Rumble - Q2 2023 Post Call
August 14, 2023
Transcript
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Hello, hello, hello. We are here from Florida with the Rumble Q2 earnings recap and a little bit of a forward look of where maybe things are gonna be trending in the world of free speech on the Internet. It's a pleasure to be here. Let me be one of the first people to congratulate you for not only a record-breaking quarter in terms of revenue, but in also minutes watched per month. How are you feeling right now?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I'm feeling great. I guess, like, the, the takeaway for me on this one is that everyone has been saying that you can't monetize conservatives and you can't monetize the audience on some Rumble, and we kinda are starting to prove them all wrong. Like, for me, it's a huge accomplishment, what we did in the last quarter. I'm super pumped. Matt, thanks for coming to Rumble again.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
I'm always appreciative to be here. Truly, it's a privilege. On that exact note, one of the things that really stuck with me during the earnings call was when it gets back into the political cycle, and that viewership really trends back onto your platform of what's gonna be going on in terms of revenue. If you're at $25 million now, once again, record-breaking, what's gonna go on in 2024, which you've now multiple times referred to as your Super Bowl year?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. I think it's gonna really be dictated by how much progress we make and how, how well we execute on RAC.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
One of the things I outlined in the earnings call is that a lot of this revenue that you're seeing right now, in the-- of this $25 million, is coming from the manual management of creators. We even said, like, less than, less than 50, creators. The way I look at it is, like, when you launch RAC and every creator can participate in RAC, both on a programmatic perspective and a sponsorship perspective, when every creator can do that, that's when you get real scale, that's when you start to see real revenue, and that, that's when I think the inflection point of this business will happen, is when we, we can get RAC up and running and ready for, for everyone, all creators.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Talking about scale and revenue, I heard this on the earnings call. You were talking a little bit about quote, unquote, "Big Tech," and you referred a little bit to the cloud infrastructure of Amazon.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Google, Microsoft, also you talked a bit about Meta. I don't know if you just didn't have enough time on the call. Let's dive into that, 'cause for me on this side, when I look at the Internet and the discussion surrounding Rumble, it's a lot of comparison of where everything is right now, but I don't know if that's exactly fair, because obviously Rumble started later. It's on a different growth trajectory. What was the point in bringing that up, and can you give us some insights?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. I think, like, when you compare Rumble and you compare, like, Meta, Facebook, as what they were called back then, I think that's like a... It, it's something that everyone should kind of look at, because I think people forget, how much people-- like, how much Facebook spent in, in 2007 and how well they did in 2005 and 2006. Like, if I don't-- I, I don't, I don't know if I remember correctly off the top of my head, but, you know, we do have the chat. I'm gonna put the chat up on my phone, so, like, if the chat can find out certain numbers.
Like, I, I believe Facebook did, in 2005, $9 million in revenue, and in 2006, they did about $45-ish in revenue. Rumble did $9 million in revenue in 2021 and $39 million in 2022. You can kinda see the parallel there on the revenue side. Then, on the flip side is, like, how many users did Facebook have in 2005 and 2006? You know, chat, you can go look, but I think it was, like, 50 million in 2007 and around 20 million in 2006, and YouTube was around 20 million in 2006, MAUs. You know, when you look at these, these companies, these massive, massive, massive companies out there, and then you look at what Rumble is doing, and, you know, we didn't raise tens of billions of dollars.
I'm not sure exactly how much Facebook raised over the course of their business, but we raised, like, $400 million in our SPAC and less than $500 million in total in the lifespan of our business, so. I, I do not see the need to raise billions, tens of billions of dollars to other companies. We're gonna do it a completely different way. I see that as, like, a major advantage to Rumble, like, on how we did it and how we are doing it. If you also look back to Facebook and their market caps in 2007, et cetera, there's a very big difference. I, I think that difference is important to note, especially in this time.
