Power
"I bring the digital and physical world together"
He lives like a protagonist in an exciting video game: Jordi van den Bussche rips and shoots his way to success. And not only in the digital world, it is also game on in the physical world: there he evolves from YouTuber and influencer to influential entrepreneur.
What kind of childhood did you have?
“My parents divorced when I was two. I mainly lived with my mother, only on Tuesdays and every other weekend I was with my father. I have lived in Amsterdam East all my life, on the KNSM Island and the Borneo Island. My mother still lives there, my father has now passed away. I had a playful childhood and had been gaming from an early age. I started playing Pokemon when I was four, on the GameBoy Color. At after-school care I played the Nintendo 64, at home I played chess and all kinds of things on the computer.”
And your mother was okay with that?
“She also wanted me to play outside every now and then. But as long as I got good grades at school, she was fine with it.”
What gave you the idea to start an English-language YouTube channel in 2008 where you play a video game and comment on it?
“I created a YouTube account because I wanted to see videos that required an account. As a username I entered Kwebbelkop, the name of a cuddly toy from my youth. That was a combination of Kabouter Kwebbel, one of the regular roles in the television series and films of Kabouter Plop, and my sister's username: Okikop. After watching a lot of videos, I thought: I'm going to make one too. The fact that I did everything in English is because I had a lot of international friends through gaming. Two more advantages of gaming: good for your languages and you make a lot of friends. I initially made those videos for my friends: look what I made!”
How did you make the content so attractive that people subscribed?
“Good ideas, that is my strength. Anyone can play a game, that's not exciting. It's about what you do in a game. For example, gaming with a blindfold on. Or play many levels in a row and only briefly show the best moments. What I grew up with were races with friends in which we sought out the craziest challenges, such as riding over a very thin rope or mega ramps: racing downhill at lightning speed and launching yourself into the air. So within a game I came up with my own game, my own challenge.”
At the time you mainly played Grand Theft Auto, Minecraft and Fortnite. Was that clever because those games were the largest market or did you just enjoy them the most?
"Combination of. What can we entertain the most people with and what do we like ourselves? If you do something you don't like, people notice it immediately.”
From 2012 onwards you focused on daily video game recordings. Was that the start of a business model?
“I had an inspiration: I'm going to become a YouTuber! No idea how I was going to do that. But if I made a video every day, it would be fine. Practice, practice, practice every day. Every day make at least one thing in the video better than the previous one. Then it couldn't go wrong.”
What else does the revenue model of your own YouTube channel consist of?
“First, revenue from ads that play right before or during your videos. You get a fraction of a cent for that. Secondly, subscription fees. Third, merchandise sales – T-shirts, photos, you name it. Fourth, collaboration with brands. But content always comes first. The viewers must be entertained, which is essential in a collaboration. Otherwise I say no.”
You can be dressed, driven... What are the boundaries for you to enter into a collaboration?
“I have never promoted eighteen-plus items such as booze, gambling and sex toys. And I don't do it for the money. I look purely at: what suits me, what I support and what helps me to do my work even better. Such as good hardware for making videos, games, sportswear... I have also received many offers from watch and car brands, but have not yet found a match. I once promoted a wallet. I thought it was a cool thing: metal, cool. That went like crazy, the fans were completely fine with it, suddenly a lot of those wallets were sold. Everyone happy. What also makes me happy: when I am invited as a speaker. I have really become a teacher within the YouTube profession.”
Have you not yet entered into a partnership with a car brand?
“I only got my driver's license two years ago. I bought my very first car, a Fiat Abarth 595, to learn to drive and to rack up the miles. I also wanted a roaring car to do that too. That became a Mercedes G 63 AMG, a really cool car. Since I always play with an orange car in my video games, I had it wrapped in that color. I really enjoyed that. But it doesn't really suit me, especially when it comes to costs, pollution and shortage of gadgets. That's why I recently sold both cars and traded them in for an Audi e-tron Sportback. It suits me much better: electric, lots of gadgets and keeping an eye on the money.”
