CrunchLabs: Mark Rober

As one of the most successful creators on YouTube, Mark Rober doesn’t see what he does as a business. Instead, it’s a way to celebrate science in the most joyful way possible. While working as an engineer at NASA, he made his YouTube debut with a tutorial on how to make a gory Halloween costume with two iPads and a lot of duct tape. Over time, his videos became more elaborate, including a belly flop into a pool full of Jello, and a demo of a glitter-fart bomb to get revenge on porch pirates. Within a few years, Mark was teaching online science classes and selling subscription boxes for kids. Today, his YouTube channel has 5.5 billion views, 48 million subscribers…and–astonishingly, given that audience–less than 150 videos. This episode was produced by J. C. Howard, with music by Ramtin Arablouei Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Sam Paulson. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2 a.m. kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan,

• 0:46Guy Raz?

  build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

  Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems. But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands, on the table in rewards you never earned, money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now, you're earning 3% cash back

• 2:16Guy Raz?

  on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever,

• 3:00Guy Raz?

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• 3:45Guy Raz?

  or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the car that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best

• 4:27Guy Raz?

  ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile regular gas in port fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary. Visit mobilefuels.com for details.

• 5:12Guy Raz?

  Hey, it's Guy here. And before we start the show, I want to tell you about a super exciting thing we are launching on How I Built This. So if you own your own business or trying to get one off the ground, we might put you on the show. Yes, on the show! And when you come on, you won't just be joining me, but you'll be speaking with some of our favorite former guests, who also happen to be some of the greatest entrepreneurs on Earth. And together, we'll answer your most pressing questions about launching and growing your business. Imagine getting realtime branding advice from Sun Bums Tom Rinks, or marketing tips from Von Weaver of Uncle Nearest Whiskey. If you'd like to be

• 5:54Guy Raz?

  considered, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. Each week, we'll pick a few callers to join us on this show. You can send us a voice memo at [email protected], or you can call 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there. That's 1-800-433-1298. And that's it. Hope to hear from you soon. And we are so excited to have you come on the show. And now, on to the show.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  It was 15 tons of Jell-O. I would say, I forget the exact gallon size, but it's the size of like, a small in-ground pool.

• 6:54Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  And there was 100 tests we did with gelatins at different temperatures to find out where the sensitivities are. How hot do you need to get it? How cool does it need to get it? It either worked, or it didn't.

• 7:05Guy Raz?

  You had to have that shot of somebody jumping onto the Jell-O and sort of like, staying on the surface.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, the belly flop on the surface.

• 7:14Guy Raz?

  The belly flop.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And we got it.

• 7:16Guy Raz?

  What did it feel like, by the way?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Like swimming in snot.

• 7:27Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 7:39Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Mark Rober's relentless curiosity drove him to create some of the most captivating videos on YouTube, and to build a business around the motto, "Think like an engineer."

• 7:57Guy Raz?

  Hello, everyone. So all this month on the show, we're talking about how content creators are building big businesses on social media. Late last year, Goldman Sachs estimated that the creator economy will be worth $480 billion by 2027. Now, before you decide to quit your job and become the next big influencer, know that there's a lot of competition. In that same report, Goldman Sachs also estimated that more than 50 million people around the world call themselves content creators. And to turn that job into a sustainable, income-earning profession takes a lot of work and not a small amount of luck.

• 8:41Guy Raz?

  In the case of my guest today, a single video can take years of experimentation before it comes to life. Many of Mark Rober's videos cost over $100,000 to make. A few even cost more than a million. And on average, his videos reach tens, sometimes hundreds, of millions of people. Mark's probably the most famous science YouTuber in the world. And a big part of his appeal is that he makes science absolutely joyful and awe-inspiring. Things like a backyard squirrel obstacle course, or dropping an egg from outer space and watching it land intact.

• 9:21Guy Raz?

  It also helps that Mark has a background in physics and two degrees in engineering. Before he became a full-time YouTuber, Mark worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at Apple. In fact, he started posting videos while he was working full-time and only left Apple in 2017, once he hit 10 million subscribers on YouTube. Today, he has nearly 50 million subscribers. And from his channel, he's also launched a significant business around science-themed products. Each month, thousands of kids receive his science and engineering subscription boxes. And what's particularly remarkable about Mark Rober's channel is that compared

• 10:05Guy Raz?

  to other big YouTubers, Mark has only produced about 144 videos in the 12 years he's been on YouTube. Unlike other creators who churn out multiple videos a week, or even multiple a day, Mark drops just one video a month. So we wanted to find out, of course, how it came to be that a guy who wanted to be an engineer ended up a YouTube entrepreneur. Mark Rober grew up in a family of five in Brea, California, near LA. His dad was a chemical engineer, and from an early age, Mark loved math, science, and solving problems.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  One time I was asked to cut onions for dinner.

• 10:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  And I remember this, and it's like, oh, I don't want to cry. Well, it seems really obvious. I should, I should go get the swim goggles from upstairs and put these on to cut the onions. And like, now that's like a life hack you see a lot, but like, at six years old, it was, we have a picture of it.

• 11:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  You have to be really judicious with, you only had 24 pictures. So the fact, it was an important moment in our family's history.

• 11:08Guy Raz?

  Important moment, yes.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  And, but that was the family I grew up in, where my mom took being a mom like really seriously. So as a stay-at-home mom, you know, her thing was always like, hey, when you hit 18, I want you out of the house because you're going to be ready to face the world.

• 11:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  And yeah, I'd say math and science just always tickled my brain the right way. And then especially high school physics, when I was like, this is cool. You can explain the world around you using math and equations. It doesn't matter like what background you have, what language you speak, we all get the same answer. And not only that, but you can use it to predict the future.

• 11:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Right? That's how you land stuff on Mars. And it, it's like a crystal ball that actually works.

• 11:53Guy Raz?

  You went to college, you grew up in Southern California, but you went to BYU in Utah. You got there, you were 18 when you got there?

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:02Guy Raz?

  And tell me about your time there. You studied mechanical engineering.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like realistically, I just knew it resonated with me. Of all the things I could pick to make a living, this felt like it felt broad enough.

• 12:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  I just, let's start learning calculus and thermodynamics.

• 12:20Guy Raz?

  So you get to, so you graduate from BYU with a degree in mechanical engineering and you get a job at JPL, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That's, that's gotta be a really hard job to get.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Man, I was so lucky. My resume was just in a stack of resume. One of my teachers said, JPL is hiring. And I was like, oh, the speaker company, you know, not realizing it was JPL, not JBL. You know, an interesting story there is like, I really wanted to work in Southern California and there was a company called Solar Turbines. They're like a caterpillar company. And I went and did that interview. And basically, at some point in the interview, I said, I started like making up an answer, basically.

• 13:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  It was this one guy in the round of panel of interviews and he's like, he lets me talk for two minutes and dig my grave deep.

• 13:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  And he's like, mmm hmm, listens, goes, pulls a book off the shelf, opens it to an earmarked page, turns it around and slides it over a table to the page that pointed out how totally wrong I was. And like that experience, and of course, that blew me the job. And that taught me that's like, it's okay to say I don't know.

