Mrwhosetheboss Interview Highlights: Arun Maini on Scripts and Shorts

Arun Maini’s story sounds like a lucky break: a teenager reviews his first smartphone, a hologram trick goes viral, and a decade later he runs one of YouTube’s biggest tech channels. His own account is less romantic. He describes years of intermittent uploads, scripts that take 45 hours to write, a stretch when YouTube left him overweight and sleeping three hours a night, and a habit he still recommends: treat the comment section as free feedback.

This post is for creators who want to know how a review channel becomes a storytelling channel, for marketers working with tech reviewers, and for fans curious about the team behind the videos. It covers his start, his scripts and team, Shorts, sponsors, his advice and what he’s doing as of October 2026.

Who is Mrwhosetheboss?

Mrwhosetheboss is the YouTube name of Arun Maini, a British technology creator born in Nottingham in 1995 whose channel of phone reviews, explainers and big-budget tech experiments is one of the largest tech channels on YouTube.

His YouTube account dates from April 2011, and he went full time in 2017, after graduating and turning down a job at the accounting firm PwC. Mashable reported in September 2025 that he runs the channel from his London home with a full-time team of 12, and that his wife, Dhrisha Mehta, is its general manager.

How did Mrwhosetheboss get started?

“That all changed when I was 14 years old. My brother gave me my first smartphone: a ZTE Blade. When I received the phone, I absolutely fell in love with it. I studied every element of the phone I could, and I decided to make a video about it.”

— Arun Maini, Business Insider (as-told-to essay), December 2021

Before the phone, he mostly made video game videos. He told Wired in 2022 that his first camera was “my dad’s old camcorder, and all you’d see in the video is my other hand holding the phone I was talking about.”

“The first few years were very intermittent. I didn’t have the money or contacts to be able to always test the latest and greatest tech, so I would resort to reviewing products I already owned, or could borrow from others.”

— Arun Maini, TechRound, January 2020

The turn came in August 2015 with a tutorial on turning a smartphone into a makeshift hologram projector. He told TechRound that his videos were averaging 3,000 to 5,000 views at the time; this one reached 300,000 overnight and eventually 20 million, and the channel went from 35,000 to 70,000 subscribers in a week.

“While viral videos don’t make you a YouTuber, they can show you what’s possible, and that probably changed my and my family’s attitude towards what I was doing.”

— Arun Maini, Mashable, September 2025

The hit came after four years of reviewing whatever he could get his hands on, and he treats it as proof of what was possible, not as the thing that made him. If you have no review units, review what you own and borrow the rest.

Why did Mrwhosetheboss turn down a job at PwC?

“I hated it … I was sitting in meetings, and I was just doodling ideas for videos for when I got home. And when I looked at the two options on paper, it didn’t really make sense to do YouTube, but it was one of those things where one route excites me, one route doesn’t. I don’t want to regret for the rest of my life not trying.”

— Arun Maini, on his PwC internship, Mashable, September 2025

The eight-week internship led to an entry-level offer of about £35,000, he told Business Insider in 2021. Until then, he told Mashable, everything had been steering him towards consulting: you pick the subjects you’re good at, a degree that matches, and you drift.

He told TechRound in 2020 that university felt like living two lives, and that the fix was compromise: getting up two hours early to film in the park, then editing in the evening. He left Warwick in 2017 with a first-class degree and a channel that had grown from 9,000 to about 300,000 subscribers. So he didn’t leap from nothing: by then he had an audience, a routine and, Mashable reported, enough income to justify the switch.

How does Mrwhosetheboss make a video?

“On average, it takes me about 45 hours to write a script for my videos. … It can take as little as 20 hours to prepare a script, or closer to 70. This includes several readthroughs to make sure my sentences are concise, to the point, and informative for the viewer.”

— Arun Maini, Business Insider (as-told-to essay), December 2021

He called himself a perfectionist in the same essay and said he spends about as long again on the visuals, from zooming in on a phone camera to check a claim to re-recording lines. Most videos then ran 10 to 20 minutes, made with a camera operator and an editor he found through LinkedIn connections and general outreach, with a fourth hire due in 2022. By 2022 the cameras were Sony models chosen for their autofocus, he told Wired, and by September 2025 the team was 12 full-time staff working from his home, Mashable reported.

That choice is deliberate. Asked whether he regretted a username picked by a teenager, he tied its imperfection to the way the channel is filmed.

“There’s actually something very personable about the imperfection of it. You know, the same reason why we don’t hire a massive garage and turn it into a studio. We just film videos in our house. And it’s actually a big part of why people were drawn to our channel. Until we hit about 20 million subscribers, everything was shot in an attic, and that attic was my bedroom.”

— Arun Maini, Mashable, September 2025

Compare our Linus Sebastian interview for a tech channel that went the other way and grew into a much larger company. The useful part for you is where the time goes: Maini spends it on the script, and keeps the set simple.