You know, this is not adjusted for inflation or anything, but I think that's, like, a very important note because Rumble is doing something that many companies haven't done, and we are really tracking in a way. When you look at 2005 and 2006, you know, obviously we didn't do as much as they did in 2006. I think they did 45, we did 39, but we're doing, we're doing pretty good.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
On that note, just speaking of origin story and whatnot, I don't think I've ever asked you, how did you come up with the name Rumble?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
That's a, that's a good question. I got it as a 30th birthday gift from a friend that said, "Go up and compete against YouTube. You're gonna kick their ass." He gave it to me for free as a 30th birthday gift. Good friend that I grew up with.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
I like that, the... Almost like the ethos of the company, like Rumble, like the fighting mantra of it. I never knew that. Is that like a commonly told story or?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
It's out there. It's, it's something I've told before, but I wouldn't say it's commonly known. Yeah, that's, that's, that's the story. I got the domain name back on my 30th birthday. I woke up one morning, and he's like: "Here's the code, and I've transferred it to you." I'm like: "Holy shit! Like, that's, that's a pretty expensive domain name." That was the gift of my life that I've received. I, I guess, I, I was shocked, and he's like: "You know, you need a good name to go and take on the, the Big Tech," and this is why we're Rumble.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Well, I don't wanna age you or anything, but in the past decade now, there's no way you could have envisioned that everything's gone the way it has now. A truly leading voice and company fighting Big Tech, which obviously you're on public record stating multiple times you have clear grievances with.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. by the way, chat, I'm, I'm actually looking at the chat, so I'm not doing things on my phone, just trying to keep an eye on the chat. I think, the, the chat's one of the m-more unique things to Rumble, so I love it. yeah, no, it was... I've always wanted to go against them. I've always were-- I, I was-- I always felt like YouTube treated creators unfairly. I felt like it treated it, it... it progressively did as time went on. you know, here we are now and, I, you know, leading the charge against one of the largest companies in the world. and I'm thinking we're doing a pretty good job so far, and I, I can't wait till 2024.
Like, 2024, if we execute on RAC, you know, with the audiences that we've picked up more recently, you know, we've done a really good job in the 18-24 demo and the audiences that will come back as this election cycle starts to ramp up. I, I think you can, you know, 2024 is set up to be a, a phenomenal year. I, I cannot wait for it. I, I think it, we, you know, we can surprise people. Then on the flip side, there's cloud,
which is like a massive opportunity for us as well. I, I think that coupling Rumble and Cloud for 2024 and the launch of RAC is really the culmination of what everyone has been waiting for. What you've kind of seen this year is, like, just kind of like the resilience of the core base audience. You know, we have 44 million monthly active users, and growth in these younger demos as politics kind of takes a backseat for a while. I, I think, like, going into, going into the next 12 months to next 1-2 years is gonna be a real awesome time to see those two audiences compound and grow together.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
I'm happy you brought that up. I guess to take one quick step back. Obviously, Rumble, trading under their ticker symbol, RUM, it's in the battle arena that is Wall Street. It seems like you and the company and everyone who supports the company, it's a lot more for the quote, unquote, "average Joe." Like, you're doing this for the average person to be able to have some modicum of free speech. On that note, I kinda wanna bring up a viral moment. While I'm doing this, folks, we wanna make this one a little bit more retail-centric because this is what it's all for. If you have your questions, please ask away. While we're doing that, Chris, I'd love to pick your brain on the recent viral phenomena. We have Oliver Anthony.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yes.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Who I was reading, like, topped the Billboard charts and out of nowhere, and once again, please correct me if I'm wrong, I believe, just signed up for Rumble and decided to host his content on your platform. What does this mean for you? What do you think about it? It is a crazy thing that occurred over the past, what? 72 hours.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. No, it's that's so true. It He came, I woke him somewhere on Rumble. That's exactly what we're doing, right? We added this new talent to the platform. We're really trying to create a lot of brand awareness, Rumble is a choice for, for, for anyone out there. You know, we don't need to go and sign everybody. People are gonna, you know, these As we do all these signings, it will be, you know, first in mind to go and join. We saw Oliver Anthony join Rumble, you know, over the weekend, I think that's that's an incredible feat for us to, to have someone that's growing that fast to pick, to go to Rumble right away. It, it just shows that what we're doing is working.