• 13:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  And so we went to JPL and did this whole round of interviews. There's a guy named Don Bickler, invented the rocker bogey system. And they put you in his room, they give you a whiteboard marker and you have an hour. And he just asks you a bunch of questions. And two or three times in that interview, I was like, you know what, Don? I just don't know. I don't have a lot of background on this. He's like, okay, great. And he moved on to the next thing. And at the end of that interview, my future boss came, you know, to come get me. And he's like, this guy's great. You should hire him. He's awesome. And I was like, I'm so grateful it worked out that way because it's much more interesting to say I'm a former NASA engineer as opposed to I am a former Caterpillar employee.

• 14:14Guy Raz?

  So you get, you get a job at JPL and

• 14:19Guy Raz?

  I mean, these are the people responsible for landing the Mars rover on to Mars. You were there, I think, for what, seven years?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Nine years.

• 14:29Guy Raz?

  Nine years.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Seven of those were working on the Curiosity.

• 14:32Guy Raz?

  On the Curiosity rover, okay. And tell me about, what did you sort of do on a day to day basis?

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I started out as a designer, so like, you know, using CAD to design parts as an engineer.

• 14:47Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  And then eventually I transitioned to what's called a cognizant engineer there, which means that like, you're in charge of a chunk of the rover, right? So my chunk was this hardware on the rover top deck, where the arm would go dig in the dirt and then it would need to come and put the sample into the belly to do the analysis.

• 15:03Guy Raz?

  Your job was that arm?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  I was, I was the door, sorry, I was the door, the interface between the arm and the belly.

• 15:10Guy Raz?

  Got it. This is the door that has to open so the arm can go out?

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is the door that has to open so the sample that the arm gathers can be put into the belly of the rover.

• 15:20Guy Raz?

  Got it, okay.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  So if it doesn't work, it's, it's a bit of a bummer.

• 15:24Guy Raz?

  There's no samples to, there's no samples to analyze.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could do some analysis out on the end of the arm, but some of the core science we wanted, it really came down to these doors functioning like a door.

• 15:35Guy Raz?

  So you gotta be really good at building a door.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  I'm so good at doors, guy. That's kind of my thing, especially like Martian doors.

• 15:43Guy Raz?

  But these are like small doors, just like with little hinges.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But it's one of those things that you don't realize until you have to send, like, once you send something to space, you can't fix it, right?

• 15:54Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  And if you're designing something on Earth, it's a lot cheaper because who cares if one bolt has a stripped thread? Just grab another one from the drawer, there's no penalty there, right?

• 16:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And so when you were at NASA, I mean, did you, did you see yourself as, as kind of a lifer? When you were there, did you, did you imagine that this could be where, yeah?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 16:14Guy Raz?

  Cause I'm sure a lot of the people there are lifers, because it must be an amazing place to work.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  It is, that's a hundred percent true. And I had no problems working for the man, right?

• 16:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  I kind of liked going in and just having a team and just being part of a bigger thing, right? I think a lot of people are like, ah, I've got to do my entrepreneurial thing because I can't, you know, but that wasn't me. So I totally saw myself as a lifer.

• 16:37Guy Raz?

  As a lifer, yeah. All right, so you're working on the Curiosity rover for a long time. I mean, this is going to be sort of your. The crowning achievement of your time at JPL, because of course it would result in the Mars rover successfully landing on Mars and doing what it needs to do. Meantime, I'm curious about making videos. Was this something that you were particularly good at or adept at? Or just were kind of casual? Like, assuming you had an iPhone and you would just make little videos? Or tell me about, you know, 2008, 2009. Like, were you playing around with videos?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Well, it goes earlier than that. In high school, I made some videos that are like so embarrassing to watch. I've sworn my friends.

• 17:28Guy Raz?

  These are camcorders with the...

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, camcorders. But that I edited with like two VCRs.

• 17:33Guy Raz?

  Okay, yeah, right.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  They're rough. So, you know, that was my first love of like, I've always just loved telling stories. You like the medium of video. In addition to being an engineer, that's just something that's always appealed to me.

• 17:49Guy Raz?

  While you're at JPL, you posted a visit. I think this is the first video you ever posted to YouTube, which you can still see and I've watched it. And it's actually seen, been viewed by 13 million people. And it's a very kind of what we might now now call a crude video. It's just very simply shot. You're like in your little studio apartment, kitchen, whatever it was.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Here's an idea for a relatively simple Halloween costume. So basically, white shirt. Yeah, so basically, I wanted to make a Halloween costume where it looked like you had a hole in your body. So I was thinking like, oh, a video camera on one and then a screen and then a video camera on the back and a screen. And if you were to combine those feeds, you know, what you see on the front will be projected on the back. So if you waved your hand in front of your stomach, the camera would film that and it would display it on the back.

• 18:38Guy Raz?

  So it would look like you literally had a hole in your body. You were just looking right through your body.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  That's right, and you had a hole. And then I had that idea for like two years. And then when the iPad came out, I was like, there it is. This is it. Cut a hole in the front, cut a hole in the back, and then you use some fake blood. And so if I use two iPads. And then basically duct tape an iPad to the front and an iPad to the back, and then start a FaceTime video chat. And it kind of looks like you got a hole in your body.

• 19:11Guy Raz?

  So you see, it looks like you're looking through your body.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so I took that costume to like our Halloween party and everyone loved it. And I was like, you know what, like my goal, my life goal was to be on the featured on the blog Gizmodo.

• 19:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  But if I could do that, I would have made it. And so I was like, this is my chance. There's this kind of newish website called YouTube. I should upload this video there. And the next day it had like a million views.

• 19:40Guy Raz?

  It was on the front page of CNN.com.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  CNN, yep.

• 19:44Guy Raz?

  But you just put this up there because you thought it was funny or interesting. That was it. That was the only.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I wanted to get on Gizmodo.

• 19:50Guy Raz?

  On Gizmo- did you get on Gizmodo?

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Heck, yeah. I got on Gizmodo.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Mission accomplished. I'd peaked, you know? But, but truthfully, it was like, it was such a fun experience. And I was like, you know what? I have like other ideas. Like what if?

• 20:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  I, every month I uploaded a video and there's, it was back when you didn't, you couldn't make money off YouTube.

• 20:12Guy Raz?

  Right. There was no creator fund.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  There was no creator fund. There was no like idea of sponsorships. It was just like uploading content for the sake of spreading cool ideas, right?

• 20:23Guy Raz?

  And these are just like fun, like you would get an idea and you would say, oh, let me, let me see if this will work. Let me make a video. And they, that, that was basically it. I mean, at the beginning.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was it. And even to this day, I try and hold true to this. The more you're doing it with like just junk you have lying around the house, the more it resonates with people. Cause it's like, ah, why didn't I think of that? That's so clever. I could actually do that, right? This is idea of relatability, especially as it pertains to something like complicated, like engineering or physics, right? Like to this day, that's my North Star of just like relatability. If I can get someone who's, doesn't consider themselves to be mathy or sciency to get it and have that aha moment, like I know I've succeeded.

• 21:07Guy Raz?

  Did anybody know or was that at the time, was that, were they aware that you're making videos that were increasingly becoming popular? Or how did they react to you? Did they, were they like, oh yeah, that's so, what would your, how's your little video thing going? Like what, what?

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say, you know, back then. Yeah, it was just kind of a fun thing like, oh, do you have a video coming up? I don't think anyone was actually watching them. I was getting like 50,000 views a video. And that was like huge for me. In fact, what I did, anyone who posted the iPad video, any news site or blog,

• 21:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  I got all their information. Every time I released a new video, it'd be like, hey, Jeff, you posted my iPad video and it got you this many views. I just released another one. And I had a list of like 50 people I would send it to.

