Cody Ko

Cody Michael Kolodziejzyk (born 22 November 1990;, Polish: ), better known as Cody Ko, is a Canadian YouTuber, podcaster, comedian, and rapper.

His style of content is often crudely comedic and profane.

, his five YouTube channels have collectively earned over million subscribers and billion views.

Ko was born Cody Michael Kolodziejzyk in Calgary on 22 November 1990, the son of professional cyclist Greg Kolodziejzyk and his wife Helen.

He enrolled at Duke University in North Carolina after being recruited on their swimming and diving team.

At Duke, he joined a fraternity and became captain of the varsity team, but later regretted some of his fraternity experiences.

Ko graduated from Duke University in 2012 with a bachelor's degree in computer science.

The same year, he moved to Silicon Valley.

Ko shortened his professional surname from Kolodziejzyk early in his career, as his Polish surname was too difficult to spell and pronounce.

In March 2012, he began to develop the photo-sharing mobile app I'd Cap That, which automatically added meme-like captions to images.

It went viral and was the App Store's Free iOS App Of The Week in May, amassing over four million users in four months.

Ko wanted to join a startup and continue developing apps.

Ko first began uploading to Vine, a six-second video platform, in 2013.

He partnered with the now-defunct multi-channel network Fullscreen, with Mahzad Babayan becoming his full-time talent manager.

He credited the network and his background in computer engineering for his early success.

I'd Cap That was acquired several months later by a startup called Iddiction, and Ko worked there on the app for two years before quitting in 2014.

He also moved to San Francisco.

In May 2014, Ko and his friend Devon Townsend left on an eight-month backpacking trip in southeast Asia.

Throughout the trip, the pair created Vines and started several side projects for ad revenue and experience creating apps with other technologies such as Node.js.

The videos were unexpectedly viral and Ko became a popular figure on Vine.

He had amassed over 290 thousand followers by July.

Ko joined YouTube on 30 May 2014.

After Vine was discontinued, he shifted to YouTube content.

In January 2015, the two returned to the United States.

Moving to Los Angeles, they looked for software jobs and continued to make Vines.

Ko collaborated with comedian Hannibal Buress to promote Buress' Comedy Central show Why? with Hannibal Buress (2015).

By November 2015, he had almost two million followers on the platform.

Ko worked for the company Victorious for eight months and had less time to create content.

He also frequently had to leave midday for auditions.

His manager gave him a job as a senior iOS developer at her employer Fullscreen, where they would be more relaxed about him leaving midday for content creation as a social media company.

Ko contributed to the code for Fullscreen's subscription service.

At Fullscreen, Ko also met Noel Miller, a web designer from marketing and fellow Viner, by chance after they had previously talked online.

The pair became close and often created internet content on their lunch breaks.

In June 2016, Ko starred in the Vine-produced series Camp Unplug alongside twelve other Viners.

He quit his job at Fullscreen the next month, deciding that he could support himself on sponsorships alone.

After majoring in computer science at Duke University, Ko worked as a mobile developer and began to upload to Vine, garnering almost 2 million followers on the platform before it closed in 2017.

He shifted to uploading commentary videos on YouTube, where he and fellow YouTuber Noel Miller became popular co-hosting their reaction video series That's Cringe and the Tiny Meat Gang Podcast.

They also began a comedy rap group of the same name.

In 2019, influencer Jake Paul was criticized for accusing Ko of cyberbullying in his commentary videos, inadvertently causing Ko to gain 140,000 subscribers.

In 2021, Ko and Miller expanded their podcast into Tiny Meat Gang Studios, a comedy podcast network.