- All right, I review a
lot of products, right? I've talked about hundreds, maybe thousands of products at this point, but as many videos as
I've made about products, there are way more products out there in the world that exist. So the process of selecting which products to even review in the first place is like an art form to itself. Most products are just, meh, they're fine. Like they exist, they get made, they're fine, whatever. So they have to reach a
certain level of interest or being really good to even
be considered for review, or sometimes really, really bad. So there's been a lotta interesting discourse
lately on this topic. There will be, you know,
some negative reviews, and then a company will
eventually go out of business. And then the internet poses the question, "Do bad reviews kill companies?" Do bad reviews kill companies? Or do bad products kill companies? Yeah, I do have a lot of thoughts. So two of the biggest examples
that have been pointed to, especially on Twitter, were the Fisker Ocean review that I did and the Humane AI Pin
from a couple days ago. So the Fisker saga was
pretty well documented, but in case you missed it, I reviewed a car, I had a pretty horrible
experience with it, documented it, published the review on the Auto Focus channel, and then a few months later, the entire company appears
to be on life support, like likely filing for bankruptcy soon. And now this startup, Humane, you know, they dropped their
first product, this pin. I review it, it's not super positive. A lot of people are saying the same thing, and I don't even think Humane
is going anywhere, by the way. But I think there is some
pretty simple logic we can use to decipher what the real
danger is to these companies, which is, do you still get
a bunch of negative reviews and then die as a company if the product is actually really good? But you know what, let's
back up for a second. What is a review? Little pet peeve of mine is I think people misuse or overuse that word a lot, but a review is just,
somebody uses the product and then just delivers their impressions on whether they think
it's any good or not, how well it actually worked. And if their honest
opinion is if it's good, then that's the review. If it's bad, that's the review. That's basically it. And so I've been a advocate
of good independent reviews for what feels like forever now. But the thing about reviews
is if they're not honest, then they're basically useless. I really strongly feel like everything that comes from a review, all the consequences and
everything that comes around it, everything in the world of
and ecosystem of reviews depends on the review being truthful and actually honest about things. So, I'll just give you an example. I've told this story before, but years ago I remember I reviewed the first Razer
Phone when it came out. So Razer, gaming company,
they make lots of stuff. They were getting into
smartphones for the first time. So they made a phone that appeals to the same
target demographic of gamers. So, you know, it had a bunch
of upsides and downsides. Obviously gaming focused features, so it's got like front-facing speakers and a high refresh rate. The battery's pretty big,
but also the camera was weak. And I specifically, I remember, the vibration motor was horrible. And I remember calling it out. I remember saying this. Also the vibration motor
in this phone, trash. Straight trash. I'm gonna call myself
so you can hear this. (phone ringing and vibrating) (phone ringing and vibrating) It sounds broken like it's, but it sounded that way
out the box since day one. So that is the Razer Phone. Just one of the worst vibration motors I've ever experienced in a new phone. So, okay, fast forward a year, right? I'm at a briefing, it's in New York City, it's for the Razer Phone 2. And so they're walkin' me and some other people through
this new phone they've made, and they've got a bunch of changes. It's got a glossy back. They added wireless charging now. The logo glows and like
the speakers are better and all this stuff, and
they're talkin' us through it. And then the guy turns to me and he says, "And Marques, you gotta try "the new vibration motor in this phone." And it's such a niche thing, but, sure enough, I try
it, and it's way better. And that's, to me, that's a big part of what
reviews are all about. That honest feedback
turned into actually action for the company to make it better. So people who bought the first one knew what they were getting into, and people who bought the second one actually benefited from that. So that's number one, honesty
obviously super important. But the second thing is these reviews are also definitely for the people that are watching them and consuming them. So you've probably been in this situation when you're about to buy something and you just wanna double check, so you hop on YouTube, you search it up, watch a couple videos about the product, just to make sure you're
not missin' anything, and then you either decide on the moment or later that day, like, okay, yeah, I'm definitely gonna buy it. We've all been there. That's the reason, that's exactly how this
YouTube channel started. Like, my first ever tech
video was reviewing a laptop, but specifically, I bought the laptop with my allowance money in high school, and I found a Windows Media Center remote in the PCI slot that wasn't
in any of the other reviews. So the first thing I decided to do was talk through it in a video so that anyone else who
bought the laptop after me would know about it. So you're thinking about buying a thing, you watch a couple reviews of the thing, you learn everything you
need to know, boom, success. But here's where it gets
a little bit interesting. I do have a bit of an extra dimension on my hands with these videos, because I know that there's no way that every single person watching a review of every single product is one of those people who
was considering buying it. I get that comment actually
in person all the time. "I watch the reviews even though "I'm not buyin' any of this stuff." So I know that a lot of people, in fact, most people
watching these videos, are actually just here to watch
an interesting, informative, good video in general,
an entertaining video. And so the way that I satisfy those things is much more subjective, I think. Like everyone has a
different way they do it. Everyone has a different
target demographic, but that's a little
bit of a new dimension. So then I think if we go back
to the original question. So can a video kill a company? I'll use the Humane and