• 21:54Guy Raz?

  But it's, it's clearly you were experimenting with cameras and it was, it was fun. I mean, the, probably the video where you were recognized or noticed internally was when the rover landed on Mars, you did a whole video about the people behind it.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  But what I think makes JPL really great aren't its robots. It's the people who build them. I can say this because I met a lot of them in the seven year span I got to work on Curiosity at JPL.

• 22:19Guy Raz?

  And you just kind of made that. You just put it out there. You didn't ask for permission, presumably.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  No. I'm a different person now than when I started. It is like the personal side of doing something that like that, right? Because like in the time I worked on the rover, my mom passed away from ALS. I had a son. So it's like, so much is wrapped up in seven years of your life to all come down to like seven minutes and either it works or it doesn't. I tried to capture here exactly what it felt like. And even still, like, I'm literally pinching my finger right now. So I don't get emotional on you, but it's like, that first picture of the rover come back from like the HAZ cam, which is very low res, black and white, of just the shadow of the rover on the Martian surface was just like, such a moment in my life that like, I'll never forget.

• 23:15Guy Raz?

  Probably when you made the video about, about the Mars rover team and the JPL staff, internally, people saw that and they, and they liked it. They probably appreciated it.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that got like a lot of views. I mean, most of them at this point were getting 100,000 views. They started getting up to, you know, occasionally I get one that was like 250, 300.

• 23:35Guy Raz?

  On YouTube.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, on YouTube. And like, that's, those are big numbers. Like I, I'm a viral video artist in a sense, right? I'm trying to find broadly appealing topics to cover.

• 23:46Guy Raz?

  But you, I mean, it seems like there was. An entrepreneurial kind of itch inside of you, right? I mean, you're an engineer at JPL, but you're also a guy that like came up with an iPad hole, iPad hole in the body.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:05Guy Raz?

  And, and this actually led you to patent this design for a Halloween costume.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, I would, I wouldn't say I'm an entrepreneur. I'd say I'm a slave to these ideas that come into my head. And once they come in, Guy, if I don't try and follow through with them, they, they just eat away at my brain.

• 24:26Guy Raz?

  So you decided to turn this iPad thing into like a side hustle?

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically with the iPad costume, people were like, cool idea, bro. But I don't have $1,200 for Halloween costume.

• 24:36Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  And so it's like, all right, fair enough. So it's like, what can I do? Is there a way to make this concept less expensive? And then a few days after Halloween, I was thinking about this. What if, again, now that you have iPhones, you had a free app? And you recorded your eyeball moving all around. And then you had a picture on your shirt of like a really cool drawing of a clown head with a big eyeball. And then you cut out the eye with scissors once you had the T-shirt and then duct tape your phone to the back of that. You'd have like a $25 costume. That would be epic.

• 25:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  And so the next year, literally a year after my first YouTube video, I worked nights and weekends on this concept. We had 25 different animations, bunch of different shirt designs. And a year later, I launched it. I called it Digital Duds. It cost me about $20,000, $25,000. And then that first year, we grossed like $250,000 from that idea.

• 25:36Guy Raz?

  And, and it was, and so just to be clear, you sold?

• 25:39Speaker 01

  T-shirts.

• 25:39Guy Raz?

  T-shirts. That was basically what you sold, but there were T-shirts that had like? The hole in it where you could stick your iPhone?

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no. That's too fancy. It was just a print on the shirt and you had to manually cut out the part.

• 25:51Guy Raz?

  I got it. Okay.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  The shirt and then duct tape your phone to the back and the eyeballs looking all around the room.

• 25:58Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  It was really trippy to people.

• 26:00Guy Raz?

  Because that and that was the app that you got.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  That was the app and the phone, the eyeball was on the phone.

• 26:04Guy Raz?

  And, and so you put in $20,000 to do this. And then how did you, and then how did you advertise it? Did you make another YouTube video?

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Another YouTube video. So that's like my history of like advertising through a YouTube video, basically, right?

• 26:19Guy Raz?

  And you got $250,000 you made in revenue.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  In revenue, but at the time, like I knew nothing about what margins are, how to anything about a business. So in the end, by the time we went to a trade show and, and demonstrated it to like the Halloween community, we literally broke even on it.

• 26:39Guy Raz?

  When you say we, who is the we? Was it you?

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Okay, just me. I'm just using the royal me.

• 26:43Guy Raz?

  Okay, okay. It was the royal you.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  It's the royal me.

• 26:46Guy Raz?

  And so, so you, but, but I mean, you, it was successful enough that you left JPL.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Well, so here's what happened is so we had that first year.

• 26:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  And then I went to like a Halloween trade show.

• 27:01Guy Raz?

  This is where like Spirit Halloween goes and.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Walmart, all the buyers go to see what the latest and greatest is, right? And at that show, we had an offer from like Party City, from Spirit, and he's got this company called Morph Suits. They're based in the UK. It's like these skin type suits.

• 27:17Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  And they said, hey, we want to buy this idea, but we also want you for your future ideas.

• 27:24Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  So it required me like leaving NASA.

• 27:27Guy Raz?

  And, and was it, was it like a life changing money for you?

• 27:30Speaker 01

  It was like, um, it was like an earn out. I think it was like a $250,000 signing bonus that would, that would work against the earn out.

• 27:38Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  And honestly, in the end, I don't mind seeing these numbers. I think in the end, I made a total of a half a million dollars from it.

• 27:45Guy Raz?

  Which, which at the time, I mean, given what you were earning at JPL, that was.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 27:51Guy Raz?

  But you would have to leave your job as an engineer at NASA was, even though the money of course was exciting for you at the time, was any part of you like, God, am I really, is this really like, should I really be going to like JPL engineer? Like, hey dad, I'm going to work for a Halloween costume company.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny you should mention my dad because he's very conservative, right? He's an engineer and to both him and I and other people I asked, it was like, it was an easy decision. And it wasn't just about the money. It was just like, this is an opportunity. I really enjoyed being an engineer. If it didn't work, it didn't work.

• 28:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  You know, they were based in London. I get to fly over there. I get to work remotely. I just get to dip my toes in the water of what it's like to start a company, but with some guardrails. They only had 30 people at the company, so it was pretty small. So I got to see how a small company ran.

• 28:43Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  It was a very inexpensive education. In fact, they were paying me for it. So I'm like, heck, yeah.

• 28:48Guy Raz?

  And meantime, you continue to make videos.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yep.

• 28:52Guy Raz?

  And did you have a clear cadence, like one a month? Or was it just like whenever? So you said to yourself, I'm going to make one video a month on something.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:01Guy Raz?

  I'm curious about your, how you interacted with the camera? Because when you look at your early videos, you interact with a camera in a way that like 99.9% of people do. It's just kind of chatting, like you're in the same room with somebody. And now your videos are very different. It's you are talking and presenting to people because that's, you have to, you have to jump out of the camera. I know that.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  It sucks your energy, right?

• 29:26Guy Raz?

  It's a lot of, it takes a lot of energy to record to camera. But at the time, did anybody give you feedback or pointers? Or were you just making it and, and talking the way you talk?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  No, it's kind of like a frog in boiling water type of thing. When if you go back and watch my videos, there's no one video where it changes.

• 29:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  It's truly every video, I'd watch the last one and be like, what could I improve on this? Right? And so you end up getting a voice. And if I had to say it, it's like, you know, Guy, this is the voice I would use on YouTube. And if we were doing this interview in this voice, it would sound a lot like this.

