YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Rober

lines on the record: 92
first: 2024-04-15
most recent: 2024-04-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Working Yeah, I started getting 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 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Jimmy Kimmel live. Live. Yeah, and then there I ask 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You want to know how I did it? 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 a brillopad. Because now you can put it back together. And you blow people's mind at the party. Potato salad, which, let's face it, nobody really likes. And that video, actually, because I had my niece and nephews in that, and I was kind of like pranking them to see how 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 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's just no upside for them. So, like you, oh yeah, you can't make YouTube videos. And I was like, 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 20,000 subscribers. I don't get that many views per video. So just relax. I'm not that big of a deal.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's just no upside for them, right? Of like they don't need press. So, 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 engineered.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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's 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 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's kind of like a frog in boiling water type of thing. If you go back and watch my videos, there's no one video where it changes. This is truly every video I'd watch the last one and be like, what could I improve on this? And so you have end up getting a voice. And if I just 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, right? Yeah. And 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. And I just love that because a lot of people like, well, I'm not good at X. It's like, yeah, guess what? And neither was I. Go back and watch my first video, right?”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Company, 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. And, you know, they were based in London. I get to fly over there. I get to work remotely. I just got 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 JPL engineer? Like, hey, Dad, I'm going to work for a Halloween costume company.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was like an earnout. I think it was like a $250,000 signing bonus that would work against the earnout. Yeah. 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They said, Hey, we want to buy this idea, but we also want you for your future ideas. So it required me like leaving NASA.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 this company called Morph Suits. They're based in the UK. It's like these skin-type suits.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In revenue, but at the time, like, I knew nothing about what margins are, how anything about a business. So in the end. By the time we went to a trade show and demonstrated it to the Halloween community, we literally broke even on it.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, basically, with the iPad costume, people are like, cool idea, bro, but I don't have $1,200 for Halloween costume. And so it's like, all right, fair enough. So it's like, what could 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 clownhead with a big eyeball. And then you cut out the eye with scissors once you had a t-shirt and then duct tape your phone to the back of that you'd have like a $25 costume that would be epic.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it seems like there Entrepreneurial kind of itch inside of you, right? I mean, you're an engineer at JPL, but you're also a guy that came up with a hole in the body. This actually led you to patent this design for a Halloween costume.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, on YouTube. And those are big numbers. I'm a viral video artist in a sense, right? I'm trying to find broadly appealing topics to cover.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and that got a lot of views. I mean, most of them at this point were getting. Hundred thousand views. They started getting up to, you know, occasionally I get one that was like 250, 300.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Hazcam, 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would say, you know, back then, yeah, I was just kind of a fun thing, like, oh, do you have a video coming up? I don't think anyone is actually watching them. I was getting like 50,000 views of video. And that was like huge for me. In fact, what I did. Anyone who posted the iPad video, any news site or blog? I got all their information every time I released a new video, 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 a house, the more it resonates with people. Because it's like, ah, why didn't I think of that? That's so clever. I can actually do that, right? This 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 Mathie or Science-Y to get it and have that aha moment like I know I've succeeded.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's no creator fun. There was no like idea of sponsorships. It was just like. Uploading content for the sake of spreading cool ideas, right?”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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? Every month I uploaded a video. And it was back when you couldn't make money off YouTube. Right”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Gizmoto. If I could do that This is kind of newish website called YouTube. I should upload this video there. And the next day it had like a million views.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 kind of looks like he got a whole new body.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cam quarters, but that I edited with like two VCRs. They're rough. So, you know, that was my first love of like, I've always just loved telling stories through like the medium of video. In addition to being an engineer, that's just something that's always appealed to me.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. That's 100% true. And I had no problems working for the man, right? Like, 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, 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 life.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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? And if you're deciding something on Earth, it's a lot cheaper because who cares if one bolt has a strip thread? Just grab another one from the drawer. There's no penalty there, right? Yeah.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you could do some analysis out on the end of the arm, but some of the core science we wanted really came down to these doors functioning like a door.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I started out as a designer. So like, you know, using CAD to design parts as an engineer. And then eventually I transition to what's called a cognizant engineer there, which means that you're in charge of a chunk of the rover, right? So, my chunk was this hardware on the rover top deck where the Armago digging the dirt, and then it would need to come and put the sample into the belly to do the analysis.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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 whitebar 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. Basically at some point in the interview, I said I started making up an answer basically. 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. And he's like, 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.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. I just let's start learning calculus and thermodynamics.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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. Right. That's how you land stuff on Mars. And it's like a crystal ball that actually works.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One time I was asked to cut onions for dinner. And I remember this. And it's like, oh, I don't want to cry. Well, it seems really obvious. 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 at six years old, we have a picture of it. You have to be really judicious with you only have 24 pictures. So the fact is an important moment in our family.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was 15 tons of jell-o. I would say, I forget the exact gallon size, but it's the size of a small in-ground pool. And there were 100 tests we did with gelatins at different temperatures to find out where the sensitivities are, how hot you need to get it, how cool does it need to get it. It either worked or it didn't.”
2024-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · CrunchLabs: Mark Rober · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT