MKBHD: The Story To 16 Million & The World Of YouTube
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Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

If we are sitting here trying to think, how do we make more money? What's the point of making more money if we're not going to do anything with it? The thing that we do with the money that we make is turn around and make better videos. So yeah, if at any point we are, like I said, we have ambitions. In order to reach those goals, we do need to make more money in order to be able to afford to attack those goals. But it is very much that making money is in order to make videos, for sure.

Hey friends, welcome back to Deep Dive, the ongoing podcast where every week I get the chance to sit down with inspiring authors, entrepreneurs, creators, and other inspiring people. And we talk about how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools that we can learn from them to help live our best lives. Now, this is very exciting because this is an interview between me and Marques Brownlee. Marques Brownlee also goes by the name MKBHD on the internet, and he's one of the world's largest tech

YouTubers. He's been on the platform for more than 10 years and has made hundreds, I think, if not thousands of videos all about tech and consumer tech. And his channel is one of the most well-respected on the entire platform. Right now, Marques has a whole team of 12 people around him. He's got this enormous studio, makes incredibly high quality videos. And so we talk a lot in the discussion around this idea of being a creator in the modern creator economy, how he grew as a YouTuber, how he managed to stay consistent for 10 plus years producing tech content.

week after week, month after month. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation with one of the legends of YouTube as much as I did. Let's roll the conversation. Marques, hey, thank you so much for coming on the show. How are you doing today? - I'm really good, thanks for having me. - Yeah, this is gonna be fun. So obviously I've been following your channel for like decades, it feels at this point. And the place I wanted to start was that you and I, Justine, are like in the tech YouTuber space, have been around for such a long time and have managed to stay consistent and seem to continue to be having fun with the thing.

And I remember you were on the Y Combinator podcast and they asked you something around the lines of, you know, Marques, what's the secret to your success? And you kind of shrugged and you said, well, if you do anything for 10 years, then you're bound to be successful at the thing. And so the place I wanted to start was like,

How have you managed to stay so consistent in kind of basically doing the same sort of stuff over the last 13, 14 years? And how have you made it fun and kind of interesting for yourself as you've evolved over time? Yeah, wow, that's a really good question. There's a lot of smaller answers that add up to a bigger thing. So I feel like the number one thing is it's fun. We enjoy it. We're all nerds here at the studio. I enjoy tech. Trying a new piece of tech every day is like,

That's like the dream. It's super fun. And genuinely having so many things under my belt now that we feel calibrated enough that I can turn around and give my opinions on a piece of tech and actually share it and have it be valuable is super cool. So it's just fun to review tech and show it to people. We're also video nerds, so it's fun to make videos, and that's fun too. We try to get better at it every time. And then...

I think also probably a little piece of that interview around that same point was as a creator, you see this sort of a lifespan of a creator, right? It's typically relatively short as far as careers go. But luckily, as a tech creator or as a product-focused creator, the pressure's not on me to keep it interesting or keep it spicy or whatever. It's actually just up to the tech companies. And I'm just having fun following along, pointing the camera at the stuff

and evaluating and reviewing and checking it out. So it's a sort of a nice combination of all those things, I think, that come together to just, we just keep making videos. Yeah, yeah, this was a big part, like when I started YouTube about five years ago, like this month, five years ago, I sort of had in the back of my mind that the only people, it seems, who have

serious longevity on the platform outside of like people like PewDiePie, although even he was kind of is younger in inverted commas than you and I, Justine, are. It seems like tech really does lend itself to that longer arc of a career. Whereas the thing that I worry about all the time is that like, will I still be relevant next year? Will I be relevant the following year? What am I going to be doing? It

Do you have any of those concerns at all around relevancy and fading out of people's minds and things like that? Nicely, I think no, just because people will always be somewhat interested in the latest tech. Maybe it's not like, oh, the position we're in now is amazing where we're sort of at the top of our game. People want to see what I have to say about tech and they'll go to it voluntarily, which is cool. But I think the second half of that, which is a new piece of tech comes out

I'm going to just point the camera at it and see what I can reveal about it or explore or review it or show it from the owner's perspective. People will always be seeking that out.

And so even if I'm not worried about being the number one tech reviewer in the world, I still feel like that will always exist and I'll always have fun being a part of that ecosystem. How do you think, if at all, about, quote, competitors? Like the other people in the tech ecosystem, in the tech sphere, you seem to be friends with like all of them. But at the same time, you're also sort of competing in this sort of competing, sort of not like competition.

do you worry about what they're doing? Do you not really think about it? How do you approach that? So far, it's felt like a rising tide lifts all ships. And I genuinely mean that. Like when I look back at tech YouTube, like seven, eight, nine, 10 years ago, all of us, not only were we all making worse videos, but we're all perceived differently. We're all taken less seriously. Um, at this point now, uh,

It's sort of matched maybe what you'd consider traditional media as far as respect levels and consideration as far as what you think of a device. And we're still trying to improve on that. But yeah, we all tend to make each other better. I'll see things that other people are doing in videos and I'm like, oh, that's cool. I'll talk to them about that. I think other people do the same thing with our channel. I think there's a healthy amount of like,

We're not really competing for the same eyeballs because there's enough to go around. And that's also a good thing about product videos on YouTube is people want a variety of opinions on things. So, yeah, it doesn't really feel like competitors as much as it's like a community of it's an ecosystem. I think I use that word already, but it's an ecosystem.

Yeah, no, I think it's the same approach for like, you know, my stuff is around productivity and personal development and stuff. And people often ask that, hey, how do you feel about the fact that other people are doing kind of doing the same thing? And I always or I also use that phrase, like the rising tide lifts all the boats. If Matt D'Avella has a cold shower video, then it's likely to be suggesting Nathaniel Drew's cold shower video. And so if I make a cold shower video, and we all do it in our own ways, then actually, that's that's pretty cool. And we're all mates. And

It just feels like quite a fun thing, especially when we can meet in real life. I imagine you have a similar kind of approach to it. Yeah. Yeah, and I feel... I also think there's a good amount of... I guess there's a process for trying to decide what we make videos on. And most of that process doesn't really consider what other people are making videos on. Luckily, it's just...

What do we think is cool and what do we think is worth showing and sharing? Maybe it's a review. Maybe it's an explainer. Maybe it's an interview. Maybe it's a dope tech video. Maybe it's this. Whatever. We got ideas. And I think if there's other people making cool videos, then we can take advice from that. We can collaborate with other creators. It's all sort of a net positive.

On that note of deciding what videos to make, how much does it play on your mind of, "I know if I make this sort of video, it'll get this many views," versus more like, "I feel like making this video because I feel like it." To me, that's always felt like a bit of a spectrum of doing things because I feel like it versus doing things because I know they'll perform well. How do you think about videos along that spectrum, if it even is a spectrum?

Yeah, so I think this is super lucky that the videos that I know will do well

are the most interesting to me also because they're about probably a piece of tech that is so cool that I want to check it out anyway. Right. So on one half, it's like what videos will do well. It's the hottest gadgets, the most impressive new things that people haven't seen before. Collaborations with really cool, interesting people. Those I know before we make them are like, oh, those are going to do pretty well. And then on the other half is what do I want to do?

And sometimes it's, well, I want to check out this gadget. This seems pretty cool. Well, I kind of want to talk to this person. They seem really interesting to talk to. And suddenly they're like meshing together and it's kind of the same pool of things. So often, again, it's like I don't have that much pressure to like, I don't really, I'm not into this video, but I'm going to do it anyway because I know it'll get a lot of views. That doesn't happen too often for me because if I know it's going to get a lot of views, why is that going to get a lot of views? Because it's a really interesting piece of tech. Oh, okay. So I'm in.

And has that always been your attitude or is that a thing that changed over time? I think that's something I figured out over time. I know that there are videos that I make that aren't going to blow up like the ones that are the most popular gadgets, but I still want to share them because I still think they're cool. And I think if I can make the video in a way that actually shows why I'm so interested in it, then it will eventually grow.

be interesting to people and we'll catch on. So I think that's something I sort of learned probably in the second half of making videos, which is that we can sort of justify pretty much any video we want to make.

