Marques Brownlee attributes his success on YouTube to being consistent in the tech space for a long time and having a unique style. He did not experience a specific inflection point in his channel's growth. In the beginning, he reviewed software on his laptop and eventually started receiving phones to review. He evaluates tech products based on their usefulness and daily driver potential, looking at metrics like features that are gimmicks versus those that are practical. He also considers the quality of a product and how it feels to use it. Brownlee believes that smartphones will continue to evolve and that there will always be new trends and innovations in the industry.

- The speaker discusses the future of folding phones and their potential usefulness in the long run.
- They also talk about their interest in Tesla and electric vehicles, and how the EV market is evolving.
- The speaker mentions that EVs offer quick acceleration and are attractive to many people, despite lacking the sound of a traditional gas car.
- They discuss the importance of charging infrastructure for EVs and how Tesla is currently ahead in this area.
- The speaker expresses their fear of becoming out of touch with new trends as they get older.
- They mention their interest in diversifying their content on YouTube, including car videos, production, and a potential podcast.
- The podcast would focus on talking with other creators and discussing creative strategies and insights.
- The speaker mentions that video is their preferred medium and they are constantly exploring new ways to innovate within it.

- The speaker has tried 360 and VR videos, but struggled to find productive uses for them in their case.
- They discuss the challenges of storytelling in VR and the limitations of cameras.
- The speaker talks about their experiences with drone footage and shooting car videos from different angles.
- They mention collaborating with other creators and discussing gear and production strategies.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of storytelling and context in their reviews.
- They consider tech to be the star of their show, but also inject their own personal humor and perspective.
- The speaker offers advice for new creators on YouTube, emphasizing the importance of finding their own voice and perspective.

The speaker discusses the importance of finding one's own voice and perspective on YouTube. They emphasize the need to be unique and not try to imitate existing content. The speaker also mentions the importance of consistency and luck in the saturated YouTube market. They talk about their own focus on high-quality production and their desire to create the most realistic videos possible. The speaker admits to being a perfectionist and discusses the challenges of creating concise and informative content. They also mention the value of YouTube comments and how they categorize and find them helpful. The speaker briefly mentions taking a hiatus from YouTube during their senior year of high school due to time constraints.

The speaker discusses their daily schedule, which includes filming and editing videos on weekdays, playing ultimate frisbee at night, and focusing on ultimate frisbee on weekends. They also talk about their fitness routine, which includes practicing ultimate frisbee and using free weights in their basement gym. The speaker mentions that they have had injuries related to ultimate frisbee. They provide tips for engaging with influencers as a startup founder and discuss the future of individual creators monetizing their content. They mention various sources of income, including ads, affiliate income, merch sales, and paid subscriptions. The speaker also mentions their goal of improving the production quality of their videos and the challenge of managing multiple tasks.

The speaker discusses the challenges of multitasking and the desire to have others help with various aspects of their work. They also mention their long-term goal of expanding their media company to include a YouTube channel, podcast, and production assistance for other channels. They express interest in creating longer videos and potentially making a movie in the future.

- Marques Brownlee attributes his success on YouTube to consistency and having a unique style.
- He evaluates tech products based on usefulness and quality.
- Brownlee believes smartphones will continue to evolve with new trends and innovations.
- He discusses the future of folding phones and his interest in Tesla and electric vehicles.
- Brownlee fears becoming out of touch with new trends as he gets older.
- He is interested in diversifying his content on YouTube, including car videos, production, and a potential podcast.
- Brownlee emphasizes the importance of storytelling and context in his reviews.
- He offers advice for new creators on YouTube, emphasizing finding their own voice and perspective.
- Brownlee discusses his daily schedule, fitness routine, and sources of income.
- He mentions his goal of expanding his media company and potentially making a movie in the future.

Marques Brownlee is a YouTuber. He has over 8 million subscribers to his channel MKBHD where he reviews electronics, drives electric vehicles, and interviews people such as Kobe Bryant and Bill Gates.

https://twitter.com/MKBHD
https://www.youtube.com/MKBHD

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

https://twitter.com/craigcannon

***

Topics

00:00 - What does Marques attribute his channel's success to?

