YouTuber
Jake Tran (b. June 13, 1998) was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and moved to the United States as a child. He grew up in the U.S. (California/Arizona) and excelled in science and entrepreneurship from a young age. After studying computer science in college, he dropped out in 2018 to pursue entrepreneurial projects and content creation. Early on, he launched a side project—a web-development app—and worked as a web developer at $40/hr, but found the work unfulfilling and pivoted to YouTube.
A key turning point was reading business books like The Millionaire Fastlane and Blue Ocean Strategy. As he put it, “that book really changed my life... I applied [its] exercises to YouTube, and that’s how I came up with the style of videos I have today.” Inspired by tech YouTubers in high school, like Linus Tech Tips and MKBHD, he eventually relaunched his career on YouTube in 2018, aiming to blend education and commentary. His disciplined background—he earned a 2nd Dan Black Belt in Taekwondo—and early hustles, such as flipping goods as a teen, contributed to his entrepreneurial mindset.
• 2018: College dropout, launched YouTube career. First major video: “Web Development Career: How I got $40/hr...” (on earning a tech salary without a degree).
• Sept 2019: Breakout viral video “Why Graham Stephan is killing the YouTube Algorithm.” Jake sent it to Graham Stephan, who shared it on Instagram – overnight it hit thousands of views. This jump-started his channel growth.
• 2020: Business mentor Arvid Ali contacts Jake. Ali urges him to outsource tasks and build a team to avoid burnout. Jake begins hiring assistants, editors, etc., dramatically increasing output and income.
• 2021–2022: Subscriber growth accelerates; Jake refines his documentary formula. (By 2022 he surpassed 1 million subs.)
• 2023: Launch of Evil Food Supply channel (grew to 274K subs by mid-2024). He also started a Spanish content channel. His first online courses and coaching programs roll out.
• 2024: Jake Tran hits ~1.8–1.85M subs. Business Insider profiles him (June 2024), verifying $820K in ad/sponsor revenue for 2023. He is recognized as one of the top faceless creator earners on YouTube.
• 2025: Continuing growth; he has built a media brand.
Jake Tran emphasizes creative autonomy and relentless learning. He fell in love with YouTube’s freedom – the idea that “you could do something creative, just have fun on camera... and make a living out of it.” He speaks of having earned a “degree in YouTube,” taking four years to reach 100K subs – a journey he views as intentional long-term education, not a quick-fix scheme. From early on, Jake prioritized uniqueness over mimicry. For example, inspired by The 48 Laws of Power, he explicitly shaped his channel around the theme that “the pursuit of power pervades our lives everywhere.” This philosophical lens—money, power, and crime—drives his content, reflecting his belief that taboo or “boring” topics can be made captivating with the right angle.
Jake applies formal strategy thinking—notably Blue Ocean Strategy—to YouTube. Early on, after years of slow growth, he realized he was merely copying other creators and needed a unique niche. He read Blue Ocean Strategy and followed an exercise from the book to carve out a “subniche” where he had “no competitors.”
In practice, Jake dissected the YouTube landscape into major categories—personal finance, make-money-online, edutainment (animated explainers), and video essays—and blended them. He took the elements he liked from each and discarded the rest. The result is a hybrid channel: part business/finance (the “personal touch”), part cinematic documentary (the “video-essay vibe”), and part high-production edutainment.
Jake’s ideas come from a wide breadth of sources. He scours books, articles, documentaries, and news feeds for untold stories. As he describes it, his research is “aggressive Googling, reading books and articles... YouTube videos, documentaries... searching wherever I can to find the best stories.” For instance, after watching a documentary on war profiteering, he scripted a video on “the viciously profitable business of war.” He admits he assumed no one would care about such a niche topic – yet that video “did super well.” This exemplifies his workflow: follow curiosity, then test it on camera.
Jake treats each video as a revenue opportunity. His primary income streams are AdSense and sponsorships, which he consciously maximizes. In the business/finance niche he occupies, ad CPMs are high. He notes that his channel’s CPM is “above average” due to advertisers valuing his audience. Moreover, every video is sponsored – he makes sure to sell at least one product placement each time. In his words, if a video “is not sponsored, then that’s wasted real estate.” This philosophy ensures he never leaves money on the table; even with millions of views, he wouldn’t neglect a sponsor segment.