Nice. One thing that struck me about your stuff is that you don't have a lot of sponsored content, it seems. It's very occasional that you'll do a sponsorship, and you don't plug your own merch very much either. So I've just been very intrigued for a while, like, what is the MKBHD business model? And

It seems also on that point that you're not really chasing revenue because you could make money more efficiently or more effectively if you wanted to. I'm sure. What is the business model and what are the I guess the metrics or the goals that you're actually optimizing for? Because I imagine it's not we just want to make as much money as possible. The overarching goal behind everything, just to keep in the back of my head for all this stuff, is we want to make what we'd want to watch.

And that actually, it translates pretty well towards the entire business. And if you keep that in the back of your head towards any part of what we do, it makes a lot of sense. So when we consider what videos we're gonna make, it's what would we wanna watch? What would we, it's like a tongue twister. What would we want to subscribe to? That's the type of channel we're trying to build. And then as far as revenue, we are in a position where the AdSense on the videos makes a good amount. And so we do very, very carefully handpick

hand select like we're extremely picky about when we work with sponsors because they all we also want them to make a lot of sense you're right we could decide to make a sponsor the amount of nose I say in my inbox like we could make a sponsored video every single video for the rest of time and and

that would be a very different channel. We wouldn't wanna subscribe to that channel, but we could do it if we wanted to make a lot of money. But yeah, there are some sponsors where it's a win-win for everyone. We see that it's a cool product and we wanna share it anyway, and now it's worth working with them and the whole thing works out great. So yeah, we do have goals as far as expansion and building not just a team, but I sort of have this dream video studio in mind on the horizon, and that's not gonna be cheap, so we gotta get there somehow.

But yeah, there is very much a hand-picked, very picky element about when we do sponsored stuff and when we plug stuff just because it's what we'd want to watch. So it sounds like it's very much sort of

Craft first and business second, I guess you can correct me if I'm wrong But it sounds like kind of the business exists for the purpose of the craft rather than the other way around And I guess this is something that Casey said we're at the Nassim it in Dubai He was like a lot of creators make videos to make money but he makes money so that he can make more videos and so the the making of the videos is just the instrumental intrinsic joy that he gets from his life and

- Would you say that's the same for you? Like how do you balance kind of craft versus business? Again, assuming that there's a spectrum between the two. - Yeah, that's 100%. I had never heard that quote, but that's exactly the way we see it. Like if we are sitting here trying to think how do we make more money, what's the point of making more money if we're not gonna do anything with it? The thing that we do with the money that we make

is turn around and make better videos. So yeah, if at any point we are, like I said, we have ambitions. And in order to reach those goals, we do need to make more money in order to be able to afford to attack those goals. But it is very much that making money is in order to make videos.

For sure. I actually have no idea where you're actually based, but my understanding is like somewhere near New York. I have a friend who just moved to New York and he said that like, oh my God, the rents here are super expensive. Like it seems like you've got like ridiculously wealthy people and you can spend an unlimited amount of money on an unlimited number of things. How do you personally think about like your, I guess, lifestyle creep and the sort of managing

Essentially managing your relationship with money. Because it's a thing I like to speak to a lot of creators and entrepreneurs about because it seems like in every creator's and entrepreneur's life cycle, there comes a point where you decide, "I've actually got enough and I don't need to optimize for money anymore." Whereas when you're struggling to pay the bills, obviously, at that point, money makes a lot of sense. There's a certain point where enough is enough.

And some people say that if you were living in the middle of like Utah, there actually isn't a way to spend large amounts of money. But when you're in New York, suddenly it's like there's a lot you could be doing. I'm very curious. How do you approach that relationship between money and lifestyle? Yeah, so we are in New Jersey. We're right across the river. You can see New York from our window. So it's right there. We can get there quickly. But it is much cheaper to be in New Jersey than in New York. So price per square foot wise, doing pretty good over here.

- No, I think what's funny is I've been making videos forever and I think when I was in college, I went to a school called Stevens Tech which is in Hoboken, New Jersey. It's a technical school and one of the things that happens when you go to a school like that is pretty much every student there, especially in my major, business majors, engineering majors,

The way they build their college career is around going to class and then going to intern at a company they hope to work for and then going back to class. And so you have these sort of periods that are designated for that. I went through my freshman year. I changed my major halfway through. I settled on this business with a background in tech. And I finally got to the point where the question was, all right, you've made it through the first year. Where do you want to go intern?

Like, where do you want to work when you finish this major? You should get ahead of the process and go intern somewhere in the city.

It was pretty much at that exact moment that I realized I just wanna make videos. That's all I wanna do. So I didn't go intern anywhere. I just went back and made more videos and then got back to class and then that was the thing that I did with my time. And it turned out that that financially made a lot of sense. When I dedicated myself full time to videos, it was even better for the channel. Then I went back to class and I was like, oh, I'm spending so much time on homework and I could be making videos again.

So, yeah, it turned out I didn't really have too much second thought when I graduated about what I was gonna do. The channel was making enough money that I didn't have to optimize for money, as you put it. So that's what I started to do straight out of college. And I think lifestyle creep is pretty easy in a big city, big fashion, big Apple, all this stuff. I don't really spend that much money on

almost anything. I don't, I mean, I wear, I wear t-shirts and jerseys, like sneakers, maybe, maybe that's my guilty pleasure. I don't, I don't find that, uh, lifestyle creep actually has too much of an effect on the business or the, or the stuff that we do. So luckily that's, uh, it's all still true.

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creep up, it seems way more than you can in the UK. Do you have, I mean, without naming any names, people that you know, creators, entrepreneurs, those sorts of people, because I imagine you've come into contact with some pretty wealthy people, you know, Elon Musk aside. Have you seen any of those sorts of people be a cautionary tale for this sort of thing at all?

Not really. I mean, so a lot of the creators, I hang out with a lot of creators and I'm always fascinated by their process and the behind the scenes and also kind of like the vibe of what's happening. Like I, you know, there's creators that are close to solo who you would never imagine like still edit all their own stuff. There are creators who are, they feel like they're in a cog in the machine. They have a hundred employees and there's just a bunch going on. I'm always paying attention to that.

And I think they've all been pretty positive examples in various ways. I think there's things to aspire to and a lot of the creators I've had the opportunity to talk to. So I don't know if there's any cautionary tales, but I know what you're talking about, which is like, you know, there's YouTubers who are just like, oh, I finally made enough to get this couple cars that I always wanted. Now I'm going to get the cars. And now what?

I don't know. I guess I'm lucky that my hobbies are exactly what the business is already doing. I play a sport. It's not particularly expensive to play other than traveling. I golf sometimes. That can be expensive, but I don't play enough for it to be expensive. Yeah, so I guess I'm pretty set. Amazing.

On that note, if I think of comparing, for example, the way Linus runs his business versus you versus someone like Justine who seems to be more of a solo operator with maybe a smaller team, have you ever considered going down the Linus Media Group, 17 videos a week, multiple channels, multiple hosts kind of thing?

and how do you think about what you actually want from the channel and from the business in the future? - Yeah, for sure. I definitely still use the back of the head, what would I wanna watch, what would I wanna subscribe to mentality. As of right now, I think I probably subscribe to about, I think it's like 100

20 channels on YouTube, something like that. If I subscribe to a channel that uploads every single day, I better really like that channel or I'm going to stop watching after a while. I'll get fatigued and I'll probably either unsubscribe or not watch most of the stuff. So going down that like content factory route is very much an optimization for making money and revenue, which we don't need to do. We still have the mentality of

Okay, what would be a good video? What do we actually want to make or show or accomplish with this video instead of just we need a new video? That's where I'm at. So I think I'm probably, if you're making a spectrum between Justine and Linus, I'm probably closer to the Justine. We have a team here out of necessity that is extremely talented and skilled and helps us make really good stuff.