2:15 - The early days

4:45 - How does he go about evaluating a product?

7:05 - Features that Marques thought were great that didn't catch on

8:15 - Peak smartphone?

10:05 - Folding phones and new trends

11:00 - Tesla and the EV market

15:20 - Getting older and staying relevant

16:40 - New kinds of videos and podcasting

22:00 - Does Marques feel limited by gear?

25:45 - Storytelling techniques

27:50 - Tech vs Marques as the star of the show

29:30 - Marco Castro asks - What advice do you have for new creators on YouTube?

30:30 - When did Marques find his voice as a creator?

33:30 - Overcoming perfectionism

34:30 - Gut instinct vs data

37:00 - YouTube comments

39:05 - Austin Ryder asks - In the early years of his channel, Marques took a several month hiatus from YouTube, but then came back with a new video format and seemingly renewed drive. What happened during those months off that led to the channel becoming what it is today?

40:15 - Winston asks - What’s your daily schedule?

42:40 - Ultimate frisbee injuries

43:00 - Amad Khan asks - Are there any problems that you see or face that you really wish engineers/developers would solve?

44:25 - Christian Giordano asks - Any tips on how to engage/work with influencers when you are a very early stage startup with little or no money?

46:15 - The future of creators supporting themselves financially

49:05 - His biggest challenge as a creator

50:05 - Long-term goals

All right, Marques Brownlee, how's it going?

I've followed your channel for a while, but I definitely did not follow it in the beginning when you were reviewing software on your laptop.

What would you attribute your success to on YouTube?

Well, I do tech videos, so I think the obvious answer there is tech has been interesting and important for so long that just being in a tech space generally for that long has done a lot for

The channel itself, I mean there's plenty of other successful tech channels but it has its own unique style, it has a consistent voice, it's been me for 10 years.

So I guess just if you combine all those factors, consistency plus texting, interesting, that's, that's mainly it.

Was there any particular inflection point where it really took off?

No, I get asked that a lot about like, you know, can I point to a certain video or date or month or something, like what happened to go from like nothing to where it is now?

But it's, I've, to this day I look back and it's mainly just like a, you can look at charts even, it's just a sort of an upward slope from 0 videos to a thousand videos.

You know, it's obviously when you get to certain points, like the reputability, is that a word?

The reputability of the channel becomes more, significant.

So you're more likely to subscribe to a tech guy with a million subscribers talking about something you should buy than a guy with a hundred.

So that's helped, but I feel like a consistency again is major.

I follow a couple subreddits on like weird YouTube channels and there are people that have a thousand videos reviewing Elevators oh yeah simple boring shit

Well, I mean there's there's always gonna be like niche stuff Which people will get really into but I think like when when it comes to something as personal as a tech product Yeah, you kind of want some sort of history to go on or sort of a reputation to look back on when it's like a thousand, phones are a thousand dollars now so yeah, I think that's helped being able to have a history of stuff.

And because in the beginning you were just doing software, right?

Yeah, and then did you start getting phones sent to you in like the early days of influencer culture?

It was, I'd started with all this laptop stuff.

So the first stuff that got sent to me was laptop accessories, a mouse, a keyboard, that kind of stuff.

Some, some paid software, I would get like a key for $30 off a $50 piece of software and I could have that access.

Phone stuff didn't happen until much later.

I remember the first event I ever went to was a Samsung event in New York City where I met a YouTuber for the first time.

You know, I grew up getting like pirated keys off of LimeWire and all that kind of stuff.

Did you ever dip into that and think like, man, maybe I should review Final Cut Pro on my channel?

Oh man, at 1 point I definitely did a whole Hackintosh thing.

Which was definitely not kosher, I guess, but you know, Hackintosh world is a whole world.

So I was curious about it and I got into it.

I was never really into downloading pirated music or any of that stuff, but I could imagine that was its own world for a long time.

Yeah, yeah, because I was curious, because as a kid you have no money when you're starting out your channel.

And I wonder if you grew up with that hacker ethos.

Like, have you done a teardown video before or anything like that?

