Matt Ruby on Ruby and Rails Practice | UGtastic Archive
Vooza is a startup comic strip that combines technology and comedy, founded by Matt Ruby with a background in tech and stand-up comedy. The team consists of comedians and performers, and episodes often feature improvisation and unexpected outcomes.
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Hi, it's Mike with UGtastic. Today I'm sitting down with Matt Ruby, the founder of Vooza. You can go look at their videos at Vooza. com, V-O-O-Z-A. com, and @VoozaHQ on Twitter. They're the startup comic strip. You might have seen them or exchanged their videos through viral social media. Thank you very much for taking the time to sit down and chat, Matt. Sure. Thanks for having me. So VoozaHQ, excuse me, Vooza, Vooza. com, that's a very startup-y name. Where did you come up with the name, and where did Vooza, the show, come from?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
The name, I actually registered the URL. I registered the URL probably like eight years ago, and I don't know why. I just made up the word, and it was available, and figured I'd snare it for some unforeseen future purpose. And it's funny, I heard nothing about it whatsoever for years, and then the week before we launched, I got an offer on the domain name.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Oh, really?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And you're like, "Oh, this is valuable. " Yeah. It was like, "Oh, God. " But we already had done all the branding and logo stuff and other things, and I just wanted to launch. So it was just funny, eight years of nothing, and then the week before, I'm going to use it. So someone comes along and is like, "Hey, I'll give you money for that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
" So obviously, you have some background in technology, but how did Vooza come to be? Was it just out of humor that you were seeing in tech, or? Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I mean, I think it was kind of a few different things coming together. I'd worked in tech for a long time. I worked at a company called 37signals. I was actually the first employee there, and worked with Jason and David on the books and some of the marketing stuff. I originally had started off there. I was a web designer. And so I'd been there for, I think I worked there for 10 or 11 years, and I had also started doing stand-up comedy about halfway through that. And I'd been working, I live in New York, so working as a comedian here and doing a bunch of shows and meeting a lot of talented people that way. Eventually, I parted ways with 37signals, and I was looking to do more comedy stuff. And I felt like, "Okay, well, it's interesting that I know all this stuff about the tech world. " I felt like there was a lot of opportunities in the video space, which I still think there are. The network model was crumbling, and TV, as we know it, is falling apart, and something new is going to rise up in its place. I don't think anyone really knows what yet. But it just seemed like there was an opportunity there from a business standpoint, and also just for me on a personal unification theory mission of how could I bring together the comedy stuff that I wanted to be doing more of, and my tech background. And so I came up with the idea of Vooza as a way to kind of combine those two things and make fun of the tech world at the same time. I'd been immersed in it for a while and seen, you know, any time you have people who are really pretentious and lack self-awareness, there's room for comedy. And I think the tech world seems to have an endless supply of that. So two really interesting backgrounds, I mean, that you were doing stand-up and also 37signals, which I'm familiar with them. For those who might not know, they're the Basecamp company now and founder of Vooza. They're the founder of Rails and all kinds of neat books that are really great. But, you know, you mentioned the stand-up. I mean, going from a nice web designer position with a very reputable, solid company to stand-up, that is, I mean, there's startup dreams and then there's like big risks. That was quite the launch. I mean, did you have a, I mean, you said you've done stand-up, but did you have a background in actually doing performance art like this and any kind of syndication? No, I've actually been in a band for years. I was in a rock and roll band when I lived in Chicago. And I'd done that for a long time. And then when I moved to New York, that's sort of when I got involved in comedy and started diving into that more. I guess through 37signals, we did do some sort of comedic things, making fun of the tech world. We had a fake site called EnormaCom. And we also did like some fake press releases and things that were sort of maybe embryonic versions of Vooza, making fun of the tech world and how seriously people take themselves. And how they're focusing a lot of times seemingly on the wrong things. But yeah, no, I've always been making stuff, either writing or making music or doing stand-up or eventually stand-up led into sort of doing more video work and sort of creating sketches and things like that. So I think it was just sort of a natural fit. And I just sort of, just personally speaking, just try to keep chasing whatever's exciting to me at the time or turning me on. And as I got more and more into comedy, I kind of wanted to... I love doing it, but I also wanted to try to figure out is, hey, is there a way to make something that I like and that I'm proud of and that also makes money and is sustainable and isn't involving just being on the road constantly or something like that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
