151. Building a Modern Digital-first Media Empire with Steve Hulford of Underknown

Steve Hulford is the co-founder and CEO of Underknown, a digital-first media company that publishes around 4800 videos per year on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, IG and TikTok. Their mission is to teach the world about science and humanities. 

 They run various channels including What if, What if kids, How to survive, Your Body On, Crazy Creatures, Aperture and Versus. Their content is available in about 12 languages. 

In 2022 Underknown has a team of about 200 people of which 50 work full time. In 2022 alone they’re doing almost $10M in Ad revenue. Quite impressive, because the company was only founded 4 years ago.

 In this interview you’ll learn:

 - What inspired Steve to start the business (content gap)
 - How he validated the business idea
- How he went about raising capital 
- How the team publishes about 4800 high-quality videos 
 - Why Snapchat and Facebook might be underrated - Future of the industry