The Truth About fern

[00:00:04]Lately, people have been talking about Fern quite a lot. Fern is the fastest growing documentary channel university called Fern.

[00:00:11]>> Who is making these videos and how? So, we decided to tell our origin story and to give you a look under the hood. We'll walk you through the 500 to a,000 hours it takes to make a fern video and we'll give you a peek at what we're planning to do next.

[00:00:28]Conf.

[00:00:32]>> All right, first time for some lore. I am Jonas or Yonas. Actually, you might have noticed already, but I'm German. In high school, I met David or David, and we've been friends ever since. In 2015, we started a German channel called Zimpletimos in tribute to this classic satire magazine. Most people just call our channel Zimply today, even for Germans, the full name is quite the mouthful. We also started a commentary channel shortly after. We were still going to uni in the Netherlands at the time and YouTube was just a hobby. But from the get-go, we were inspired by the grades on this platform.

[00:01:07]We've always been fans first. Every frame a painting of course, The Nerd Rider, Quitzkazak, Vox, CGP Grey, Veritassium, Vsauce, Let Me Know, Captain Christian, Neil Howerin, the list goes on and on and on. All these channels were in their own way making an impact. And this might sound a bit corny, but we wanted to make an impact, too. That often involves reaching many people, which works best in English on this platform. So, in the summer of 2019, we gave it a shot with Reezy.

[00:01:37]It actually worked quite well, and the channel hit 100,000 subs within the first four or five videos. Simone Yet tweeted about our video on Shell's greenwashing at the time, just weeks before her wired cover. That was cool.

[00:01:48]But we were out of uni at this point, barely making any money with YouTube and keeping ourselves afloat with editing gigs. So ultimately, we didn't manage to keep both channels running. Reezy died, dipped under 100k subs over time, and this banner has been a big ass lie ever since.

[00:02:04]Around the same time, Zimply joined Funk, essentially a network financing and producing content for young people funded by the German public broadcasting system. And this marked a real turning point for us. We got professional journalistic training and a stable budget to build a team and make better content. We had some truly great years there, but it was not all great and we decided to leave Funk in 2022 for a variety of reasons. One of them being that it was nearly impossible for us in that setup to try and restart Reezy.

[00:02:32]First, we kind of got off track with a bigger streaming documentary on Russian government hackers, though. It's actually available on Fern, but for complicated legal reasons without all the cool interviews.

[00:02:43]Just when we were finishing off that project, we met Elmer. He already ran his channel, Hook. All three of us were living in Amsterdam and we connected over our shared views on YouTube and what was missing. Elmer was a gifted animator and storyteller and at the forefront of using 3D in his videos.

[00:02:59]David and I had a team of journalists and mostly 2D animators and knew how to run a YouTube channel at scale. An idea began to form. What if we joined forces?

[00:03:12]Over the course of almost a year, we developed Fern. The name is a play on the German words Fanvi and Fanzian. The former describes a feeling of homesickness for a place you've never been, and the latter means to watch television. It's also planned in English, hence the green. On July 11th, 2023, we went live. And it all became pretty crazy pretty fast.

[00:03:39]Nowadays, we shoot content all across the globe. Revolute helps us manage our money while we're on the move. We can pay in local currencies, keep track of what we're spending in real time, and split expenses all in one app. Holding multiple currencies makes traveling a lot smoother, and sending money abroad is simple and transparent. If you want to check it out, there's a link in the description, or you can scan this QR code. We get instant notifications every time we spend, so nothing slips through the cracks. The detailed spending insights make it easy to stay on top of our budget, especially during busy shoots and travel days. Feel free to check out Revolute. It's helped us a lot. More than 70 million people worldwide are already using it, and there's a welcome bonus waiting after your first card payment. The links in the description.

[00:04:24]Back to 2023. It's probably not an overstatement that our videos on the hunt for the dark web king and the kids who hacked the CIA were catalysts for this subgenre. The mystery board flooded YouTube. Copies of our 3D thumbnail style would go on to become a defining feature of AI slop content. We'll cover that in a different video soon. And we want to stress that we didn't invent most of this. Let me know using 3D in brilliant ways in his videos way earlier. So had our friend Neo and others. We actually got the inspiration for the first B thumbnail from his Bin Laden video and asked him if he'd be chill with us creating our own version.

[00:04:57]In any case, Fern was delivering these types of videos on a near weekly basis.

[00:05:02]thanks to countless hours of work by a hyperdedicated team. And that was new, helping the channel grow very quickly.

[00:05:08]But more on our team and workflows in a minute, because pretty quickly there was a problem.

[00:05:14]Elmer noticed that working in a setting like this wasn't working for him.

[00:05:18]Experimentation and scene building in Blender increasingly became feedback on Frame.io and chasing people for script deadlines. And it was tough to not let his personal channel hook slide. 4 months after launch and about 15 videos in, he quit. But he continued doing voiceovers since he was the main established voice of the channel at this point, which was incredibly kind. We're friends to this day and I think it was a good decision for him. There's no drama here. It's just how things go sometimes.

[00:05:44]But for David and me at that moment, it posed a huge challenge. We'd only really managed to get Fern off the ground with a third person on board. Now, we had to run simply, Fern, and our other projects in parallel. We were at the end of our 20s managing a team of around 60 employees and freelancers. The rocket was flying into space and we were hopelessly overwhelmed. There were many stressful periods during our YouTube career. That's just part of it. But this was a whole different beast. Lost in HR, sales, business operations, production coordination, and legal stuff. We could barely focus on the actual content anymore. We realized that we just couldn't keep going alone, especially if we wanted to keep up the video quality.