So that kind of leads me to the question of the team and the ensemble that you've put together.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Are these other developers that you've worked with and kind of had a comedic bent with? Or how did the Vooza team come to be? Sure.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
They're all comedians here in New York. All the cast members on the show are standup comedians and performers here in New York. And it's interesting because it's finding people who also seem believable in a startup environment but also are funny and good at standup. And so you have to kind of find that good middle ground, I guess. And we work with a production crew and a director here in New York who also have a lot of experience doing comedy videos and comedy stuff. So I think for me, it's like the more everyone involved in it can come from a comedy background, I think that's the hardest thing to do is to make it funny. I think I can kind of plant the seeds of like, hey, here's the reality of the tech world or what's the real thing that's happening and kind of explain it to people. And then they can kind of go from there and figure out what's the way to make it funny.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
So that kind of makes me wonder then when you do those, what is LinkedIn kind of a bit? Are these people just kind of ad-libbing that they don't really know what LinkedIn is? Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
Those are episodes where I don't even tell them what they're going to be talking about. We just turn the camera on and we ask them to explain.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
You know, skeuomorphic design or something like that and just sort of hear what answers come out. So that's the fun thing about working with stand-ups and their good improvisers and able to think on their feet. So most of the episodes we do have scripts for, but I'd say it's similar to maybe how Larry David films Curb Your Enthusiasm in that we know where the scene's going to start and where it's going to end. And there might be a couple like words or bullet points we want to hit, but we also want to give people room to improvise or just sort of make something up on the spot because a lot of times that's not going to work.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
So I think that's the freshest or funniest part of the episode. I have to say that I think it was the one with LinkedIn where at the very end, the lady who does the marketing director role.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Actually, I want to real quick, do your characters all have names?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
They do.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
Her name is Laura. Oh, Laura. So when Laura gets asked, she says, "Oh, I have to take this. " And she just walks away. That was so perfect for a marketing type. She just doesn't want to acknowledge that they don't know something. I've seen that in action. So it was just perfect. Marketing is a job that never ends.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
You're always putting a spin on everything, right? Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
So you're saying that a lot of the people that you're working with are not techies or actors who are ...
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
I mean, how do they sometimes react to off camera? Really? Is this what startups are like? Sure.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I think at first when we started, because we've been around over two years now, we've been around for a while, coming up on 100 episodes, actually. And at first, I think there was more of that, of explaining, okay, here's why this happens in the tech world and what it means and words like pivot or disrupt are being thrown around. But I think what's ... Actually, it's been interesting to me to watch. It's something that I used to think was a very niche, techie-only way of speaking or knowledge base has really been expanded to the world at large. I think you see movies like The Social Network and shows on HBO.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
Like Silicon Valley and the fact that everyone's got a smartphone, everyone's got apps, everyone knows about Snapchat and Facebook and reads these articles about the valuations. And I think a lot of the stuff that we're touching on in the show is sort of breaking it out into a mainstream audience of people who just all kind of ... Tech is just sort of a way of life. It's not really this niche thing like it was five or 10 years ago, I don't think.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right. Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
It's so embedded in the culture. I mean, it's gone out of business magazines, and now it's almost ...