You may be a city boy, but your business goes all over the world. You have now managed to gain a foothold in America and recorded videos with YouTube greats such as Pewdiepie and MrBeast and stars such as Kevin Hart and Zac Efron. What is it like to work with such greats?
“It's crazy to meet your heroes, have a beer with them and make plans for a collaboration. I have been a huge fan of Kevin Hart. The funny thing is that MrBeast used to have me as a hero – he watched all my videos. We even had a business together for a while. We stopped doing that because we were both too busy.”
As a YouTuber, are you perhaps a bit of a loner: your own channel, your own content, your own thing?
"No. It is precisely because I have always been a team player and been open to doing crazy things with other people that I have managed to get this far. I learned a lot from MrBeast and Jelle. Actually you are all playing the same game, but everyone does it in their own way. This is how MrBeast puts every dollar he earns into his business. He has been a great source of inspiration for me to reinvest very aggressively in my company.”
The world of YouTube is all about numbers. You now have almost 15 million subscribers. MrBeast has about 100 million. What else does he do?
“He is the king of viral content. He can create a very viral product like no other. Every day we analyze the outliers with our company and see whether we can also apply this ourselves. Ultimately, we also want to reach those 100 million subscribers. That is quite a challenge. To do that, we need to consistently produce videos that explode and get shared. And we must continue to innovate. If you do a trick once, everyone says 'wow!' If you do it again, everyone will say 'I already saw it'. And you really need a team for that. That's been the biggest lesson for me in my entire career: that I didn't approach it like a business from the start. I've only been working on that for a few years now. At first I did a lot myself. I advise anyone who is exploding to build a team as quickly as possible.”
You have grown from YouTuber/influencer to entrepreneur and CEO. How do you like that role?
"Delicious! That position is tailor-made for me, that's why I'm here. It's wonderful to be able to inspire people, give them a platform where they can grow, and offer them a career opportunity.”
Due to your passion for gaming, you have also developed an interest in the digital world and all technical developments within it, such as crypto currency. Tell.
“When I came into contact with it in 2013, I bought my first coin, the dogecoin. I then studied crypto currency for three years. I started to orient myself in Space, research, try to understand it, see where this could possibly go. I had the capital and actually wanted to invest ten times as much in crypto as I have. My financial advisor at the time advised me against that. “Crypto is a bubble,” he knew. I have still invested fairly heavily in Ethereum and Bitcoin, but instead of just crypto I have also bought real estate, including my penthouse. If I had listened to my own voice, I could have bought the entire building! That was a beautiful life lesson. I have long thought that older people know better, but that is not always the case. It's better to make your own choices and take your own responsibility.”
If you ever propose to your girlfriend Sophie Duijn, will you do so in the physical or digital world?
“I'm not going to do that. I think getting married is old-fashioned, it doesn't suit me. Love must be felt and shown. Not that hassle with a marriage certificate and notification to the municipality. She can have a ring, she can have the party, but I'm not going to put it on paper that we're married.”
Maybe you should put an NFT on her finger…
“Then she'll kill me.”
MASTERS MAGAZINE
Want to read the entire interview with Jordi van den Bussche? The winter issue of MASTERS was created in collaboration with Jordi van den Bussche. Many will know him as YouTuber Kwebbelkop, but he has been working hard as an entrepreneur for some time, as he explains in the Great Interview. What is new is that his company JVDB Studios offers to do social media marketing and short format content marketing for other companies. “They can also figure it out themselves, but we cracked the code.” Jordi gives a platform to like-minded entrepreneurs such as Jay-Jay Boske, Demy de Zeeuw, Chahid Charrak and Marcella de Bie, and discusses developments surrounding games, crypto and NFT: “Just as bitcoin turned the financial system upside down, will that also happen with gaming.” This extra thick winter issue also focuses on Lengers' first own ship, an interview with Corendon CEO Atilay Uslu, specials about the new BMW 7 Series and Samsung foldables, and - exclusively for MASTERS! – an interview with Max Verstappen.
