Arun Maini, aka Mrwhosetheboss, says he was a shy, lanky, acne-prone 14-year-old when he uploaded his first video to YouTube. His big brother had just bought him his first phone, and he was geeking out. That first vlog, a shaky, sometimes out-of-focus overview of a long-since-forgotten phone, surprised him (and his skeptical classmates) by garnering tens of thousands of views in short order. It also showed Maini what was possible on YouTube.
To take you back in time to 2011, the most-watched YouTube videos of the era were "Friday" by Rebecca Black, Yosemitebear Mountain Double Rainbow (all the way!), Annoying Orange Wazzup!?!?!?!, and The Old Spice Man.
Maini, now 29, is one of the most successful tech YouTubers in the world. Since he posted that first video, he’s created one of the most-followed technology YouTube channels on the platform. Along the way, the Brit picked up a Guinness World Record, achieving yet another childhood dream.
Today, he has 21.6 million subscribers on YouTube, with 7.6 billion views across 1,800 videos. That’s an incredible hit rate for a YouTuber — the equivalent of 4.2 million views per video. He also has 2.5 million followers on TikTok, 1.8 million followers on Instagram, and 1.7 million on X.
Maini spoke to me this September from his home in London. Shortly after our virtual interview, Maini flew to Cupertino, California, for the Apple Event 2025. He's already given his viewers a first-hand look at the all-new iPhone Air, a video that’s racked up 16,000 comments in just six days, as of this writing.
Watching Maini's videos is like watching a charming, slightly nerdy friend show you all the cool new stuff they just bought and can’t stop talking about. His videos are always informative but never feel like homework, even when he’s breaking down complicated specifications or the cameras inside the new Pixel 10 Pro smartphone.
These days, countless 14-year-olds dream of becoming successful YouTubers. Maini’s path provides a clear road map for other aspiring creators. His success didn’t come overnight from a viral video but after years of careful, disciplined work to grow his channel, one video at a time.
Talking to Maini, it’s easy to see why he’s made it. While we chatted, he often paused to think more deeply before answering a question, and emphasized again and again the value of trial and error. Success, he explained, comes from paying close attention to what works and what doesn't.
"If someone asked me, 'What's the secret sauce?' It's literally: make a video. Doesn't matter if it's good or bad. Pay attention to the comments. Implement them. If they're mean, then just take the nuggets and then implement those. Do that 500 times and you're a good YouTuber."
And just think: Maini almost became a consultant.
How did Maini become a world-famous YouTuber? One video at a time.
If Maini hadn’t become a YouTuber, it’s easy to imagine him becoming a successful entrepreneur instead. He started his first online business at just 13.
"YouTube wasn't actually the first business I had," Maini said. "I ran an eBay business before that, when I was 12 to 13. So I was basically selling Beyblades, the kids' toys. But it was such a good exercise for me. I bought about 20 of them from China…that allowed me to get them at about $3 a unit. And then I was selling them for about $5, and then when I did that, I used that money to buy 30, and then I got a slightly better price. And then, you know, I did that again and again. I remember my biggest shipment coming in was, like, 400, and so it was a fairly substantially sized business for, you know, a 13-year-old.”
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A stolen phone put an end to Maini’s growing Beyblade empire. After accidentally buying and then re-selling a stolen phone, eBay banned Maini’s account.
After that, his focus shifted to YouTube, where Maini took a disciplined approach to building his channel. However, it took years of repetition before he finally achieved his first viral video. By then, he was in university and still doggedly uploading vlogs.
“My first viral video ever was ‘How to turn your smartphone into a 3D hologram.’ And I remember making this video and putting it live while I was at a party, and I thought absolutely nothing of it. I was making a video every few days at this point, but this video, I was a little bit drunk in the evening, [and] I remember checking my phone thinking, 'This is a little bit more views than I expected.'”
The next day, Maini woke up, looked at his phone, and realized he had too many notifications to count. It’s the type of "I’ve arrived" moment that’s become a rite of passage for serious YouTubers. "I was obsessed with YouTube at this point, like I was so obsessed with growing this channel that I had charts across my wall, and every day I was checking in on my progress. So, to suddenly see one video perform better than the 100 videos before all put together — my body wasn't ready for it. You know what I mean? I was like, squealing. I was like, running down the stairs. I called my mom. I was like, I've got an email from BBC News! They want to talk to me."
"It was probably one of the top five moments of my life, for sure," Maini said.