Why does Mrwhosetheboss make tech videos for people who aren’t into tech?

“I aspire to make tech videos that apply to more than techies, they are for anyone to watch so they can start to enjoy the industry … I want to make every video better than the last.”

— Arun Maini, Tubefilter, May 2021

He told Tubefilter he wants videos with mass appeal, so that even people “like my mom will enjoy them.” His channel’s About text promises “the most FUN and USEFUL Tech videos on the Planet” as of October 2026.

He told Business Insider in 2021 that he stuck to smartphones early on to avoid a fragmented audience, then branched into laptops, cars and even a vacuum cleaner once the following could carry it, along with opinion pieces on subjects such as the metaverse.

In 2020 he told TechRound his next strategy was scale: “instead of unboxing one smartphone in a video, I might unbox ten.” In 2022 he toured MrBeast’s North Carolina headquarters on camera and counted $2.9 million of tech inside, Tubefilter reported; both were then represented by Night Media. Our MrBeast interview covers where that kind of escalation leads. In August 2024 Maini and the YouTuber Matthew Perks built a working iPhone 15 Pro Max replica over two metres tall to celebrate overtaking Apple’s YouTube channel in subscribers, and Guinness World Records recognised it as the largest smartphone replica.

“Growing up, I would disappear into the library for hours to read the latest Guinness World Records books, so to achieve an award myself feels absolutely surreal.”

— Arun Maini, Guinness World Records, September 2024

Asked by Mashable in 2025 whether the bigger stunts were a MrBeast effect, he put them down to the nature of YouTube and the pressure to make each video bigger than the last. The lesson is that the topic can be narrow while the audience is broad. Explain a phone so a parent enjoys it, and your ceiling rises.

What does Mrwhosetheboss say about Shorts and long videos?

“And the crazy thing about that shorts channel which is just like 60 second videos, is that that has now overtaken the main channel in views after one year. It’s on almost 2 billion which is just ludicrous.”

— Arun Maini, on his second channel, Wired Autocomplete Interview, October 2022

YouTube Shorts are short vertical videos that play in a swipeable feed. The channel he means is Mrwhosetheboss Plus, which opened in April 2021; as of October 2026, its YouTube page lists its uploads under a Shorts tab, with no separate Videos tab. He told Wired his most successful Shorts series was Tech Pranks, which shows viewers how to use technology to prank their friends. As of October 2026, Mrwhosetheboss Plus had 6.88 million subscribers and about 3.87 billion views, according to its YouTube page.

When YouTube’s official blog shared his Shorts tips in July 2022, his advice was to pick a subject you love. “This will ensure that you stick with it,” he said. By 2025 he was recommending Shorts as a low-cost way to find out whether YouTube suits you at all.

“Make [YouTube] Shorts in your spare time, and you’ll realize very quickly, either this isn’t for you, it’s too time-consuming, you hate editing, you hate being on camera, or you’ve got something here and you love the feedback cycle, and you can get better very quickly.”

— Arun Maini, Mashable, September 2025

A second channel is one way to try Shorts without changing what your main subscribers get, though YouTube says Shorts can’t hurt your long-form videos. Our guide to how the YouTube algorithm works explains how the two formats are ranked.

What does Mrwhosetheboss say about working with brands and review units?

“YouTubers can take a lot of money to just say nice things about a product. I try really hard for that to not be me. So like any time I do a sponsored video on a product, I will have actually asked that company to send that product beforehand before I sign the agreement to say I’m gonna cover it”

— Arun Maini, Wired Autocomplete Interview, October 2022

He was answering whether viewers can trust him, and pointed to a video he had made on that question a year earlier. For ordinary reviews, he lives with the product. “I review phones for my living. So any time a new Android phone comes out I will take out my sim card, put it into that phone, and then try to insert that phone into my life and see how well it fits,” he told Wired.

The record shows the line between sponsor and subject. In July 2025 his review of Nothing’s latest phone concluded it probably wasn’t worth its price, and the video’s sponsor was the personal data protection service Incogni, not Nothing, Tubefilter reported. He has also reported problems with brands’ products: in September 2022 he published a video reporting swollen batteries in several of his older Samsung phones. Trusted Reviews reported that Samsung had taken the phones back for analysis after he tweeted about it, and that he had heard nothing after 50 days; Engadget wrote that it wasn’t clear how broad the problem was. Our Marques Brownlee interview sets out how another reviewer handles the line between sponsors and reviews.

Affiliate links are labelled too. The description of his September 2026 iPhone 18 Pro review lists his favourite gadgets under the line “Not sponsored but these are affiliate links which help out the channel”, one reason he sits on our list of the top tech YouTubers. He told Business Insider in 2021 that his income is a mix of ad revenue and sponsorships, without giving figures.

If you’re a creator, write down your rule before the first deal arrives and disclose every paid placement, as our guide to disclosing affiliate links and sponsorships explains. If you’re a brand, expect a reviewer like Maini to ask for the product first.