We're attracting talent, and the, the entire Rumble business model is bringing him in on his own without us doing the, the active effort to go bring him in.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
That's a perfect point. The business model itself is bringing creators in. A little bit ago, you alluded to, like, they're gonna benefit off of RAC, R-A-C. What is that for a person who maybe this is their first time hearing about Rumble and your monetization method?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. Think of, like, you, you have Google AdSense. AdSense serviced YouTube. You'd connect your YouTube account to AdSense, you'd monetize YouTube. AdSense also serviced publishers, where publishers could go and monetize their websites. RAC is going to be identical to that. RAC will be the engine that's going to service Rumble for advertising dollars for creators. RAC is also gonna be an engine for all publishers to come in and bring in their websites and use the demand within RAC to monetize their websites. We already have Truth Social that are, that are testing that publisher aspect of it.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
There'll be a lot of news on the, on the publisher side in terms of how we're gonna start opening that up very soon to everybody else. Then, in addition to RAC, we added something that, you know, AdSense doesn't have, nor Google Ad Exchange. We're adding the Creator Sponsorship Marketplace, where you, as a creator, can now list your show and advertisers can come and buy spots within your show. We're not talking.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
programmatic pre-rolls and video ads, but we're talking about real sponsorships with brands, with direct response, that wanna go into your show. I know, you know, You know, that, that essentially is what's driving our revenue in, in the last quarter. I think that's gonna be a major part of our revenue in the future quarters, especially when we go from, like, you know, less than 50 to thousands overnight that go into that program. Like, you as a creator, why wouldn't you list your show in there? The beauty of RAC and the Creator Sponsorship Marketplace is it'll be agnostic. Let's say you have a show, and it's... You don't wanna use Rumble, you wanna use another platform, you're assigned to another platform.
You can still use RAC to monetize your show wherever it may be. Obviously, we want you on Rumble.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
We feel like having a very agnostic platform and exposing people to the Rumble brand is a, is a good win for us overall.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
On that particular note, I know you, like, can't give us the exact timeline 'cause there is quite a bit of a technical feat that has to be figured out here. What's a rough timeline, as much as you can give us on both that, because that was one of the major things you dove into on the call, but also Rumble Cloud, it seems like to be the other aspect of business that you really dove into?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, you know, back, I think we, we were anticipating the cloud to launch in 2023, and then, I, I, I believe, like, a year ago when I was on Maria's show, and we said late 2023 is, when we. A more precise time for when we're gonna be relaunching the cloud. I can tell you that we are, we're very far along on that process right now.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Awesome.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
We're I believe we're, we're gonna beat those expectations of being late 2023 and get something out, and get something out sooner here in the very near future. Launching that beta cloud is, it, is, is very, is very near.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Awesome.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
It's around the corner. That, that is, like, super exciting. You know, we've obviously had some very big clients, a, a very big client using our cloud for a very long time. You know, I think they started using it back in 2021. Truth Social, that's been testing and, and using our cloud product for, for a very long time now. We we're really excited to opening that up to, to m- many more, we're looking to do that very soon.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
I listen to many, many earnings calls, and one of the analyst questions you got today was about AI and AI integration.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
I have to tell you, it seems like the trick to Wall Street right now is you mention it, and your stock just goes up. The one that I didn't hear about is a little bit more of crypto-related, and maybe that fad has come.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Mm-hmm
Matt Kohrs (Host)
it's still growing. Is there any plans of crypto or maybe Bitcoin-specific integration with Rumble? Are you looking at crypto in any manner?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
You know, it hasn't been on the forefront right now for us in terms of, like, our core focus right now is to launch the Rumble Cloud and launch RAC. Those are the two things.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Okay
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
... that I, that, that we need to do. That's in addition to, like, improving the Rumble product. We're gonna actually come out with a, a... There's, there's a tweet right now out that we just recently put out of all the product improvements we made on, on Rumble itself, and we're gonna be coming out with a really large update, hopefully, the, by the end of this week, where the, the entire video page is gonna be redesigned. If it's not this week, it'll be in the, in-- just shortly after the, the debate, but hopefully this week. You know, improving the product to improve engagement, which we saw happen. Engagement soared in the last quarter, and this is, like, in large part due to major product improvements and design improvements.
We're gonna continue to do that 'cause the, the benefits there are huge.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Getting RAC out, out of the door, out of beta, into full-scale launch on the programmatic side, talking to Rumble and having ads in the app and OTT as well. Huge, like, huge focus for us, then getting RAC to support the Creator Sponsorship Marketplace for all creators. That is also a major priority for us. Then finally, the cloud. Those are the... Those are the items that we're really, really kinda digging our heels deep into right now and really wanna get out as out the door as soon as possible, because that's gonna reflect, like, revenue growth, profitability in the future. It's gonna allow us to really kind of predict things and really set the tone for Rumble going forward. Like, we have the audience. We know the audience is monetizable now. We've proven that.
Everyone that was saying that you can't monetize conservatives, bullshit. It's total bullshit. Conservatives monetize very well, if not better than other groups that I've seen. That's out the door. We've proven that, and now we just need to automate it and scale it. That's, that's what we need to do. You know, I love, I love the crypto world, and if there's a demand from our audience, we'll deliver it. Like, if our audience goes out there and says: We wanna be paid in crypto, and it's, you know, it's persistent and people, it's widespread, we're gonna fulfill that need. Like, that's what we, I think we do amazing at Rumble, is, like, our team here is really, really listening to the community and really delivering to the community what they want.
