Nicholas Carlson has witnessed spectacular failures in the tech and media worlds over the years. As the former top editor of Business Insider, he chronicled the carnage at Yahoo and Groupon, and then watched several Silicon Valley companies and rival publications make an ill-fated “pivot to video.”
Now Mr. Carlson, 41, is trying to put the lessons he learned to good use. He is preparing to debut a media start-up of his own — one with a focus on video.
The new company, Dynamo, is betting big on the growing popularity of video on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn. It will produce “cinematic” video stories for those platforms, Mr. Carlson said, focusing on business journalism for a core group of strivers that he calls “dynamos.”
The average dynamo — Mr. Carlson considers himself one — is an ambitious, career-oriented viewer who believes that business can explain the world.
And he is quick to assert that his new company has more in common with Mr. Beast, the mega-popular YouTube star, than it does with Facebook Watch, a video service that was shuttered after struggling for years.
“We’re not pivoting to video,” Mr. Carlson said with a laugh. “We’re cannonballing into the deep end of video.”