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
I mean, what is that show?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
The Silicon Valley.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I mean, that's a mainstream show that people are watching outside of tech culture.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Sure.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
Even my sister-in-law, who is a medical student, she watched it. So that says a lot about how that culture is getting out of actual Silicon Valley. And as far as where you drive your ideas from, I mean, do you have a backlog of ideas that you work from?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Do you guys do like a, what is it, a spitball session?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I don't know what it's called for you guys in the entertainment biz, where you just come up and say, "Hey, let's sketch out an idea.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
" How do you come up with the scripts or at least the gist for an episode? Sure.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I just sort of have a huge notes file or database. Actually, there's an app called Scrivener that I keep everything in. And so there's kind of like a list of ideas or a list of a hundred different topics that I think might be funny for episodes, whether it's an article that I read in the Next Web or TechCrunch or some publication like that, or if it's an interview that I see with David Karp where he has a funny quote or something that I think is funny, or anywhere else. There's just sort of, I read an article recently about the toothbrush test, which apparently is something that Google uses when they decide whether to acquire a company or not. The idea of Larry Page talking about the toothbrush test, as soon as I see that, I'm like, "Okay, well, that's going to be a booze episode. We have to do something on this. " And so then I have to learn what that actually means and then be like, "Okay, well, how can we make this funny? " And then it's me sort of probably generating most of the ideas of the seed. And then I work with other cast members and writers to actually write the scripts. And so sometimes it'll be me explaining like, "Hey, here's the silly thing that happens.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
How can we incorporate that into the show?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
" Just throwing out ideas. And again, the cast also definitely has a lot of input into what they think is funny, or even when we're actually shooting, being like, "Hey, why don't we try it this way? " Or just improvising stuff on the spot. So I think a lot of times it's just sort of creating that framework of, "Hey, here's the subject and the topic now, but feel free to kind of play around with it and see where it goes. " Yeah. And it just reminds me of what I was listening to. I listened to SiriusXM. They have a comedy channel. So I can't remember the name of the comedian who said this, but he described it where people ask him how he gets to be funny, and he says, "Well, I watch the news. " If you watch the news, you just got to take it out of context, and it's hilarious because even in context, it's often hilarious.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I mean, I think that's a good point. I mean, so much of the stuff I see at tech blogs or the interviews that I hear or read, I'm like, "Uh, this is almost comedy. I'm going to be funny already. " A lot of times it's just taking an actual quote from some startup CEO and just making it maybe like 10% more absurd. But the basis of what's ridiculous about it, people in the tech world are saying ridiculous things all the time that are almost hilarious. They're just saying it with a straight face, whereas we put a little wink on it where I think people get the joke a little more.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
You only have to take it a little bit beyond what they're already saying to make it pretty absurd.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I mean, just the toothbrush test. I had a toothbrush test. I had a toothbrush test. I hadn't heard of that, but I mean, already it's on its face it's absurd.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Sure.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And you've got to go a little bit further and maybe make it – I'm not a comedian, so I'll just leave it to you. You've just got to go a little bit further, and it's hilarious. But I'd also like to just ask a little bit about kind of like your process for shooting and for – what is a day like on a VUZA set?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Do you do shooting every day? Is there a schedule? How many camera people do you have? What is that like? Sure.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I'd say we shoot about one weekend every six weeks or so, and we'll try to film between eight and 12 episodes during that weekend. So it's a pretty hectic schedule. We shoot two days – this is usually how we work anyway. We shoot two days straight. There's an office that we film at in New York, near Union Square. Our crew is – it's a pretty skeleton crew. We have a director. His name is Jesse Skatula. He's our crew. He does a great job. He brings his crew in. It's usually him, a DP, and a sound guy. Sometimes there's maybe one other person there, too. And then we have our cast, which is usually between five or ten people are there. And it's really – it's filming like sort of run-and-gun style, where we're just trying to kind of do things quickly but give people some room to play with stuff. We're usually filming the scenes five times, ten times a week with the two cameras set up, and then we'll switch the cameras and kind of get reverse angles and close-ups and things like that, and shoot it a few more times that way. And then from there, the editor has something to work with to put it all together. So that's sort of a general overview of how we work.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
