Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) is a creator, professional reviewer and bonafide influencer with millions of followers across social media channels (18.5M subscribers on Youtube, 6.2M on X, 4.8M on Instagram etc). His reviews are honest, sometimes negative, and indeed, influential.
Marques got a lot of grief last week for publishing a negative review of the Humane AI Pin, a new hardware device created by ex Apple execs, after calling it “the worst product” he’s ever reviewed.
Critics said Marques has a responsibility before trashing a product that is pushing the boundaries of technology (but also raised millions of dollars, and is a business at the end of the day).
For example see here from Daniel Vassallo:
“I find it distasteful, almost unethical, to say this when you have 18 million subscribers. Hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility. Potentially killing someone else’s nascent project reeks of carelessness. First, do no harm.”
Or Alex Finn:
“MKBHD bankrupted a company in 41 seconds,” referring to the opening of his video. Finn later added, “If this video never came out, they would have sold so many more.”
So, who’s in the right? Can a reviewer be critical without drawing fire?
Following the backlash, Marques published a response, asking the question: can bad reviews really kill tech products? “All that any honest review actually does is just accelerate whatever was already going on”
It’s hard to do the right thing for everyone
Allow me to take you back to Dec 2004, when I started this very blog, VC Cafe. I used to cover every single round of funding of Israeli startups. It was a one man operation and not so easy to keep up with the news, but one of my motivations for starting the blog was to provide news on Israel in English that show the incredible innovation taking place in the market…
One day I ‘scooped’ a funding round in a company that has since been acquired. The page was under construction, it was a big round, but I managed to piece together that it’s an Israeli startup and I put together an amazing post, with screenshots etc. To be polite, I emailed admin@company.com, webmaster@company.com, etc and said I’m going to publish this and ask if they have any comments.
The founder emailed me right away and said “great detective work”. he asked if I could give him 48 hours before I publish as the only have one chance to launch properly, and they’re not ready yet. I said sure, no problem, as long as I’m the first writing about them I don’t mind. 24 hours later, a post came out on Techcrunch. I emailed the founder 3 letters and a question mark (you can guess what they were).
He said: “Look, Techcrunch said that if they’re not the first to publish, they won’t cover the story”. I understood, that despite my hurt ego, if I thought I was helping startups by publishing news about them quicker than anyone else, I might actually be hurting them, because what they want is more exposure.
Are tech reviews ever really objective?
Going back to Marques – doing review videos is his thing, and he probably makes a good living from it. If every review is positive, he loses credibility. But at the same time, I’m not sure that new companies (especially devices) will rush to send him early versions of their product.
Ultimately, the fact that a Youtuber review is causing so much noise is a testament to the power of influencers in shaping public opinion, but while one voice can be influential, there are many voices out there.
Marques stayed true to his real customer – his own audience. My personal opinion – the AI Pin is a first version and an attempt to explore what comes after the smart phone, by very smart ex Apple professionals. But like many first products (see Apple Vision Pro) it’s not yet a mass consumer product and will require a few iterations.
I’m a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google’s first physical hub for startups.
I’m also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we’ve built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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