“Right now I have approximately 70-ish subscribers,” declared a teenage Marques Brownlee at the beginning of his 100th YouTube video back in 2009. Marques recorded his first of many product reviews earlier that year, after buying his first laptop. Quite simply, he wanted others to have more information about this computer than he did when he bought it. 

Since then, Marques has grown his channel, MKBHD, into a full-fledged business with more than 16 million subscribers and over 3 billion total views. He’s expanded beyond reviews too, posting interviews with well-known public figures like Kobe Bryant, Bill Gates and Elon Musk. 

This week on How I Built This Lab, Marques reflects on his journey as a content creator and how he turned a love of tech into a lucrative and sustainable business. Plus, he shares his philosophy for building a strong team – which interestingly enough, is inspired by an octopus...

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Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab.

So for those of you listening to the lab for the first time, this is the place where we get to talk to entrepreneurs with big disruptive ideas that could maybe make our world a better place.

We also talked to return guests who've been on the show to hear about the things they've been up to since they were last on, and also people who are making a name for themselves in the creator economy.

And my guest today is almost like the anti-YouTuber.

He's soft-spoken, he's self-effacing, almost camera-shy, he's kind and friendly, and also 1 of the biggest YouTubers on the planet.

His name is Marques Brownlee, and he's the creator of the MKBHD channel.

And since 2009, Marques has been reviewing gadgets, computers, phones, earbuds, TVs, you name it.

And he's widely considered to be among the best tech reviewers in the world.

Today, his channel has more than 16 million subscribers, over 3 billion views, and his team of 13 producers and editors also makes a podcast and other YouTube shows related to technology.

When Marques recorded his first YouTube video back in 2009, the intention was to help point out cool things on an HP laptop that he just bought.

But as his channel grew and his videos became better and more polished, Marques decided to build a business around his work.

And he says, pretty much since he can remember, he's been a gearhead.

I was definitely pretty much as early as I can remember into tech in some way.

I guess my earliest exposure to that was like an old VHS camera trying to like record a video but then didn't have a computer.

So I had to edit the video in the camera by cutting together different clips in the shooting process.

It was just fun to be able to make something using technology.

So the second I could use a computer, the second I could own a computer, that was what I was obsessed with.

And yeah, pretty quickly became the tech kid.

Like I think your dad worked in the tech sector, right?

My mom was in financials, but Yeah, that definitely helped a bit as far as like exposure to someone being computer savvy pretty early

I know that you were a little kid in the 90s What were some of the coolest things that you remember just discovering and playing around with?

Yeah as a Family growing up we didn't actually have a ton of technology And I think that was on purpose like my mom only had 1 TV in the house And it was in the basement so like any time we spent on the TV was like precious before you know We weren't allowed to use it after a certain time but there was still like this background interest in gadgets and computers and things like that and then I do remember like I said sort of the earliest piece of tech I was able to interact with was a camera and then later after that I'm growing up in the 90s like I finally got a computer in high school, so I had a laptop.

That's sort of the beginning of my modern gadget history, the beginning of smartphones and gadgets.

So there's a just charming, delightful video of you.

I don't know if it embarrasses you or not but I think it's delightful it's just sweet and it was recorded around

I think you were like maybe a freshman and sophomore in high school.

And you are reviewing a laptop called the HP Pavilion.

It's very basic, it's like a camera point at

So I'm gonna do a very, very short review of it.

Obviously I can't show you what it does on the screen because I'm recording it on the laptop Pardon the light behind me by the way

Tell me how you got the idea to even just put that up there.

Yeah, you're right 2009 you know I didn't have any other YouTube videos online.

I was just sort of watching a lot of videos I was a sophomore in high school, and it was finally gonna make sense to have my own computer You know we had a family computer up in the office, but like wow I'm gonna have my own computer This is the craziest thing ever okay I'm going to spend my allowance money on an approved computer That had my parents are gonna let me actually buy and so I wanted to do as much research as possible Watch as many videos watch as many reviews read as many articles as humanly possible so I could know everything about every laptop so I could buy the exact perfect laptop for me.

There turned out to be sites at the time, HP let you build your own laptop on their site.

I could choose exactly how much RAM it had and what options I would pick out.

And eventually I picked 1 out, and that was the HP Pavilion DV7T.

And when I got it, I felt like in person, I noticed a couple things that I didn't notice in the videos.

And so my natural response was, well I did just watch a whole bunch of videos about this and I somehow never saw this in any of the videos.