Jake deliberately moved from a one-man “artist” to a lean media business. He credits building a production pipeline with overcoming the lone-creator bottleneck. He now leads a distributed team: his LinkedIn lists dozens of collaborators (video editors, motion-graphics specialists, content editors). These hires are international (Indonesia, Argentina, etc.), reflecting a strategy of outsourcing tasks wherever it’s cost-effective.
Jake offers practical, hard-won lessons for creators:
Quality over Quantity: Don’t fall into the trap of endless uploads without improvement. Jake warns against the mindset of “just post more” and stresses the importance of unique, valuable content.
Innovate Relentlessly: Test formats, topics, and styles until you find what works. Jake experimented for years, switching strategies until he found his signature formula.
Find Your Niche: Emulating big creators won’t cut it. Jake realized copying Graham Stephan’s style didn’t give people a reason to watch his videos. You must carve out your own angle.
Be Patient: Growth takes time. Jake spent four years to reach 100K subscribers, underscoring the value of perseverance.
Manage Burnout: Creative work has limits. Pace yourself, delegate when possible, and avoid overloading.
Deliver Real Value: Treat your channel like a product. Every video should teach, surprise, or reveal something meaningful to the audience.
Stay Dangerous: Jake’s sign-off phrase encapsulates his ethos—be bold, tackle hard topics, keep learning, and never get complacent. He aspires to be a modern-day renaissance man, constantly exploring new skills and ideas, and he encourages other creators to do the same.
“Blue Ocean Strategy really changed my life. I applied its exercises to YouTube, and that’s how I came up with the style of videos I have today.”
“We try to make a really clever segue so that it kind of ties into the topic, and people don’t immediately realize it’s a sponsor.”
“If you imagine the process of making a video as an assembly line, we have people in every position.”
“It was always my dream to make a career doing stuff from home just with a camera—or in my case, even without a camera, just a microphone—and it turned out to live up to the expectations.”
“My goal is to have every video sponsored, because a video that isn’t sponsored is just a waste of digital real estate in my opinion.”
“Consistency is just the baseline. If you’re just consistent posting the same video a million times, if it’s a bad video, it’s still going to be a bad video that gets no views.”
Books: Jake frequently recommends Blue Ocean Strategy (on market differentiation), The Millionaire Fastlane (wealth mindset), and The 48 Laws of Power. These books have shaped much of his business thinking and content style.
Creators/Channels: For aspiring creators, Jake suggests studying Graham Stephan, Marques Brownlee, Kurzgesagt, and LEMMiNO. He values their research-driven, high-production content as benchmarks for quality.
Tools/Resources: Jake’s toolkit includes practical tools like Skype, Loom (for recording), and Adobe Creative Suite. He also runs his own learning platforms, such as Laptop Lifestyle Academy, offering insights and resources for creators.
Blue Ocean Strategy: Jake applies this concept to his content strategy—finding uncontested markets or “blue oceans” instead of competing directly in saturated niches. His shift from generic topics to unique, high-impact subjects is a direct reflection of this mindset.
Faceless Channels: Jake builds faceless channels that rely on voiceover and B-roll rather than personal appearances, allowing scalability and flexibility in content production.
Outsourcing and Systemization: He emphasizes a systemized, team-based workflow over the solo “artist” model. Jake admits he once held limiting beliefs about delegation but overcame them by gradually building a team to handle every part of production. This assembly-line approach is the backbone of his operation.
Open Loops and Hooks: Jake uses narrative hooks—asking intriguing questions and leaving them unresolved for stretches of a video—to keep viewers engaged. This storytelling technique, known as using “open loops,” helps drive retention.
Video Segmentation: His videos are meticulously structured into clear sections and chapters, helping viewers follow complex narratives. He often breaks down dense topics into step-by-step explanations for clarity.
Growth Mindset: Jake champions continuous learning and improvement. He warns against complacency, noting that consistency alone won’t guarantee success—creativity and constant refinement are essential for long-term growth.
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