67 - Rodrigo Velloso, YouTube & Roblox

In Ep. 67 of Earned, Conor sits down with creator economy expert and gaming industry veteran Rodrigo Velloso. We begin by learning what attracted Rod, who built his early career in traditional media, to join the then-booming tech industry. Conor and Rod then share their predictions for how the rise in AI technology like ChatGPT will impact industries across the board. We dive into Rod’s time at YouTube in the early 2010s, and hear why the platform’s shifting focus from views to watch time led to increased interest in long-form gaming videos—a completely new genre of content at the time. Next, Rod shares his learnings from his time as YouTube’s Director of Gaming Partnerships, before pivoting to his experience leading creator-led marketing at interactive gaming platform Roblox—which helped fuel the company’s hypergrowth to compete with gaming giants like Minecraft. We learn how Roblox’s monetization model drew an influx of gamers to the platform, and Rod emphasizes how the best content lives where its creators can be properly compensated for it. To close the show, we hear what Rod has learned about the broader creator economy since joining creator commerce platform Spring, and Rod reveals what’s up next for his career.