• 30:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Right?

• 30:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  And it's, it's just this thing I developed over time, little by little. And I love that. I love that so much, Guy. No one ever told me that. It's just like personal improvement on a very, what turned out to be large stage.

• 30:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  And I just love that because a lot of people are like, well, I'm not good at X. It's like, yeah, guess what? Neither was I. Go back and watch my first video, right?

• 30:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  I talk about this being like the Super Mario effect where it's like, No one ever picks up a video game and falls in the first pit and is like, I'm so ashamed. I'm just not good at this. They're like, no, I remember there's a pit there. I need to come with a little more speed. I need to jump a little earlier, right? And, and as a result, you get really good at this thing in a very short amount of time. And guess what? It doesn't feel like learning.

• 30:48Guy Raz?

  When you sold the company to Morph, you were committing to like two and a half, three years.

• 30:54Guy Raz?

  And I, from what I gather, I don't think that the T-shirt costume turned out to be like a, a big hit for them. But, but meantime, you were still making YouTube videos and kind of starting to build a following.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:06Guy Raz?

  But then I guess while you were at Morph, you got an offer to work at Apple as a design engineer there. How did, how did that come about?

• 31:17Speaker 01

  My boss's boss from JPL called me up one day and said, hey, I'm building up a team here at Apple. I think you'd be great on it. So I was like, I still had a year left in my contract with Morph suits. So I interviewed at Apple. They liked me, so they bought me out of the contract. But one of the stipulations was like, you can't make YouTube videos anymore.

• 31:39Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:40Guy Raz?

  Wait, why? Because they didn't want their, any reputational risk or?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  There's just, there's just no upside for them, right? Of like, they don't need press. They're like, hey, good news. One of our, you know, employees made a video. It's only downside and I accidentally, you know, blow up a Girl Scout van. And then, you know, suddenly Apple engineer does this.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  There's just no upside for them. So like you, oh yeah, you can't make YouTube videos. And I was like, uh, well, first of all, you guys asked me to work for you, so I'm not coming if that's your thing. And so they backed off and just said, fine, wait three months and just get a lay of land on the culture. And I'm like, by the way, guys, I only have like 120,000 subscribers. I don't get that many views per video. So just relax. I'm not that big of a deal.

• 32:29Guy Raz?

  99% of people at that point would have been like, well, it's Apple and the most desirable, one of the most desirable tech companies to work for. Okay. I'll do what you say. I won't make videos anymore. But you were willing to like not work there? To continue to make videos?

• 32:45Speaker 01

  It'd been four and a half years of me making videos. I'd built up this channel, right? And by the way, like, I really enjoyed it. And I also had done a few brand deals at that point.

• 32:55Guy Raz?

  And Right. So you had a little business going at that time?

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit of a business.

• 33:00Guy Raz?

  It was a small, little business. But when you said, I really want to do this, they, their response was, OK. I mean, this guy, this, who was building this team, clearly went to bat for you. He wanted you there.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  He did, yeah.

• 33:13Guy Raz?

  So he was, so he or somebody on the team was like, OK, we'll let you do this, just wait three months.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then the first video I made with mega viral.

• 33:28Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, if you've ever wanted to jump into a swimming pool full of Jell-O, well, Mark will tell you exactly how that is done. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 34:01Guy Raz?

  Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting, and a CMS built in. So the work is production ready from day one, and you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. AI agents and humans work together. The agents bring speed and scale,

• 34:45Guy Raz?

  and people bring taste, judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities, it's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on.

• 35:28Guy Raz?

  NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new, expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it.

• 36:13Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Stripe is built for whatever comes next, because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies, and new expectations for speed, reliability, and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow, and operate globally. From payments and billing to fraud protection and cross-border payouts,

• 36:57Guy Raz?

  Stripe is built to support the new pace of commerce. They're trusted by the companies building at the frontier, from 86% of the Forbes AI 50 to global leaders like Salesforce and OpenAI. In fact, more than 1.6% of global GDP flows through Stripe, with Stripe's users processing a combined $1.9 trillion last year. So if you're already thinking about what's next for your business, see what's possible at stripe.com.

• 37:36Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2015, and just three months after Mark starts working for Apple, he has his first viral video. And you really have to see it to fully appreciate it. But basically, he's sitting down with a group of kids with a watermelon on a table in front of them. And then Mark slides off two halves of the watermelon rind to reveal a perfect red oval of watermelon flesh.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  It looks like a pill. Oh, my gosh, what's this?

• 38:10Speaker 03

  You want to know how I did it?

• 38:11Speaker 01

  How? And of course, the trick is you just have two watermelons that are about the same size. You cut one in half, carve it out, and the other one, you just slice off all the rind and like polish it down with like a Brillo pad.

• 38:24Speaker 04

  Now you can put it back together.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  And you blow people's mind at the party.

• 38:28Speaker 04

  Watermelon average prep time is about 10 minutes, which is less time than making most other summer party dishes like gross and lame potato salad, which, let's face it, nobody really likes.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  And that video, actually, because I had my nieces and nephews in that, and I was kind of like pranking them to see how they they were like, what? You know, it was the first time I first of many times that I would prank them. But Jimmy Kimmel saw that video. He sent me the email like a couple of months back. And he said, hey, this guy could be a good recurring guest. And he never does that. Usually it comes from the producers.

• 39:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And Jimmy Kimmel says, come on my show, come on, on, he's not this night. What's this?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Jimmy Kimmel.

• 39:10Guy Raz?

  Jimmy Kimmel Live.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Live, Jimmy Kimmel.

• 39:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And he invites you onto the show?

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I there I asked permission because it's like, and it went all the way up to, I won't name his name because you know his name. He was a senior VP at Apple, and he said, we should be focused on making great products. That was his answer. And it actually had the opposite effect because it emboldened me. I'm like, aha, he in writing is not willing to say no, which means he can't say no. So I just did it. And that was a very good decision in hindsight.

• 39:46Guy Raz?

  But meantime, you're still doing videos. And tell me about like internally at Apple. Because I've, you know, I've been there and it's an amazing, incredible company. But it's a very secretive, siloed organization.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:01Guy Raz?

  People don't know what other people, like husbands and wives don't necessarily know what they're working on if they're, if they're both working at Apple.

• 40:10Guy Raz?

  So what, like, how did people start to react?

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I started getting like street cred around Apple and people thought it was cool. And like, people, quite a few levels above me in the food chain would call me into their office just to like chat. And I was like, okay. People start, just started to recognize me on the street. So it started to be a thing where it's like, all right, there may be something here. At this point, maybe I had like, I don't know, a million subscribers, maybe.

• 40:39Guy Raz?

  And 2017, you made a video that is now famous for people who know your work. Where it's a, it's a dart, you engineered a dartboard that would move to where you threw the dart and you could essentially hit a bullseye every time. How did people internally at Apple started to respond to you? Because, you know, this is really when YouTube starts to turn where

• 41:01Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 41:01Guy Raz?

  You, you start to see YouTube celebrities emerge.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that deal, that one specifically, I think, was a brand deal for like $40,000, which to me was like really big money, like to make that much money on a brand deal. So I started to make more money on YouTube than I was at Apple for starters.

• 41:19Guy Raz?

  And they, that money find, presumably financed that creating that dartboard. Because I think you spent three years

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:27Guy Raz?