So I'm going to open up the laptop, turn the webcam on, and just record a video to explain what I found which is this little Windows Media Center remote.

This button here has a small letter I on it.

It's not very clear, But it basically brings up all the things, like the Blackberry menu you might have been familiar with.

It brings up all the options you can do with that particular piece of media.

And I hit stop, and then I just went to YouTube.com and then just uploaded that video and posted it.

So now if anyone else was in my shoes they would also have that video to watch.

They could make an even better choice when buying their laptop.

You weren't trying to perform for the camera or to be silly.

It was literally like almost like a university seminar.

And you just put up there to contribute to this body of work.

It was like you were kind of just doing it for this community of people who were interested in this laptop.

And it sort of like grew directly from that.

Like, oh, you know, now that I found this laptop, I did the first video on that, but then there was also the cooler that I bought for the laptop, and then there was some software that I bought for the laptop.

And it's just like, yeah, you know, more people are gonna be in the same purchase decision as me, so I might as well just upload these videos real quick just to make sure other people have this information too.

So yeah, just trying to be valuable a little bit, I guess is how it started.

And just talking about the product, like the good, the bad, whatever it was.

And again, this is like early YouTube, so very few people are watching your videos, but you kept at it, you kept making them and uploading them, again with the thinking that this is just for this small group of people who want to know about these things that I have too.

Yeah exactly there was no such thing as a youtuber in

There wasn't there wasn't any like view counts to pay I mean there were view counts but it's not like I paid super close attention to them.

This is early days of online video So yeah, it didn't really matter how many people watch the videos What mattered was that if the video was available for people to watch if they were in the same shoes that I was in

It was just like this video deserves to exist

Um, I read that by the time you post your 100th video, you had 78 subscribers.

Were you just buying a bunch of things and reviewing them?

Early videos included the cooler that I bought, the mouse and keyboard that I bought.

But I did a bunch of videos on freeware, which is just the screen recordings of just free software stuff and like customizing the laptop.

So there were Windows themes that I showed you how to install and different alternate browsers that I showed people how to customize and get working the way they wanted.

So in this quest of making my own perfect laptop, I'm like showing people how to do the stuff that I did along the way.

So that adds up pretty quickly to a lot of quick one-take videos about laptop accessories.

You know, I think this is still like kind of the innocent days of the internet when we all kind of trusted everything and told everything about our lives and told Facebook more than we tell the Social Security Administration or the Census Bureau.

But were your parents at all like, hey, Marques, what are you doing?

Why are you putting videos of yourself on the internet or were they okay with it?

So basically yeah 1 day my parents brought me down to the kitchen table and I said hey YouTube videos huh?

You know they found them somehow I don't even know you'd have to ask them how they found them but yeah YouTube videos like that's a it's a hobby, you know ask me about it How I was enjoying it or whatever and basically the only advice was like don't reveal Unnecessary personal information about yourself or where you live because you know, it's the internet anyone could be on there

And I think they just figured there's way worse things their kid could be doing in their spare time.

And so if grades are slipping, we'll tell you to stop.

You went to college, you studied at an engineering school, Stevens Institute Technology, and I think their specialty is mechanical engineering.

I'm imagining that when you went to college, you were not imagining a future as a YouTuber, but a future as a mechanical engineer.

So you know, by the time I was choosing a college to go to, I had been doing videos for a couple of years at that point, built up a little bit of an audience.

And actually, YouTube became somewhat of an established real profession, which is really interesting.

And so what that meant was there were YouTubers that had relationships with tech companies and product companies where they might send a product to a YouTube channel to make a video about.

And I sort of dabbled a little bit in the beginnings of those things.

And so when I went to school, I actually figured as someone studying business and technology, I would probably end up as 1 of those people, 1 of the people that works at a tech company that can engage with the media, that is knowledgeable about a product, since I'd seen both sides of it.

So that was kind of your plan, but your plan, of course, was derailed by videos that started to really go viral.

And I think the first 1 that really blew up was this video you did of the LG Flex, which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist anymore as a cell phone.

You know, it was like this hot new thing because it was bendy and it was scratch proof.

Do you like squash it down and you scratch it with a knife?

And you were just doing this all on your own, right?

You were editing and filming these just by yourself.

Yeah, at this point I'm like taking my camera and a tripod to go shoot at like a table and a bench in the park, or I'd just be in my dorm room or whatever.

