Kevin Stratvert

Kevin Stratvert is a popular educational YouTuber.

He has more than 2.7M subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel.

Introduction-

Kevin Stratvert was born in 1983 in New York City, United States; he grew up in Morristown, New Jersey.

His mother’s name is Renate Stratvert, and his father’s name is Bruce.

Kevin has a brother, Steven Stratvert.

Growing up, Kevin was into basketball but after his father bought a family computer, he became interested in computers.

At a young age, he used to often play computer games like ‘SimCity,’ and ‘Transport Tycoon;’ these games taught him a valuable lesson of the power of compounding, which later helped him in his investments.

Education-

In 2002, Kevin finished his schooling from Morristown High School, New Jersey.

Then, in the same year, he joined Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, to study for a degree in Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA).

Here, Kevin majored in Business and minored in German.

He graduated in 2006 with High Distinction.

A teenage entrepreneur-

While in his middle school, Kevin was interested in the web; at the time, the web was growing rapidly with many people getting online, and AOL was the prominent internet provider.

At the time, as there weren’t social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, people used to express themselves by setting up their own websites.

Kevin got fascinated by websites and web pages; he created his own website in the late 1990s and started building websites for local businesses.

Eventually, he realised that even though he was earning a one-time fee from customers for setting up websites, he wouldn’t earn recurring revenue from them and so, he decided to start a web hosting company, by which he can earn a recurring income.

So, in October 1999, at 15, Kevin launched his web hosting company, ‘eMegaWeb.com,’ in Morristown; at that time, he was studying in high school.

He started with just a couple of customers and eventually, gained many customers from across the world.

Also, people started reselling on his behalf and his business never looked back.

At that time, with 120 customers, ‘eMegaWeb.com’ used to make a revenue of $24K and profit of $16K per year.

Running a web hosting company exposed Kevin to both the technical and business sides; he bought his own server and hosted the accounts on it, he did marketing, accounting, and advertised in The New York Times and various alumni magazines.

In July 2006, after running the company for six years and ten months, he sold his company to his friend.

Kevin used to run four blogs, ‘Unlimited Net Worth,’ ‘Sheet Music Hits,’ ‘Kevin’s Wolverine Fan Page,’ and ‘Hail to the Victors.’

Honing skills-

Through running his web hosting company, Kevin observed that he loved both running a business and technical aspects.

As at that time, he was more inclined towards the business side, he chose to study BBA from University of Michigan.

While studying at the university, Kevin took technical courses like C++, database courses.

Career; meeting Bill Gates-

From June 2004 to July 2004, he worked as an Operations Management Intern at Spedition-Lühmann GMBH, Cuxhaven, Germany.

While studying at university, Kevin noticed Microsoft conducting interviews and so, he submitted his resume.

He faced the marketing interview; his experience with ‘eMegaWeb.com’ helped him in the interview.

From May 2005 to August 2005, in between his junior and senior years at the university, Kevin interned at Microsoft in Redmond and worked on a variety of projects.

While interning at Microsoft, he along with around 50 interns, got invited to Bill Gates’s house overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.

Here, they had dinner, and Kevin got a chance to explore Bill Gates’s house and interact with him.

After graduating from university, in August 2006, he joined Microsoft as an Associate Product Manager in Redmond and started working on Managed Exchange Server, Link (which evolved into Microsoft Teams), and PR.

Kevin worked for a total of 14 years at Microsoft in various roles like Search Account Manager, Global Process Manager, Product Manager II, and Senior Product Manager.

YouTube channel-

While working as a full-time Product Manager at Microsoft, he noticed that most of the people needed to wear an IT hat.

And they were expected to use new software tools and complicated programs and these overwhelmed people and sometimes Kevin too.

So, he realized an opportunity to educate people about these tools; at the time, he used to also personally explain the tools to his colleagues.

Kevin realized that teaching people one-on-one isn’t feasible; so, he decided to produce tech videos, as they are an excellent teaching medium, scalable, and can reach a lot of people.

Initially, he used to publish random videos on to his eponymous YouTube channel, which was started on 8 January 2007; on 20 September 2016, he published his first tutorial video, ‘How to Use Your Phone as a Mic.’

Even though initially his tutorial videos were receiving only a few hundred views, he persisted, as he liked teaching people.

Quitting Microsoft for YouTube-

While working at Microsoft, Kevin used to follow Jeff Bezos and read the book, ‘The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.’

While reading this book, he came across the concept of ‘The Regret Minimization Framework,’ which encourages one to follow their dreams by visualizing one to be in their eighties and have no regrets while looking back at life.

Kevin was hooked to this concept and as in his high school, he started a web hosting business and scaled it from nothing to having more than a hundred customers and loved the experience, he thought that if he didn’t start a business again, he would regret this in his eighties.

Even though he loved working at Microsoft, he loved the ownership mentality of running his own business even more.

So, Kevin decided to once again become an entrepreneur and this time around, scale his business bigger than his previous web hosting business; he decided to work on his YouTube channel full-time and scale it as a business.

While working at Microsoft, he used to spend just 20% of his time for his YouTube channel and work on it on Sundays, and on nights during the weekdays and dedicate 80% of his time to Microsoft.

But Kevin was earning more through his YouTube channel than his regular job.

So, he decided to become a full-time YouTuber and grow his channel even bigger.

So, on 17 July 2020, Kevin quit his job at Microsoft and became a full-time YouTuber.

He was confident of his decision as he had several fallbacks, his wife has been working in Microsoft, he made good savings and investments, and he used to receive job offers from Google and Facebook.

While working at Microsoft, Kevin helped people by developing software and products, but he loved helping people on a more personal level through his YouTube channel.

Being successful-

As of February 2024, he has 2.74M subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel, 1M followers on Instagram, and 313K followers on his Facebook page.

Kevin earns from a variety of sources like advertisements, and ‘Super Thanks’ on YouTube, affiliate marketing, selling ‘Excel for Beginners’ course, and sponsorships.

He has a website.

Kevin was featured on Windows Central, CNBC, Fast Company, and GeekWire.

At 33, he became a millionaire.

Personal life-

Kevin is married to Kerry.

Kerry Stratvert works as a Principal PM Manager at Microsoft.

While working at Microsoft, Kevin met her in a Microsoft Connector bus and in May 2014, proposed to her at Discovery Park, Seattle, Washington.

This couple has two children.

Kevin’s favourite TV show is Shark Tank, and he lives in Seattle, Washington, United States.

He is a polyglot as he knows English, French, and German.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Kevin Stratvert?

Share with me in the comment section below.