy a good portion of my kids' childhoods.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah, we didn't talk much about that, so I'm glad that you brought that up. That's a great point to end on. Gregg congrats on all your success. Super excited for for the future and for watching this production come to life. And we'll be cheering you on.
Gregg Spiridellis: Yeah. Fun chatting.
Jason Jacobs: Thank you for tuning into The Next Next. If you enjoyed it, you can subscribe from your favorite podcast player in addition to the podcast. Which typically publishes weekly. There's also a weekly newsletter on Substack at the next next.substack.com. That's essentially for weekly accountability of the ground I'm covering, areas I'm tackling next, and where I could use some help as well.
And it's a great area to foster discussion and dialogue around the topics that we cover on the show. Thanks for tuning in. See you next week.