But it's not to make more stuff or to make more money. It's not like an assembly line where we just like cranking out the next thing.

It works for some people, but it also seems like you're just hopping on a treadmill and just turning up the speed. - When did you start hiring people? And I guess like what does the org chart look like now? And how has that sort of evolved over time? - Yeah, so I remember first time technically hiring someone was a former teammate of mine, Andrew. He currently runs a studio here. But it was like a CES I remember one year.

And CES is always one of those weird, stressful times as a tech creator because there's so much stuff you could maybe make a video about, but good luck getting to all of it. So I remember after I finished a CES, just like sitting in the hotel with like half the footage I wanted to have, just like, wow, I could have used a second set of hands there. Like that would have been way easier if I had somebody to hold the camera and to like help me out with things.

So he was the first person I hired. At this point, the org chart is, I think we probably have a, I don't remember the exact number, but I'll figure it out as I count. So Andrew runs a studio with me. So that's two. We have the main channel videos, which are Vin and Brandon do cinematography, set design, art design, the intros, their camera work is awesome.

So that's four. We have an editor. We have a sales ad manager. We have a behind-the-scenes channel point guard, I guess. Runs it, edits it, shoots it, everything, the studio channel. Then we have a podcast audio editor and a podcast video editor. And then we have a motion graphics and a still graphics. And so that's 11. And that's the sort of...

I don't know if there's a flow to it or sort of a blob at this point, but everyone has a designated task. Have you heard my octopus analogy before? MARK MANDEL: Yes, I have. I was going to ask you about that next, but I would love it if you could elaborate on that. MARK MIRCHANDANI: Yeah. OK, so the octopus analogy is like, as you start off as a creator, you're a solo creator.

There are all these different things that you do that you really want to be good at, but you have a main focus. So for me, it was like, I want to review tech. I want to talk about tech. But I also have to be a professional cameraman. And I have to be a professional video editor and lighter. And I have to be a professional inbox manager and finance and accounting and taxes.

And I also have to do all this other behind the scenes stuff and audio and the list goes on. And so you feel like an octopus. You've got eight arms. They're all doing different things in order to stay on track. At this point, the team we've built is all of the arms that I've cut off. So they're all much better than I am at holding a camera. They're much better than I am at set design. They're much better than I am at sound design, at still graphics. So the thumbnails are all better. The sound is all better. Everything is better about everything we make because of the team. And that is the purpose of the team.

So, yeah, I guess the awkward ending of the analogy is an octopus has three hearts. So I feel like as one of the hearts, the beating heart, I am still very much like talking tech, reviewing tech, you know, content strategy. But the team is now built out around it in a way that it is pretty smooth. Yeah, I think it's kind of the same for me. So we have a team of

13 of which like nine ish are like in person. Um, but a big chunk of that is running operations for the courses that we do. And then there's like a much smaller team because the sort of, the sort of videos that I do don't have such a kind of heavy lift in terms of production and cinematography. Uh, it would be awesome if they did, but, um, I think my vibe is more like,

what do I want to be doing? Basically just like exploring cool concepts and talking to the camera about them. And similarly, I don't really want to have to be doing the editing. And so that was something that I outsourced early on. I was listening to another interview with you from a few years ago where you said you were still holding onto the editing. Are you still doing the editing yourself or have you cut off that particular arm yet? We're slowly adding that. So we have a new editor and we're sort of working on

matching style, adding what they should edit versus what I should edit. I still edit most stuff that you end up seeing, but the studio channel, I don't edit. The podcast channels, I don't edit. So it depends on what you're watching. But yeah, we do cut that arm off pretty soon.

What's been the biggest surprise around having your own team, or the biggest challenge that you hadn't quite realized would be a thing as you built up over time? Oh, that's easy. You have to add an arm, which is managing people.

That's a whole new job. So yeah, before my job was find the tech that's worth making a video about, make the video, find out what makes a good video. All of that is very much a front of mind focus. But as you become the hub of the wheel, you also need to sort of manage and optimize everyone's processes towards making that video, where before you controlled everything. Now you have to sort of control the control.

So that was my biggest surprise. I'm learning at it. I'm getting better at it. I think that's a learned skill. But yeah, that's for sure like a new amount of time that I have to be prepared to spend.

- So are you the one, like for example, doing one-on-ones with all other 10 team members or like, is it that you have a, I guess, quote, general manager who does all the day-to-day management? Like, I'm so curious to dig into sort of how the business operates like within the machine that you've got. - Sure, it kind of feels like pretty much everything has to go past me in order to be published, like content wise.

But as far as running things, Andrew and I sort of tag team running the studio and assigning things and make sure everyone's doing the thing that needs to get done. That's kind of it. I feel like there's only maybe two levels to it, I guess, as far as org chart visuals.

But I think that helps. I think the team's not too big that it's like we need like a manager to manage a group within a group that has a manager to manage the managers or anything like that. That's a lot. We just have our creative team and our business team and they all sort of work together. Yeah. At one point we had a team that was approaching the size of like 20. And at the size of 20, we had to have like middle managers whose only job was to manage the people doing the thing. And we ended up having like a bunch of issues around like communication and stuff. And so as we sort of pared down to,

Working with people more part-time and freelancers. It really felt as if okay now we have a content team and now we have a courses team and Those those are like the two halves of the business that work well together What does your process look like from I guess idea to video being published? What are the steps along the way who the people that sort of get involved with making an idea come to life? Yeah, so let's go with let's go with a classic video a reviewing a phone. Yeah, right so

Step one is the phone arrives at the studio and I take it out the box. Sometimes I'll shoot the unboxing if I know that's gonna be part of the video. And I put my SIM card in it, I set it up, and I start using it and I start testing it. We have a, so I actually mentioned, I forgot one of them earlier, a writer, researcher, script supervisor. David will help me with a lot of the research and making sure we've got all the points worth mentioning about this device, about this phone, all in one doc. So I'm taking notes as I'm using it. We're brain dumping into this document.

And then eventually we get to the point where we're like, all right, I think we've got it. I think we've got everything. Let's turn it into a script, a story, a through line, something that's worth watching. That's basically my job is to translate all of this information into the headline, the thumbnail, the thing that will live on YouTube. Then we shoot the thing. So

There's sort of two versions. I'm sure you've do this too. There's a role and B roll. So you shoot your a role where you're talking to the camera and then you have pieces where you know, you're going to be, you know, you're talking, but you also have like footage ready for when you're going to talk about that stuff. We typically start with shooting a role so that I have all of the talking out of the way. And then we know all the little quirks and things that I've mentioned. And then we,

we will go shoot all of the rest of the B-roll to cover all the things we need. A lot of that is Vin and Brandon shooting B-roll off on their own. A lot of that is I've got a couple shots in mind I need. I'll grab them and go up to the roof and we'll go shoot some stuff that I know we need to get.

We cover the whole script. Everyone has access to the script. Then it gets edited. For the most part, that's just me ingesting all the footage and landing it down on the timeline. And then if there is any sort of extra fancy visuals, then we'll go sort of next level. Say this one has a robot shot in the intro.

I'll be editing the main video while Andrew, Vin, and Brandon will go off to the robot studio and we'll make their incredible masterpiece. And then that can tie in back to what I've been editing. So they'll give me a couple ideas. We'll pick one. We'll go, this is one that would really work with the YouTube tagline and

Sort of you can see the whirlwind happening as the content gets made it gets to the end of the process I finished the video we give it one last walk through the whole timeline watched a whole video together any last adjustments Okay, it's good export or upload publish nice what what prompted you to spend such an ungodly amount of money on a robot studio and

What's the thought process behind that? There is actually several things, and I think it makes a lot of sense now that all those things are real. So number one, we went out and shot a dope tech video at that studio, the company that makes them. Had no intention of getting one when I went out there, but they came to us with the idea, hey, check it out. We do these camera robots. I was like, that is so sick. Let me check it out. We go out there, we shoot with them.