LG G Flex was like, it was a flexible OLED display, but they had to build the components to be flexible too.

So the phone could kind of bend a little bit, which is crazy.

And this is the LG G Flex, quite possibly the most interesting phone in the world right now.

And then on top of that they had a self-healing back.

You know anytime you hear a crazy claim like that from a smartphone manufacturer you're like well I got it I guess I got to test this.

So I decided to do a full test of my own.

I did this for you guys So thumbs up for that down below.

I just started cutting it up and then putting it to the test, seeing how long it would take to self heal.

And sure enough, when it pulls that off on video, yeah, people click.

There was a light bulb moment, you know, and I quickly understood that there was a market for quick, timely information in the form of a high quality video.

So yeah, that was probably a pretty early taste at like people who are not subscribed to the channel watching the videos anyway.

Sort of a discoverability light bulb for me.

We're going to take a very quick break, but when we come back, more from Marques Brownlee, the creator behind the tech-focused YouTube channel MKBHD.

I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

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I'm Guy Raz and my guest today is Marques Brownlee, whose YouTube channel MKBHD has more than 16 million subscribers.

You know, I interview celebrities and founders and really the 2 people that my kids wanted to stay home from school were you and Casey Neistat.

You know, you have such a massive audience, particularly of young people and of kids who use these products.

But 1 of the things that I really like about what you do, and you've done this from the beginning, is you're very atypical.

Yeah, it's your man, you know, Marquez here and I'm you know, don't do that.

You're almost like, like, you're almost like the anti YouTuber, like you're very understated and quiet and thoughtful and your videos are very crisp and You deliver things in a very measured way Like it's it flies in the face of all the conventional wisdom of what makes something go viral,

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned the original goal, and this is kind of still true today, is I'm trying to make videos that I would want to watch.

And so I didn't really start off watching the super animated, yelling at the camera type YouTube because honestly I just didn't enjoy watching it that much.

So I was watching other tutorials and other gadget videos or whatever.

And so I just kept making what I would want to watch.

And I slowly was able to develop a way of talking to a camera over time.

But it's funny, the other part of that, which is even more true today than ever, is like, there are lots of people trying to make YouTube videos, right?

You can watch any number of a million videos from anyone from me to Casey to the Mr.

Beast of the world to any other, there's a ton.

They're all competing for attention, and often the subject of the video is the person.

And so in order for it to be an interesting video, the person and the thing that they're doing has to constantly be interesting.

And for me, I've been lucky enough that I do product videos.

So a lot of other product YouTube video creators can relate to this, which is like, the pressure isn't really on me as much to be super interesting.

People are watching the video for the product.

So the pressure, I guess, is on the company to make an interesting product, But I'm pointing the camera at it.

And I guess it helps that the videos are crisp and we love high quality production.

But as far as the quest of making a video we'd want to watch, it's like the gadget is the star of the show.

And we're just doing our best to make it feel like you've seen it through the video.

So after you graduated college, it was clear to you that this was going to be the business you were going to pursue, which was MKBHD.

It's your initials in high definition, right?

And, you know, you thought, okay, this is starting to take off by the time you graduated college you already Kind of a YouTube celebrity you already had a relatively high number of followers not like today But you know 2015 you already had quite a bit of attention and you were reviewing the new iPhones and so on, was it clear to you like, okay, I gotta figure out how to make this into my profession, my business?

Yeah, it was luckily a pretty perfect curve.

So on 1 hand, I'm going to school, I have class every day and I'm playing on the Ultimate Frisbee team and I'm doing videos in my spare time.

But as you mentioned, I've been making a lot of videos and putting a lot of time into it and really enjoying it and it's got an audience to the point where it does make money through the YouTube Partner program.

At the same time in parallel, Stevens Tech, a pretty technical school, loves its relationships with tech companies all over the world but especially in New York City.

So they've built these curriculums to where students specifically will do a semester of class and then do a semester interning at maybe a potential future company they'd work for.

You know, there's lots of them in New York City.

And so I started my semester of school and then it came time for me to do the break semester internship.

And the only thing I wanted to do during that semester was just pour more time into making videos because I enjoyed making videos so much.

Yeah, and So every time I did that I got a little bit of a taste of like what would be like to be a full-time Video creator.

So by the time I graduated It was both making enough money and obvious enough that yeah This is what I want to do when I'm done with school that it was kind of a yeah It was a no-brainer to turn it into what I pour all my time into so that's exactly what happened

You know with these companies send out sample products to get reviewed?

