Canadian YouTuber Linus Sebastian, best known to most as the guy behind the insanely popular Linus Tech Tips channel, has announced that he’s stepping down as CEO of the companies he helped create and has been running for the past ten years.
In a 10-minute video called “It’s time”, Sebastian announces that as of July 1 he’ll no longer be heading up Linus Media Group, the company that not only runs the Linus Tech Tips show but also companies like Creator Warehouse and Floatplane Media as well.
“I wasn’t built for this, and I’m tired”, he says. “Like ‘really can’t do this anymore’ tired. And if I try to drag myself through another 10 years of business administration I know I’m gonna destroy myself, and probably end up killing the company and the community that I love so much in the process”.
Of course he isn’t leaving the show or YouTube altogether. We’d have said that up top if he were. Instead he’ll be moving into a new job called “Chief Vision Officer”—which he admits is “a stupid, BS-sounding, made-up role”—which will allow him to not just keep making videos, but maybe even appear in more of them, since he’ll have been freed up to do so without having to focus on all the business stuff that comes with being CEO of a company that at time of publishing has around 100 employees.
Interestingly, Sebastian says that at the same time he was making this decision, Linus Media received an offer of $100 million to “sell out”, which was in the form of 60% cash straight-up, and 40% equity in the (undisclosed) purchasing company. Linus decided to turn it down, though, citing a combination of factors like the fact they liked working with the company as it was and that, to be real, they were already super rich already.
Terren Tong, previously with Corsair, will replace Sebastian as CEO.