  Trying to build a dartboard that would move

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:30Guy Raz?

  To wherever you threw the dart. So it required a lot of really complex technology and money to do it.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Well, but like the money was like, the, again, the trick is like find existing technologies and synergize them in a way to make

• 41:44Guy Raz?

  Off the shelf stuff and then

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we use Vicon motion capture systems. And that right there is like 90% of the problem. Once you can track this dart with retro reflectors through the air, then honestly, it's from, from a bird's eye view, it's simply y equals mx plus b. From a side view, it's a simple parabolic motion. And you're just solving for the x, y coordinates of the board. Now, obviously, that's an oversimplification, but not by that much. So then it's just a matter of just putting it together with some code and MATLAB. And building the hardware for it.

• 42:16Guy Raz?

  And you would do this like in your garage?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And also I would work with buddies too. Like that one specifically was a guy named John, who I knew he had very specific experience with that. So we'd kind of work together, but you know, I started to get to a point where like, he would be turning the bolts and that's how I could work my full-time job.

• 42:39Guy Raz?

  How do you, I mean, you know, any business is, is starts out with an idea, right? And, and multiple ideas and, and eventually there's an idea that lands. How were you getting ideas for what to do? Like the dartboard one, for example, like, did it just pop into your head or?

• 42:59Speaker 01

  I don't have a great answer to this. I get this question a lot, but it's like, the ideas part of the, is the part I find easy. And I think the answer is like, my brain is just never turned off. There's always a conversation I could be having and I start spacing out and then people are like, oh, you're probably, you want to do a video on that. I was like, of course, that's so good. So I've always had about a year's worth of video ideas out in front of me as a runway, including now. We're all of, we're doing, we're working on videos that we will release a year from now. 12 of them.

• 43:32Guy Raz?

  So tell me about your, just your life, because this was not like, even at this point, you were not building a business. You were an Apple employee, right?

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:43Guy Raz?

  At, at a certain point, right? You, you, you're watching your subscribers go up. You're, you're, you hit 2 million subscribers.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:52Guy Raz?

  In your mind, you remember thinking, you know, maybe at a certain point, I need to just focus on this full-time.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  My, one of my, I mean, I had a few fears. A big fear, like I said, I'm a fan of the side hustle. It's like a big fear is like, as soon as this is my real job, does it suck the passion out of it? And is it then I feel pressure to do this as opposed to like, I get to do this on my free time because I love it. Right? Another fear was that it would just be, feel very isolating because I, I had such good camaraderie with my team at Apple, same with at NASA. I really liked being around the people. And it's like, then is it just me surfing the web at home all day? And it just feels. And both of those turned out to be like very unfounded.

• 44:37Guy Raz?

  At what point do you remember realizing that this could be a viable stream of like this could support your life?

• 44:46Speaker 01

  I think a big factor in the end is I ended up doing, so I went on Jimmy Kimmel's show once, right?

• 44:52Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  And then they're like, he, one of the producers, like, he kind of likes you, like, he really likes you. And I'm like, whatever, you say that to everyone. And then by like, the fourth time I went on, I was like, he does like, like, we're both kind of pranksters, right?

• 45:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  And eventually, he was like, hey, dude, I think we should do a TV show together. And for Discovery Channel, and we called it like Revenge Engineers. That was like, the moment where it was like, this is just a lot. I'm gonna have to take three months off to film.

• 45:24Guy Raz?

  He had approached you to make a show while you were still working at Apple?

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I was still working at Apple.

• 45:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And, and this was on the, I guess we should go into the stories, on the strength of this famous glitter bombs video you made, which was designed to take revenge on somebody who stole packages, Amazon packages from your front door.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, someone came and stole a package from my porch, and it just felt so powerless, like all of us who've had that experience, it's very familiar experience, you just feel violated.

• 45:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Police wouldn't do anything, and then it's like, I was like, oh, again, in the mind frame of always to get video ideas, I was like, wait a second, I have the tools, I have the motive, I have the glitter. If anyone was going to make a revenge bait package and over engineer the crap out of it, it was going to be me. So the idea was like, yeah, you make a package with four phones in it, because they could record, they could upload footage to the cloud in case it got destroyed. And then when they lift the lid, it sprays like a pound of the world's finest glitter in a cup at the top, and then a bunch of fart spray. But we keep repeating five sprays every 30 seconds until they throw the package out of their car or house, before they realize there's four phones inside.

• 46:39Guy Raz?

  They would throw the box out because it was so disgusting, and then you guys could retrieve the box.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:44Guy Raz?

  Because you had GPS in there, and then you could download the footage.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Exactly. He takes the package and gets it his car, and eventually makes it to this parking garage where this glorious sequence unfolds.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  No way. Look at that, dude. Look at my car, dude. Everything.

• 47:07Guy Raz?

  That video really was what I guess triggers Jimmy Kimmel to say, hey, we gotta do a TV show, a prank show getting revenge on people who do bad things.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, they wanted me to come on the show for like the fifth time. I would do like pranks you could do with like junk lying around your house. And he's like, that's where he said like, hey, why don't we take this even, let's not even do something for my show. Let's do a TV show together. Where it's like, yeah, you engineer some way to get back, back at people who are violating social norms. So you don't pick up your dog's poop. We build like an autonomous robot dog to like fire that poop back at you. Or you don't return your grocery cart at the grocery center, you know, small social violations. But we have an army of robotic shopping carts that will like chase you through the parking lot.

• 47:54Guy Raz?

  So let me ask you from just a personal perspective, right? Because in 2019, I think you, by that, you decide to leave Apple. And I think by that point you had like.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  10 million subscribers.

• 48:06Guy Raz?

  10 million subscribers, right? Which is, and you were still an employee at Apple. But I wonder whether, I mean, you had, you know, a personal life. You've talked about your son on your channel and, and he was born with autism. And presumably that, you know, that required some, some stability to, for, you know.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 48:29Guy Raz?

  Therapy and other things that, that were involved. Was a part of you, I don't know, worried about leaving the stability of Apple? I mean, even though 10 million subscribers is a lot of people, but I don't know. Was there any uncertainty like you thought, you know, this could just all dissolve one day?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Totally. But it was like, I've always been pretty conservative in my decision making. And like, we had enough runway and enough deals on the horizon that it's like, I know I would at least have a two or three year run at this. And if it failed, like I could always go back and get another job. But I may not always have this opportunity in front of me.

• 49:06Guy Raz?

  You were doing up until this point, everything, pretty much. I mean, you were having friends that would help you build things, but you were filming and editing and scripting everything yourself?

• 49:18Speaker 01

  For the most part, yeah, that's true.

• 49:20Guy Raz?

  Why?

• 49:21Speaker 01

  I mean, a big part is like, because I enjoyed it.

• 49:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  And this is a problem a lot of YouTubers do where it's like. They see a little bit of success. So it's like, well, what's the playbook say? Okay, I need to hire a manager and I need to hire five editors and a video guy and a script guy. And then, and then you're left just being a manager of people. And then they're surprised three years later, when the content's changed because it's lost its heart. They hate it because they feel like they're just a manager and the money's not there because the public has seen that the content has changed. Right? So I was just like, why would I give up the thing I loved? Which is like, to this day, I still write all the videos and I spend probably 60 hours in the edit. And I'm never going to give that up. Like, why would I?