At this point, you were getting some attention from people who were interested in technology.

Did you start to get flooded with stuff to review?

So this was early enough that I wasn't flooded necessarily with stuff to do videos on but it was a pretty steady stream of interesting stuff happening to talk about interesting devices to try that I could make a video about and I graduated from my 5 dollar a week allowance or whatever

to now actually the YouTube partner program existing Which meant that based on the size of the viewership of a video you'd actually get paid a little bit for people watching the videos So this was a It was a hobby, but it was also a hobby that was paying which was pretty cool.

Yeah, and yeah, this was like a the beginnings of Relationships between media companies and online video creators super early

and the revenue was coming Entirely because you were getting a cut of the ads that YouTube was playing before the videos.

Yeah, the partner program, they'll show ads on top of videos, maybe right before videos.

So in the middle of a video, an ad might pop up.

All the sorts of built-in tools that YouTube's given creators over the years were all contributing to pretty steady income to the point where like it was making full-time job money by the time I graduated.

At the time how long would it take you to make a video because you're setting up tripods and you know you want to write a nice script and you want to edit it together nicely and you were a student so yeah roughly how long would it take you to make up a 4 or 5 minute video

yeah man so I'd say if you pick like a standard like gadget review, you know, there's obviously a testing period, like I'm using the device, I'm actually going through writing things down, taking my notes on it, but I guess just for production, sitting down, talking to the camera, and then editing, I could probably do an entire video back then in a day.

Maybe I had class and at 2 p.m And I would I would just work on it for the entire rest of that day until Midnight or something and then post the video and that would be my day That process has evolved a lot since then but things get more complicated as they get more intricate but yeah I think around a day for a video.

Wow and you were I mean you say you're making like the equivalent of a full-time salary so I'm curious more than $100, 000 a year

Not yet at that point So I think I was more just like oh I can pay my rent and buy food and have money to reinvest in the business So probably like 30 40 grand something like that

and how many views were your videos getting in 2014 2015 when you're in college?

Back then, I'd be estimating, but I'm going to say probably every video is getting anywhere from 50, 000 to 150, 000 views just on a normal video.

And it was a high enough volume of videos.

So you know that it's, this is what you're going to pursue, because you've got this niche.

And when you graduated, how did you decide to think about this business?

I mean, did you think about, OK, I've got to hire people, I've got to have another camera person, or was it initially, even after you graduated college, just you?

Yeah, after I graduated, it was still just me.

So basically the way I thought about it, and I've evolved the business part behind the scenes of this operation very, very slowly and deliberately.

In the initial years after I graduated, it was literally just, oh my God, I have so much more time, I just get to pour that time into making videos.

So here I go trying to learn new animation tricks and try new software tools and try to up my production.

And it went from me doing videos in my spare time and maybe doing 1 or 2 a week to me not having class every day and getting to do 3, maybe 4 videos a week or up the quality, do 3 videos a week, but way better videos.

So that's initially how I started thinking about it.

And of course, you could twist that into a business move and say, I'm building an audience that way, specifically by making better videos.

But the whole scaling and building a team thing was not for many years after that.

You know, what's remarkable to me is that this is all self-taught.

Because you can go back and watch your first video, and obviously it's not a high-quality production.

It's just a sweet kid talking to the camera, and it's like a FaceTime video.

And then you compare it to what you do now, it's just remarkable.

But what's really remarkable to me is that your scripts and just your delivery was so crisp.

I mean, today, of course, too, but even back then, who was giving you feedback?

I mean, was there anyone that you could go to and say, hey, what do you think about this video?

Or like, how were you able to do such a good job just on your own?

Yeah, I guess that is part of the beauty of YouTube, which is, I guess if you're an artist and making anything, you scroll back far enough, you start to cringe at your own work because you can see your own improvement.

But the other part of YouTube is like the second I upload something there's immediately hundreds and hundreds of people watching it and giving their open honest feedback in the comment section of things that they enjoyed, things that they liked from the last video, things they wanna see done better.

And I made it a point to listen to that feedback and continue to not just make videos I would wanna watch, but just try to make better videos, period.

I did have some other creator friends and I think everyone kind of builds their channel a little bit differently so it's valuable to hear from other people on how they do it.

But yeah, I think honestly you just look back at what you used to do and try to do that 3% better again and again and again and again and again.

And that adds up to pretty big improvement over time.

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HIBT Lab! MKBHD: Marques Brownlee