Linus Gabriel Sebastian is a Canadian YouTube personality, presenter, producer, and founder of Linus Media Group. Sebastian is best known for creating and hosting four technology YouTube channels, Linus Tech Tips, Techquickie, TechLinked, and ShortCircuit, which have a combined subscriber base of over 16 million users. From 2007 to 2015, he was also a regular presenter of technology videos for the now defunct Canadian computer retailer NCIX. In 2015, Inc. magazine ranked Sebastian 4th in a list of the "Top 30 Power Players in Tech". He is also the owner of Floatplane Media. As of July 2020, Linus Tech Tips is ranked the most watched Technology channel on YouTube. In 2014, Tubefilter named the channel as being within the "top 1% of Google's preferred advertising channels" on YouTube for the technology category.
Career
NCIX and ''Linus Tech Tips''
Sebastian was working as a manager for the now defunct Canadian online computer store NCIX. He was asked by the company to be the host for its technology channel, which was created to help demonstrate products. Sebastian was assisted by an unidentified cameraman and editor, and worked with limited resources, shooting videos with a camera borrowed from the son of the company's president. His first video was a demonstration for a Sunbeam processor heatsink. Due to high costs and low viewership during the early days of the channel, Sebastian was instructed to create the Linus Tech Tips channel as a cheaper offshoot of the NCIX channel, to allow for lower production values without impacting the NCIX brand. He described TigerDirect and Newegg as competitors. Linus Tech Tips was created on November 24, 2008. Sebastian did not develop videos full-time at NCIX. During his time at the company, he worked as full-time sales representative, a high-end systems designer, a product manager, and a category manager.
Linus Media Group
Sebastian founded Linus Media Group in January 2013 out of a garage, with Luke Lafreniere, Edzel Yago, and Brandon Lee. The group developed the Linus Tech Tips channel as an independent venture.
Notable projects
"7 Gamers 1 CPU" (early 2016 – late 2016)
On January 2, 2016, Linus Tech Tips released a video demonstrating a computer capable of supporting seven individual players at once, with an estimated total cost of $30,000. The video made technology news on a number of websites, and gained over one million views on the day it was uploaded. Two more videos of the machine, including benchmarking and overclocking results, were released before the machine was disassembled during a livestream the following month. The computer had eight modules of 32 GB ECCDDR4 RAM, eight 1 TB KingstonSSDs, two Intel Xeon 14 core E5 2697 v3 processors, seven AMD R9 Nano GPUs, an EVGA T2 1600W PSU, and was housed in a Caselabs Mercury S8 with an Asus Z10PE-D8 WS motherboard. The project was sponsored by Kingston Technology. On May 22, 2016, Linus Tech Tips released a sequel project, which was a system that allowed for eight users to play games simultaneously, among other improvements.
In April 2018, the Linus Tech Tips channel uploaded a video claiming that Apple refused to repair his iMac Pro after they damaged it in a product teardown, an act that has been speculated by VentureBeat to be illegal.
In December 2018, Linus Tech Tips released a four-part series detailing their experience buying a gaming PC from 6 System Integrators representing 3 different market tiers: two major manufacturers, two high-volume SI, two upscale boutique SI to see what they would offer to an average customer. The experiences were varied. The series has gained over 11.7 million views and was covered in PC Gamer magazine
Personal life
Sebastian has been married to Yvonne Ho since May 20, 2011. They have one son and two daughters. In an interview with technology startup website Tech.Co, Sebastian said that his favourite YouTubers were TotalBiscuit, Marques Brownlee, iJustine and Austin Evans. In February 2014, Sebastian was among the YouTubers who contributed funds and support to Evans, who lost his possessions and home in a fire. In January 2020, Sebastian said he is considering retiring. He followed this up however, by stating that he is not going to retire at this time.
