They Were YouTube’s First Stars. Here’s What They Wish They’d Known.

MatPat, Miranda Sings, Grace Helbig and WheezyWaiter hit it big on YouTube long before it became a behemoth. They have thoughts about what it takes to succeed there.

When many of YouTube’s earliest stars describe the nascent years of the video platform, founded in 2005, they paint a picture of a close-knit community of creative-minded young people who, separately but simultaneously, fostered an extraordinary connection to audiences.

This was before the rise of Instagram and TikTok, a window when YouTube stood out among emerging video-sharing platforms for features like comments and subscriber alerts, which helped cultivate followings around user-generated content.