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4633 words
- Nebula grew into a streaming platform with more than 650,000 paying subscribers, a valuation exceeding $50 million, and approximately 100 employees within four years. Its founders achieved this without venture capital funding, although the business later accepted a strategic investment from CuriosityStream.
- The idea for Nebula emerged from a November 2018 conversation between a YouTube creator and his agent, Dave Wiskus. The creator was waiting at Sydney International Airport for flights through Tokyo and Boston to Washington, DC, when Dave described a proposal from Vimeo involving a paywalled streaming service for another client.
- Vimeo was offering creators technology to establish their own paid video platforms. Similar proposals had circulated throughout the YouTube industry for years, but previous attempts struggled because audiences had little incentive to pay for content already available on YouTube.
- Vessel was a prominent example of the failed alternative-platform model. Launched in early 2015 with creators including Good Mythical Morning, Epic Meal Time, Shane Dawson, and Linus Tech Tips, it charged $2.99 monthly for access to videos 72 hours before their YouTube release.
- Vessel promised creators substantially higher earnings per view through subscriptions and advertising. Its weakness was that higher revenue per view could not compensate for the dramatically smaller audiences watching outside YouTube.
- Alternative platforms faced a fundamental customer-acquisition problem. Audiences could watch identical content free on YouTube, while competing services needed subscriptions or more intrusive advertising to generate sufficient revenue.
- Previous streaming challengers often ran out of money before reaching a sustainable audience. They attracted creators through initial financial incentives but failed to develop enough viewing activity to justify continued participation once those incentives ended.
- Nebula's founders believed they could overcome these failures by combining creator relationships, shared financial incentives, exclusive content, and a low-risk launch strategy. Their approach developed from an existing network of educational YouTubers rather than from an independently funded streaming startup.
- Nebula's origins can be traced to July 27, 2016, when Kurzgesagt's Philipp Dettmer contacted the narrator. Dettmer said he and another major YouTuber were considering a project but could not yet disclose its details.
- Philipp Dettmer and CGP Grey introduced the narrator to Dave Wiskus, their existing freelance sponsorship agent. After approximately a month of arranging a conversation, Dave offered sponsorship representation with better rates through a data-driven approach and a disclosed upfront commission.
- YouTube sponsorship representation was particularly unfavorable to creators in 2016. Advertising revenue from YouTube's AdSense program was often insufficient to support full-time creators, making external sponsorships financially important.
- Some sponsorship agencies imposed six-month exclusivity agreements without guaranteeing paid opportunities. Creators could be prohibited from working with competing agencies even when their contracted representative failed to secure sponsorships.
- Undisclosed commissions allowed agencies to conceal how much sponsors were actually paying. An agency could charge an advertiser one amount, offer the creator a substantially smaller amount, and retain the difference without disclosing its margin.
- Some sponsorship agencies contractually represented advertisers rather than creators. Their financial incentive was therefore to negotiate lower creator payments, despite presenting themselves as the creator's route to sponsorship revenue.
- The narrator encountered evidence that one agency retained undisclosed commissions as high as 50% on certain sponsorships. Such margins explain how Dave could increase creator earnings while potentially charging advertisers less than competing agencies.
- Exclusivity agreements weakened creators' ability to reject poor sponsorship arrangements. Leaving an agency could require surviving six months without sponsorship income, potentially threatening a creator's financial viability.
- Dave Wiskus differentiated his business through transparent commissions, better rates, and personal service. The narrator initially doubted his promises but found that Dave delivered better financial results.
- CGP Grey and Philipp Dettmer also connected Dave with Brian of Real Engineering. Brian had previously collaborated with the narrator on videos that became viral successes and helped establish both channels.
- Joseph of Real Life Lore became another important member of the emerging creator network. The narrator had developed a relationship with Joseph online and repeatedly encouraged Dave to represent his rapidly growing channel.
- The inaugural VidCon Europe in Amsterdam in April 2017 helped consolidate these relationships. The narrator persuaded Joseph to attend partly so he could meet Dave, although travel disruptions meant Joseph arrived only on the afternoon of the final day.
- A lengthy gathering at an Amsterdam bar helped Dave recognize the potential for a larger business. Meeting multiple creators in person demonstrated that his informal sponsorship-booking operation could expand into an organized agency.
