This first-time CEO just raised millions from investors including Mark Cuban to build a better YouTube without ads
Portal
- On Tuesday, an ad-free video-streaming platform called Portal was launched, competing with the likes of YouTube and Vimeo.
- On Portal, creators are paid directly by viewers who like what they watch - ideally meaning creators have to hustle less for views, and focus instead on building relationships with their audience.
- Portal has raised $4.2 million in seed funding from investors including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
- Swerdlin decries the practice of "demonetization," and says that allowing advertisers to dictate who is and isn't allowed to make money from their videos is tantamount to censorship.
When Radiohead famously released its "In Rainbows" album in 2007 and told fans to "pay what you want," Jonathan Swerdlin forked over $50.
He was enamored by the radically different approach to payments. But to his disappointment, the model that helped Radiohead instantaneously earn $3 million upon the album's release never really caught on in the music business.
Swerdlin - who started his career in e-commerce, most recently helping grow a popular online women's underwear company called THINX - couldn't shake his fascination with Radiohead's experiment or ignore the rise of micropayments on gaming platforms and in countries like China, where "tipping" for content from one's favorite blogger, live-streamer or musician has become the norm.
On Tuesday, Swerdlin announced the launch of Portal, an ad-free video-streaming platform where creators are paid directly by viewers who like what they watch.
For his ad-free video platform, which puts him in direct competition with the likes of YouTube and Vimeo, Swerdlin, Portal's co-founder and CEO, has raised $4.2 million in seed funding from investors including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, of "Shark Tank" fame.
"For the content creator, [Portal] gives them the ability to focus on value and investing in delivering something that matters to people rather than trying to churn something out every single day and game an algorithm," Swerdlin told Business Insider in a recent interview.
Getting paid with Portal
Portal's key differentiator from other video platforms, Swerdlin told Business Insider in a recent interview, is how creators are paid.
Similar to Radiohead's "pay what you want" approach, Portal lets viewers "tip" creators for the videos they watch. Enjoy the content you consume, and you can leave a tip ranging from $0.10 all the way up to $100.
For multiple revenue streams, any creator on Portal can also set up monthly subscriptions for their channels, or enable a paywall for the individual videos they post. To make money on its end, Portal takes a small percentage of the funds paid to creators.
Swerdlin and his team - currently comprised of five engineers and "a small community team" - hope the shift away from an ad-based model (which compensates creators according to the sheer number of views a video receives) will increase the quality of content being produced.
Portal
Ad-free means freedom to create
Another major upside to an ad-free model, Swerdlin explains, is that content creators don't have to feel the need to create "advertiser-friendly" content designed not to offend deep-pocketed media buyers.
"[Advertisers] should not be the authority on what it is that we see or don't see," Swerdlin explains. "That's not what the Internet was built for. That's a fail right there. But [advertising is] a multi-billion dollar business and because of that, it continues on."
Swerdlin also decries the practice of "demonetization," where platforms like YouTube decide that some videos or channels are unsuitable for advertisers, and revoke their share of the ad revenue from that content.
While the idea is to tamp down on offensive videos - infamous conspiracy theorist channel Infowars was recently demonetized by YouTube - others have gotten caught in the crossfire. LGBTQIA video creators, in particular, have complained that they have been unfairly targeted by YouTube for demonetization. He says that Portal has already attracted a thriving community of LGBTQIA creators who felt jilted by its larger rivals.
"Demonetization is censorship," Swerdlin says. "When you take away [people's] ability to earn money then you take away their ability to create content. It takes money and time and investment. You have to pay the bills."
Notable creators that have been using Portal's beta product for the past few months are social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk and the online news show, The Young Turks.
"The Young Turks has always believed in the 'audience first' approach to content creation and place great value on the direct relationship with our fans," The Young Turks' Chief Business Officer Steven Oh said in a statement. "We are excited to be on Portal to continue building that direct-to-consumer relationship."
A crazy idea takes shape
For Swerdlin, the launch of Portal has been two long years in the making.
"Everybody told me in the beginning that I was crazy. A lot of people didn't realize that ads were a problem," Swerdlin remembers. "It's been really interesting and exciting for everybody to sober up and wake up to the problem."
Read more: The CEO of Vimeo landed the job at 34 - and she learned a huge leadership lesson in her first 12 months at the top
As for the seemingly insurmountable battle of taking on a competitor like YouTube, which as of May had over 1.8 billion active users, Swerdlin says he's confident that Portal's micro-payments model will ultimately win out.
"People think like, 'Oh, David and Goliath,' with platforms like Facebook and YouTube as the Goliath," Swerdlin says. "But if you compare the models side-by-side and you look ten years from now, in ten years from now, our model will be the Goliath."