YouTuber Landon Nickerson gives up $2m career to create tech startup Instagram: landn[jwplayer h3XPfMqQ]Landon Nickerson is a name well-known among younger generations as a gaming YouTuber with millions of subscribers \u2014 but now, he\u2019s putting that behind him to focus on his new tech startup Arkh. Nickerson defines Arkh as \u201cthe paradigm shifting in technology to come,\u201d focusing on Augmented Reality (AR) spatial computing with the aim of becoming the first mainstream AR platform. We spoke with Landon about his YouTube career, what Arkh can do for society and, among other things, the pressure of leaving behind a $2m-a-year career to pursue the unknown. \u201cIt was kind of scary,\u201d Landon said, when asked about leaving YouTube to pursue a tech startup. \u201cBut something I learned was this: Once you identify your passion, you should never be concerned about what anyone else is saying, especially if it\u2019s \u2018this is impossible to do\u2019. If you truly believe in yourself and keep going after something, YouTube for example, you\u2019ll get to where you want to be.\u201d There\u2019s no denying that this has been a huge leap of faith for the 21-year-old, who even at his tender age has made more money than many of us could fathom \u2014 and is consequently willing to give it all up to chase an opportunity that could end without any of the success he\u2019s seen so far. Landon has realized, though, that his interest in Arkh and this new idea for innovative technology was worth the risk \u2014 or, more importantly, he would never forgive himself for passing up on the opportunity to take the risk. \u201cWhen I first got the idea I realized I could pursue it, or I could continue doing YouTube the same way I had been doing pretty comfortably,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I realized that if I didn\u2019t pursue Arkh and this crazy idea that I would probably look back and regret it, and YouTube would always be there.\u201d The obvious question here is how Landon\u2019s platform helps Arkh going forward. As someone who created gaming content with Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, the correlation between his YouTube audience and the tech audience looks to be almost nil. Nickerson isn\u2019t concerned, though, and he believes his core audience, those who tuned in every day to support him, will still want to interact with Arkh and see what they\u2019re doing. Moreso, he firmly believes that Arkh offers a technology that can \u201cbenefit everyone,\u201d so while younger fans might not understand the relevance of AR and spatial computing, they might still reap the benefits. If you needed any further proof that Landon is all-in on this project, he just about confirms that he\u2019s done with his content creation for now, saying that he\u2019s \u201creally trying to step away from the YouTube stuff\u201d even if it leaves him \u201cnameless,\u201d and that he\u2019s \u201creally focused on trying to allow my startup\u2019s brand to live through myself.\u201d Needless to say, it takes true belief to step away from such insane annual earnings as his projected $2m to go all-in on a tech startup \u2014 but, he says, it\u2019s his understanding of social media, and YouTube in particular, that helped present this opportunity. \u201cOnce you understand that the main commodity of social media, including YouTube, is people\u2019s attention, you can divert your following or your influence in any direction. \u201cWhether that\u2019s Emma Chamberlain and how she has a coffee company now, or a very popular route is making a clothing brand. Once you have the attention, you can introduce things to that group of people, you can do anything.\u201d In fact, he says, he\u2019s learned a lot from fellow YouTubers, particularly after attending both KSI vs. Logan Paul boxing matches. \u201cThinking about KSI, he\u2019s the perfect person to show that you can do anything,\u201d Landon explained. \u201cHe defined a YouTube path and then found a path that was not well worn, where he had this opportunity to do something where people were saying \u2018don\u2019t do this, you\u2019re going to get hit in the head, it\u2019s not going to work out for you,\u2019 and he did it. Look where he\u2019s at now. He has this limitless mindset. \u201cWhen I saw KSI and Logan Paul fighting\u2026 They\u2019re not scared of trying and failing. They\u2019re really just focused on doing something. They\u2019re not worried about what could go wrong, but only worried about what\u2019s going to go right. Watching that fight kind of made me realize that.\u201d So with the upcoming launch of Arkh, does that mean Landon Nickerson, the guy with a million V-Bucks, the guy who got banned from Roblox twice, has given up on YouTube completely? Not at all. \u201cI see myself coming back to YouTube when the time is right,\u201d he said, evidently already in the mindset of a tech CEO. \u201cI really, really want to prove to the world that what we\u2019re working on here is very legitimate, and I think once that\u2019s established, it\u2019ll be really good for me to come back into the YouTube life.\u201d While Nickerson might not be on our screens and in our YouTube sub box right now, he believes that he might be back one day. But, for now, he\u2019s taking on the tech giants we\u2019re all so fond of \u2014 and, in his own words, pushing them to up their game, approach technology differently and innovate even further. Speaking with Landon, there\u2019s one resounding message that repeats throughout our conversation: anything is possible. Whatever you want, if you go for it, you can achieve it. Having seen so much success by the age of 21, it\u2019s hard to disagree with him, and impossible not to buy into his belief in Arkh\u2019s success. While details on Arkh are scarce right now, Landon assured us that by the end of September, the AR spatial computing company will see their first big activation, and he sounds more excited than ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
YouTuber Landon Nickerson gives up $2m career to create tech startup Instagram: landn[jwplayer h3XPfMqQ]Landon Nickerson is a name well-known among younger generations as a gaming YouTuber with millions of subscribers \u2014 but now, he\u2019s putting that behind him to focus on his new tech startup Arkh. Nickerson defines Arkh as \u201cthe paradigm shifting in technology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}