• 50:07Speaker 01

  I'm happy to not make, make fewer videos and do what I love than to just be a guy who just like manages a team.

• 50:14Guy Raz?

  So when you left Apple to go full time into YouTube, who is like doing business development? Who was looking out for, I mean, at that point, did you sign with an agency? Did you, because there's a lot of incoming emails and messages and you're also filming and writing scripts and editing. You couldn't possibly have done all that by yourself.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  No, that's right. Like, no full-time employees, but like I had a, a management company who'd been bringing me brand deals for five years. And they were continuing to bring me brand deals, right? And so they would just tell me, hey, you have to say this at the end of the video. Okay. And then the check would show up in my bank account. And then eventually, I can't remember the exact year, I hired my first employee. Someone to just help run errands and do little builds and help set up tech stuff and get the cameras rolling. You know, stand behind the cameras and help me get focused. Just one person to do all that.

• 51:08Guy Raz?

  You basically were like, I don't want to manage people. I want to just make stuff.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. And to this day, now we have like 60 employees and still only one person reports to me. And everyone else reports to the other person.

• 51:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you leave Apple, right? And this is 2019 and you've already at this point, I mean, you've had 10 million subscribers. So you're at this point, a big YouTuber.

• 51:35Guy Raz?

  When did you start to realize, or I, and you know, I, I know you're just my kids. And I think a lot of kids are part of your fan base, right? Do you, by the way, do you think it's primarily kids?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  I mean, the, the analytics on average, it's like a 23 year old is like my median watcher. It's kind of tricky because some of those kids watch their parents' accounts. But I could just say when walking around, if you're under 30 years old, definitely more than 50% chance you know who I am. If you're under 20 years old, it's probably 90%. If you're over 35, it's like 10%. And that's a function of do you have kids?

• 52:17Guy Raz?

  I'm curious about how you thought and think about what you represent. Did you want, and do you want your videos to be seen as educational? As something that, that kids or even adults can learn from? Like, are these basically physics videos?

• 52:38Speaker 01

  I'd say what I am is like the gateway drug to like that aha moment. Like that lovely feeling of just like learning something new and being like, that feels good. I want more of that, right? So I think I hide the vegetables is what I like to say, right? Where it's like, you get, you learn about parabolas from an automatic bullseye dartboard, right? And so it's like, there's the cool story. It's the clickbait title and thumbnail to bring you in. But once you're there, you, once you click on that video of the 15 ton Jell-O pool and you're in, then you better believe I'm gonna sneak in a little chemistry on you. And so that, I just want to reach as many brains as possible with that message.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Which by the way, Guy, you better not cut this out, but you do it too. I was just like, they learn something, I don't realize they're learning something.

• 53:29Guy Raz?

  Thank you for that. You're talking about Wow in the World, my kids show. Thank you for saying that. That's what we try to do. Cause every episode actually comes from a peer reviewed scientific journal article. We just turn it into a cartoon for kids' ears.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 53:42Guy Raz?

  I'd love for you to sort of like walk me through all of the work that leads up to starting to put together. Like, let's talk, this is amazing, cause I don't know anybody who hasn't.

• 53:55Guy Raz?

  dreamed of jumping in a pool of Jell-O or hot fudge. Or like, I remember as a kid, we'd be in the pool and somebody would say, "What would that be like to jump into a pool full of marshmallows or Jell-O?" And you, of course, did too, and you decided to see if you could make this happen. Now, I'm thinking-

• 54:10Speaker 01

  This is the world's first ever actual pool of Jell-O.

• 54:14Guy Raz?

  Oh, no problem. You just get a bunch of Jell- like, I think most people, like, you just get a bunch of Jell-O powder boxes and you just throw a bunch of water in there and-

• 54:21Speaker 01

  And while it may look simple, it's actually a very difficult engineering challenge to pull off. So difficult. And you're right, that's everyone's intuition, until you actually sit down and do the math and scale it out. First of all, to make Jell-O, you have to boil it, and then you have to-

• 54:38Guy Raz?

  Cool it.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Basically, cool it.

• 54:39Guy Raz?

  In the fridge, so 38 degrees, basically.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Super easy to do on a stove top. How do you boil and then refrigerate an entire pool? This seemed like a very worthy engineering challenge. So last year Thanksgiving, my brother and I came up with a plan, and then in the middle of winter, we started digging a hole in his backyard.

• 54:57Guy Raz?

  By the way, how many gallons was this swimming pool gonna hold?

• 55:01Speaker 01

  It was 15 tons of Jell-O. I would say, I forget the exact gallon size, but it's the size of like, a small pool, in-ground pool.

• 55:11Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  So, first of all, how do we cool it? Well, I was like, my brother lives in Utah. We installed a thermometer, and starting in January, we tracked the temperature in his backyard every night. And then got actual gelatin from a cooking supply company. And then we use potential energy, because we'd boil them in these 55-gallon drums, open the spigot, it would drain into the pool.

• 55:32Guy Raz?

  So basically, the idea was, let's just make this in layers. We'll pump up the Jell-O mixture in layers, and we'll do it at the right time at night, so overnight it'll chill it.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  We didn't want to waste actual food, so this is just water and gelatin powder and food coloring, but there's no sugar. I lost 10 pounds filming that video, because I was so nervous, and at that point, I couldn't- Fail on this video.

• 55:57Guy Raz?

  It had to work.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Because there was lots of videos online of Jell-O pool. And then it's like, it never solidified. It's super unsatisfying. And I have a reputation on my channel where it's like, I will deliver on what the thumbnail promises. And so this one was very binary. It either worked or it didn't.

• 56:13Guy Raz?

  You had to have that shot of, of somebody jumping onto the Jell-O and sort of like, staying on the surface.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, the belly flop on the surface.

• 56:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  And we got it.

• 56:24Guy Raz?

  And you got it. What did it feel like, by the way?

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Like swimming in snot.

• 56:28Speaker 03

  You go in, it just like fills your nose.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Like, to this day, when I smell that smell, like those, my brother still has some of the 55 gallon drums in his backyard. And if I go by there, it's like 10% good memories, 90% like, ooh, that was a rough week.

• 56:44Guy Raz?

  Cause gelatin is basically pig bones. So it can get stinky.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  It's not a great smell when it's burning.

• 56:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah. By the way, how much does a video like that cost, do you think, to make?

• 56:56Speaker 01

  That one was maybe $80,000, I'd say. I don't do, most of my videos now are, they're almost never less than a hundred thousand. Sometimes they're as much as 400,000. I have one coming up at the end of this year that will be $4 million.

• 57:13Guy Raz?

  Right. These are massive productions now. I mean, we'll, we'll get to that later, but one of the things that happened to all of us, of course, was the pandemic and YouTubers in particular, our show too, we were very lucky, we were well placed because all of a sudden you've got billions of people around the world stuck at home and, and you can capture their attention with videos and a lot of Instagrammers became famous and all of a sudden now kids aren't at school or they're, you know, and, and, and you kind of jumped into that fray. I mean, you, you sort of kind of became a science teacher during that time. More in a more formal way.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I felt like I had a connection with a lot of these kids and it just felt like. I just wanted to do something to give them some sense of like normalcy or something. So I decided to livestream like some science classes once a week. Um, and we did it for like three months, but it was, that was the first domino in a series of dominos that's led me to this position I'm in now, which is like starting a company that's doing very well, right? Because it was my first, I've had this dream to be like a high school physics teacher and to teach science classes. That was always my plan. One day I would retire and just like do that as a volunteer.