So it's not – I mean, it is pretty loose. It isn't like big, scripted, formulaic, two-camera. Lucy enters stage left. It's pretty – I view the script as sort of like something to fall back on. The script is a framework where it's like, hey, if we're rushed or if we don't have time or no one else has any other ideas, then yeah, let's get that and bang it out and move on. But I think also – part of what I think is fun about the show is that we don't – we have low overhead, we have a small crew, and whereas – but that to me is an advantage in a lot of ways. Like if you look at a lot of these other sitcoms on major networks, they've got crews of dozens of people and this huge lighting setup and every second that they're filming is costing them thousands of dollars.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And that puts a ton of pressure and makes you want to move really fast and makes you just bang stuff out and gives you no room to like deviate from the script at all. And I think you can kind of sense that in a lot of those shows. They just have that sort of formulaic feel, whereas I kind of like working cheap and with a loose crew and a loose script. And I feel like the more you get that playful environment and vibe going on the set and with the cast and crew, that kind of comes out in the final product. You can feel that it's people having fun and there's something loose about the whole thing.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And also, I mean, now that you kind of mentioned it, the formulaic – like you look at the Big Bang Theory, which is very popular, and a lot of people look at that as a view into engineering, startup, techie, programming culture. But as a developer myself, I watch it and it is just cringe.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
It's painful for me to watch it because I could see the setup and I could see how they tried to telegraph a joke or something like that, whereas it seems like more with Vooza you just kind of let it ride.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I think that show is not meant for actual engineers or tech people. I think that show is meant for people – it's the same way like – But I know a few engineers who adore that show.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Really?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
It's hilarious. And I'm like – Yeah. I'm on your side. To me, it's also just even that – Yeah. – that format of the laugh track and even when they say a joke that's not funny, everyone erupts in this raucous laughter.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
I'm like, "Are you watching the same show as me?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
" Yeah. Because that was not that funny. Just the whole thing kind of feels phony. Yeah, much more shows like Peep shows, this UK show, or Curb Your Enthusiasm, or things without a laugh track, Spinal Tap and all those movies, things that kind of let the audience sort of breathe a little bit more and decide for themselves whether they think something is funny as opposed to a lot of other things.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And I think that's kind of where the punchline is. I think a lot of sitcoms or mainstream stuff seems a little bit like it's spoon-fed to you. And I'd rather kind of let people figure out for themselves where the punchline is.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And even then, it's – I mean, I've watched a couple of Voo's episodes where I recall it wasn't like laugh out loud. It was more of an empathy sympathetic like, "Yeah, they got it. " Yeah.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
That was – yeah. That's – I'm not going to laugh because – yeah, that's about – I mean, it's kind of like Dilbert where you don't – Yeah.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
Maybe it's not laugh because you kind of want to cry a little bit.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
No, it's an interesting point because I think that also speaks to what's your goal when you're creating online video. I think it's a little bit different. We still want to be funny and have it be good, but I think there is – when you talk about that empathy factor, I think that's also really an important part of why people share stuff. I remember being at 37signals and engineers were always sharing Dilbert cartoons with each other in our campfire group chat room and being like, "Huh, that's interesting. This isn't always the funniest stuff," but people would be like, "Hey, you're going to get this. " Yeah. I think there's that, "I want to share this because they get this thing and I get it and I want to share it with you because you'll get it," and why people share stuff online I think is an interesting sort of psychological factor. But yeah, there's definitely episodes where we're sometimes being like, "Okay, this one's hilarious and we'll hit a broad audience," and then there's other ones where we're like, "All right, this one might not be as laugh out loud funny, but I think, hey, engineers or marketing people are going to be like, "Oh, yeah, I know that person," or, "I've heard that phrase. " Yeah.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And, "God, I'm so glad someone's making fun of this. " So it kind of goes to the core audience.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
I mean, do you schedule?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I mean, that's an interesting point. Do you schedule the episodes so that way they go out in a way that it's like, "Okay, this next episode is going to be targeted towards our core audience," whereas this one we know is kind of more of a high-end general humor.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
So do you do that kind of planning with the episode schedule? Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I mean, there's no hard science about it or anything like that. We put out a new episode every Wednesday, so that's our fixed schedule. And from there, yeah, I think there's just a rhythm of like, "Hey, we just had an episode or two focused on engineers.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Why don't we have one that's more geared towards designers?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
" Or we had one that's more sort of anyone would get a kick out of this. It's just loosely about social media or apps in general. And then from there, then we might be, "Okay, well, now we can do one that's a little more specific to sys admins or hackathons or something like that. " So I think there's just some sort of like not trying to be one. I think we're just trying to change it up enough from week to week that people still feel it's fresh. Or if last week wasn't for them, maybe this week applies to them.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
The hackathon one. That one, that was good. Thanks.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Hackathon? Yeah. Bathroom hackathon? Yeah. Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