Fisker examples specifically. The Fisker Ocean was a terrible car. It is a terrible car. I've reviewed about 40, 50 different cars in the past few years, made videos about many of them. This is the first one where I genuinely couldn't wait to be done driving it. Like it just had tons of problems, bugs, missing features, safety issues. Like it's just bad, right? So I review the thing, I give people what I
feel is a fair assessment that also doubles as a warning
not to buy this bad car. So hopefully it's
entertaining and informative to the majority of people who weren't thinking about buying the car, but also that it is as honest as possible with the people who are. And maybe a week or two later, the company's stock price is
plummeting to an all-time low and they appear to be like
filing for bankruptcy. Cue the internet, going nuts, which I guess I get it. Like obviously it makes a nice headline. Like, oh, this review came out
and it killed this company. This review bankrupted
all of Fisker, maybe. Like there was a whole Morning Brew thread on how Fisker handled this video so poorly that they're now gonna go
bankrupt because of it. Also, there were whole stock
investments theme channels saying this was like
a paid promoted attack against the Fisker stock price. Like it got pretty crazy. But did one review kill
the entire company? I would say to zoom out a bit. I would really... I think it's important to
zoom out a bit, actually. First of all, I was not the only one to review the car, not even close. And so yes, the stock price
did drop after my video, but the stock was in free fall for many, many months
before my video, too. And if you zoom out on YouTube or in the car review space in general, I was far from the only
person saying these things about the car for all of these months. Many other reviewers had been
having a plethora of issues, even stuff that I didn't
have with this thing. I actually, I feel like that might be the easiest way to tell if
a review is honest or not. Like, we're all reviewing the
same product basically. We all have the same thing, so we're all gonna find
a lot of the same things. We're all eventually going to have a lot of the same upsides, downsides. If there are issues they
may eventually surface. So yeah, they're probably
gonna agree with each other. A bunch of honest reviews. They'll all say a lot of the same stuff. Oh, and also, in the U.S. the stock price, there's this thing where
if a stock, what is it? If it's below a dollar for
however many days in a row, then they'll get a warning
that they may be de-listed and they have six months
to get the stock price back up over a dollar. And Fisker had just received that notice, right around the same time that my, I think right before my
video came out, actually. And if you're an investor,
you're looking at that, that's the type of stuff that
really tanks the stock price, if you're askin' me. And if you're askin' me personally, I literally don't care
what the stock price is of any company, of any product I review. I just don't care. (chuckling) And so if I'm talking about a product that will never have anything to do with what I say about the product, and I hope that's not true
about other people either. And I shouldn't even have to say this. I'm not invested in any
companies that I cover. It's just a matter of trying
to make an informative, educational, and honest video review. That's my goal. My only goal is to do that. And I don't have any duty
to any of the companies whose products I cover. It is only to the people
watching the videos. So now, okay, fast forward
to, you know, pretty recently, the Humane AI Pin comes out. A lot of the same stuff, right? Like this pin has a lot
of missing promises that, you know, the things it does, it doesn't actually do super well. The battery life is bad, it overheats. The laser projector is kinda bad. Like the list just goes on and on. I tried to be as fair as possible and as informative as possible, but I'm also absolutely
not about to sugarcoat or leave anything out
to protect any company's $700 device with a monthly subscription. Not into that. But yet, even still, there are some threads blowing up saying it's extra bad what I
did to this poor company. And you know, maybe you could argue since this is the biggest
channel that covered it, maybe there's some extra impact there. But again, I would say to zoom out. Just zoom out again. I was not the first, actually, even, to cover the Humane Pin, but I'm also far from the
only one to talk about it. And even a little inside baseball, when a product comes out that's
this notable or this bad, which isn't very often,
a lot of reviewers, like it's a very... It's stressful. You wanna make sure you
get everything right. A lot of us are literally trading notes and like trying to figure out, like when mine died in two hours and overheated on my chest
without doing anything, I thought it was like an issue with mine, and I was texting a couple others, and sure enough, they're having the same
things happen to them. So we're all trying to be
as thorough as possible and making sure reviews are truthful. And so that's how you get a
bunch of truthful reviews. Now you could argue, and I think the guy on Twitter did, that the packaging was too clickbaity. And I totally get that. But I also stand by our
title and thumbnail, and especially the end of the title. But keep in mind the dimension that most of the people
who see this in their feed, in their subscription box, have never heard of the Humane AI Pin. And this will be the first
time they hear about it, and they click on it, hopefully, and then they're delivered
with a thoughtful, well-considered, balanced,
and honest, and entertaining, and informative video that
happens to be a review. So look, I've reviewed a lot
of bad products in my day. You might remember some of them. You might remember the Dyson headphones or the Red Hydrogen
One or the Pixel Slate, or the HTCU Ultra. The list goes on. But one thing has definitely been clear and consistent throughout all of this, which is anytime the company goes under, you don't get those bad reviews without the product being
bad to begin with, obviously. I have a massive amount of
respect and appreciation for people and groups of people who are actually making new
stuff, like building products. That's the hard part,
at the end of the day. And we get to get a whole
bunch of new exciting things that might change the world,
and that's really exciting. But my reviews technically
are not for them. All that any honest review actually does is just accelerate whatever
was already going on. Think of it that way. Okay, thanks for watchin'. Catch you guys on the next one. Peace. (upbeat relaxed music)