- Dave's sponsorship operation became Standard, a company intended to operate quietly behind its creators. Its deliberately unremarkable name reflected the idea that creators should remain the public focus while the agency handled commercial work.
- Standard grew through creator referrals rather than aggressive recruitment. Its transparent practices, competitive sponsorship rates, and personal service distinguished it from agencies with unfavorable contracts and hidden commissions.
- Standard developed into a prominent sponsorship agency for educational YouTube creators. It added dozens of channels, hired employees, opened an office, and organized events around gatherings such as VidCon.
- On November 27, 2018, Dave circulated Nebula's original concept to Standard's creator roster. The proposal followed discussions with the narrator and several other creators and established the initial business model.
- Nebula's original offer was ad-free and sponsor-free versions of creators' YouTube videos, supplemented by occasional exclusive productions. The proposed subscription price was $5 per month, a price the narrator said remained available years later.
- Nebula's initial marketing assumptions were almost completely reversed by experience. The founders expected to attract viewers through purchased AdSense advertising and worried that paying their own creators to promote Nebula might appear inappropriate.
- Purchased AdSense advertising never became a profitable acquisition channel for Nebula. Paid promotions delivered by YouTube creators instead became the platform's central growth mechanism.
- The founders deliberately designed Nebula to fail with minimal financial and reputational damage if the experiment did not work. They wanted to avoid the pattern of heavily funded competitors launching publicly, failing to achieve profitability, and leaving participating creators embarrassed.
- Nebula adopted an unusually lean minimum viable product strategy. Rather than build a complete streaming operation based on assumptions, the founders wanted an inexpensive working platform that would reveal customer preferences through actual behavior.
- Standard already possessed useful software-development capabilities. Dave had previously worked in iOS application development, and Standard employed engineers who maintained internal tools for sponsorship billing and advertising inventory.
- Video delivery was Nebula's principal technical challenge. Reliable high-quality streaming across different countries and internet connections required infrastructure the company could not afford to develop independently.
- The founders rejected Vimeo partly because of customer ownership concerns. Vimeo's proposed arrangement would have placed subscriber billing information and payment relationships under Vimeo's control, potentially making it difficult for Nebula to retain customers if the partnership ended.
- Nebula selected Zype as its initial streaming infrastructure provider. This allowed its team to concentrate on building the customer-facing website and iOS application instead of developing an entire video-delivery system.
- Nebula initially operated with very little automated backend infrastructure. Its systems relied heavily on manual processes despite the polished interface presented to customers.
- An employee named Eric manually processed uploaded videos while also working as the company's podcast editor. Creators placed files in a shared Dropbox folder, after which Eric encoded the videos and published them with the appropriate metadata.
- Nebula's initial website and application cost approximately $100,000 to prepare for launch. Using third-party infrastructure and manual processes significantly reduced the capital required to enter the streaming market.
- The company's most serious unresolved launch problem was how to persuade creators to promote Nebula without sacrificing existing sponsorship income. Standard's experience indicated that a video's audience would generally respond effectively to only one major promotional call to action.
- Promoting two products in the same video could reduce the creator's total earnings. Standard had observed that adding a Patreon promotion after a paid sponsorship often harmed sponsorship performance more than the additional Patreon revenue justified.
- Unpaid Nebula promotions threatened both creators and Standard financially. Creators would sacrifice opportunities to promote paying sponsors, while Standard would lose commissions on those sponsorships.
- Standard and Nebula initially operated as the same legal company. This made the promotional conflict especially important because reducing Standard's sponsorship income would also weaken the revenue source financing Nebula's development.
- Nebula launched without a fully proven customer-acquisition strategy. Its founders accepted this weakness because the initial platform was intended to test whether a workable commercial model could be discovered.
- Nebula established a creator profit-sharing arrangement before launch. The structure allocated 50% of Nebula's profits to participating creators and extended the economic arrangement to a potential sale of the company.
- The creator arrangement was designed to provide participation in a future sale, not merely ongoing video revenue. The narrator illustrated the principle by saying that if Nebula were sold for $1 billion, creators would collectively receive half.
- Individual creator payouts were allocated according to watch time. Creators whose content attracted and retained more viewing activity would earn larger shares of the collective distribution.
- The revenue-sharing structure aligned creators' financial incentives with Nebula's long-term success. It rewarded creators for bringing viewers, producing engaging content, and helping the platform grow rather than simply uploading videos in exchange for fixed fees.
