More and more successful young YouTubers are dropping out of high school. And why not? With millions of followers, brand deals, their own merchandise and other sources of income, it seems silly to keep going to class.
Cody Kolodziejzyk, better known as Cody Ko, is a good example of someone who took a different route. He graduated from Duke University with a computer science degree. After college, he spent some time backpacking around Asia, he founded a startup, he worked as a programmer and grew a huge following on Vine and YouTube.
He has lived an unconventional life, which was partially inspired by his parents. He said, “Both my parents are crazy. My Mom sold a software business when she was young. My Dad also sold a software business. So, they were both very entrepreneurial. And then they both started running marathons. My Dad broke the world record for the longest distance travelled in 24 hours by human power. He engineered a bike and rode it around a track for 24 hours and broke the world record. And then my Mom and Dad started doing Ironmans. Now they run ultramarathons, which are 100 miles. They’re insane. So, I was inspired my whole life. It led me to want to do different things and master different things.”
One of the first things he mastered was swimming. A strong swimmer in high school, Cody looked to continue his career in college. He joined the swim team at Duke University and worked on a computer science degree.
After graduating from college, he took a job as a computer engineer at a startup in Silicon Valley. After working for a couple years, he was bored with his job so he decided to quit and backpack around Southeast Asia with his friend. They also started a business, a greeting card app, so they could keep writing code and make some money while they travelled.
When he came back home, he took a programming job in L.A. This is where he met his future collaborator, Noel Miller. Cody said, “It’s a pretty funny story actually. We were both making YouTube videos and we followed each other on Vine. So, we’d spoken a little bit online. But my new boss, on the first day of work, took me to my desk and Noel was sitting at the desk across from me. Both of us looked at each other and were like, ‘Are you stalking me? This is so weird!’”
At this time, Cody was focused on his YouTube channel and also his podcast, where he had Noel on as a guest. Cody said, “With me and him it was just an easy flow, which is super rare. About a year later, I quit my job to focus on YouTube, and the podcast, full time. When he got laid off later, I said, ‘Don’t get another job right now. We can get a Patreon and try to make some money right out of the gate. So, we don’t have to wait on advertisers. It’s been a year and a half and we’re (The Tiny Meat Gang Podcast) the 24th biggest Patreon on the site.”
In an age where almost everyone under 30 years old wants to quit school, or their job and become a YouTuber; Cody’s story is inspirational. He continued to work, while pursuing his dream on the side, until it made financial sense for him to quit. He remembered, “It was a blessing, in the beginning, because I didn’t care what anyone said because I was like, ‘I’m an engineer and I’m just going to do this because I’m good at it.’ So, I never worried about what people thought of me online because I was just doing it for fun.”
Most YouTubers with a successful YouTube channel and podcast, would stop pursuing other ventures but Cody continues to push himself to explore new talents.
Cody and Noel took their podcast to the stage last year, touring around the country. And this August they will launch another tour.
They also launched a mixtape, in December of 2018, which was streamed over 10 million times. Music is another passion of Cody’s that he is pursuing. He said, “I was making fun of Jake Paul’s song in a video two years ago. And I was like, ‘I think I can make a better song than this.’ It was kind of like a challenge. So, I made this awful beat and I brought Noel over to rap over it. So, we made this really stupid song. And it wasn’t better than Jake’s song. But it was the first beat I made and it was really cool. I always wanted to make music from scratch. And I just got more and more into it. It’s something that I’ve been pursuing, in the background, for awhile.”
So, let’s recap. Cody Ko is a computer engineer, a comedian, a podcast host, a successful YouTuber, an entrepreneur and a hip hop producer.
What’s next for Cody Ko? Maybe he’ll set a world record like his Dad.