If that's what they want, that's what we'll deliver. At this point, I don't see too much demand on the AI or too much demand on the crypto side. I do see some really like, I, I do see some demand on the cloud side when it comes to, to AI in respect to, you know, people looking for cloud GPU cloud and looking for different, you know, infrastructure services to support AI. I have seen a little bit of that, but for the most part, you know, we're gonna do what the community is asking for, and we're gonna follow, follow our community. I think that's, that's how you win. It's how we're winning, and it's all about listening, listening to the community.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
On that note, do you have plans to build out the community even more? What I specifically mean by that is, right now, there's a lot of conservatives that pay attention to your website, they pay attention to what's going on. Do you have plans of duplicating that on the left side of the aisle? Like, is your goal to be a place of free speech, almost agnostic of what political ideology you have?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
We have Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., that joined the platform, so absolutely. Like, we're completely neutral. It doesn't matter where you are in the aisle or what political leaning you may have, I could care less. You know, I wanna service everyone, and I want a free and fair platform for everyone. I think that's what, you know, we're missing in this world, and that's the gap that we're filling. Like, you're even seeing it. Like, you're seeing, like, YouTube start imitating what Rumble is doing. I think they're reversing their policies on what they deployed a couple of years ago. Why are they reversing those policies? Like, why are they bringing themselves closer to Rumble all of a sudden? I think they feel it.
I think that most people out there. We're seeing it. We're not having trouble attracting talent.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
As you can see, we've been able to bring on the two biggest guys on their respective platforms, like, if not the biggest on their respective platforms, there might be someone bigger. One of the top guys on each respective platform, Twitch and YouTube, decided to come to Rumble. We're not having any resistance on the front of attracting people.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
We're open to everyone, and we wanna service everyone. Like, that's, that's where we wanna be.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
I even heard you got the top finance show, so-
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
point there. I don't want to go too far in that political route, but I heard on the call that you're actually involved with the primary debates coming up in a week or two here, for the Republicans. How does that even come about? Like, how does... People accuse Rumble of not being known and whatever, but then you pull this off, so obviously, you're doing something right. How does that even come about?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, I, I think Rumble is so underrated, in so many ways. The getting, getting the debate, you know, obviously, there was a process of trying to do that. We, we saw this as like a, a great opportunity for the brand to, you know, get to a larger audience out there. Yeah, we'll have the, the Republic, the first and the second.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Good
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Republican primary debate, first one being on August 23rd. I, I think that's probably one of the, the larger milestones for us as a company, as sing-- as a single event, that we've accomplished. It just shows you that the appetite out there is not just for YouTube anymore. Like, Rumble is part of that conversation, and, I think that's, that's a big thing. Like, we're, we're part of that conversation, where we are today, and, we will be, and I think we will be in a much bigger way in 2024.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Well, on that note, so with growth, how do you, as the founder and the CEO and the Chairman of this company, envision? Obviously, you're making record revenue, but you're also spending more money. What's your mindset on balancing that out as the quarters and the months pass?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. Our spending is discretionary. You know, we don't have to make these signings if we didn't want to. We're making these signings because we wanted to diversify our content portfolio, we wanted to attract new users, and we want to grow. When you compound what we've done in the last two quarters and what's going to happen in 2024 with the presidential elections, I, I believe Rumble's in a, in a new realm in the United States. Obviously, our focus is in the U.S.A. at this point. Like, Today, you know, I, I, I, I tweeted about the fact that eight of the top 20 live streams at around 11:15 A.M. are on Rumble.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
That's so crazy.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
YouTube had 7 I think Twitch had 7? I'm not sure. Neither We had the most.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
That's crazy.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
That's massive! Like, this is in the United States. This is gonna happen in 2024 and late 2023 as this election cycle ramps up. You take all the pieces that we put together in the last six months with, you know, bringing on Kai, Speed, Akademiks, JiDion, the digital sports leagues, you know, all this culminating in 2024, and compounding on top of each other. I'm so excited about 2024. I don't think people quite see the pieces that we're putting together and how we're putting them together. Like, we're in an off-election year right now.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
the quietest time there is. When it comes to an election period cycle, like, you can see how CNN and Fox, when the midterms go, like, what are their drops in audiences? I, I, I think I've seen, like, significant drops in their audiences. And like we're, you know, in, in Q2, we're, we're, we're holding relatively steady. We did see a drop as well, in, in Q2 with the older, the, the older audiences, but we saw an uptick in, in the younger audiences, and that counterbalance is great, and we don't see that, that, you know, the younger audiences going down anytime soon. Kai and Speed are not leaving, like we're, digi- the digital sports speeds, sports leagues are not going anywhere anytime soon.
