James Hobson, 30, kitcHener

This engineering grad built a multi-million-dollar company making elaborate superhero props

i joined youtube in 2006 to share parkour videos and backflip tutorials with my friends. Within a few years, I was also teaming up with my friend and now–business partner, Ian Hillier, on engineering projects—like converting a regular Honda into an electric car—and we started sharing those, too. Ian and I studied mechanical engineering at Conestoga College, and went on to work in our field full time.

In 2012, I rebranded as the Hacksmith. I made working prototypes of props inspired by superhero movies and video games. For the first two years I didn’t have much traction. Then, in 2014, I had my first viral video: I used pneumatic cylinders to make an exoskeleton that allowed me to curl 170 pounds. In three days, the video had over 500,000 views, and I appeared on the Discovery Channel, where I curled 275 pounds.

In late 2015, I quit my engineering job. I wanted to give YouTube 100 per cent of my attention. I had moved to downtown Kitchener, and I was working out of my 1,300-square-foot garage. I only had a few months of expenses saved up, so I withdrew $15,000 from my RRSP. A few months later, Ian quit his job to manage the business side of our operation and help with some of the projects.

The next year, we built a replica of Captain America’s electromagnetic shield, with a 3,000pound lifting force. We released the video right before Captain America: Civil War came out. Within a few weeks, we grew from 100,000 to 500,000 subscribers, and by the end of the year we were at just under a million. Suddenly, we were making money from ads. Sponsorship deals rolled in from companies like LG, Audible and Google, and Hollywood came calling. In 2017, when War for the Planet of the Apes came out, I travelled to New Zealand to test out their motion-capture suits, and last summer we made a working neuralyzer prop for a Men in Black: International campaign.

Now we have 11 full-time staff—video editors, engineers and a production manager. Each video takes 300-plus hours of labour to produce, and at any given time, we have half a dozen projects on the go. We’ve only received one noise complaint—but we did have two jet engines going in the backyard.

We make anywhere from $1 to $10 per thousand views, so if a video gets a million views, we can get paid up to $10,000. I also do talks and keynotes. We sell merch and we have a Patreon page. More than half of our revenue comes from sponsorships. We’ve doubled our gross revenue three years in a row, and we’re putting out more than half a million dollars in yearly salaries. That’s pretty neat. And last year we moved into a 13,000-square-foot facility in an industrial part of Kitchener.

It’s kind of fun being a quasi-celebrity. Last year our team was in Atlanta for work. We were driving on the highway, and the guy driving next to us yelled out the window, “Hey, Hacksmith, I’m a huge fan!” We ended up throwing him some merch through the window.