Justin Tse’s life in the spotlight

If you’re a hockey fan or a football fan or a basketball fan, July is often regarded as downtime. Free agency and entry drafts have passed, yet training camps and preseason are still on the horizon. Apparently, though, nobody told that to Justin Tse. His LinkedIn looks more like Drake’s Instagram. Similar to @champagnepapi, he has snaps amongst the A-list. Here he is with Charles Leclerc, the Monaco-born star of Ferrari’s Formula 1 racing team, motorsports’ premier operation. Here he is at Wimbledon, tennis’ premier tournament, and the setting where David Beckham’s suits go viral every year. Tse was at these world-class shindigs on behalf of the company he founded and acts as CEO, Feature Media: a YouTube channel turned in-house media corporation.  

“In the last month or so especially, there's been a lot of boxes that have been checked off in terms of global opportunities,” Tse tells me over Zoom. His camera is off but his profile picture situates him at New York architectural wonder Hudson Yards, further fuelling the globetrotting image. He continues by sharing that he recently toured Apple’s campus and even crossed paths with Tim Cook. I wondered if he asked the juggernaut’s CEO to install a store in his hometown — something Tse once bemoaned to Collectively Inc: “Being a content creator in Canada has its difficulties. Logistically, certain products can be challenging to obtain — mostly due to lengthy delivery times and customs charges,” he said. “However, I have noticed continuous improvements around these shipping hurdles over the past few years. Being on a small island (Victoria, B.C.) creates more challenges, including the absence of an Apple Store!"

From the outside looking in, this challenge doesn’t seem to have slowed him down at all. Tse and Feature Media have seen a meteoric rise from the early days in his family home. Put simply — and borrowing the lede from a 2019 Vancouver Sun feature — “Justin Tse is living the dream.” It’s a dream that first manifested when he was a teenager. Tse was born and raised in Victoria. Like many a Canadian kid, he first fell in love with hockey. But the sport was swiftly brushed aside when a distinctly mid-2000s innovation broke onto the scene. The first iPod Touch rocked Tse’s world. The release also coincided with what could be looked at as the birth of the YouTuber — two Silicon Valley innovations bouying each other as iPod reviews became plentiful on the platform. He was hooked through watching these videos. Tse started to think that he could make them himself, maybe even better. 

Fast forward a decade later, and Tse has more than proved his aptitude for content creation. From a kid in his parents house prepping massive blasts of cold emails in the hopes he could procure a gadget to review — Tse once told Douglas Magazine’s Aldyn Chwelos that he got his start sending one hundred emails to PR reps every Sunday — Tse is now getting those cold emails sent to him. For me, it felt like I was on the other end of a Zoom call with a former child actor who’s now a Hollywood leading man. With this in mind, I was curious how Tse would reflect on his life. 

“It definitely feels like I've been in the industry for a long time,” he says. “Because, I guess, it is half of my life. But at the same time, I think it is getting started in terms of the opportunity [I have]. Personal and business goals continuously change. The industry is changing, there are new interests, there are always ways that technology is involved in [our] lives, and can be leveraged in different ways. So, one thing that we're very good at is finding that new leverage. How can we bring our strengths to the forefront, to be able to work on cool opportunities?” Tse eventually got bored of just reviewing iPods. Case in point: the growth of Feature Media and stops in Montreal to chat with Shell about the gas in Formula 1 cars (there’s a 99 percent similarity between what’s in Leclerc’s gas tank and your car’s gas tank, Tse excitedly tells me) or hobnobbing with the sponsors of Wimbledon. The way he sees the world now (and thus, tech) is not so much through its gadgets but through the connectivity innovation can garner. The way Formula 1 elicits a global audience and shared community differs from the often solo journey of scrolling on an iPhone.

But I still couldn't help but remain curious about how Tse connected with himself. As he pointed out, he has spent half his life as an influencer, which is a microscope few can say they’ve been under for so long. In an interview with nwsppr in 2020, he was asked who Justin Tse was in real life. “I don’t know,” Tse replied. “Almost everything I do is some form of work.” To help him out, there’s this, at least: Justin Tse is an innovator. When I asked him how he makes sure Feature Media’s growth is sustainable, he returned serve quickly before becoming more introspective.

“Constantly innovating,” Tse starts. “I usually don't really like change: ‘Do the same thing and [be] pretty firm on it’ was definitely the way that I ran things for quite a few years, especially when it was just myself.” (Feature Media is now a five-person operation). “But I think there's been a few times where we realized that we do have to innovate. I get bored pretty easily and it's very hard for me to get excited about something. So, riding that wave is how we continue to build the company.”

In terms of that day-to-day operation of Feature Media, Tse notes that the only constant in this decade of his life is that it never really stops. There are always new campaigns to craft or new opportunities to seek. Plus, there’s the worldwide aspect of the company now: “Travel’s a whole other ballgame” according to Tse. Although born and raised in Victoria, it’s perhaps due to all the stamps in his passport that it’s taken Tse some time to effort to be a member of the city’s tech community. “I actually only left the house to go to the airport for a while,” he confesses. “But, in the past few years, we've definitely started to build our network a little bit in town and get a sense of the tech scene and the companies around here.” (Feature Media linked up with local online auto sales startup Vinn Automotive last year, for example). “I think it is a growing market for sure,” Tse says of Victoria’s tech scene. But for his company and himself, “it's more so just being part of the scene and then building a bit of a network here and there.”

That’s not to say he’s without a home base. Tse’s Victoria condos have routinely undergone renovations, which inspired him in both content (a tour of Tse’s office loft has seven-figure views) and a new arm of Feature Media, Feature Collection. Two of the properties Tse and co. have purchased and renovated for Feature Collection will be on Airbnb this year. But they’re not done there. The team has plans to continue growing that division, perhaps even with something like a lake house or vacation spot. Yet, it’ll be far from a remote, off-grid cabin. This is a tech-obsessed crowd, after all. Sponsors of Feature Media campaigns range from mattress manufacturers to vacuum juggernaut Dyson. Feature Collection properties, then, have top-of-the-line beds and hair dryers. 

“It almost feels like we're working in three different industries at once,” Tse says. That’s because he is. In addition to Feature Media and the new real estate division, he runs a menswear store called Kinsvale which has a retail location at Victoria’s 543 Johnson Street. Yet, they don’t seem to conflict. If anything, the trio are fueling each other. Feature Media is producing 100 videos a year and its Instagram schedule is also starting to become a full-time business of its own. “When all those come together, it's pretty much like working three jobs and you're trying to innovate in all three of them. But, also, keeping up and pushing all three of them to the highest point,” he points out.

It all seems very consistent with what I’ve come to learn about Tse. If you’re going to travel for work, it may as well be to the Canadian Grand Prix or to Wimbledon. If you’re gaining some traction reviewing iPods on YouTube, you may as well turn it into a multi-million-dollar media company. If you’re going to the lake house, it may as well be loaded with smart TVs and gaming consoles. And if you find your passion, you may as well give it your all. As Tse mentioned, work never really stops for him and Feature Media. I don’t think he wants it to, either.