We see this compounding as we, as we go forward, and that, that, that's what really excites me.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
That's the one thing that really jumped out to me. If you go back really far in this cycle, particularly the political cycle, there was that older audience that your viewership was massive. That's now waned a bit, then you have the younger audience that's actually starting to, like, pop up. It seems like in 2024, once again, you're calling it your Super Bowl year, that's where the almost like the 2 waves come together. They're gonna be overlapping with each other. Obviously, it seems like you have good reason to be excited about that and with the growth, and obviously there, there's gonna be an organic aspect that causes it to get bigger. For people who support you directly, like, let's talk about the retail audience.
What are some of the major things that you're seeing that are kind of getting Rumble's name out there even more? Are you seeing it be like an internet Twitter thing, or are videos being shared? Like, what's a major way where, like, the supporters support the company?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, you're seeing like... I, I, I would say, like, our the biggest strategy around marketing for us, like, our marketing strategy is bringing on big influencers. Now, I, I do not see the need of being as aggressive as we have been in the last 6 months, to be as aggressive in the next 6 months or, or the next year. I think we can achieve a lot without doing that. Now, that doesn't mean that we're not gonna be opportunistic about it. Like, if, you know, if a big name comes knocking at our door that we think is a, is a real good business opportunity, we're, we're gonna take it. Like, we have the ability to take it, we're gonna take it, we're not gonna stop.
But I don't think we're gonna be as aggressive as it's going to be nearly as aggressive as it was in the last six months on the spending for these, this new talent and new creators. Like, how many more big people can we get? Like, we got Kai and Speed, and we got, you know, we got these huge sports leagues now. It's, we're kinda hitting that upper limit of how far we can go with that. Our bringing in of influencers is one of our major ways of marketing the platform, getting people aware of Rumble.
Obviously, when you have that engine firing, when you have Kai and Speed yelling from the top of the hill, saying, "Go to Rumble, download the Rumble app, I'm live, going live," then you have the Republican primary debate going live at the same time at Rumble, and you have the elections going on, and you got Trump rallies going on, you can start to see, like, all the awareness happening from all the influencers. The marketing strategy is the influencers on the platform. It's you that's promoting your channel on Rumble and bringing your audience to Rumble. That, that's, that's what's getting it out there. When you look at like, you know, you look at X, or you look at TikTok, like, for us, we don't see them at all as, like, competition to us.
The way we envision X and we envision TikTok and the way it has actually played out for us is that all the great talent that's on Rumble, whether it's Russell Brand or it's Speed or it's Crowder, all those clips end up on TikTok, and they end up on, on X.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
They end up going viral on those platforms, as these short clips, that ends up driving more downloads to our app and more users to our app to watch the full shows. The way I look at TikTok and the way I look at X is that they're, they're non-intention based apps. They're discovery apps. You're going there, you don't know what you're gonna see and what you're gonna get, but you're gonna find great things, and it's gonna lead you to great places. One of those great places it's gonna lead you to is Rumble. At Rumble, we're very intention-based.
You know, everyone that's coming to our stream, not everyone, but like a lot of people that are coming to our stream are coming to listen to me and you, and they knew we're gonna be there at this time.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
It's very intention-based. It's not based on discovery, it's based on the fact that you know you wanna watch Dan Bongino at 11:00 A.M., or you wanna watch Crowder at 10:00 A.M. It's very intention-based. I don't really see these two like, Rumble or X and TikTok, they don't compete in any way. They're, they're, in my mind, very complementary, and they help drive, they help drive a lot. They're, they're not the main drivers to Rumble, but, like, they're definitely they help.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
To tie that together a little bit, whenever we do these, and I put out an X thread or whatever it's called now, one of the most common questions is always: Is there any update on the king of content, Joe Rogan himself? I know you can't specialty announce it or anything like that, but, like, I guess maybe a better question is, what would that do to the competitive landscape, or is, is there anything you could tell us there?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I don't have anything to tell you, with respect to Joe Rogan, but, you know, I think Joe is... It'll be very interesting to see what Spotify does and, and how, and how Spotify goes about it. He's obviously exclusive to Spotify, and, I, I think Joe's a very loyal person to, you know, just generally, just based on what I can tell. Whatever he chooses to do. You know, I'm happy for what he does, what, what, what he'll do. I can tell you, like, the door is open to Joe, the door is open to Tucker Carlson. We would love to have both of them. I think both of them are massive in their own right, and I think Rumble would be the greatest home for, for both of them.
