First Million Through Cringe

Cody Ko shares the story of his first major breakthrough on YouTube with his "That's Cringe" video series.

"I remember the first time I hit a million views overnight. It was a 'That's Cringe' video, which became one of the most viewed series on my channel. We did a couple and they seemed to be working, people seemed to be into them, but it wasn't apparent how much more people liked them than the other stuff I was doing.

Then we posted the third or fourth one, and I remember waking up to a million views. I was like 'oh my god' - that was unfathomable for me, even five months ago those numbers just didn't make sense to me. That was one pretty distinctive moment.

After that, me and Noel went on tour for the first time, and all the times after that, the tickets would just sell out. That was a moment where I was like 'I can't believe this is now converting into real world sales where people want to come to a venue and see us in person.' That felt really cool, that's always a weirdly sobering thing."