Not really, I mean, I used to be much more into building PCs and taking them apart and upgrading them.

I had a Mac, 1 that was the Tower Desktop Mac Pro.

Yeah, I did, like, I was replacing the GPU and upgrading the RAM and all that.

And I had an XPS tower that I did the same thing to.

But I guess I never was really fully into the building process as much as I was the final result.

How well that finished product would work for you.

But when I watch your videos now, you're pretty into the stats of it all.

Like all those like hard metrics with the products, right?

I mean, I think If you just look at, if you take a huge step back and just look at what the videos are about period, especially with the reviews, it's like how good is this product that this company made going to work for you?

And there's a whole bunch of different ways to measure that.

I've heard you talk about it before in the context of like, this is a feature that's gonna maybe spark some interest and this is a feature that I'm gonna use every day.

I mean, I kind of you can pick up a phone and use a really cool feature for 2 seconds You're like, whoa, that's amazing.

But when you actually buy the phone, are you gonna use that feature?

There's all sorts of benchmarks and things people do like How fast is the storage?

And that stuff is useful, obviously, if you have more demanding needs for your phone.

But a lot of it is literally just evaluating, like, is this a gimmick or is this really going to be daily driver material?

1 thing I was talking about on a recent podcast is how it's very hard for the market to recognize how good a product's quality is.

Like when you sit, when you touch an iPhone for the first time.

And so like how do you go about quantifying that when you're making a video?

I mean, it's really, sometimes I see my job as like a professional user.

And you get the briefing obviously, and the breakdown of all the new features and what is new versus what's not new.

And you can compare it to things you've used before.

But at the end of the day, like you actually have to use it to figure out if it's actually useful.

There's, they'll tell me about a new feature and they'll tell me exactly, there's some New York for you, how it, like the ideal use case scenario, how it works well.

This came up recently, because I did a video with an LG phone that came out.

Has this feature where you wave your hand over it and do these gestures to open up apps and things like that.

And like on the surface, like this is cool.

This is like future type stuff, but then you actually use it and you're like, all Right, so I don't know what I have, stuff on my hands, maybe I'm cooking, but I just wanna like open the YouTube app real quick and search for something, like now what?

Like I have to still type in what I wanna search, like there's limits to the usefulness of that.

So that for me fell in the gimmick bucket just because using it actually changed my mind.

But then what about the features where you thought it was great and it didn't catch on?

of examples of things that are great to me that aren't a big deal to other people.

Like I'm a, I love high resolution, really nice screens.

And you can hand, you can hand me a phone with a 1440 P AMOLED great display.

And you could hand me a phone with a 1080 P LCD display and I'd look and I'd immediately want the better 1.

But to an average person, a lot of times, whatever, like they both look fine to me.

So sometimes there will be things that I'll evaluate.

I'll be like, you gotta get this because it's got a great screen and it won't matter to a lot of people.

But at least then you can calibrate yourself to what I've in the past liked a lot.

So in the past if I keep saying like I really like these phones because of their screens, and you know from your past experience that screens aren't a big deal to you, then you can at least say, all right, I'll discount this point because screens aren't my thing.

Okay, yeah, because I've kind of wondered if we're going to reach a point of complete diminishing returns with smartphones, right?

You're like, oh man, you know, iPhone 10 or whatever.

IPhone 11, is it a hundred percent better?

So like, do you think we're gonna reach peak smartphones?

And the only reason I don't is because I've heard that question for the past 5 years of smartphones and then the next year I'm like, well that's new.

And I think it's mostly because the trends change.

There was a thinness trend a couple years ago where it was like we got 9 millimeters thin and then 8.9 and then 8.1 and then 7.9.

Holy crap, there's a 6 millimeter thin phone.

And then it changed to like, okay, now we want these bezel-less phones.

So thickness, whatever, it's just gonna be thin.

But now, can we get a 90% screen to body ratio?

Eventually we're going to be like, have we hit peak?

And then the next trend is going to happen.

I don't know what that next trend is, but I feel like because of, I've observed these cycles over the past couple of years, it doesn't seem likely that it's just going to, we're going to get this end product of like the perfect phone.