They get some example shots or whatever. We come home. Within a day of getting home, I was like, I wonder if we should get one of those things. That was kind of cool. But the other thing about it is, look, there's a thousand different tech videos that you can watch now about the new iPhone SE that just came out, right? Why would you watch mine? Maybe just because it's me. Some people will watch it just because it's me. But I want to give you like a real tangible reason to watch this one because

Because you have so many options. And so we start to do things like cool shots in the videos, realistic shots in the videos, extra depth and insight in the research and testing. But one of the things that we found is anything that you do at this level, at the highest level, ideally, is very visible and lots of people will try to copy it.

And all I wanted was something that's really hard to copy. So if we do stuff like top-down shots and everyone else is doing top-down shots all of a sudden, great. If we do stuff like macro shots of certain things and then suddenly those show up, fine. They're good ideas. Of course people will take them. That's the whole point. But we wanted a couple things that we could do that are unique to our videos to give you a reason to watch them and

And also everyone here at the studio is a video nerd. And when I had the idea of maybe getting the video robot, it was pretty unanimously, hell yeah, let's do it. And so all of that stuff sort of came together and now we have a robot. Yeah, I find that like when I see a robot

When I see a Marques Brownlee video, I am just like, oh, I wonder what they're going to do in the intro this time. And I'll often just sort of rewatch the intro and I'll be like, I think the latest one, Pixel 4a or Pixel 6a, you sort of took it away from the thing. I was like, oh, that's clever. Nice, nice, nice one there. And just like watch that a few times. And it's become this sort of, I imagine you get this feedback a lot from people, become this sort of Easter egg where I'm like, oh, yes, let's see what's going to happen this time around.

And I guess that's kind of fun for you guys being video nerds as well. It's fun. Yeah, exactly. We enjoy making the videos and also we enjoy like having the sort of Easter egg moment of the fact that it relates to, it's not just a cool shot. Like we just do a cool shot, but the shot will actually have some sort of reference to the video itself or a reference to the, to the,

title or the headline or something that we're going to say in the video. And so that extra challenge of making it really intrinsic to the video is probably why people enjoy that extra level of like watching the intro and then getting into the video. Yeah. Um, what was the, I guess, um,

What happened during COVID when it wasn't like people in the studio in real life anymore situation I'm imagining? Like what was working in that kind of setup like? That was a absolute nightmare. So I am the type of YouTuber that is terrified that if I give something up, I'll forget how to do it well.

So as I've slowly started to add pieces of the team, I will still occasionally chip in and do the thing like Tim makes nine out of every 10 thumbnails, but I'll still make one out of every 10. Like I'll edit these things. And during COVID, everyone had to leave. I think we had at that point five people.

And it was at the exact moment that we were moving studios. So we had all of our stuff upstairs in this building and we basically got kicked out. It was right around the start of a new month where we'd switched our contract down to this place down here.

So by myself, basically, I became a furniture moving machine. I found a way to drag thousands of pounds of furniture down into the elevator and across this building into the new studio. Spent a couple weeks doing that, set some things up.

And then a couple months go by, people start becoming more comfortable coming back, vaccines are a thing, and I am very grateful for the team coming back because we can make much better stuff when they're here. You can probably see a shift here.

in like the second half of 2020 where the videos were like very like OG YouTube and then they went back to being like a little bit above, you know, the classic production level. That's the team. Just a quick little break to tell you all about the sponsor of this episode, which very excitingly is Shopify. Shopify is sick. It's like the best platform in the world for starting and growing an online business because it is like an e-commerce and an in-person way of selling stuff.

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One thing I've done over the last year is think sort of like, you know, what is the sort of YouTube channel that I want to have? What's the sort of business I want to run? And I kind of realized that it's a lot more energizing to work with people in person rather than remotely. And I realized, oh, I guess I could just hire people in person and have a studio and hence why we're here. But I will occasionally see other kind of startups and stuff where they've got a fully remote workforce and

And I was speaking to another YouTuber friend a few days ago, and he was saying that, hey, man, if you had a remote team, you'd be able to, I don't know, get people from abroad and pay them less money and not worry about benefits. And you'll just be on Zoom calls. And there was part of me that was like, yeah, I could, but it's just way more fun just hanging out with people in real life. What's been your experience of sort of the, I guess, creative collaboration IRL versus over Zoom? Yeah.

- I've, yeah, I've definitely found it much more engaging. Everyone except one person works in the studio. That one person being, well, they were going to consider moving right at the beginning of the pandemic, so that sort of got derailed. But yeah, it's because so many pieces of the team work together in so many different spontaneous ways, it makes sense to just all be in the same room. Like, I'll have an idea,

and I'll just roll my chair over to Tim and be like, hey, I just airdropped you this file. Let's do a couple of these edits, and I think it might be a thumbnail candidate. And then David will roll back his chair over to Adam and be like, for the next episode of the podcast, I just had an idea. We were just editing this thing an hour ago, and I just wanted to just drop this on your plate so you know about it. And so there's this, and everyone's collaborating and talking, and that sort of

Creative environment I imagine is more productive than having to do a zoom call every time it feels like it's more productive so productive creative Collaborative everyone is a little more likely to take action when it involves another person rather than just sort of zoom calls all yeah, yeah, no I completely agree like I feel like the the IRL thing is where you get those serendipitous connections that are

you know we found that when some of our team was in person and some of them were remote it's like we'd be having an idea and then to to update the person who was remote it would be like oh now we have to arrange a zoom call with that person which means oh now we've got to play calendar tetris and it just adds so much friction that it's like that person's never going to find out about the idea and then the idea is not going to happen because the people who need to know about it are not going to know about it and all that kind of stuff we've been in this studio now for the last almost like nine ten months and we've got another two months in here

And so the next question is like, where are we moving to? And so we've been scouting out a few other places in London. And for me at this stage, it feels like there's a bit of a choice of like, we could downsize and I could try and film back in my own apartment, in my flat, and maybe the team would come occasionally or we'd sign up to a WeWork.

Or we could actually get a studio for another year and have a nice space where we can film videos and podcasts and it's great vibes because the team's around. But that's more expensive. And what's in my mind is like,

In our case, if, for example, the business was absolutely loaded with cash, it would be a no-brainer. Just like, oh, let's go for the studio because it's fun. But in my mind, there's a bit of a concern around the ROI of, is it really worth spending all this money for this extra space and just being able to have slightly nicer shots and slightly nicer vibes? What's been your take on the whole...

ROI of the studio? Is it ROI positive or in terms of money or do you not really think of it in those terms? That's an interesting question. I think at the highest level, we don't have too many ROI concerns because we get so much use out of everything that we do.

Anything that we might do for one single video, it's more of like a time ROI than like a money investment ROI type thing. The robot, you know, it was very expensive, but we've used it for literally years now. Wow.

I'm not too worried about ROI. Like the studio is the single most expensive thing that I regularly, other than taxes, I guess, pay, but we shoot everything here. So yeah, that's pretty ROI positive. And so yeah, individual videos, we might have a hefty amount of time dumped into like a 12 second clip where we're like, we got to redo this robot shot. We got to redo the animations here. We got to get this right. That, you know, that's again on the end of like

we want it to be hard to replicate so this is this is the goal let's accomplish it but you know as far as the studio goes i feel like youtube is a very visual medium and so if your goal is to be more cinematic then the studio can help you accomplish that if the goal for the vibe is to feel more like a home or like a small set or like a less of a production which is a goal for a lot of productions is to feel like less of a production then it makes more sense to just go straight to that

The way we've built out the studio is like it's a large space but with a bunch of smaller spaces in it that we can make feel more homey or more reasonable than a relatively unrelatable 7,000 square foot white box. So that's what we do. That's the goal. So it would depend on what your goal is. If you specifically want the videos to feel or look a certain way, then you sort of have to lean towards that to accomplish it. - Yeah, I like how,

Other than when you do a studio tour or in the studio YouTube channel, you don't really get the impression that you're shooting in a 7,000 square foot place that has a whole team in it. It almost does feel as if, oh, you're just shooting in a room and there's a shelf at the back and there's a blue iMac that says A on it and there's a little Easter egg of a little Android robot-y stick figure P in the background. And it does kind of feel...

sort of OG YouTuber of like, I'm just shooting in my bedroom, but like, obviously like a level up and then you see the B roll and you're like, wait a minute, what's going on here? Um, I, I imagine that's an intentional decision on your part. Yeah. Yeah. There is a, so there's this very specific aesthetic to the videos that I think a lot of people don't really talk about, which is that they feel first person instead of third person.