Still, even with a viral video under his belt, Maini was on a conventional track: graduate with an economics degree and get a consulting job.
"My entire life up until about the age of 21 was gearing me towards a career in consulting," Maini said. "I feel like, you know, the vast majority of people are kind of being carried [along], and I certainly was in that position. You pick subjects that you're good at, then you pick a degree that lines up with those subjects, and you drift, don't you?"
As Maini drifted, his YouTube channel was still growing. He says the turning point came when he landed an internship at the consulting firm Price Waterhouse.
"I hated it," Maini said. "I was sitting in meetings, and I was just doodling ideas for videos for when I got home. And when I looked at the two options on paper, it didn't really make sense to do YouTube, but it was one of those things where one route excites me, one route doesn't. I don't want to regret for the rest of my life not trying."
By then, Maini was no longer the shy and awkward teenager who posted that first vlog. YouTube had transformed him, and not just professionally. While the comments section under a video can be a notoriously toxic place to look for affirmation, Maini said he mined his comments to fine-tune every aspect of his videos. In the process, he found the confidence and charisma of a YouTube star.
"While viral videos don't make you a YouTuber, they can show you what's possible, and that probably changed my and my family's attitude towards what I was doing.” Crucially, Maini was also making enough money to justify the transition. "At the start, there was a lot more confusion. You know, around when I was doing my A levels, which are kind of your end-of-school exams, I remember the day before a very major one, I was filming an earphone review in my back garden, and my mom opens the door, like, ‘Arun, do you want to revise?' 'I'm doing it later, mom!'"
So, while he eventually did quit his day job, Maini’s advice to aspiring creators is straightforward: "Don’t quit your day job."
"It's very easy to want to be a YouTuber, right? When you look at it on paper, it makes too much sense, right? You do what you want. You talk about it for fun. You go travel the world. You get treated like a VIP. Who doesn't want those stat points? In reality, it's very, very unlikely, [and] you kind of just have to convince yourself you're going to become the one percent who gets to do that."
Instead, he recommends starting small and starting now.
"Make [YouTube] Shorts in your spare time, and you'll realize very quickly, either this isn't for you, it's too time-consuming, you hate editing, you hate being on camera, or you've got something here and you love the feedback cycle, and you can get better very quickly," he said.
Maini isn't a kid with a camcorder anymore
If Mrwhosetheboss sounds like a YouTube username chosen by an awkward teenage boy, that’s because it is. I asked Maini if, after all his success, he has any regrets about the username he chose 15 years ago.
He said there came a time in his early career when he asked himself this question a lot. At the time, he was being invited to speak at important tech events, and he worried people might not take a Mrwhosetheboss seriously.
“There's actually something very personable about the imperfection of it. You know, the same reason why we don't hire a massive garage and turn it into a studio. We just film videos in our house. And it's actually a big part of why people were drawn to our channel. Until we hit about 20 million subscribers, everything was shot in an attic, and that attic was my bedroom. So, yeah, there was a phase where I was questioning it and overthinking it, but would I change anything now? No."
Maini’s videos have moved far beyond the attic, in fact. His recent videos include a vlog where he gives his brother his dream car (the same brother who bought him the phone featured in his very first video — just one of the full-circle moments in Maini's life lately). In another, he spent $10,000 to buy random gadgets from Kickstarter. I asked Maini if this is the MrBeast effect, but he attributed this evolution to the nature of YouTube and the pressure to make each video bigger than the last.
"We got a Guinness World Record recently for helping to build the world's largest iPhone. And I remember that feeling really full circle for me, because as a kid, every other day, I would go to the library, and I would just pull out Guinness World Record books. Kid me would never think that one day you'll be in those books."
Maini shared that record with fellow YouTuber Matthew Perks, and that ridiculously oversized iPhone is in his basement, taking up a lot of space, as we chat. And it will probably continue to take up space for years to come. Turns out, besides winning Guinness World Records that take your YouTube career to new heights, giant phones aren’t particularly useful.
As a hugely successful YouTuber, Maini has a unique approach to separating his personal and professional life — he doesn’t. Not only do his family members sometimes make appearances in his videos, but his wife is also his YouTube channel’s general manager. Their sunny London home doubles as HQ, where a full-time team of 12 helps run the operation.
A lot has changed since Maini uploaded that first video to YouTube, but you can see glimmers of the creator he'd become in that teenage vlog. Because 15 years later, he’s still geeking out over phones on the internet — just with a few million more people watching.
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