I mean, maybe we will, that'd be great, but yeah, I don't, I don't

I mean, I know a lot of people are holding onto, you know, iPhone basically 5 form factor.

Phones are better and they last longer than they ever did.

So in that sense, we're closer to peak smartphone because your iPhone, if you buy an iPhone 10 S now, that phone's probably going to be good for like 4 years.

Like legitimately, iOS has gotten better.

So it's true, you can hang on to an older phone longer than you used to be able to.

But that's also something tech companies got to think about when they make their next product.

So what do you make of these new trends, like the folding things, like new trends right now?

Folding 1 is is 1 of those interesting ones because I I'm trying to imagine the future of like why folding phones matter.

At this point like generation 1 folding phones are like alright proof of concept like yeah you can technically fold it but there's a big ugly crease in the middle on these bezels are huge.

And you know, it's, it's not really, it doesn't seem that useful yet, But that challenge is to like, okay, go like 8, 9 years down the road where it's like, oh, yeah, you can just you have a tablet and a phone and you just unfold your phone and becomes a tablet like in that world.

Like 2019 folding phones were worth it because we got to that point.

So if we get to that point someday, then I think it'd be worth it.

So then I've noticed you filmed a bunch of Tesla videos.

Based on, you know, the ratio of types of content on your channel, Are you just betting electric vehicles is the next big trend?

Partially yes, and partially I just love the thing.

Yeah, I mean, but that's like a cool signal, right?

Like I remember people wouldn't shut up about their iPhones when they got them.

And the same thing is true for the Model S.

Yes, and that's a comparison I've heard, like the Tesla is the iPhone of cars again.

Like it's kind of just that next wave and electric does seem like its future.

You see all these big companies like, yeah, we're going to go electric by 2028.

Yeah, No, I'm a huge fan of the Tesla and it's like, it's kind of like a perfect segue into me.

I've always been into cars, but like I'm 25, like how into cars could I be really?

I don't drive all kinds of cars and stuff, but the Tesla was a perfect segue into cars because it's a tech product.

It has all these tech features, It's basically a tech company.

So it was sort of a natural segue into the car world.

Yeah, because I've just been curious, like on the performance side, how much it actually matters.

Because if you look around, obviously the Model S is nuts to drive, right?

But then the Prius is, have you driven a Prius before?

Right, and so, yeah, I've been kind of wondering where the EV market will end up going, because the Model 3 is also pretty quick.

What's your impression of like the low end EV market?

The thing about EV is you still get like that quick torque.

So even though the performance from like, you know, your 60 to 90 might not be like high end gas car territory, most of the acceleration and like merging and quick things you do on an EV, even a low-end EV, is still zippy.

Like you still feel like you're in that zippy go-kart type of feel.

Even in, I drove a Model 3 when it first came out and so it was rear wheel drive.

I'm pretty sure the 0-60 is like 5 and a half seconds or something, which is fine, but like that car felt quick.

I'd step on the pedal and I felt like zippy like I was in a Model S.

So even low-end EVs will have that feel and that's attractive to people.

I think a lot of people overrate how much sound matters.

Like in the high-end car market, everyone cares how their car sounds.

But for 90% of people who are just like...

You mean interior or the actual engine sound?

Like when I hit the pedal, I want to hear it working for me.

Like that's a common, like, resistance to the EVs.

So, but yeah, I think for like 90% of people, or taxis, or just commuter vans, or just basic transportation, like, silence is great.

I mean, maybe I'm just, cause I'm looking mostly at Tesla, but like the amount of things, you know, having a smartphone controlled app where you can summon the car to you.

Like all these remote start stop features in gas cars are great, but when you look at the amount of, I mean, Tesla's a tech company, so you see all kinds of tech features in

Yeah, I guess I just kind of wonder, like, where, because you spend so much time reviewing products, both like smartphones and cars and stuff, like you kind of get an impression of the bleeding edge, but I'm wondering like where you're seeing it going, like things that are just popping up where you're like, oh, that's actually a super cool feature that people aren't talking about or thinking about right now in the context of cars.