• 58:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  And so it was like my first chance to actually try this.

• 58:35Guy Raz?

  I read, um, something that you said in 2021 where you were like, you know, I kind of see what I do as a business, but not really, you know, if I, if I saw it as a business, I'd have a bunch of people like you did not, tell me why you didn't see what you were doing as a business, because now by 2021, I mean, just from YouTube ads alone, well, it's a YouTube ads and sponsorship. I mean, you were bringing in a substantial amount of money. I mean, millions of dollars a year.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:06Guy Raz?

  So did you see yourself more of as like, I don't know, like an actor would see themselves or a performer rather than a, somebody who was actually running a business?

• 59:16Speaker 01

  I don't know. Business just sounds so boring, guy.

• 59:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Like, I didn't like, I just didn't want to frame my, it in my own head as that because now all of a sudden it's like, you gotta talk about taxes and stuff. I'm more like, I'm the guy who builds an obstacle course for squirrels in my backyard. Right? Like just in my own head, it's helpful to frame it that way. It takes the pressure off. And going back, like treating your life's challenges like video games, like when you call it a business, it feels less like a video game, right?

• 59:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You must have had people coming to you and maybe, and you probably still do today, saying, Mark, I know how you can scale this thing. You should have 50 channels and you should have like, you know, a bunch of different people who make videos and they're all under the Mark Rober, this and that. And have people come to you with those ideas?

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Yes, all the time. I would always ask to be like, okay, okay, for what? And then in the end, It's always, so you can make more money. And it's like, I have enough money. So why would I put myself under all this pressure? It's like running on a treadmill.

• 1:00:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  And I had a good jogging pace on my treadmill. And sometimes what people do is they take on all these ideas and they're cranking the treadmill up to a sprinting speed. And that's cool for a little bit. And you're getting the dopamine hit and you're getting that reward for that. But pretty soon the dopamine wears off, but you're still sprinting. And that's like the definition of burnout, when you're not getting that reward for the work you're putting in. So I was very protective of my treadmill speed.

• 1:00:42Guy Raz?

  When we come back, why Mark eventually decides to speed up the treadmill and sell subscription science boxes to kids. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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• 1:02:43Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2021 and Mark is getting more and more known as a YouTube personality, but he's about to add something new to the mix. Subscription boxes for kids and a company to sell them. Crunch Labs. What was the genesis of that? Did you feel like, hey, I can actually create a product from what I'm already doing?

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  So there's two genesis from it, in a sense. One is Jimmy Kimmel and I did a livestream for my son to raise money for autism.

• 1:03:18Guy Raz?

  This is during COVID?

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  This is, yeah, during COVID.

• 1:03:20Guy Raz?

  Yep. And it was like, three hours you guys did live stuff?

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, a bunch of his A-list celebrity friends, a bunch of my YouTube friends, and we raised $3.5 million or something. And that night afterwards at his house, he's like, you know, you really need to make something physical. And I gave him the standard line I give everyone where it's like, why? So I can make more money? I'm fine. He's like, no, not so you can make more money. You could just reach more kids with your message. And it's just a different experience to physically put something together, to be in the trenches versus just passively watching a video. So they're going to bed that night. I was like, for the first time, I'm like, ah, man, I think he's kind of right. And then in conjunction with that, around the same time, I had created

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  this class with monthly.com. It's now called Studio, where I taught creative engineering. And that did very well for them. And I made a good cut of that. And from that, the guy who founded it was, I told him I was thinking about doing this idea. And I asked him if he thought it would be a good idea because he had all the analytics. And he was like, I would pay you $50 million on the spot if you would just do what you're saying you would do and give me ownership.

• 1:04:37Guy Raz?

  And what were you saying? What was your description to him? What you were gonna do?

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  I would just make monthly boxes where they're paired with the video where I could teach the science of the cool physics that's going on. So kids would get this exclusive video. First and foremost, it has to be fun. Right? And then beyond that, what's the physics with it? And each one would be paired together with a lesson. We talk about the Koanda effect relative to this little mini disc launch. And that's when he's like, $50 million right now if you do this? And I was like, okay, well, that's an interesting response.

• 1:05:12Guy Raz?

  But it confirmed that you're, he didn't, to be clear, did not give you $50 million or finance it. But it was, it gave you the confidence that that, that this actually could work.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. Because he had just seen the data and how well my creative engineering class had done. And ultimately, what it comes down to is like, the best situation you could have for a product is when you have IP along with the product, right? Disney does this very well. They launched the movie Frozen, but you better believe there's a million Elsa dresses being manufactured in backpacks and stuff. And basically, what I had done is for over a decade, I'd been building this IP. And so there was all this pent up demand for a product. And so in June 2021, the first step I did is I got a product designer I really respected. So

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  For about a year, we worked on the ideas. And then in June 2022, we hired a couple more people, someone to help with like logistics and buying and sourcing from China. Took about, I think, $3 million of my own capital. No investors, no nothing. We had 30,000 subscriptions ready to go, like 12-month boxes, like, and we, we sold out in like five days.

• 1:06:28Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  So we were cash flow positive after like two days or three days.

• 1:06:33Guy Raz?

  And, and so this was entirely self, I mean, by this point, you had enough capital, enough cash to self-finance it. Was, was a $3 million investment in this thing? I mean, you've referred to yourself as being conservative when you make business decisions, but did that feel scary? Cause it's still a lot of money, you know?

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Not really, because it was a lot of money and I'm not, I'm not sitting on like Scrooge McDuck piles of cash by any means. That was a reasonable amount of my whole net worth for sure. But I just knew we would make enough at least to break even, you know?

• 1:07:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  I knew there was some demand there again, from like the creative engineering class I did. So I did not think we would sell out in like less than a week. That's for sure.

• 1:07:20Guy Raz?

  How did you, so I'm wondering, you know, you'd mentioned, oh, do I really want to do this and that and I get burned out and so, but now you were jumping into a business that requires a lot of attention and time and then videos, your videos are increasingly complex. I can't imagine how much time just the filming of them. And then you're still doing a lot of the editing. So how, how were you able to kind of start to do both of those things and manage your time?

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  It just like, I finally was able to hire people. I had the resources to hire good people. And eventually now we've got to the point where like, I've hired the person to do the hiring, but that's such a hard role to hire for, right? Because it's like. It's like trying to land something on Mars. If you're off by a half of a half of a degree, you're going to miss the planet by five million miles. And at this point, Crunch Labs itself has about 50 employees and my YouTube channel maybe has 10 employees.

• 1:08:23Guy Raz?

  Wow. I mean, are they separate businesses? Or are they, they're not the same business, right? There's maybe like a superstructure, but are they with separate P and Ls and everything?

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  They're separate P and Ls. There's a lot of shared resources, obviously. But like, at this point, the YouTube channel is just there to advertise for Crunch Labs. I don't run it to make money. I basically, because I don't make money from sponsorships anymore, because I always just talk about Crunch Labs. Because I realized

• 1:08:49Guy Raz?

  I see.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  It's a lot better for me to build up my own brand and IP. It makes more financial sense.

• 1:08:57Guy Raz?

  So now, like, for example, your latest video is testing if you can blow your own sale. And it's amazing because there's a, I feel like just for one shot, you went to like Quito, Ecuador, like just for one, like you flew to, maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like, I was like,

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  I would never fake that. And my team was like, really? Do we really need to go to Ecuador?