And I don't know if that's the right terminology for it, but basically sometimes we'll do like a setup and I'll go, hey, all right, Vin and Brandon, we're gonna make a video with the Pixel 6a and any sort of Easter eggs that you see in the script that you think would work here, let's build it. And we'll build a set and then we'll have the camera like five feet away from me and it'll look incredible, like a beautiful set.

And you look at the frame and you're like, I look like someone is shooting a video of me, not like I am making a video. And it's just, it's a very small visual cue, but you bring the camera way closer in and you give it the wide angle. And a lot of times I'll even start, you know, touching the camera, like I'm right in front of the camera. I think that first person feel is,

is very intangible, but very important to the feel of the video. That goes for our set design, for the fact that we shoot in corners more often than we shoot against a blank white wall. Like we're thinking a lot about that feel just as much as the things that are going into the video itself.

And I think that's a reason why it never feels like we're shooting in a giant white concrete box. It's more we've built things inside of the box to accomplish a different vibe and sounds like it's working pretty well. - Yeah, yeah, definitely. I've never quite thought of it in those ways, but I do notice in your videos, there are some times when you're holding up a camera and you're looking off to the side in the monitor to be like, is this in focus?

And part of me is thinking that like, surely you've got a camera man behind you, so you don't need to do that. But also it looks good. Cause it looks as if you're kind of that Marcus Brownlee who was like, Hey guys, a hundred videos, 73 subscribers. It's just like slightly leveled up rather than like ridiculously leveled up with the whole 7,000 square foot place. Yeah. And we don't actually, so, I mean, sometimes there's a camera man, but if I'm doing a roll, like the cameras on a tripod, um,

I've gotten so comfortable talking to a camera on a tripod. That's all it ever is. There's no person behind the camera. It's just me, the tripod, and the monitor is right next to the camera. So that's kind of what it is. There's things like teleprompters that would theoretically make the production better that I can't see myself ever using because they feel less natural. I guess I haven't explained. I write the video out in a doc

and then I have the doc on my phone and I put the phone in my lap or on a table next to me. So when I talk to the camera, I'll pick up the phone, read the first two paragraphs, put it down, internalize it, and then just deliver it. And it's not gonna be verbatim to what I wrote down, but as long as I hit all the points that I wrote down, then I've got the flow going.

And then I'll pick it up, read the next couple, put it down, deliver them, and then sort of work my way through that way. So that's why sometimes I'll go off on a tangent or like mispronounce something or missay something because I'm just sort of going through what I want to tell you as if I'm talking to a person. And so I'm definitely guilty of like having some mistakes in videos, but I think that all sort of

comes back to just the feel of the video. It's very real. Yeah. On that note, something I spoke to Mr. Who's the Boss About, who I know is a friend of yours who I interviewed on the podcast a few months ago. He said that he is very kind of anal about the analytics and the retention and making sure every single moment is scripted and spends 100 hours scripting and

repeats a line like a dozen times just to really try and squeeze those extra points of retention out of it. And there was part of me that was thinking, oh, wow, that's like an incredible attention to detail. But another part of me that was thinking, wow, that seems like a lot of work. And I kind of get a bit stressed out when I look at analytics and retention curves, and I don't really like looking at them. What's your relationship with analytics and retention curves and trying to make the video as retention heavy as possible versus like being a bit more chill about it? How do you think about that?

Here's how I'll rephrase this. Do you watch any sports? I watch the occasional squash match and occasional clips of you on Ultimate Frisbee when I see them as a B-roll. Okay. I'll try a... I don't know any squash players, so I'll use a basketball example. So how do you know somebody is a good basketball player? Number of...

points scored in a season or just avoidable? Yeah, you can use points sometimes. So you watch a game and you get the sense as the game is going on, you're watching it like, oh, this guy is the best player on the team. I mean, he's got the most points. I see him dunking on people. He's grabbing rebounds over the top of people. He's really flashy with the ball. Like I can tell. I can tell this guy's good. I really like this one player.

Now, if you wanted to craft the best player, let's say you were just designing a player from head to toe, you could design it entirely around stats. He will have the most points, the most rebounds, the highest efficiency. I'm going to look at all the numbers and the curves, and I'm going to design the player that is the best. And statistically, sometimes that player wins MVP. But sometimes it's just...

The eye test, sometimes it's just a certain look or a certain change in a historic way that the game is played. And that can be just as valuable to a video, even if it doesn't match the retention curve or the stats or anything like that. I think you can have a healthy amount of both.

So to sort of bring it back to YouTube, it's like I could obsess over the numbers and sort of focus every ounce of my attention on maximizing the numbers on paper. And theoretically, that means it's a good video because people made it to the end and I successfully maximized retention.

But that's not my only focus. And I think if it is my only focus, I might lose a little bit of the rest of what makes a good video. So yeah, the numbers, we pay attention to them. I think they're sort of a guiding force. They're the bumpers on the bowling lane more than they are the bowling ball itself. Does that make any sense? Yeah, we pay attention to them, but we don't live by them. Speaking of numbers, at the end of last year, you tweeted the following,

But seriously, the only way to guarantee meaningful positive change in the next 365 days around the sun is to exit your comfort zone and relentlessly attack your goals. That's my plan anyway. Good luck and happy new year. And I read that at the time. I was like, okay, I want to...

Understand your relationship with goals. In Aaron's case, it's very numerical. Like, I know I want to hit 10 million subscribers this year and I'm going to try and reverse engineer the numbers to hit the goal. He's obviously stupidly successful. In my case, it's a bit more like, I don't really like numbers. I kind of like goals that are under my control. Like, hey, I want to make a video every week. And once it's out in the world, beyond tweaking a title and a thumbnail occasionally if it bombs, like, there's not a lot I can do about it. So I'll try not to think about it.

How do you approach goals? And when you say relentlessly attack your goals, what does that look like for you? - Yeah, I think stepping out of the comfort zone has been a big thing, especially with adding the team, that's been a thing. I'm a relatively quiet, introverted person, so building a team around me is a new outside of my comfort zone thing. But the goals really are pretty simple, and I'm like you, I like to keep them in our control. So the goal is more better.

And I've mentioned this before, like if you try to do more of something, you probably do it worse. And if you try to do better at something, you probably do it less often. So the fact that we have built a team skilled and talented enough that we can do more things and all of them are better than they usually would be, that's a success for us. Numerically,

I just kind of want to keep it on a study positive. It's not really in my control how people respond. The channel is pretty spiky. I don't know if you look into analytics enough to know, like there's some channels that, you know, are pretty steady growing or that are pretty flat or that are, you know, sort of spiky like mine. Sometimes there's just a device that you don't expect that just people, it just clicks. So people wanted to know about it and you got the video out at the right time. Great.

But that's not in my control. So as long as it's still on a general positive, I'm pretty happy. But it is fascinating to see people set very specific goals that are clearly not in their control, but to attempt to guide all factors towards accomplishing it. Like saying, if I decided today, all right, we have a certain subscriber count. We wanna hit 20 million subscribers by the end of 2024.

How on earth would I guarantee that? I really don't know. But I think doing more and better would get us closer to it. That's kind of all I can control.