I mean, honestly, just going electric and the number 1 thing you think about is charging.

The more like those big companies think about answering those questions, like Ford and like Chevy and those big guys, the more you realize how, how far ahead Tesla is, but How, how much, how, how far there is to go, to actually make EVs useful for most people, but I think, you know, the basic premise is you're just going electric, like you just put a battery in it, you charge it and you drive it the same way a normal car drives, but I don't think there's any sort of magic sauce to it other than that.

So it's more like on the infrastructure side, it's really important getting it on.

less flashy and like, you know, magic feature that's winning the market over, but it's like, that's what you have to nail to make a good EV.

And so, you know, now you're, you said you're 25.

Yeah, so now that you're 25, do you feel like there's gonna be a point where you have less of a pulse on like the new cool stuff?

It's, I'm scared of being that like old guy who's like out of touch.

Like, but at least, at least I think that process will be slower for me because I'm so immersed in it now.

Like with music, maybe I'm already there.

Like, I tried to listen to like the billboard 100, like whatever the other day, and I was just like, this is objectively bad.

I clearly am out of the loop, but, I guess with tech, I don't know.

Maybe I'm a little more immersed, so that might take longer.

Yeah, or it's just near and dear to your heart, so it really matters.

Yeah, or I'll just, well, there's also hope, because there are plenty of much older tech journalists and tech youtubers who are who are doing their things I mean if you if you stay like in that world it's it's kind of just part of what you're doing every day

no and I know plenty of older people who are way more into music than I am and I catch things early

but it is this like core fear as a creative person where you're like, dude, am I old school right now?

So do you, does that fear like motivate you to try like weirder YouTube stuff?

Or are you like kind of, you know, this kind of phone, whatever video works and I'm just going to keep banging it out.

I don't know if, yeah, I mean, I'm definitely trying to diversify the breadth of coverage you might call it.

I don't think that's out of fear of like forgetting what's popular.

I think that's just cause like, I'm interested in other things.

So there's the reviews and there's smartphone stuff, but There's also the car videos now, which is the auto-focus series.

But there's also like, I'm into production naturally, cause that's what I'm doing all the time.

So I'm doing this, this whole like spaces series where I'm, I'm talking to other creators and how they use their space.

I'm ideally starting a podcast pretty soon where I can just talk with people about things like this.

So there's, I think that just comes from like all the other things that I've become interested in through making tech videos.

Interesting, So what else would be on the podcast?

That's like probably the main thing because that's not something that is readily available to me.

I think like when you get to a certain place in this creative world, there's no longer like an article you can go read to figure out how to do something.

Like when you're starting YouTube, you can figure out like what's the best DSLR for a thousand bucks and then buy it and find the lens that works best with it and then start from there.

But Like when I'm trying to figure out like, how do I best like start a new series given the current uploads and like the pace of, you know, the way things are moving, like all these nuanced questions that don't necessarily have answers, but that other creative people think about too.

Just talking with people about that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I mean it sounds a lot like just strategy, right?

Where like 2 things can simultaneously be true but you have to pick 1.

And that can be a little intimidating I guess and helpful.

Yeah, it's less math, more just like, I don't know, it's just strategy.

Yeah, strategy and like creative insight.

And so what are you going to try and like innovate in your podcast in any way because I'm what I'm kind of fishing for is like you know obviously YouTube video right.

Like what are the other mediums that you're like testing out to feel like, Oh, maybe there's an audience here.

I feel like video As a medium is my favorite by far.

So I think, I don't think about new mediums as much as I think of new ways to do video, new topics, new formats within video.

Podcasting being like a sort of an auxiliary way to also talk.

And I've never intentionally triggered Bixby.

So that's like the third or fourth time that it's thought I've been talking to it.

I think I'm still trying to figure out the whole video thing generally.

And that might be a battle I never win But I feel like that's that's gonna be taking up most of my time is is doing different types of videos,

Okay, and so it have you tried 360 have you tried VR like have you tried these new formats?

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Marques Brownlee on Building an Audience and Other Advice for Creators