Well, that's an interesting— Free labor. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think that episode is an interesting one because that was generated by a tweet, basically. So we have our @BoozeHQ as our Twitter feed where we have a couple times a day.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
We have a bunch of funny jokes about the tech world. And then sometimes one of those will take off and get retweeted dozens or hundreds of times or something like that. And they'll be like, "Okay, well, that's clearly hitting some sort of nerve.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
How can we turn that into an episode?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
" So I think that's kind of an interesting thing, too, is that sometimes the ideas is kind of being fed to us from the response on social media to just sort of one-liners that we throw out there.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And just the last question I want to bring up, unless something else comes out is, you have a really interesting advertising model, one that on Utesic I tried to figure out. I'm a one-man shop, so I haven't quite been able to figure it out. And I'm not nearly as entertaining as you guys.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
But the—what was the term you used for it?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
The advertising where it's not advertising, where you simulate a comedy. I've watched a few of those, and I watched through them, not realizing that I'm not watching it. But I think that's a really interesting thing in an episode. I remember there's the one with Jason Freed, who is pretty funny, where he's pretty deadpan, and you seem to be working around him a lot in the advertising. But it's an interesting advertising model, and I'm just curious about how you came up with it, and how is it working?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Sure.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
So far, so good. I mean, I like to tell people we're just like a real startup, except we actually make money. But yeah— The show. Exactly, exactly. The show actually makes money. Yeah, I mean, I think so. From the outset, that was the goal, was to make money off it and to make this sustainable. And I think one inspiration was The Deck, which is an ad network that 37signals and Kudal Partners actually started years ago, which was ads dedicated to what they call creative professionals, designers or filmmakers or people who work on the web in different ways.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And then partnering with advertisers like Adobe or people who make fonts or things like that to kind of make ads. You know, hey, you can kind of assemble this audience with this network of sites and have ads that are actually appealing to them and have it not be an obstacle or an intrusion or like, hey, this is something from Toyota or Snickers or something you don't care about. Instead, have it be like, hey, we're the guys running this ad network. We're picking all the sites and the people who are making this content, and then we're also finding advertisers who we actually like and use their product. I think it's a good fit. And, you know, you can kind of create like a whole ecosystem of people who are actually liking what they're seeing and it's advertising, but it doesn't feel like it's bugging you. So I think that was interesting to me back when we did that years ago. And then I think you also had just the rise of native advertising and branded content and that sort of taking over in print or whatever you want to call it, content media or, you know, words and articles and things like that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
You started seeing that more and more and wondering, hey, is there a way to do this in video?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And I think also it's like people sometimes are like, oh, this is a very innovative, you know, futuristic way to do advertising, which to me is kind of funny because it's also exactly the way advertising started on TV back in the 50s or on radio where, you know, you'd have, yeah, exactly. You'd have, you know, Howard Stern used to, I'm a huge Howard Stern fan, you know, always used to stop the show and do plugs. And I think it works in a couple of ways. You know, you've got the actors or the people on the show talking about the products, so that makes it feel much different than, you know, a typical commercial. It happens within an episode, you know, we also do pre and post-roll ads, but like a lot of the branded episodes we do are the product is mentioned within the episode, but we try to do it in a subtle enough way that's not really annoying and that it's still like, usually those episodes get to be longer. They're, you know, three minutes instead of a minute and a half. And so, you know, I think, you know, there's a way to look at it. It's like, hey, this, this advertiser is helping you get more content than you would otherwise. And also we're working with people who like, it's right for our audience. It's not just some random brand. It's people like New Relic or Ustream or MailChimp, uh, or Insightly. People who like, they're making products that are for the people in our audience and it's, it's kind of this mutually beneficial thing. So the goal is to, you know, have it be advertising, but that's not like really obnoxious and annoying and in your face. And yeah. It's not stopping. Here's a commercial for brand day.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Exactly. Exactly.