- The possibility of participating in a future sale encouraged creators to remain involved during unprofitable early periods. Nebula sought to establish a relationship between creators and the platform as business partners rather than service providers and customers.
- Nebula's formal public launch occurred on May 23, 2019. Its website had already been operating during testing, but the first public creator promotion marked the practical beginning of the service.
- Isaac Arthur delivered Nebula's first public promotion through his video "Colonizing Black Holes." The video directed viewers to his Nebula Original, "The Paperclip Maximizer," described as one of the platform's first three Originals.
- Real Life Lore, Second Thought, and Polyphonic also released Nebula promotions around launch. Their videos were supported by a small, fixed promotional budget rather than a large advertising campaign.
- Nebula generated more than 4,500 trial signups during its opening weekend. Although the founders expected some users to cancel, the registrations provided valuable early evidence of customer interest.
- Public reaction to Nebula's launch was substantially negative. Many observers expected it to join the list of failed YouTube alternatives, but the attention also demonstrated that audiences considered the idea worth discussing.
- Small paid sponsorship experiments began after launch to test acquisition economics. Nebula wanted to determine whether creators could receive rates comparable to ordinary sponsorships while generating enough paying subscribers to justify those costs.
- A promotion on the narrator's podcast, Extremities, produced 200 signups for an $800 payment. The test implied an initial acquisition cost of approximately $4 per signup, with each customer offered a $5 monthly subscription.
- Early marketing tests suggested that creator sponsorships could acquire subscribers economically. The larger problem was financing enough advertising in advance to grow the platform quickly.
- Nebula lacked sufficient cash to sponsor major channels at scale or finance more ambitious exclusive productions. Monthly subscription revenue would accumulate gradually, even when customer-acquisition campaigns were commercially promising.
- CuriosityStream became the solution to Nebula's initial marketing-financing problem. Standard already managed sponsorships for the documentary-focused streaming company founded by John Hendricks of Discovery Channel.
- CuriosityStream viewed Nebula as complementary rather than a direct replacement. Its documentary and nonfiction offering appealed to a somewhat different audience, making cooperation more attractive than competition.
- Dave Wiskus negotiated a bundle with CuriosityStream at its offices outside Washington, DC. The agreement allowed customers subscribing to CuriosityStream through participating creator links to receive Nebula access at no additional charge.
- The precise financial mechanics of the CuriosityStream bundle were not disclosed. The narrator said the arrangement was designed to provide a worthwhile commercial return to both companies.
- The companies negotiated terms and signed a term sheet before implementing the bundle in September 2019. Nebula creators then began promoting the combined offer through CuriosityStream sponsorship placements already booked on their YouTube channels.
- The bundle solved Nebula's original conflict between sponsorship revenue and platform promotion. Creators could promote Nebula while still delivering a paid advertisement for CuriosityStream, preserving sponsorship opportunities for themselves and Standard.
- The combined CuriosityStream–Nebula offer substantially improved sponsorship conversion. The narrator reported that it became a more compelling proposition for his audience than other sponsorship products advertised on his channel.
- Marketing tests revealed that Nebula's exclusive productions were its strongest selling point. Promoting behind-the-scenes material or extended versions of existing videos produced comparatively weak results.
- Advertising-free viewing was a moderately effective marketing message but weaker than exclusive original content. Full-length, high-budget Originals generated the strongest improvements in subscription performance.
- Nebula shifted its content strategy toward substantial productions unavailable on YouTube. These exclusives provided a clearer reason for viewers to subscribe instead of continuing to watch the same material free elsewhere.
- CuriosityStream began co-producing Nebula Originals after the bundle demonstrated commercial success. Its involvement expanded beyond customer acquisition into financing content that could generate additional subscriptions.
- In October 2019, the narrator traveled to St Helena to produce "The World's Most Useful Airport." The remote Atlantic island provided the setting for Nebula's most ambitious and expensive Original up to that point.
- Nebula passed 10,000 paying subscribers while the St Helena production was underway. It reached 20,000 subscribers less than a month later.
- Nebula exceeded 35,000 paying subscribers by the end of 2019. Within roughly six months of its public launch, it had moved from an experimental service into a rapidly growing subscription business.
- The narrator helped develop Standard and Nebula for years without initially owning Standard. Until 2020, he was a closely involved, long-term client rather than a shareholder.