The, the door is open to both of them. Where they decide whatever they decide to do, I'll support, but I would really, really. I'm going to be biased. I would really love them to come over here.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
I mean, definitely interesting times, Ed, 'cause both of them have mentioned Rumble multiple times.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
It's not like.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
You're obviously on the radar. It'll be interesting to see how things play out when, when I'm sure when we're sitting here a year from now, it'll just probably be a wildly different situation.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. Hopefully, we get, 1, if not both of those guys, a year from now. That would be great.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Beyond just like the content creators themselves, we've talked about RAC, we've talked about what's going on in the cloud. All three of those things considered, is there a particular thing that you're excited about that you feel like just no one's asking you? You're like: How is no one, whether it's Wall Street, retail, maybe even your own company, maybe your own family, I don't know. Is there a thing that you're like, "Dude, someone needs to ask me this?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
No, I, I think, like I hit on it today in the earnings call, and we hit on it a little earlier. I just like, I was blown. I didn't, I didn't know. Invested in them, and I, and I saw their, their revenues, and I saw their MAUs. You know, we're doing okay. Like, things are pretty good over at Rumble, and I, I, I think, like, that was a, that was a real big eye-opener, and that's, you know, not adjusted for inflation, but I thought, I thought that was, like, a, a real eye-opener. Like, we have. We're doing something very significant, and sometimes I think that gets a little overlooked.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
if not a lot overlooked. You know, we've, we've built a, a huge audience in the last couple of years, and, you know, obviously a lot of it stemming from politics and political content, but nevertheless, a huge audience. And that audience is very monetizable. And now we're starting to prove that it's monetizable. I think that's, like, one of the biggest achievements. Like, everyone, everyone I know was saying: How are you gonna ever monetize conservatives and, and monetize the audience on, on, on Rumble? And like, you know, I, I think our, our, our Q2, our Q2 report, and even the previous subsequent reports prior to that, are showing that, you know, that, that, that's just bullshit.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Like, that's. They want you to think that, but it ain't true. Like, audiences are monetizable regardless. Rumble is proving that. I, and the best part is like, this is with less than 50 creators. Like, think about the real estate that's open. Like, we're not monetizing programmatically in our app.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
With video commercials. We're not doing it. We're not doing it on OTT, like. It's, I think that's like, you know, the perspective where we are when Big Tech was where we were. The perspective of, like, what we've accomplished.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
now have the most famous streamers out, even.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Fine. Yeah, so, like... I think that's, like, a big gap. You know, it needs to be a lot better. Search is like going right up to the top of the list. I'll, I'll just kind of go over that, like, what, what our priorities are right now on the product side. New design rollout, like a massive new design rollout.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Samsung app, the latency on streaming and stream API keys. All those are, are, you know, imminent right now. All of those can happen at any point in time, all those can get rolled out. Once... You know, not once that's done, but, like, right after that, and once those are rolled out, which those are imminent, you know, the number one priority in this company is getting search to a much better place and having people be able to discover those VODs that you're talking about, and, you know, ingesting more of those in VODs through, through our apps and through the web. You know, no one's really tackling that except YouTube, and obviously we are, but our search is just not up to the standard it needs to be. That is definitely one of our top priorities.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
In that list right there, in the last call, we were talking a little bit about Callin, the company that you guys.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, yeah.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Where is that in the integration?
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Callin is, that's also, you know, moving much faster than expected. What we're, what we're doing with Callin is we're, we're turning it into the Rumble Studio, where a creator like you can agnostically stream to multi different platforms, and it will be not only, it, it'll basically be the create, the, the app for a creator. It'll be the studio Rumble. That is looking like the launch of that will happen, you know, before the end of the year, for sure, if not much sooner.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
That's awesome. That's a great update. The one update right there, we could practically hear the applause from some of our content creator viewers when you were talking about the stream API key. I'm sure there's many... To the viewers, that might not mean a lot, but to the creators, I practically could hear the applause across America right now. That's gonna be exciting news. On this note of where you are right now and where you see things going, you had an interesting note in your earnings report of you're happy with this previous quarter, but you're most excited about the trajectory. Really, I think this whole conversation has kind of exemplified that, really.
