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SciShow and Crash Course are some of the most popular educational series on YouTube, with 8 million and 17 million subscribers each.
They’re not cheap to make.
SciShow, which publishes four to five episodes on YouTube each week, costs roughly $500 a minute. Crash Course costs ten times as much, at about $5,000 a minute. SciShow videos can range from around 10 minutes to more than two hours, while CrashCourse videos are typically under 10 minutes.
“Most YouTube channels don’t spend more than $500 per video in terms of cash out of pocket,” said Matt Gielen, CEO of digital media studio Silver Berry.
Production for SciShow is mostly done in-house and takes about six to eight weeks to go from pitch to episode. The production timeline for Crash Course is significantly longer, with development taking anywhere between six to 18 months per series. That’s because the show brings in subject matter experts, including scientists and PhD holders to write the curriculum and the scripts.
This breakdown comes from Julie Walsh Smith, CEO of Complexly, the educational media company behind the shows. She sat down with us for an interview on the latest episode of Scalable, embedded below.
Complexly, which has roughly 85 employees, was founded in 2012 by longtime YouTubers Hank and John Green.
Known as the Vlog Brothers, the two have long been thinking about how to expand the business, to both lessen the reliance on them on screen and offset some of the costs. They’ve brought on new hosts and considered different financial models, including acquisitions, taking on outside investment and giving employees ownership.
Ultimately, Complexly decided on a very different approach. In February, the Green brothers sold their shares in the company and turned it into a nonprofit. “After really turning over every stone, we kept coming back to nonprofit,” Smith said.
She added that the company was not the “most appealing target for commercial investment” as its mission is to “create engaging educational content for free, for everyone, forever.”
Complexly doesn’t look like other creator companies that typically rely heavily on ads and brand partnerships to make money. Just 20% of Complexly’s revenue comes from advertising, including sponsorships and YouTube AdSense. Forty percent comes from audience support, such as Patreon or fundraising campaigns, while the remaining 40% comes from grants and philanthropists.
“Becoming a nonprofit just lets us lean into those revenue streams. We are not abandoning advertising, but that’s not going to be our priority moving forward,” Smith said. Revenue from audience support grew by 56% last year, she said.
The company has also taken a stand against using AI in its work, and it’s sticking with it as the technology continues to develop. In 2023, the company published its AI policy, which includes not producing any videos that use AI for scriptwriting, editing, fact-checking or to develop visuals. The company may still use AI for preliminary research or ideation.
“We’re making a bet that people are going to want to see content that was made with humans driving the creative process,” Smith said, noting that Complexly can’t “become the most trusted educational brand without really sticking to our standards.”
We covered a lot of other ground with Smith, including whether Complexly’s business model is replicable for other creator businesses, how to mitigate key-person risk and more. Tune into the full episode, out now, anywhere you get your podcasts.
Alex Cooper Can’t Win
Alex Cooper is getting a lot of heat for her new reality TV dating show “Unwell Winter Games,” which aired its final episode on YouTube on Thursday. The controversy centers on the polarizing cast, including convicted con artist Anna Delvey and Dakota Mortensen, who has been in the news recently for domestic abuse allegations against his ex-partner Taylor Frankie Paul. Paul has also accused Mortensen of abuse.
At the same, the “Call Her Daddy” host is also being criticized for being too non-controversial. “She’s just very, like, PG,” one of the hosts of the pop culture podcast “Friend Of” said about Cooper’s interview style with guests. “She never really has an opinion.”
It’s not easy for creators to evolve their businesses and content, especially when they begin in a specific niche. They need to stay true to their loyal fans who knew them for one thing, while trying to capture new audiences and grow as a brand.
Cooper is one of the most successful examples: She’s moved from raunchy content to interviews with public figures ranging from Kamala Harris and Jane Goodall to A-list celebrities like Victoria Beckham. Cooper’s media company, Unwell, now has about 100 employees and reaches more than 50 million people daily.
One way to expand is by bringing in new people and voices. Cooper has also done that, signing nearly a dozen other podcasts to her network. She has also launched energy drinks, established a marketing agency and executive produced a new reality dating show for Hulu called “Love Overboard.”