• 1:09:20Guy Raz?

  It was like one stand up. I was like, wow. But when you put a video like that out, like right now, this video has 20, almost 25 million views. And I'm sure it was expensive to make, but does 25 million views, just the revenue that you get from YouTube on that, is that enough to pay for the cost of the video and your team?

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  No, but Crunch Labs pays me like a monthly fee to make the videos.

• 1:09:49Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  So it's built into our CAC, basically. I am a sponsor. They sponsor my videos.

• 1:09:55Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Do you want to know how much I made on that video? I'll tell you.

• 1:09:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Let me just see.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  That video has made me $67,000.

• 1:10:05Guy Raz?

  Testing if you can blow your own sale right now.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Is that, is that a big number or a small number?

• 1:10:09Guy Raz?

  I would have thought, I thought it was a lot more.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:12Guy Raz?

  25 million views and that video must have cost, you know, at least a few hundred thousand dollars.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Here's what I'll say though, that's, that's just that video. Whenever you release a video, there's a knock on effect where then people will see a bunch of your back catalog. So the amount I made the month that I released that is closer to like $300,000.

• 1:10:35Guy Raz?

  From YouTube videos.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  From YouTube videos. So that revenue is closer to like, oh, that can keep the lights on and pay for this video, right?

• 1:10:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I mean, so essentially YouTube was the, was the generator of income for so long. You were able to, to make really good money from YouTube. Now YouTube is really, it doesn't matter if it, if you, you want it to break even at the very least. You don't want it to cost you money, but it's not that important that it makes a lot of money because it's a way for you to also talk about Crunch Lab, which is more important.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  That's right. And, and just from a financial standpoint, you can make more with your own business than you can just making YouTube videos and taking sponsorships from like NordVPN. And it's like, more importantly, like my ethos on money hasn't changed, right? Like I don't have five Lamborghinis and I ran a three bedroom town home. So it's like, we're taking that money and we're reinvesting it and doing some really cool things. For example, for the classroom, all of the middle school science standards, we're making like a Mark Rober style video of those to teach them. And we're going to have lessons, plans with it for all these teachers.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  And that's probably going to cost like $10 million and we're going to make it free for teachers. Kind of like what Bill and I did back in the day.

• 1:11:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  So we're kind of reinvesting the money into efforts like that.

• 1:12:02Guy Raz?

  And something like that becomes sort of sustainable or self financing because of.

• 1:12:09Guy Raz?

  Of what? Because eventually there'll be ad revenue or people sort of discover Crunch Labs? Or I mean, there has to be some way to pay for it.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  I think it's more, truthfully, we have not figured that out yet. It feels like it's the right thing to do. Certainly, there's a brand awareness play that helps. But that's a gamble and it's a long-term thing.

• 1:12:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  Our North Star here for everyone at Crunch Labs is to like, reach as many brains as possible.

• 1:12:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  And to learn science and feel that it shouldn't be that intimidating. And against that metric, this is such an obvious thing to do. Maybe that, you know, sells more Crunch Lab subscriptions because kids know about it.

• 1:12:50Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  But the plan is definitely not to like, run ads for NordVPN.

• 1:12:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And, you know, like, you'd mentioned Bill Nye earlier. And he's obviously an important science communicator and has been for a long time. Your, the boxes, right? They're connected to the videos that you deliver with the boxes where people can watch how to make them. And it's you, it's Mark Rober. And so, does that matter? I mean, the business depends on you. It depends on your name and your brand and your being in front of the camera.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Guy Raz?

  And a lot of times, you know, companies start to, you know, one of the ways that they mature, grow. It's not always the best thing, but sometimes they're, they have this conversation like, how do we survive without this person? Like, in your case, does it matter? I mean, because you will always need to be the face of the brand.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  I think yes and no, right? Because some of the stuff is evergreen. So like, once we make our four years worth of build boxes, they're done. The videos are done. If we do the videos for the classrooms, like, once they're done, they're done. And those can live on and hopefully still be relevant. So yes.

• 1:14:08Guy Raz?

  Physics doesn't really, the physics doesn't really change.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, gravity's always going to be 9.8 meters per second squared. At least for the foreseeable future. But that's the nice thing about packaging up a video. Is like, in this time that you and I have been talking, I am in just about a million homes. A million different views.

• 1:14:29Guy Raz?

  Of your 144 videos, one of the.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  Of the 144 videos, that's right. So. I think there's an element like, once I get these done, then they can live on and be evergreen. But I agree with you that like, you see this as, I feel like it's a downfall when they try and totally pivot the channel and have eight different people on camera. People don't like it and it's not what they subscribed for, right? It's not what they came for.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  And I do feel at this point that it's like, what I'm doing is working and so it's like, nobody touch the controllers, nobody sneeze. Let's just keep doing this until somehow people get sick of it.

• 1:15:12Guy Raz?

  Mark, when you think about the, the journey and like where you are now, I mean, you were a lifer at JPL, you know, not that long ago, um, and here you are, you know, you're on every list of the 10 biggest, 10 most famous, whatever YouTubers and I mean, when you think about where you started and then, you know, where you are now, how much of what happened do you attribute to, to the work you put in and the grind? And how much do you think has to do with just the luck of the timing and the people and circumstances?

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  My short answer to that, if you made me give it in half a sentence is luck is so much about the right time and the right place. I will say this, everything in life is a dice roll. But what you can do is like stack the dice in your favor.

• 1:15:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  And so that's very much how I view my success. I do put in a lot of work and I try hard. But so if you put my same brain in a hundred different situations on this world, you know, very, very, very few out of 10 million would end up in the position I'm in.

• 1:16:17Guy Raz?

  I, I keep thinking about how remarkable it is. I mean, you mentioned that, you know, you made that video at JPL, seven years working on it, you had a kid, your mom passed away. I mean, particularly your mom, I mean, that happened before you became

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:33Guy Raz?

  this giant YouTuber.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  I love that. Honestly, like to me,

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  it's like regardless of what you believe happens after we die, like this idea that she had no idea.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  Because it's like she took being a mom like

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  because she took being a mom like so seriously, right? And so I love this idea that no one really knows the full ripple effect of like the effect you'll have in a life because when she passed away, six months later is when I made my first YouTube video.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  And so I think that's also sort of the lesson for my son is just like, just a sec.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  Is like the measure of success.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  The measure of success, it's, did you leave the world a better place than you found it? Like, what is your, what is your net positive effect on, on the world? And so by that measure of success, my son and his special needs buddies and like my mom are just like,

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  you know, giants living amongst us mere mortals.

• 1:17:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  And to me, like,

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  I'm like following in their steps or at least trying to.

• 1:18:09Guy Raz?

  That's Mark Rober, YouTuber, engineer and founder of Crunch Labs. By the way, how did you guys clean out that Jell-O pool?

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Um, this is a great. We called a porta potty company and had them come hose it out.

• 1:18:29Guy Raz?

  Brilliant. They just sucked it all out and then wow.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  For literally like 200 bucks and then we just filled it back with dirt.

• 1:18:37Guy Raz?

  And that was it?

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  This, you just gotta think creatively, guy.

• 1:18:43Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show, and as always, it's free. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Sam Paulson and engineering help from Gilly Moon and Josephine Neonai. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Catherine Seifer, Alex Chung, John Isabella, Carrie Thompson, Malia Agudelo, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.