Finding Founders

Adorian had dabbled in Youtube fame before, but it wasn’t until he checked his phone after school to 40,000 new followers that he realized the true potential and speed of the online world. I mean imagine…in 2009, twitter was only 3 years old and the hashtag was even younger. Amidst working on high school homework and filming SMOSH-inspired videos, Adorian had somehow stumbled on the opportunity of a lifetime— he’d be one of twitter’s first non-celebrity creators. Now at 3.5 million followers on TikTok and more than 90,000 YouTube subs, Adorian is a seasoned internet veteran and self-proclaimed ‘facts guy’. You may have seen his multi-million view videos on your feed before, as he teaches followers how to escape bee attacks and what came first: sharks or saturn’s rings? But it wasn’t all fun edits and trivia questions. In his journey through the early internet landscape, Adorian ran into swindlers, lawsuits, and even an early case of cancel culture. Growing up as one of the first ‘chronically online’ species,