I have more thoughts on the matter, but wanted to keep them separate from the purely Lab-based comments.
On one hand, aggressive expansion and reinvesting everything is how you get MrBeast-level growth. What's more aggressive than a Youtuber poaching a seasoned employee from an established company (and using him as bait to encourage other defectors)? But it seems quite expensive. I don't know if they're burning cash, but he said in his Expanding Labs video that "what little cash Yvonne and I had left for business development & expenses" was going into the Labs instead of another merch run.
I'm no businessman, and not one to judge. You can write off a lot of equipment costs the way you can't with people, and GamersNexus did just buy a massive fan tester, so the writing is on the wall for the "generalist" content he wants to move away from. But he's paying a guy to "think" for 6 months, with no idea of what the returns will be. It's like philosophy or academia.
Me personally, I would've dumped that money into property (so my company's less reliant on Youtube), or bought established or up-and-coming channels. NXGamer (55K subs) is a smaller DigitalFoundry who is sometimes contracted by IGN. In a MLID stream, he namedropped VGTech (25K subs) as the only other trustworthy videogame framerate data channel, besides him and DF. I would buy or rebrand NX or VG. Maybe grab a few of these tech rumour channels that have been popping off in the last few years, and have them pump out 1 video a week on separate days, so I have new content every day.
My favourite is the long-format essay Jim from AdoredTV used to do. But LTT doesn't dabble in rumours (probably because of their close connections to manufacturers), and they only have 2 video essays on Tech Longer. They also don't do much gaming, outside of PC benchmarking. Someone like FrameChasers specialises on a game (Warzone), both the content and the PC-building side.
Maybe it's wishful thinking. Linus said multiple times that workers are his biggest expense. However, Youtube is a clear and present danger that needs divesting from. YT ads are where he makes his money, over Floatplane, merch and sponsors. He said on last week's stream that it's deliberately hiding analytics, despite their usefulness in making the trending videos that make it money.
This is like Uber drivers with the Sword of Damocles bearing over them by the tech overlords. In one swing, they can cut off your livelihood, or make things difficult with a policy change (see Apple forcing apps to update frequently or be removed). And their motives don't even make sense. Profit-maximisation is in their rational self-interest, yet Youtube makes changes that cut engagement and stop creators chasing trends.
Sucks to be a gig-economy worker. I know LTT are in a much stronger position, but at the end of the day, they have no bargaining power. Youtube can decide on a whim whether their channel lives or dies, and are accountable to no-one. These unknowable gods and their algorithms that require deciphering like ancient texts aren't a rat race I'd want to get involved in, hence real estate.
Plus, let's be honest: you can have 14M subscribers like LTT, but Youtube only cares about music videos, talk show hosts and movie trailers, i.e. old media. The only new media they go out of their way to defend are vloggers and streamers (see Logan Paul). Even then, TikTok and Twitch eat their lunch, to the point where Youtube is just a dumping ground for clips from those two platforms.