[00:06:24]And that's when we started talking to Electrify.

[00:06:27]Their business model is pretty straightforward. Electrify invests in creators, stabilizes their business and takes a bunch of operational tasks off their shoulders. The creators maintain full editorial and creative control and have final say over sponsors. We quickly understood that they understood that the audience's trust is the one thing that matters on YouTube, especially in edutainment. If your quality drops, your audience leaves and your business collapses. So any sustainable YouTube operation needs to put quality first at all times. We intrinsically knew that and apart from that just always want to make better, more meaningful content with the biggest possible impact. But we needed any possible partner to understand this too. While considering it, we spoke to Derek from Veritasium about his experiences. He'd been with Electrify for quite some time at this point and his work life balance had improved dramatically. While the channel kept making some of the best content on this platform for us, the proof was in the pudding. We believed in their business model and after months of consideration decided to partner with them starting the 1st of January 2025 and that move was an absolute gamecher for us. The change took time and at times the transition was rocky but ultimately they took so many tasks off our hands HR sales legal etc etc. We managed to refocus on the content and stabilized our operations. We're now able to make longer more in-depth videos with way more boots on the ground. Our visual quality increased significantly as well as we grew both the writer room and the production team. There are amazing ex Netflix and BBC folks working at Electrify with decades of production and process experience. One of them helped us pull off the Wakan production for which we successfully sent Valley to Afghanistan. That documentary has won four awards so far and we are so so proud of it. And we have so much more coming this year. We're experimenting with reenactments. We have several investigations coming for you, some bizarre, some chilling. We interviewed incredible people to bring you their stories. And of course, we're planning new videos with Vali. Maybe that's a good moment to give you a little insight into how we're making all of this content.

[00:08:31]The entire next part is totally inspired by KZK's 1,200 hour video. Their quality standards in general have always been a benchmark for us, and I'd probably faint if I ever met their founder, Philip, in person. We emailed a couple of times, though. That was exciting. Overall, about 100 people work on our videos. Not all full-time of course. So we have an endless list of topics coming from all over. Things that interest David and me, internal pitches, suggestions from viewers. Generally, we work on about 30 projects at any given time. We try to balance ambitious productions with more straightforward content like true crime.

[00:09:03]When covering crime, we usually try to find stories that have a second layer, something you can take away from the video aside from the thrill. We aim for a colorful, unpredictable mix, so you'll never know what's going to come next. We also collaborate with established outlets. They often have far more resources than us, and it's an honor to spread their reporting.

[00:09:23]Once a topic has been selected, we spend days, sometimes weeks, doing initial research. Then we discuss how we could tell that story. Then more days, weeks, or sometimes even months of research follow, often trying to find and interview experts or protagonists. This comes with its own challenges. For example, finding film crews all across the world to work with us. Then the main journalist covering the story writes the script under the supervision of an editor-inchief. Yet another editor-inchief provides a third pair of eyes, and every video gets a fact check by our dedicated fact-checking team.

[00:09:55]Sometimes we bring in additional outside experts to weigh in on science or history questions. We still make mistakes, but we try to correct them as best we can. Once the script is done, the production team rolls in and cooks.

[00:10:07]Oftent times, our art directors have already been involved during the script process to make sure interviews are filmed in a certain way. For example, a team of cutters, 2D and 3D animators, musicians, and sound designers all work together on a single video. Usually, it takes about 2 to 4 months for a video to move through post-prouction.

[00:10:25]Now, you might be wondering, all that sounds incredibly expensive. It is. We have two income streams, AdSense and sponsors. First, AdSense. YouTube pays you a share of the ad income through their native ads. Good when you make a lot of views. We're confident in our content, but it naturally raises the pressure to package our stories well.

[00:10:45]Second, sponsors. A slot in the video, no editorial oversight or input. We reject almost all sponsors who want to work with us and extensively wet the ones we pick. But also here, more views often equal more income. In addition, many businesses now focus on AI. We don't think AI is any good at creative tasks, but can be useful in other areas.

[00:11:04]Balancing what we can and cannot recommend, how and to what degree is difficult. And at the same time, it's just tough to find good brands that are willing to buy a slot in an investigation into journalism in Gaza.

[00:11:15]That will never mean that we wouldn't make a video like this. It's the whole reason any of us are in this in the first place.

[00:11:23]Lately, we realize that we need to diversify. Both AdSense and sponsors are good pillars, but they demand a focus on views, and they make it more difficult to cover some of the toughest, most controversial topics. In other words, not everything that matters will get clicks or a sponsor. And at the same time, many investigations into these things that matter demand incredible amounts of resources.

[00:11:45]So, we're building a third pillar called Roots.

[00:11:50]This starts with a newsletter. It's packed with amazing content and totally free. We're going to bring you a couple of stories every other week for now about things you never heard of, things you always wondered about, supported by amazing graphics. We'll also share updates and some personal thoughts about our work, about Fern, or whatever is going to be on our mind. We're doing this to build a firmer community around this channel. There won't be any ads in the newsletter, and we will inform you about roots as we're building it out. I really hope a lot of you will join us.

[00:12:19]If you enjoy what we do, this will be a blast.

[00:12:26]Fern is just 3 years old, and in many ways, we're just getting started. Sorry, Amar. I totally ripped that one from your previous bio. All right, come on.

[00:12:33]Join the newsletter. It'll tell you about Minecraft's most fascinating server and a crazy hacker cable, plus some behind the scenes. Oh, and because you're early, there's a little bonus waiting when you sign up. A link is in the description.