And when you say that you had this vision for like a dream studio, what does that look like? And is that the sort of thing that you're then sort of reverse engineering based on the vision? How do you approach that? Oh, yeah. Well, so I picture the dream video studio, and we already have gotten quite far as far as this vision. Like our current video studio is kind of amazing. We'll have other productions come in, and they look around, and they're like, you guys own these RED cameras? Do you...

You just have a Russian arm in your parking lot? I don't understand. Because most of the time, if you want to put a good production together, you need to get the logistics out. You need to go, all right, here's the cameras we'll need. Here's the set we'll build. If we walk into the studio and I wake up with a good video idea, we can leave the studio that day having finished the video because we just walk up to the camera and it's right there. The equipment's right there. The ability to make something amazing. We have the robot room right here. The editing is right here. Everything is here.

so we can just make whatever we want, which is amazing. I sort of picture a leveled up version of that that is a little bit more,

just a little bit more of the right sorts of tools available to us at any time and maybe a little bit more organized than it is now because we sort of just crammed a ton of stuff in here. That's one thing you don't see in the videos is just how much stuff is just everywhere in here. So yeah, we're working on that. It's going to take a little while, but we'll get there. So at the moment, you have 7,000 square feet, like...

How big do you imagine the dream studio to be? We have been doing all kinds of looking. My sister's a real estate agent. She's sent me listings. I think my minimum is somewhere around 20,000 square feet that I've actually considered, but there's been a bunch of different

options that have come up that we will visit, we'll visit a building and just look around and be like, all right, what can we build in here? Is this, is this floor layout like going to be able to suit us making studios in here, making podcasts in here? There's a, there's a very hefty content production consideration. So I don't know if there's a number that actually will end up being targeted, but we sort of walk into the building and we get a feel for it.

Nice. Yeah, I remember when you moved into this one and you were like doing the tour, showing it around. It was just so exciting. And I think that's one thing that your channel does really well, where I and probably the 15 million other people who follow you feel like there's in a way this relationship with you and we get

we get very excited oh my god you're moving to a new studio that's really cool and you're like showing us around and it's just it's just a great vibe i often worry when i'm 55 years old am i still going to be being like what's up guys welcome back to the channel youtube video youtube video about personal development do you ever worry like what are you going to be doing when you're like 55 years old that sort of existential question yeah i guess not you know i there is a uh there is a sort of a larger life cycle of

formats that is fascinating to me where a lot of people who have been around long enough kind of see this generation of tech video creators on YouTube as like a follow up to the newspaper columnists that they used to follow for like the the Walt Mossberg's and David Pogues of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal's.

And I don't think those 50, 60, 70 year olds are too mad that they're still making tech content. It's just not the new wave of whatever video stuff that we do now. And so I see the videos that we're making now as being this larger wave. And I do wonder what comes after that. I don't know. I don't I keep an eye out for it. I'm not really sure.

Is TikTok a new wave or is it just a smaller crest on the top of the wave? I don't know. It's hard to know because I couldn't have told you five years ago what we'd be doing now. So 50 years? I don't know. But I do think about, yeah, that wave of like I enjoy tech. I enjoy making content about and with the tech.

Maybe that looks different when I'm 40 or 50, but I have no idea how it looks. I got glimpses of your view into this in your Cullen and Samir interview. But how are you thinking about short form content like shorts and reels and TikToks?

And I know you've got the MKBHD Shorts channel where some of the stuff on that has been cool. But for example, if you wanted to, you could 10x your output on short form content to think. And you could be thinking, hey, TikTok is where all the kids are at. Let's just bang out the content on TikTok. But it seems like you're not going down that approach. So how do you think about TikTok-y type content?

Yeah, okay. So that last point you made is really very close to how I think about it. It's like the demographics of our audience. So again, I'm 28. A lot of my audience is right from about 14 to 35, let's say. Just like...

15 years less to maybe 15 years older, just somewhere in there. And endlessly, probably undefeated with creators, what I'll see is as they get older, their younger audience that was closer to their previous age becomes less interested. And I guess their older audience becomes more interested. So when I see TikTok, I'm like,

Like that's where the youngest parts of my audience will inevitably be. If I want to talk to those people and anyone using TikTok, that doesn't mean you're a child. That just means like that's the average of what a TikTok scroller is doing. If I want to reach that younger audience, I guess I should be on TikTok. But is that my goal?

Or am I really just concerned with reaching the same people who are making a purchase decision, who have some disposable income, who have a choice to make about what piece of tech to buy, and maybe the age of those people isn't gonna change. I mean, it's cool to get kids into tech. I still think that's awesome. And I think there is probably a cool way that we can make short form content

that is interesting to younger audiences. And maybe that's a net positive because we can get people interested in tech and that's cool. But I think the target demographic is actually the same age as it's always been, whether it's shorts or longer videos or podcasts or anything like that.

- So it sounds like you don't feel that pressure of, like I've spoken to a bunch of other creators who, and myself included, who sort of feel that pressure of, ah crap, TikTok is where all the new people are, everyone shows that like maybe YouTube is on the decline. Am I gonna stay relevant by, am I gonna try and force myself to stay relevant by kind of adapting and becoming a TikToker as well? - Yeah, okay, so that's a different question. So relevant, if my goal was just to be famous, which I don't want,

then I would be all in on TikTok, right? But here's a different way of thinking about it. When I'm going to search for the new iPhone comes out, where do I go look for that video? I go to youtube.com and I type it in the YouTube search box. That is where I wanna live for those people who are searching for that information. If that answer ever changes, if it's like the new phone came out, let me go into TikTok and see what people are saying about the phone.

then I guess that is when I'll feel that pressure. But I think for the people who feel the pressure to be relevant or the pressure for the eyeballs or the fame or something like that, then you'll feel the pressure because TikTok is 100% accomplishing that now. The most viewed piece of content I have ever made in 15 years is a 12 second TikTok of me unfolding the LG wing. It has 35 million views. It

If I wanted the eyeballs, I'd be all over TikTok. But I think it's different. It's just that people searching for things, the people making purchase decisions, I'm trying to make valuable content for them. And so that's still YouTube. It's a nice way of thinking of it. Just out of curiosity, if you were to look at your analytics, do you find that most of your growth comes from search? Or is it mostly through like homepage suggested, the browse-y type features? Growth, interestingly, comes from the browse and suggested. But I still feel that like slightly intangible like

of

It's almost like time-based. When you look at the comment section of a video, the first three to four or five hours of people commenting on a video are not people who came from search. They're people who subscribed, who found it with browse. Then a week or two later, there's people who are searching the subject and then watching the video and then commenting, and that's a whole new separate crowd that might not be the YouTube growth you're after, but you can still see the value in that. So we sort of optimize...

the content for both of those groups of people, but they're very different times. So do you then change titles? Like you wouldn't believe this phone versus Google Pixel 6a review. And I kind of know the answer to this because I don't see you doing those sort of browse type clickbaity type titles particularly. Yeah, I see those titles and it comes down to again, like what, what

what I want to watch, what would I click on, what would I want to subscribe to. And sometimes I do see this title on thumbnail, which is just like a, cause you know, you're, you're doing the analytics. You're like, Oh, I have to have a face in the thumbnail. I'm going to have a sort of a clickbaity blurred out object. You wouldn't believe this. Oh, check it out. I don't click those. I don't watch those videos.

If I was thinking, wow, every time I click one of those, I am very happy with what I watch, then I would probably explore formatting my content like that. But I think if you just name it what it is, you can't lose, right? That's it. You're going to get what you came for. There's no way you're let down. I told you exactly what you were getting into. We play with the post-text formatting a little bit sometimes, play with a little pun at the end of the title, but you know what you're getting.

Yeah, I was having this debate with myself just yesterday when I was filming some stuff where I was thinking, you know, this is a video about how to start an email newsletter. And then I was thinking, oh, but like do enough people want to start an email newsletter? I know it's something I want to teach. What if I said, called it something like this thing that you're not doing is a thing you should be doing? Question mark. Or, you know, something somewhat clickbaity like that to get more eyeballs on it. And

It was a bit of a debate I was having on myself where I know a lot of YouTubers who go down that route and I've gone down that route in the past. But I was thinking, you know what?

