When Marques Keith Brownlee - High Definition (MKBHD) posted his first YouTube video in 2009, he was 14 years old. If you scroll back to his early videos, you’ll find Marques posting his golf swing, asking viewers to give feedback. Back then, YouTube was 4 years old (launched on Feb 14, 2005), and Marques was a young person on the verge of high school who was interested in sports and his other love that would become the focus of his channel—technology (anything with an “on” button).
Thirteen years later, Marques is one of the most popular technology reviewers on YouTube. Boasting an astounding 16 million subscribers, major tech CEO’s reach out to Marques so they can speak to his audience about their latest gadgets and innovations. This impressive list includes Bill Gates, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Apple’s Craig Federighi. Marques also has interviewed Barack Obama, Will Smith, and Kobe Bryant.
Many YouTube creators grow such a large audience that they essentially become their own production company—with sponsors, revenue from ads, employees (Marques currently has 10), and spinning off other related content. In addition to his tech videos, MKBHD has created other original content, which appear as subchannels of his main channel—such as a video podcast (waveform/WVFRM), electric car reviews (Autofocus), vintage technology (Retro tech), and forward-looking cutting-edge technologies (Dope tech).
YouTube is the place where many creative young people are carving out niches for themselves, earning a living as creators and shaping the industry. You can’t ignore YouTube’s impact—with over 2.5 billion monthly users worldwide, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in existence (second to only Google Search). There are 16 million people who consider MKBHD to be their trusted expert on anything having to do with the technology industry and its culture-shaping products.
About the Author
Sam Gutierrez is the Associate Director at the Eugene Peterson Center for the Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary. More of his creative work can be found at printandpoem.com