What does Mrwhosetheboss say about the pressure of YouTube?

“I basically give myself a hundred days to turn my life around because it got to a stage a while ago where YouTube kind of caught up with me. I was overweight, I was sleeping three hours a night.”

— Arun Maini, Wired Autocomplete Interview, October 2022

He was describing a health reset he invited viewers to follow, with an 11pm bedtime and meditation before sleep. The pressure goes back further. In 2020 he told TechRound that once he had an audience, “there was a constant fear of drifting into irrelevance” whenever he took too long a break.

In the interviews we found, he doesn’t list early mistakes as such; this account of letting the channel run his health is the closest he comes. If you plan your schedule around launches, plan the recovery too.

What advice does Mrwhosetheboss give new creators?

“If someone asked me, ‘What’s the secret sauce?’ It’s literally: make a video. Doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad. Pay attention to the comments. Implement them. If they’re mean, then just take the nuggets and then implement those. Do that 500 times and you’re a good YouTuber.”

— Arun Maini, Mashable, September 2025

He told Mashable his advice to aspiring creators is “Don’t quit your day job,” and gave TechRound a longer version in 2020.

“It’s becoming increasingly competitive every day, and for anyone coming in now, my honest advice would be to approach it as a hobby. Hope that it grows, and really try to make it grow, but don’t expect it to, and be careful not to shut other doors to pursue YouTube, because there’s so much here that’s just not under your control.”

— Arun Maini, TechRound, January 2020

In 2021 he told Business Insider to try all kinds of videos, learn from the top creators once you know your subject, and think hard about who watches. Put together, it’s a loop: start small, publish often, read what viewers say, change one thing, publish again. He ran that loop for four years before the hologram video.

What is Mrwhosetheboss working on now?

As of October 2026, the main channel had 23 million subscribers and 1,939 videos, according to its YouTube page. His iPhone 18 Pro review went up on September 18, 2026, asking whether the new phones “cooked or flopped”.

Outside the channel, he scored the winning penalty for the YouTube Allstars against the Sidemen on April 18, 2026, in a charity match at Wembley that raised £6.2 million, Tubefilter reported. In August 2026 he announced the birth of his first child, according to Wikipedia. His website, as of October 2026, is a sign-up page that reads, “I’m planning some big things so if you’d like to be the first to know about them, drop your email here and I’ll ping you”. We found no public details of those plans.

“When I was growing up there were not a lot of Asian faces to aspire to.”

— Arun Maini, Asian Media Awards, October 2024

He said that on being named Best Video Channel in October 2024. A year later, Mashable made him one of five cover stories in its Mashable 101 list of creators shaping the internet.

What creators can learn from Mrwhosetheboss

Sources

• Interview with Arun Maini (Mrwhosetheboss), TechRound, January 2020
• Tech Guru ‘Mrwhosetheboss’ Signs With Night Media (Exclusive), Tubefilter, May 2021
• I turned down a finance job to become a YouTuber. Here’s how I grew to 9 million subscribers and made my hobby into a career., Business Insider, December 2021
• UK creators share their pro tips for creating amazing Shorts, YouTube Official Blog, July 2022
• MrBeast’s HQ is worth about $14.1 million. Tech reviewer Mrwhosetheboss got an inside look., Tubefilter, July 2022
• YouTuber says Samsung may have a problem with swelling phone batteries, Engadget, September 2022
• Samsung may have a swelling issue with older smartphone batteries, Trusted Reviews, September 2022
• Mrwhosetheboss Answers the Web’s Most Searched Questions, Wired, October 2022
• Tech YouTuber Mrwhosetheboss builds world’s largest scaled-up iPhone to break record, Guinness World Records, September 2024
• Mrwhosetheboss named Best Video Channel 2024, Asian Media Awards, October 2024
• Top 5 Branded Videos of the Week: Chicken Shorts and Kill Tony, with bonus Prime Day, Tubefilter, July 2025
• How YouTuber Arun Maini went from being a shy kid with a camcorder to 21 million subscribers, Mashable, September 2025
• The Mashable 101: These are the creators shaping the internet in 2025, Mashable, September 2025
• Sidemen soccer match raises £6.2 million, draws 2.2 million concurrent viewers during 20-goal thriller, Tubefilter, April 2026
• iPhone 18 Pro Review - My Last iPhone?, Mrwhosetheboss on YouTube, September 2026
• Mrwhosetheboss and Mrwhosetheboss Plus channel pages, YouTube, October 2026
• Mrwhosetheboss – Welcome to our website, Mrwhosetheboss.com, October 2026
• Mrwhosetheboss, Wikipedia, October 2026

What to do next

If Maini’s comment loop makes sense to you, judge other tech creators the same way: by what their recent videos do and how they disclose deals, not by subscriber counts alone. Our methodology explains how we check creators, and our creator lists put it into practice.

For the same questions put to other creators, browse more creator interviews, including our iJustine interview on 20 years of tech videos.