If I was acting in a way that I didn't need to worry about the views and I didn't need to worry about money, what would I title the video? It would be called How to Start a Newsletter or How to Start a Newsletter that Changes Your Life. You have a little bit of clickbaitiness there. It wouldn't be called, you wouldn't believe this one thing that I did that made me a millionaire or whatever the hell else the title might be. And I opted for the more vanilla title rather than the more clickbaity one. And I felt good about the decision, but I guess we'll see on the analytics what that looks like.

I also feel like whenever I see those titles, I'm like, you are making the conscious decision to weight your optimization more for the subscribers and the browse feature. And the people searching for how to start a newsletter will never find that video. Even if that's exactly what you talk about in the video, if the title is something completely different and the thumbnail is something completely different and clickbaity, when I search

Because I am specifically looking for how to do this thing. I search YouTube, how to start email newsletter. If that video comes up, I'm not clicking it because that's not looking like what I want to watch. The one right under it that says how to start an email newsletter, I'm watching that one. So if you're trying to deliver value to a certain type of person, you have to realize there's several buckets of getting that click.

You mentioned just now that you're not particularly interested in being famous, and yet you are one of the most famous tech YouTubers or tech people in the world, I would say. What is your relationship with fame broadly? I think I'm lucky that most people who watch tech videos are at home most of the time. It's great. So I can go out and I'm-- it's cool that there are people in public that recognize

my videos and my work, which is very awesome. I happily talk to people. You know what's funny? The other day, yesterday, I was walking out to my car and the UPS guy pulled up as he was delivering to the building and stopped and said, hey, I just watched your video on the Pixel 6a and I just had a question about this feature and just went right into like the features of the phone that I just reviewed. And I was like, that's,

That's someone who really pays attention to the videos. That's amazing. That's probably my ideal interaction. It's fun. We actually get to talk about tech. And there's a lot of YouTubers who are famous for them and they can't go outside because people just want to talk to them. I also have another...

hilarious anecdote, if we have time for it, which is the YouTube Creator Summit every year. I think there's a couple, but basically it's a hundred or so creators from a certain region, in my case, North America, all going to a certain hotel somewhere and meeting together, but also meeting with the CEO of YouTube and a bunch of executives at YouTube and just talking about how we feel about the platform, things like that.

Inevitably, they put us all up in the hotel and they give us this little postcard that says like, "Hey, let's be considerate and not post about this on social media because if your fans find out where we are,

you know how they are. They might show up. It's a hotel. It's public information. So we try not to make it public where we are when there's 100 of the biggest creators in the same building. But inevitably, someone posts an Instagram and someone looks in the background and sees the name of the hotel. And suddenly there's 100 screaming little girls outside. And we're like, what happened? Somebody told us. Oh, that's great. And I remember this happened. And I was standing at the door of the hotel. And there's like 200 or 300 people

teenage girls just waiting for, I think it was Lele Pons or something, just like, I can't wait. Oh my God, they're screaming, let us in, we wanna see this. And I was waiting for my Uber to go back home

My Uber pulled up in the street behind them and I walked out the building and I just walked straight through the middle of them and not a single one of them even noticed who I was. I just walked right through. Walked, got in the Uber and I was like, this is great. Anybody who would have been into tech, they're at home, maybe they show up at a tech event, that's cool, we can chat there, but I'm not here to try to be screaming girl outside the hotel famous. We're not, it's fine. They can have that. That's great.

Do you get much hate as a tech YouTuber? I've never seen any in your comments. But I mean, 15 million subs and millions of views in every video, you must do. What sort of hate do you get, if any? And how do you deal with it? Hate is funny because it's formatted as just trying to get your attention, which is pretty funny sometimes. So I do think there's a good amount of legitimate feedback.

people who watch a video and genuinely believe something's wrong about the video, that they would have done it differently, that it should have been a different way. And you can read a comment and feel and understand that this person really means what they're saying. And then there's hate that's just like, ah, this guy sucks. Ah, this guy loves Apple. Oh, he can't stop talking about how much he hates this company. Oh, he's biased.

oh, Samsung paid him, whatever. I don't pay any attention to any of those comments because they're just unfounded and they mean nothing. And also they're wrong. So fine. So I try to separate those buckets in my head. Yes, I do get hate. And I try to sift through to find the grain of truth inside of every pearl of hate. There's something in there that maybe I can learn from. One of the sort of genre of, I guess, hate, but like,

I kind of don't like the word hate because it sort of implies malicious intent sometimes. But one of the genres of feedback comments that I find strikes me at the core is when someone will say something like, "Hey Ali, your videos used to be good. Back when you were a doctor and you were providing value to society, I actually watched your videos because you were actually doing something interesting. Now you're just a YouTuber who makes videos for the sake of making videos."

And I'm like, oh man, it's kind of true. I'm a YouTuber who makes videos for making videos. It's like, I'm not a doctor anymore. And like, there'll, there's always be a part of me that's going to be lying awake at night thinking about that. Do you get that response to any sort of genre of hate comments or negative comments or anything? Or are you sufficiently Zen that you're just like, ah, it's either feedback or it's unfounded?

No, I don't think I've seen that too much. I mean, I think of when you just mentioned that, I just thought of Mark Rober, who used to work at Apple, used to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and now is a full-time video creator and does amazing videos and amazing work for getting kids interested in STEM. So I don't see the problem with being a YouTuber. Maybe that person's kind of old. Yeah. Maybe that person's kind of old. Yeah, no problem. What was the...

The thought process or like the strategy or like the reason behind starting the waveform podcast and how's that kind of evolved over time? Yeah, the podcast was started for two reasons one because we had all these conversations in the studio that we realized were very Interesting or insightful and we're like we could have recorded that that would have actually been a really interesting conversation to get other people's opinions on and

And two is because the videos that we produce are so produced. They're polished and they're structured in a way that the podcast allows us to just like sit back with a mic and just talk. And if something interesting happens or some conversation comes up, then it's more casual. And that's a sort of a different way of creating content. But it's actually fun for me to just like think off the top of my head about

this new phone. You know, I just had a thought about this. As we were talking, I realized, just dive right in, that sort of thing. So it's been pretty successful for both of those outlets for us. And we look to keep doing it. So do you have like a schedule where you're thinking about episodic content and like what your talking points for the week are? Or is it literally just, hey, I've got a cool thought. David, let's go chat about it on the pod.

and you go over to the studio and turn the cameras on. MARK MANDEL: Yeah. It's somewhere in between that. We know we make one episode per week, and we record some time on Wednesday, every Wednesday. And so we might have a conversation on Tuesday, and we're like, hey, wait. Save that thought. Write it down. Let's talk about it on the pod. We'll have that.

So we'll sort of gather everything from the week. We have a Slack channel literally just called Waveform, and we'll just dump thoughts in there. And then every Tuesday or Wednesday, we'll just drag things out of there. Like, oh, we were talking about this before. Let's talk about this. Oh, remember this tweet we saw or this random announcement of a thing? What did you think about that? And we'll just get into it. So it is probably the most structured format-wise that we have because it's literally one upload per week, but that's kind of how it goes.

That's a good idea. I often think that with our team, where-- and we even hired a full-time videographer just to sort of capture this, but it ended up not being there with audio and micing people up. We always have really interesting conversations in the studio about being a creator and the business side of things and stuff.

And some subset of our audience really is interested in that kind of stuff. And it's still a part of me that's like, oh, I really wish we had, for example, a podcast studio that was always set up so we could literally just sit down and hit record because right now it just feels like a lot of friction. And then there's all these interesting conversations happening, which are not really relevant to our content, but are just interesting. And we want to kind of share them somehow. Any thoughts on that? Do you think it's nice having like a studio that's set up at all times?

Yeah, this is the most turnkey room in the whole studio. We walk in, I hit that light, I hit that light, I hit that light over there, the board turns on, and we're ready to go. So if there's a thought we have or a guest or someone pops in, we're like, hey, you want to...