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And I think, again, it goes back to the, the fact that we're doing this with low overhead and with just a few people enables us to kind of like, Hey, we're going to like, let's, you and me are going to get together and film this ad for New Relic and it's going to be us talking about this product and do it quickly. Whereas, you know, if it's a big bang theory or something like that, that's probably going to be harder and more expensive for any, any brand to, to work in that way. And I think also that, uh, the other thing is that we're not, we're not trying to get Toyota and Snickers and, and, and these massive brands that are going through agencies and doing, you know, tens of millions of dollar media buys. We're working with people who maybe have never done video content before or who have like an explainer video, but want to do something that's a little bit funnier instead of just that straightforward informative style. And so these are people who, you know, instead of having to go through an ad agency and waiting like eight months, I can, you know, kind of talk with someone in marketing there and, you know, in, in three weeks, get, get the go ahead and get the check signed and make something for them. So I, I think it's just a new way of doing stuff and, you know, sort of, it's interesting because I think the fact that we're small and, and doing it on our own, it's in some ways a weakness, but it's also helped us kind of maybe find the right audience who we want to work with and the right advertisers who want to reach that audience. And I have to think also, just because of the, the, the material material you're dealing with, it might even be possible to just to send them a clip that's relevant right to them and be like, Hey, this is, here's a three minute clip of, of an episode that, and you're able to talk right to them because you know, if you do a marketing, heavy, heavy episode, you send it to the marketing department.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
And they'll be like, Oh yeah, they actually, that just happened. We've got a new video coming out of that. Uh, uh, the new support rep at Vooza and we had the script and then send it to a company that was, you know, does, has a support, uh, app and that now they're going to be sponsoring the episode.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
It's like, sometimes it's works out great where we're like, okay, we've got the script that we think is funny, who would be a good person to sponsor this and run it past them. And that's actually happened a couple of times. So I think like to me, that's great. Cause then that's not, you know, like we're making some, some bullshit content that no one actually wants just to please an advertiser. We're like, Hey, we're, we're like, this is the funny thing that we're going to do anyway. And people are going to like it. Why don't you get your brand involved and it's going to be good for you and good for us. And, and the viewers are barely going to notice that it's any different than any other episode. So it just seems like maybe there's a way to make stuff that works for everyone involved. Well, I think somebody, I've read somewhere that somebody said, um, in or in, it was like an honest trailer or something like that, where it showed a picture of Mark Wahlberg in the last transformers movie, drinking a Bud Light. And it says, and the caption is this movie brought to you by Mark Wahlberg drinking a Bud Light. And you know, this episode brought to you by us thinking that this marketing thing is funny. So a marketing company came and supported us. So we'll get, get to do another episode next week. Yeah, totally. Totally. And I, we're also exploring other models. Like we'll, we'll be launching on a Patreon soon in a way that viewers can actually, you know, donate to the show itself just in case they want to support us. You know, like I think the, the idea is to have, you know, viewers, you know, paying you for exactly what they want, you know, as, as opposed to just relying exclusively on advertisers. But I think, you know, realistically, maybe there's some sort of hybrid model we can do where, Hey, if there's people who really love it and just want to throw us some cash because they want to support us and help us do it and help us pay everyone involved, that's great. If there's advertisers who want to reach our audience, then that's also great. And just sort of play around, you know, just from a business standpoint with like, what what's the new way to do content and make it sustainable and keep it going? And how people like it, you know, give us money and let brands who want to reach our audience, you know, also be part of it. So it's, it's kind of a, it's like a real startup in that way. I'm just trying to figure out how to, how to keep this going and how to make money off it and, and what's the best path and, you know, like there's new technologies coming out that make different, different approaches possible. And so I, you know, I, my, my goal is to make good stuff that people like, but you know, part of that is also, you know, figuring out the business side of things so you get to keep doing it. Well, yeah. And there's, there's a lot more people starting to think about that aspect of the blog brothers.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Are you familiar with their channel?
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
I'm not. I've heard the name, but I don't know.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Matt Ruby
ruby and rails practice
▶ Speaking
But they, they've come out with a I'm trying to blank on the name of it right now, but they just, they're huge. And they just launched a program to support media content creators who are, are not quite at the volume of views to really generate a living wage from their YouTube channels, but are.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
enough to have a sustainable audience that's very targeted and very niche and they it's like maybe you only have 100 000 viewers but they're you know in in a niche and and you're you're making content directly for them how can people support that channel that might not otherwise be easily monetizable um yeah I think you also like live events and and merch and other stuff is all people are going to start cropping up with all different kinds of ideas so if you've got an audience of people who like you want to support you how do you figure that out and what are the different ways to actually like turn that into money that you can use to keep it going yeah all right well thank you very much for taking the time to uh sit down and chat uh the for everybody who's watching it's vuza. com v-o-o-z-a dot com and at vuza hq on twitter matt thank you again for taking the time to to speak with me it was a lot of fun thanks so much I enjoyed it take care [Music]
Critical Insights
durable
"The success of Vooza lies in combining technology and comedy, creating a unique and engaging content format."
durable
"The team's improvisational approach to content creation adds freshness and humor to each episode."
durable
"The use of unexpected outcomes in episodes adds to the entertainment value and keeps viewers engaged."
durable
"The team's background in comedy and technology allows them to create content that is both informative and entertaining."
durable
"The use of characters with distinct personalities adds depth and humor to each episode."