- CGP Grey and Philipp Dettmer became less enthusiastic about Nebula than other participating creators. They concluded that the streaming business made less sense for them and sought to end their ownership involvement.
- Five creators agreed to purchase the ownership stakes held by Grey and Dettmer. The buyers were Brian of Real Engineering, Alex of LowSpecGamer, Devin of LegalEagle, Thomas Frank, and the narrator.
- The ownership transaction took place in March 2020, coinciding with the beginning of widespread COVID-19 lockdowns. The purchasers believed strongly in Nebula's prospects, and the transaction increased creator ownership among those most enthusiastic about the platform.
- The pandemic accelerated demand for streaming services. As people remained at home, Nebula's bundle subscriptions grew faster and creators earned substantial sponsorship revenue.
- CuriosityStream went public on NASDAQ through a SPAC merger in October 2020. Its shares ended the first trading day approximately 11% higher and reached nearly twice their first-day price at a peak in February 2021.
- The CuriosityStream partnership generated benefits across both businesses and their creator network. Nebula gained subscribers, CuriosityStream gained customers, and creators received stronger sponsorship payments.
- Nebula's owners initially resisted outside investment because they feared pressure to reduce creator compensation. They believed financial investors might favor increasing the platform's percentage of revenue without recognizing the resulting damage to creator participation.
- Nebula's owners believed creators generated most of the platform's commercial value. Higher creator earnings encouraged additional exclusive productions, recommendations to other creators, and continued promotion to established YouTube audiences.
- The founders favored a smaller percentage of a growing business over a larger percentage of a weakened one. Their view was that generous creator compensation would expand the platform's total revenue sufficiently to benefit everyone, including its shareholders.
- CuriosityStream was considered an acceptable investor because it already understood Nebula's creator-dependent economics. It was Nebula's largest marketing partner, had become an important production partner, and had demonstrated a willingness to fund arrangements beneficial to both parties.
- Nebula's owners unanimously approved an investment from CuriosityStream. The deal represented the company's first outside equity investment and ended its status as an entirely creator-owned business.
- CuriosityStream acquired a significant minority ownership stake in Nebula. The investment valued Nebula at more than $50 million, although the exact amount invested and the percentage acquired were not publicly disclosed.
- The investment provided capital for faster expansion without following Nebula's previously rejected venture-capital launch model. The company accepted money from an established commercial partner already closely connected to its growth.
- Nebula experienced particularly rapid expansion during 2022. Productions including Real Life Lore's "Modern Conflicts" and "Jet Lag: The Game" proved especially successful at attracting subscribers.
- Nebula expanded its workforce substantially, particularly in engineering. Additional employees developed applications for platforms including Roku and Samsung televisions, extending the service beyond its original website and iOS application.
- The investment allowed Nebula to develop proprietary streaming technology. This reduced its dependence on Zype's white-label infrastructure and removed some of the technical limitations of its original platform.
- CuriosityStream's production financing also enabled a more ambitious pipeline of Nebula Originals. The company invested in premium exclusive content because previous acquisition tests had identified it as the strongest subscriber incentive.
- Nebula Classes became a significant experiment that failed to meet its commercial expectations. The idea emerged from the pandemic-era boom in paid online education and the strong earnings creators were receiving from classes.
- Outside education platforms had repeatedly approached Standard to sponsor its creators. Nebula decided it might be more profitable to sell its own educational courses rather than advertise competing services.
- Nebula Classes was intended to retain course revenue within the existing creator ecosystem. The company regarded online education as reasonably close to its established educational-video business.
- Unlike Nebula's original lean launch, the Classes project received substantial upfront investment. CuriosityStream's investment had provided cash reserves, encouraging the team to launch a more fully developed product.
- Nebula developed new website and application sections and a backend system supporting multiple subscription tiers. These technical changes were necessary to sell Classes separately from standard Nebula access.
- The Classes service launched with six professionally produced courses. They were filmed in a New York studio with professional editing and motion graphics, creating considerable production expenses.
- Nebula initially planned to release one new class every week. Maintaining that schedule required extensive coordination among its production and engineering teams.
- The Classes launch was operationally successful but commercially disappointing. The narrator reported that the technology and production schedule worked well, while customer demand remained considerably weaker than anticipated.