The Hulu show premiered around the same time as the controversial YouTube competition show, which puzzles us. The two projects feel at odds, as Cooper is essentially competing with herself. We dig deeper into this in our latest podcast, embedded below, or available anywhere else you get your podcasts.
The Round Up
Patreon announced that its podcasters earned more than $629 million in 2025, up 33% from the previous year. Podcasting has been the highest-earning category for creators on Patreon for a second year in a row, with more than 47,000 podcasters earning money on the fan membership site. This comes as we’ve recently seen more long-time podcasters abandon their shows.
MeidasTouch, a progressive news podcast with more than 6 million YouTube subscribers, received an investment from Soros Fund Management, Bloomberg reported. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. The George Soros-owned firm has made other bets on new media, including progressive media firm Crooked Media. It also took a majority stake in radio and podcast firm Audacy, when it filed for bankruptcy.
Hubspot acquired Futurepedia, a network of education channels on YouTube that teach people how to use AI. Terms were not disclosed. While this may seem like an unusual deal for a marketing and sales software company, Hubspot previously acquired The Hustle, which includes a newsletter and podcast, in 2023. Plus, just look at OpenAI’s acquisition of TBPN, which we gave our take on here and in this week’s podcast.
Today in TikTok
• Microdrama mania at TikTok: The company is casting for a new short-drama production this month, Business Insider reported. The move comes after TikTok recently began testing a short drama feed in the US and other markets.
Separately, actress Issa Rae’s independent media production company Hoorae Media will premiere its first microdrama series, called “Screen Time” as part of a new content deal with TikTok announced Wednesday. (We predicted TikTok could start striking deals with creators for microdramas here.)
• Khartoon Weiss, the general manager of global business solutions at TikTok, announced she was leaving the company this week. She joins a growing list of executive departures that includes head of marketing Sofia Hernandez, who announced she was stepping down last month.
• TikTok plans to invest 1 billion euros ($1.17 billion) to build a second data center in Finland. Both investments are part of an effort to safeguard the data of its more than 200 million European users as the EU continues to crackdown on social media companies.
A Message from Agentio
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Creator Moves
Enjoy Basketball, a media company co-founded by YouTuber Kenny Beecham, is working with the NBA to produce a new original series with three episodes called “The Trivia Show.” It will be available on the NBA’s app and TV network and on Enjoy Basketball’s YouTube channels. Read our interview with Luka Dukich, vice president of content marketing at the Chicago Bulls, where he explains why the NBA is ultimately a content business here.
IShowSpeed, a top streamer, will be featured as an animated character in a new anime-style series in the works from production startup Big Shot Pictures, founded by Brian Robbins, the former co-CEO of Paramount Global.
Adam W is now the chief digital officer of Stic, an out-of-home advertising company. Meanwhile, “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star Whitney Leavitt was named chief creative and brand officer of Cool Sips, a dirty soda chain. More brands are giving creators C-level titles, which tend to be largely symbolic: Dhar Mann being named the NFL’s chief kindness officer is a perfect example. But it also reflects how brands are working more closely with creators on marketing and product strategy, not just social media promotion.
Jorge Ramos and Johnny Harris, two independent journalists with large YouTube followings, were both nominated for Emmys in the news and documentary category. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, who has argued that YouTubers should win traditional awards, congratulated them on X, writing that journalists “can connect directly with their viewers” on the platform.
Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer, spoke at a rally earlier this week in support of Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Muslim candidate running for Senate in a tight Democratic primary race in Michigan. It could be the start of more creators appearing on the campaign trail during the 2026 Midterm Elections and beyond, as more influencers use their platforms to support political issues and candidates.
Talent Tracker
Christina Kavalauskas recently joined Reddit as global head of KarmaLab, its internal creative strategy team. Before that, she was executive strategy director of social and creator at Deloitte Digital.
Anthropic is hiring an influencer marketing manager focused on Claude brand campaigns, as well as events and ambassador programs.
Sixteenth, the Whalar-owned talent management firm, is hiring a head of unscripted at Sixteenth Studios to lead the development, packaging and sale of unscripted formats and docuseries for TV and streaming.
