THE EARLY YEARS
“I grew up in Portland Oregon,
from there ended up going to
college at BYU in Utah and ended
up traveling the world as a You-
Tuber.” That’s the quick take from
the guy who says he loves what
he’s doing for a living. “I get to
travel and get to work with some
of the world best athletes. We film
in some of the most remarkable
and cool locations, and I get to
share that with everybody.”
Devin would say that he’s always
been involved in creating videos,
long before YouTube was even a
thing. “I got interested in snow-
boarding and started doing snow-
boarding videos. I was making
stop motion videos with Legos. I
was making kind of random, stu-
pid music videos with my friends
to any song that was popular.”
That was whenever his parents
would let him borrow their video
camera. When he wasn’t making
videos, he also loved watching ac-
tion movies and says his inspira-
tions are Steven Spielberg, Chris-
topher Nolan and J.J. Abrams.
“When college hit, I went to film
school at BYU because I wanted to
make Hollywood films like ‘Juras-
sic Park,’ which any kid dreams
of.” He says a shift came when,
“My roommate at the time, Jeff
Hartman said, ‘Devin, YouTube
is going to be the next big thing;
you should look into this.’” Devin
checked out this new web site and
was not very impressed. The year
was 2008 and the content was
definitely not Hollywood block-busters stuff. Mostly, he saw people’s home video
uploads and didn’t think much of it.
While still in college, he had the opportunity to
work with an up and coming company, Orabrush,
who wanted to get their product on the internet. Spe-
cifically, they wanted to upload the video to YouTube.
“We did this video and it ended up blowing up and
getting millions and millions of views. They started
selling millions and millions of product. I saw first
hand the power of advertising a product through so-
cial media using YouTube.” He says that this was his
first step in the YouTube world.
In 2009, Devin started his own YouTube channel
and an opportunity came for him to go to Hawaii for
a year and do a documentary with BYU Film School.
“While I was there, I had a lot of free time. I started
doing kind of fun, random things. The college kids
I was staying with were always looking for the next
adventure.” He shot and posted the adventure on his
channel, and the popularity grew. “We started getting
millions and millions of views and people all around
the world started contacting me. It opened up a world
of possibilities significantly faster than the traditional
route of going to film school, then going to LA and
looking to make it there.” In 2010, he renamed his
channel “Devin Super Tramp.”DEVIN SUPER TRAMP
TURNING STUNTS INTO PROFIT