- Nebula Classes initially cost $100 annually as a standalone product or an additional $5 monthly for existing Nebula subscribers. The company considered these prices competitive with other professionally produced online-course services.
- Classes created customer confusion because Nebula was already promoting a different subscription offer through CuriosityStream. Audiences encountered sponsorships for both products on the same YouTube channels at different times.
- Classes could not be included in existing CuriosityStream bundle promotions because they were not part of the bundle. Consequently, Nebula's own marketing campaigns effectively competed for the same customers with different offers.
- Some subscribers purchased or upgraded to Classes, but sales were insufficient to justify the planned production schedule. The product generated limited successes rather than an outright absence of demand.
- Nebula Originals remained a more effective use of creator production resources than Classes. Creators could improve subscription acquisition and sponsorship performance more effectively through exclusive documentaries and entertainment productions.
- Nebula entered the online-class market after its strongest period of popularity had passed. The narrator observed that other course platforms were also struggling to establish sustainable demand.
- Nebula eventually removed the additional charge for Classes. The courses became available to all Nebula subscribers, and the company slowed the rate of new class production.
- The Classes experiment generated useful marketing evidence despite its disappointing sales. Testing subscriptions outside the CuriosityStream bundle helped inform Nebula's subsequent decision to market its own subscriptions directly.
- CuriosityStream shifted its business strategy toward profitability in late 2022. Its quarterly reporting indicated a move away from rapid expansion as pandemic-related viewing declined and the broader streaming industry weakened.
- CuriosityStream informed Nebula that it wanted to substantially reduce marketing expenditure on bundle sponsorships. The narrator connected the decision to CuriosityStream's changing financial priorities, although he presented that explanation as an assumption.
- Reduced CuriosityStream sponsorship spending threatened both Nebula's subscriber growth and creators' earnings. Despite the development of profit-sharing payments and Originals financing, paid YouTube sponsorships remained the largest source of Nebula-related income for many creators.
- Nebula therefore considered replacing CuriosityStream-funded sponsorships with direct promotions for its own subscriptions. This would remove its dependence on another company's marketing budget but transfer the upfront acquisition costs to Nebula.
- The viability of direct sponsorships depended on customer lifetime value and acquisition costs. Nebula needed subscribers to generate more revenue over their lifetimes than the company spent acquiring and serving them.
- The narrator illustrated subscription economics using a hypothetical $10 monthly service retained for an average of 27 months. Such a customer would generate $270 in lifetime revenue.
- If the example service cost $5 monthly to operate, the customer would contribute $135 over 27 months before acquisition costs. This amount would need to cover marketing expenditure and any remaining profit.
- A hypothetical $75 acquisition cost would leave $60 of lifetime contribution after operating and marketing expenses. The example demonstrated how a subscription company could justify paying substantial amounts for each customer.
- Sponsorship fees could be calculated from expected customer acquisition. At a target acquisition cost of $75, a creator expected to generate 100 new subscriptions could receive approximately $7,500 for a sponsored video.
- Subscription advertisers evaluate campaigns against a target acquisition cost rather than only views or exposure. Agencies and advertisers assess whether campaigns collectively deliver subscribers at or below the target cost.
- The difficulty with subscription marketing is that acquisition costs must be paid before most subscription revenue is collected. In the hypothetical example, spending $75 immediately would require approximately 15 months to recover from the customer's $5 monthly contribution after servicing expenses.
- A profitable subscription model can still experience serious cash shortages during rapid growth. New customers may generate positive lifetime returns while requiring more upfront advertising expenditure than the company can finance.
- External investors often fund the gap between subscriber acquisition and the recovery of marketing costs. Their capital allows subscription companies to grow faster than their existing cash flow would otherwise permit.
- Nebula wanted to avoid raising additional investment and diluting its owners' shares. Instead, it considered using the couple of million dollars already held in its bank account to finance direct customer acquisition.
- Nebula had years of evidence that YouTube sponsorships could acquire subscribers below their expected lifetime value. The unresolved question was whether subscription payments would arrive quickly enough to replenish the cash spent on marketing.
- Rapid recovery of acquisition costs would allow Nebula to recycle revenue into new sponsorships. If costs were recovered within approximately a year, the company believed it could maintain or increase marketing expenditure without continually obtaining fresh capital.