Like, yeah, you're very happy with this, but it seems like getting into 2024 and then all of 2024 is when, almost, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that the pieces are finally, like, really coming together for the company.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, I think, like, you know, 2023, you know, and then, and the subsequent quarters in 2023, we're, we're building still.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Like, you're not. You, you don't have RAC that's gonna scale to thousands, you know, until RAC is ready to scale to the thousands. We're all kinda. We're. 2023 is a building year. 2024 is, is the, is the year that we're gonna see the fruits of the building. That's, that's kind of the way we're positioning it right now, and that's kind of our goal. Getting RAC ready for 2024 to tap into that, you know, all those audiences from the 18-24 to the 55-64, we want to be able to monetize everything across the board. Monetization is gonna be a huge, huge thing for 2024, but 2023 is a product building year, getting, getting the Rumble video product perfect or as close to perfect as possible.
Getting cloud up and running, getting RAC up and running, getting all those pieces up and running so that 2024 can be the Super Bowl that I want it to be, and the Super Bowl that I think it will be.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
What a perfect way to kind of put a pin in this. I appreciate your time, but before we wrap up, if there's anything else you wanna say, but I just wanna say appreciate your time, and I'm excited to see how things go out in the next quarter and just everything that could be shipped and delivered.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. Chat, any other questions? I guess we'll leave it to the chat. I always like to... Okay, we have a, you have a Rumble rant that just came in. Chris, in addition to search enhancement, is there any headway as far as being able to moderate chat via the app? Good question. The moderation within the app is not something that is going to be imminent in terms of a product feature. I, I, I don't know where that is on the roadmap, but because you asked the question, I'll definitely be asking Rick on the other side of the wall over here, about that. I, I don't have the answer to that, unfortunately, but definitely something that we will bring eventually. The question is when? Hopefully sooner than later.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Phenomenal.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Then another question came, another rant from Clubfoot Bill: Concerning the recent news of Bill C-18 in Canada, what are your views on seemingly exponential growth of censorship in Canada, along with the similar growth elsewhere in the world?
Matt Kohrs (Host)
That's a good question.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
That's a great question. You know, the Canadian, the Canada question is, like, a tough one. Like, it's like you don't want to say anything bad about Canada because I was born and raised there, and there's, like, an amazing crew of Canadians that, like, really, really care about free speech. They care about freedom. You know, you saw it in the trucker protests. Like, people care, like they. There's some real, there's a real contingent of caring Canadians. What you're seeing in Canada is nothing I could have imagined growing up in Canada. You know, as, as an American, like, as Americans, the Canadians were the same way.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
We grew up in the schoolyard. We used to say all kinds of shit in the schoolyard. You would... You'd always say, "You know, it's a free country. It's a free place. I can say whatever, whatever I want." That was Canada.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I'm sure that's the same in the United States, even more so, probably. Now, you know, it's not like that anymore.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Those values are... Don't seem-- They, they pretend those are their values. You know, they, they pretend they, they care about their Bill of Rights, but it's not, it's not shown in the, in the bills that are being passed. You know, there, there are some, you know, politicians that are fighting for it to a certain extent, you know, but it's not good enough. You're seeing Canada go into a place where I never imagined it would happen, and for a very, very-- That's a very big reason why we're in Sarasota and we're in Florida right now is, unfortunately, you can't really trust where, where Canada is gonna go. Hopefully, things will change, and, you know, I'm hopeful and I'll do whatever I can to help it change. It's pretty sad.
It, it, it's, it's embarrassing, and I hate to say it as a Canadian, it, it sucks. Hopefully, it changes, and I'm hopeful that something will change and, you know, leadership might change, and hopefully they'll change those, those, before it gets any worse.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Depending on which way it trends or doesn't trend, could it actually impact Rumble's services being there or not? Is that, like, a real thing? I know it has in France.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Well, Facebook just eliminated the news feed for news, or they already openly said it. Like, even the Big Tech companies are, like, kinda like screaming that this is too authoritarian for them. You know, when they're screaming, like, "Holy shit!" You got, you got a problem, like, a, a major problem. Yeah, like, I, I don't see it getting that bad.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I think, but like, you know, I, I don't wanna predict anything in Canada, 'cause I would never have predicted we'd be where we are right now. We'll see, and we'll do the best we possibly can. We have another $10 rant from StoryTrading. "Hi, Chris. Ben from StoryTrading. Can you comment on how long your cash will last before you might need a capital raise?" Ben, we don't need a raise. We're, we're, like, fully funded right now, and I don't believe we at this point right now, there's any need to raise any more capital for what we need to do. All the spending that we're doing is discretionary right now. It's to, you know, diversify our content. I, I don't believe that, we're gonna be.
