In 2023, Kurzgesagt has existed for 10 years - an insanely long time in internet years. We are among the largest sciency channels on YouTube and still a bit of a black box to people. So let us talk about ourselves a bit in three parts: our backstory, how we finance our work, and the values of Kurzgesagt!
Our Backstory
Kurzgesagt’s foundation was laid when Philipp, our founder, dropped out of high school as a teenager. Learning seemed daft and useless and he was not interested in anything - until a very special teacher at a school for dropouts grabbed him by the neck. The way she taught was different - she talked about connections and the big picture, and told a story. For the first time ever, Philipp wanted to learn more without being forced. It was a key life experience, and Kurzgesagt tries to recreate this experience for you.
Philipp got a high school degree, studied history and design, and eventually started Kurzgesagt as a passion project, inspired by Crash Course World History. In 2012, YouTube was less commercial and more idealistic - you couldn’t make a living with videos as involved as ours and that was fine. The goal was creative freedom, and so for the first few years, it actually cost money to make Kurzgesagt. We had no outside funding, just intrinsic motivation and a few friends from university. We worked for clients during the day and on Kurzgesagt at night, 80-100 hours a week. It was a real struggle, but also very rewarding.
But then, Patreon launched, sponsorships started, our views increased, and YouTube changed. In 2015, the channel began to break even and then to earn a profit. But we were pretty burned out at this point, so we decided to bring in more friends and hire the first team members full time, creating a legal entity. More people meant that we could stop overworking, do more, and improve. But we also needed to earn more - the livelihood of real humans depended upon it. None of us had any experience in running a company, but it sort of just happened.
A decade later, Kurzgesagt is not a small project anymore. We are an animation studio with offices in Munich and Berlin. We need computers, monitors, tablets, desks, coffee, contracts, pay licences, taxes, rent, and insurance. In 2023, our team consists of over 60 full employees and a lot of freelancers around the world. Salaries alone cost millions of dollars a year, just to stay around.
How We Finance Kurzgesagt
We have added up our earnings from 2015 through 2022. Our sources of funding change depending on opportunities and the state of the world. Early on, agency work was our main source of income, ad revenue varies, in some years we got more sponsorships than in others. The shop didn’t exist for a long time, then it became pretty big after we launched our calendar.
62% of our revenue comes indirectly or directly from you - you watch our videos with ads, support us on Patreon or buy from our shop. The single biggest source of income by far is our shop, that alone accounted for 40% over the last 8 years. YouTube ads accounted for 13% and Patreon 9%. So without your support, we would cease to exist. We want to put more emphasis on the beauty of the world, the amazing progress we have made, and the potential of humanity.
Our most important sources of revenue are our shop and Patreon, as we are science communicators and create sciency products that require hundreds of hours of research, discussion with experts, and working directly with manufacturers. This allows us to be directly funded by our patrons and give something back in return. YouTube ads are also a crucial part of our funding, however they are not within our control. We stopped doing paid agency work in 2022, which accounted for 9% of our revenue over the last 8 years. 12% of our revenue came from commercial sponsors advertising products, and 7% from German Public Broadcasting for the German Channel, which we ended in 2022. Institutional sponsors accounted for 10% of our revenue.
We choose our institutional sponsors carefully, and have contracts with each of them to prevent them from having any editorial influence other than suggesting topics like “global health” or “climate change”. We agree on video topics together, and the final decision is always ours. We have received 3% of our revenue over the last 8 years from the Gates organisations for a wide variety of topics, 5% from Open Philanthropy for specific projects, and 2% from other organisations like the Red Cross or the UN. We have used this funding to start Arabic, Hindi, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese, and French channels, as well as to create original Tik Tok content.
Running an educational YouTube channel is a balancing act that we take very seriously, and we are doing our best to maintain this balance and adjust whenever necessary. Our core mission is to spark curiosity and make science and humanism accessible for as many people as possible. We want to make people excited about science and inspire long term thinking and a positive, constructive outlook. We want to put more emphasis on the beauty of the world, the amazing progress we have made, and the potential of humanity. Despite the gloomy topics we discuss, we strive to approach them with an informed and well-researched optimism. We don’t want to ignore humanity’s challenges, nor do we want to fall into the trap of pessimism. Instead, we want to inspire people to dream of the glorious future we could create if we believe in its possibility.
We don’t want to limit ourselves to YouTube; we want to be a positive influence across multiple media platforms, such as TikTok, long-form content, apps, VR games, and future games. Our shop is also part of this vision, where we start our stories with a video and end them with a poster.
We are thankful for your support, which allows us to work to the best of our knowledge and ability. We hope you enjoy what we offer and that we will be doing something worthwhile for as long as we exist. We want to make science and learning more fun for as many people as possible and if you want to help us do this, you can watch and share our videos, check out our shop, become a Patreon, or give us an ad blocker exception.
We are grateful for your presence and we hope we are less of a black box now. Doing Kurzgesagt for a decade has been a wild ride and we thank you for being with us all these years.