- Slow recovery of acquisition costs represented an existential risk to Nebula's business model. Even successful campaigns could exhaust its cash reserves if the company committed too much money before customer payments accumulated.
- Nebula proceeded with direct subscription marketing despite this financial uncertainty. The change represented its most consequential experiment since launch because it placed customer acquisition and the associated funding risk under the company's own control.
- Five months after the transition, direct sponsorship marketing had exceeded Nebula's expectations. The company's actual subscriber-payment behavior was substantially more favorable than the founders had feared.
- More than 80% of newly acquired subscribers selected annual rather than monthly subscriptions. This meant Nebula could collect a year's subscription payment immediately instead of waiting for monthly installments.
- Nebula paid creators for sponsorship placements the day after their videos were published. Annual billing therefore allowed the company to receive substantial subscriber revenue before paying for the promotional activity that generated those subscribers.
- Average upfront subscriber revenue exceeded Nebula's average customer-acquisition cost. This eliminated the specific working-capital problem that had previously threatened to constrain direct marketing.
- Positive upfront acquisition cash flow did not mean Nebula earned an immediate overall profit on every subscriber. The narrator emphasized that the business still incurred expenses beyond marketing, including operating and production costs.
- The annual-payment pattern made Nebula's marketing expenditure far more scalable. Because new subscriptions replenished acquisition spending almost immediately, the company no longer needed large additional cash reserves merely to fund more of the same advertising.
- Nebula increased monthly marketing expenditure from zero to more than $500,000 within several months of the transition. The narrator said the company was receiving more subscriber revenue in the same month than it was spending on marketing.
- Direct marketing fundamentally changed Nebula's independence from CuriosityStream. The platform could now finance creator promotions through its own customer revenue rather than depend on a partner's willingness to maintain sponsorship budgets.
- The change also strengthened creators' control over Nebula's future. Creator earnings and platform growth were less exposed to strategic changes at CuriosityStream, even though CuriosityStream remained an investor.
- Successful direct acquisition unlocked additional investment in programming, technology, and recruitment. Nebula began planning a more ambitious slate of Originals, adding creators, and expanding its technical capabilities.
- The narrator considered 2023 potentially as important to Nebula's development as its launch year of 2019. He believed the combination of proven audience preferences and sustainable customer acquisition could make previous milestones appear modest in retrospect.
- Nebula's growth depended on relationships extending beyond formal commercial agreements. Creators regularly shared successes, discussed problems, attended conferences, vacationed together, and participated in major personal events.
- The creator community provided practical and emotional support during the pressures of running YouTube channels. The narrator credited these relationships with helping individual creators navigate their careers and maintain a shared commitment to Nebula.
- Nebula and Standard employees handled much of the work that participating creators did not publicly perform. Their responsibilities included engineering, sponsorship operations, production, technical maintenance, and services that enabled creators to concentrate on content.
- Subscribers became an active source of feedback and support rather than merely paying customers. The narrator said customers identified weaknesses, celebrated improvements, and helped guide the service's development.
- Early subscribers tolerated technical shortcomings that accompanied Nebula's inexpensive initial launch. Their willingness to remain involved gave the company room to improve a product originally built with limited funding and substantial manual operations.
- Nebula's development was shaped by repeated testing and changes of direction rather than a fully correct founding plan. Purchased AdSense marketing failed, paid creator sponsorships worked, the CuriosityStream bundle accelerated growth, Classes underperformed, and direct annual subscriptions ultimately resolved the company's most serious acquisition-financing problem.
- Nebula's ownership, compensation, and marketing arrangements were designed to reinforce one another. Creators benefited from sponsorship payments, watch-time-based profit distributions, and potential sale proceeds, giving them several reasons to produce exclusive content and bring their audiences to the platform.
- The company's expansion demonstrated that attracting customers and financing customer acquisition were separate business challenges. Nebula established that creator-led marketing could generate subscribers years before it discovered how to fund that marketing at substantial scale without repeatedly raising investment.
- At the time of the account, Nebula offered an annual subscription promotion through Nebula.tv/Wendover. The advertised discount reduced the annual price by $20, producing an effective subscription cost of $2.50 per month.
- The narrator acknowledged that some internal details could not be disclosed for legal or practical reasons. This included the precise financial mechanics of the CuriosityStream partnership and investment, meaning the account described the major decisions and outcomes without revealing every contractual or ownership detail.