You want to just talk about that on the podcast real quick, and we can just do it. That frictionless experience is part of our ideal production environment. So yeah, that's pretty key. Nice. All right, I'm sold. We're going to get some kind of podcast room in our new studio, whatever that looks like. Yeah, hot mics everywhere, all the time. Absolutely, absolutely. Similar question around the studio channel. What's going on there? What was the idea behind it? And-

Why did you decide that like, oh, it would be cool to sort of showcase the team rather than it sort of being, I guess you being the centerpiece at all times? Yeah, it's so the studio channel is really, I guess the studio itself is the main character. Like you watch the videos and you feel like you are in the studio. You feel like you're almost part of the team. And that's the idea is like, we realized we have such a cool, unique experience here at the studio that like,

Let's share it. Let's at least give people an opportunity to like peek in and get a window into it because there's a lot of fun stuff here. And then we'll have random ideas of like, you know what would be funny? A parody video about this commercial that was super bad. Or you know what else would be funny? If we did like a chopped episode but like with making YouTube videos instead of food. So yeah, we just have crazy fun ideas and we do them. And I think the idea is you feel like you are in the studio. Yeah.

And that's a pretty easy thing to accomplish. Yeah, it creates a very sort of fly on the wall kind of vibe. I really enjoyed like the Leica M11 review, for example, where I was like, oh, this is a cool camera. I wonder if Marques got it. It's kind of weird for MKBHD to do a video reviewing that particular camera. But oh, sick, there's an episode of the studio where the team are reviewing the camera, which was pretty awesome.

So the studio channel, is it purely for fun or is there more of a quote-unquote strategic business objective behind it, kind of to use that terminology? It is definitely for fun, but I think it's also interesting and experimental to have a channel that doesn't depend entirely on...

me being on camera. And so in that sense, there's a little bit of the pressure on the ideas to be interesting there because it's not just product focused stuff. It's more ideas. But it is interesting that we actually have successfully created a channel where I can appear in videos sometimes or sometimes there's entire agency where someone's just like, I got to review this keyboard. Like people need to know what I think about this keyboard and they have an outlet to do that. So that's pretty fun. Yeah, sort of a combination of the two.

And like on that note of like this, a big part of this business, like almost all parts of the business seem to revolve around you as an individual. One thing that a lot of other creators that I know have done is slowly try and build their own brands and build their own teams and their own setups.

in a way that means that the business will survive even if the creator decides suddenly that, oh, you know, I'm not really feeling it or I want to take a break for a whole year. Do you think about that sort of dissociating yourself from the business so the business can, quote, survive without you? Or are you fairly chill about just continuing to be the sort of centerpiece of, I guess, the nucleus of the whole business? Yeah, this is probably the...

Number one biggest cardinal sin as a business major that I've committed, which is I am totally fine being the one that is necessary for everything, for the engine to run. For at least the main channel on the podcast, I guess theoretically the podcast could be other conversations and I might not be there, but...

Yeah, I think I'm pretty happy with being the tastemaker for the operation. And so that means I'm involved with pretty much every part of the process. And if I did want to take a break for a year, then it would absolutely fall off the face of the earth. And that's on me. And you're okay with that, in theory? Or do you just imagine not wanting to take a break for a year?

- That's basically what it is. I'm okay with that. So, okay, I'm fine with that because I know it's very unlikely I'm gonna take a break for longer than about a week or two, which in YouTube terms is nothing.

And then also, we do think strategically about larger brand collaborations and larger product opportunities and things that we could make. And we have been having those conversations behind the scenes for like the better part of the last five years. And it's really just about finding the right thing. I've had endless opportunities to just jump right in and be a part of something that seems pretty cool.

But the list of things that gets me really excited about it and really wanting to like make that a priority is very small. So, yeah, those conversations bubble up now and again. We have our agency that that works on those sorts of deals. But, yeah, it's a it's mostly just a nucleus type of deal.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, I feel like I'm in that place right now where it's like, obviously the entire business is reliant on me. And we've sort of made a few inroads in the past of like, oh, let's try and diversify, et cetera, et cetera. What if Ali gets hit by a bus? Then all of a sudden the business dies. And now that we have employees and stuff. But I think in the past I was like, oh my God, this is a big concern. We need to sort this out. But actually-

Instead of what I've seen over the last few months is that like if someone has worked for our business and then strikes off on the run to do freelance stuff, they're going to get clients. No problem. Like they're going to have zero issues. And so I imagine it's the same with your team. Do you do you worry about like, oh, crap, how am I going to support the team? Or is it a similar kind of attitude?

I think it's pretty similar. Yeah, the team is supported. I mean, the work that they create adds so much value that everything is set. I guess if it's a machine with a bunch of gears, all the gears are really important. The machine doesn't work with gears missing, but you kind of have to have all of them for it to be operational. So everybody has a stake in everything, I think.

Sweet. Final couple of things I wanted to talk to you about is I recently started dabbling with angel investing in startups. I can't remember which one it was that I recently invested in, but it seemed like you and Casey were also on the cap table. I wanted to ask, how long have you been doing angel investing? What's your take? What

how did you get started? Like what's the sort of companies you invest in and like, how does, how does that work kind of from, from your end if you're open to talking about that? Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty new to me. So it's definitely within the past like two years that I've started like seeing investment opportunities and it is very much, I've watched so much shark tank that to me it's like I

I see a pitch and immediately I go into shark mode of it's like, well, what if a big company copies this? Well, what if this like there are there are a couple ideas that are really cool. And I've I've invested in, I think, four companies total in the last couple of years. So it's not very many, but it's the companies whose products I believe in and who I think I can add value to. And maybe it can become something bigger. That's the general idea.

So I guess, yeah, it's not that many, but it is really interesting now being able to behind the scenes instead of in front of the scenes have a sort of an influence or an impact on something you think can be bigger than it is. Nice.

Sick. Yeah, I think I've kind of overstretched on that front where I've just sort of saying yes to any opportunity that came my way. And now it's a bit like, oh, I'm getting WhatsApp messages from these companies I've invested in. And I feel really bad because I suck at replying to WhatsApp messages for my friends, let alone kind of people I've given money to. And I might have to kind of put a bit of a pause on it. I feel like four feels like a manageable amount. I guess the final thing I want to ask you about is, firstly, thank you so much for being so open and gracious and stuff.

with your time. This has been a wonderful conversation. What sort of goals do you have in sort of what are the things you're thinking about in

your personal life? So like the non-YouTube, non-work stuff. Do you have any sort of personal goals that you're, I guess, working towards? How are you thinking about that? Yeah, I mean, I definitely have a second half of my brain that's switched off when I'm at the studio, which is during weekdays we make the tech stuff. We do the studio video thing. I also play on some Ultimate Frisbee teams.

And we have big goals for those teams. Every year we have pretty lofty goals. I'm leaving for a week starting tomorrow to go compete at the Club World Championships, which is a pretty lofty goal. I mean, that's going to take a lot of focus and I won't be making videos for a week. So it's stuff like that. I feel like the left brain, right brain thing is pretty real. Work hard, play hard. You've heard the phrases. Yeah.

So, yeah, a little bit of that. A little bit of keeping my competitive side entertained versus the creative side. All right. Well, Marques, this has been an absolutely wonderful conversation. Thank you so much. We'll put links to all the stuff in the video description. But where can people go to learn more about you and kind of see what you're up to? If you just search MKBHD on any platform, probably video platform, you'll probably find me.

Yeah. Amazing. Right. Thank you so much for taking the time. This has been wonderful. And hopefully we can meet IRL if I ever get a visa to come over to New Jersey sometime. I'm currently working on it. Open invite to the studio. Feel free to come by anytime.

This is fun. That would be awesome. All right. Thank you so much, man. Take care. Have a great day. Say hi to the team and we'll see you guys later. Bye bye. All right. So that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast.

Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.