267 - Theo Browne

Theo Browne is the Founder and CEO of Ping Labs, building better tools for video content creators and enabling you to create studio quality video without the studio.

Content creation is hard. Creating with your friends is even harder. We built Ping to make bringing on guests as easy as copy-pasting into OBS.

Prior to founding Ping Labs, he was a Software Engineer at Twitch.

He also writes about tech and content creation as well as creating content on his popular YouTube channel.

Twitter → twitter.com/t3dotgg

Inside Theo's Workspace

I do almost all of my work on the couch on my laptop. The desk is for meetings and videos.

Items:

• Camera: Sony FX30 (I'm consistently annoyed to all hell by it)
  
• Mic: Shure SM7B (most people are fine w/ the MV7)
  
• Mic arm: Elgato Wave Mic Arm. This thing is great, gets super out of the way
• Interface: Rodecaster Pro II (If you need this you NEED it. My fav piece of gear. If you don't, just rock the MV7)
  
• Keyboards: Some random 68% mech I don't like, Apple Magic Keyboard w/ TouchID I love
  
• Mice: Magic Trackpad for most things, Razer Viper Ultimate for games
  
• Headphones: Oh man…..the ones that matter are the AirPods Pro 2 and the Philips SHP9500
  
• Monitors: Some gaming ultrawide 1440p and an older Dell Ultrasharp 1440p. They don't match great but they're both fine. Only need the one on the right while streaming.
  
• Speakers: JBL LSR305. I love them dearly.
  
• Lights: Elgato KeyLight (big one) and KeyLight Air (small one). Probably should have gotten 2 Air's.
  
• Extra buttons on my desk: Elgato StreamDeck. Buggiest software ever but it's so worth it.
  
• Wall mount: Elgato Wall Mount. Love these things. Wish they came with screws lol.
  
• Computers: Gaming desktop with a lot of hard drives that I use for recording content and video games. Macbook Pro 14" M2 Max I use for coding and editing. I also have a Macbook Air M1 I love dearly and wish I still used, only upgraded for video editing.
  
• SSD Pouch on laptop: SlipDrive. Must own for anyone who runs out of storage and works with media a lot.

How do you spark creativity?

I don’t really believe creativity can be “sparked”. I optimize to be ready to act on it whenever it happens. I obsessively document any weird concepts and ideas in Notion so I always have a list to work from. When I feel like recording, I’m never more than 2 button presses away from starting. I’ll regularly pause a conversation to go jot down an idea. I envy people who can sit down and just come up with shit.

How do you manage work-life balance?

By having two “jobs” that feel equal parts work and play. The YouTube success is a really nice balance to the stress of running a company, and the consistency of the company is a great break from the rollercoaster that is YouTube.

What do you enjoy most about being a creator?

The depth of conversations. When I worked at Twitch, I had a slack channel with hundreds of engineers I could talk about new stuff with every day. When I left, I lost that. Original goal of the channel was to find a group of people I trusted enough to have similar convos. Ended up reaching hundreds of thousands, including the people who are building the tech I wanted to talk about 😂

What do you enjoy least about being a creator?

Overall it’s been great, and I’m lucky to avoid a lot of the common issues (harassment, unstable income, content demonetization).

The one thing I run into a lot is, well, judgement. Many no longer look at me as an engineer or open source dev, they see me as a “YouTuber”. I’ve had many of my open source contributions downplayed and ignored due to my success on YouTube. Thankfully, there are countless open source legends who get it and support the hell out of me.