You know, what we've done in the last 6 months with the digital sports leagues, bringing on, on these top influencers, we were very aggressive. We're not gonna need to be as aggressive. We've attracted those audiences now. We have, you know, we had the, you know, growth in the 18-24 demographic in the last quarter. That audience will now compound with the, the, the political audiences that we'll have over the next year. I don't see the need to be as aggressive on the spending there, and we're fully funded. Like, I, I do not see the need to, to raise capital at this point. I think we're, we're gonna be in a very good spot in the coming years with what, with what we're doing.
You have a lot of rants coming in right now. I don't know if we're gonna be able to get to them all, but they're, like, flying in all of a sudden. "Chris, is Rumble looking at investing in the small creators? Would love to chat more." This is a $5 rant from Uncle Pudge. Yeah, so like, that's the whole point of RAC. The whole point of RAC is to create an ecosystem and an economy for every creator, not just the large creator.
'Cause like, what we're noticing with the large creators is they attract a lot of the, the sponsorships, and they are, you know, Because it's a, it's a manual job, and you have an account manager placing an ad with a creator, and then they have to read the ad, and you have to audit it, you have to check it, and you have to do all these little processes.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
The advertisers are, like, more inclined to, like, do something with big creators because it's just less work. If the advertisers had a way to be able to do it across, like, thousands of creators simultaneously, where the audits and checks were done by us in an automated way, this is how we could invest in small creators in a pretty, in a very meaningful way that will work, that will monetize them, they'll make more money, the advertisers will be happy. That's the whole point of the scaling here, is like, being able to really step on the gas pedal with small creators and being able to bring them those opportunities that large creators have. That's why Rumble exists.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Mm.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Like, in 2013, it was all those tools and monetization and distribution that, you know, YouTube was giving to, you know, at one point, all creators, then slowly made it for MCNs, then slowly put these hourly limits, and you know, slowly pushed out the small creators and only focused on the large ones. Like, Rumble wants to be the absolute opposite of that. We want you to be able to monetize on day one. We want you to be able to have access to all those tools that large creators have, and we want you to be able to have a free and fair shot at getting distribution without it being rigged against you. That's, you know, that's the whole ethos of Rumble.
We're going to drive as fast as we possibly can on getting RAC up, and then once RAC's up, you know, having small creators earn, you know, a lot more for their content is gonna be, is gonna be very possible.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
I've been in content generation for about three years now, and this whole concept of RAC and how Rumble's approaching it, it truly is novel. For the questions of: Can small creators get paid? That's clearly the intention, and I think it's actually gonna cause a little bit of ripple effect in content generation in a general sense.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Mm.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Like, I think everyone's gonna have to rethink how they do it.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. I'm gonna take two more rants.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Okay.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
We're, we're good? All right. Mikey with triple Y: "Will Rumble Shorts become a thing?" We were initially going to launch the vertical video within Rumble a couple of months ago, and then we kind of reprioritized everything into this UI and design. We will have a feature, a discovery feature with Shorts at the top of Rumble in the carousel area. It's essentially almost done now, but I don't think we'll see it till September. I don't wanna give an exact date. I'm hoping to get it out by September, but it could come sooner, and it could come a little later, but we really wanted to get these new designs out the door as fast as possible.
The final one is CCL Iceman. A $10 rant: "Any plans for better integration between Rumble and Locals?" Yes, we have an imminent feature coming out where your subscription to Locals will happen directly onto Rumble. Following that feature, we're planning to start listing Locals content within Rumble as Locals content within Rumble as well. The integration between Locals is going to become a lot more comprehensive and very soon. Those are, those are, those are things that we've been working on for a while, and we feel that...
Well, we know that, with that, the, the integration for the credit card and the subscription directly on Rumble will, will be, will be. It'll come out, I don't know exactly when, but could be this week or the next week.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
That's awesome. In reality, this whole conversation has been phenomenal. I appreciate your time, and speaking for the audience, I know we appreciate you being so open and candid with the people who support you, your company, and your mission. Very excited to talk to you quarter from now and seeing what you're able to pull off and really what the future vision is for Rumble. Once again, thank you for your time.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Awesome. Matt, thanks for having me on again, and thanks for coming to Rumble and looking forward to doing the next one.
Matt Kohrs (Host)
Happy to.
Chris Pavlovski (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
All right. Take care.