Wo ist eigentlich Manu?

Hey guys and welcome

to the Manu channel. It still feels somewhat

unusual not to start with "Hey guys and

welcome to Hardware Deals" here,

and by now it's almost

unusual to be making a video here.

I mean, this is actually the

Hardware Deals section, and I have

n't been seen here for a while, so I

think it's really about

time for this video. It

feels like every

hardware deals video now has top comments.

Either where is Manu, is he still alive? Is

he completely out? Or, my personal

favorite, did Manu enter a monastery? First of all, to put your mind at

ease. No, I

am not in a monastery and I have never been

in a monastery, although I

must admit that a little peace and quiet

might not be so bad sometimes

. I've noticed that a

lot of you have been

asking for a while now what's going on with me

and why I'm hardly ever seen in Hardware Deals posts anymore

. And quite

honestly, I actually wanted to

give you an update much earlier

and not keep you waiting so long

, but for me personally it's

not such a simple video. To be

honest, I was kind of putting it off

. Not because

anything hugely dramatic happened

or anything, but rather because

so much has

changed recently and I had to

sort things out myself, figure out how to

put it all into a video, and yes,

I also feel a bit guilty

. I built up a YouTube channel over 11 years

and then suddenly there were

no videos for two, or now almost three, months. But I think that

before there's any more speculation about

whether something has happened to me or where

I am, I'll just take you with me today

and tell you quite openly what's been going on with

me lately

and what's going to be going on in the near future

. But in order for you to fully understand,

we need to take a little trip down memory lane to

how it all started here on the channel

, how everything began, and yes,

what has happened since then. That's quite a lot

. The channel recently

celebrated its 11th birthday. I've always been

super enthusiastic about gaming and hardware,

and I think that came mainly

from my older brother,

who is almost 15 years older than me and

was himself totally into gaming and

hardware. That means that even

as a child I always looked over his shoulder

when he was playing games or

tinkering with the PC, and much to the

displeasure of my parents, he

always provided me with games. My brother

even had his

own PC shop here in the order back then, and of course he helped

me assemble my first computer

. I think

I was about 10 or 11 years old then. The

graphics card, if I remember correctly, was

the GeForce 4 Titanium 4200,

if I've got it right, and

I always

secretly played GTA Way City on that thing. Later on, I was always

automatically the type of person people went to

when it came to PCs.

Many of you probably feel the same way

here in this hardware community. Within

the family, of course, but also among

friends and acquaintances, basically

everywhere. If someone needed a new

computer, the answer was always,

relatively quickly, "Ask Manu, he

knows all about that." And above all,

people kept coming to me with the same question

. Can you recommend or assemble a PC for me for x €,

or

maybe even build one for me? Or hey,

I need a monitor for X.

At some point, I thought to myself, if you get

asked this so often,

why don't you just start a

blog where you do exactly that? So,

gaming PC recommendations in all

price ranges, accessory recommendations, because

there are certainly many more

people who are also looking for one.

The homepage hardwedeals.com, which existed

before the YouTube channel, was followed

relatively quickly by the YouTube channel,

and of course that was a

very lucky time, because in 2015 there was

n't that much

hardware content on YouTube, and above

all, YouTube

really pushed small channels back then. So,

as I said, there's always a bit of

luck involved, especially when it comes to

getting started with the content. I mean,

look at the first Hardware

Deals video again, it's still

online, it wasn't exactly a stellar performance,

and then there were two years of

videos that consisted almost entirely of voiceovers and

screenshots. So, those of

you who are absolute OGs might

still remember that.

Otherwise, just watch the oldest video

here. Eventually, I

actually picked up a camera

and, more

importantly, probably created your

favorite format, or at least my

favorite format, namely #gamingrott

. In 2017, the first video about

a pre-built junk PC came out, and yes, at that

time pre-built PCs were really 99%

absolute garbage. So, it really wasn't

difficult to find content for videos back then

. And it must have been around 2018

. That's where I first

heard of Dubaro. I

discovered a pre-built PC at My Deals and

thought, wow, I think this is the

first pre-built PC that isn't crap.

It was properly configured and the

price was right too, which somehow made me want to get to the

bottom of things, so I just

called and I

got the managing

director Kai on the phone, who is

now a very good friend of

mine, simply because it was a one-

man operation back then. But nobody

else was working, and somehow

we got along so well on the phone

and it worked so well

that at the end of the call the

Hardware Deals Edition at Dubaro was

born, which has now become

commonplace, but back then

it was truly unheard of. Good

gaming PCs with good configurations at a

fair price. Exactly what

Dubaro stands for and what has

made Dubaro successful. Back then, of

course, I did everything myself from

home. So you can

imagine, my two-room apartment was

more of a benchmark, kitchen, storage and office

than a typical apartment. There was just

a bed lying around somewhere, and somehow it's cool to think

back to that. Especially

because the whole thing has simply

become enormous. Your latest update is

basically from the last studio tour, since we had just

moved and Basti had

started working for us, and that was already

huge. In the meantime, we've moved into

a second floor in the same building,

and we're now at

employee number 11. So it's growing

and growing and growing, and that's all incredibly cool,

which

makes me incredibly proud, especially

because we can all

earn our living doing what

we love. It does

n't get any better than this. I basically turned my hobby into a profession,

and then the whole thing grew

so big. I don't think I need to tell you again that Dubaro and

Hardware Deals have been very closely linked from the very beginning.

Two years ago, Kai and I made the decision to

take the whole thing to a new level and build a real

corporate group together. I've

already mentioned in the studio

that I've invested in Dubaro,

but in the meantime,

significantly more has happened.

Mere participation is far too

neglected. Today I am one of the managing

directors of the United Gamers Group, which is the very

group of companies that

includes Hardware Deals and Dubaro.

But now they also have Silentware and

Memory PC, with a total of well over

100 employees. So, besides everything that's

happened here with hardware deals,

new employees, a new office, and

everything else that's been added, on the

other hand, a tremendous amount more has happened in the last two years

that you can't even see.

With Silentware, we built a company

for components such as cases

and coolers, and with Memory PC, we

also integrated another complete company

. And quite honestly, sometimes

I can hardly believe that it

all really happened in just these two years

. Time has passed so incredibly

quickly, and of course

my day only has 24 hours, so quite a

few things have been left undone,

e.g. YouTube videos. Anyone who

regularly follows this channel will have

noticed that I've been

appearing less and less. And to be

honest, it didn't just

start yesterday, but actually

two years ago. You can probably

imagine how much time it took to

build all of that in parallel

with YouTube. And what I

simply have to say at this point is that

I am incredibly grateful to have

such an awesome team here that

I can rely on

and that really great

work is being done here without me having to be involved in everything

myself.

Basti has truly enriched the company with his expertise

. I mean,

if you think back to what our

tests and benchmarks looked like, say,

3 years ago, and how

detailed and elaborate our

testing is today, it's simply a huge

difference, a huge development,

and it just wouldn't have worked with me alone

. And how cool are

Tobi's videos when he

goes somewhere on the cover and

buys things with a hidden camera, and

generally the videos that are being made here now

, it just makes me

incredibly proud. These are simply

people I can rely on,

and it wouldn't have

worked any other way. And I can totally

understand that many of you

may have subscribed to the channel at some point because of my

video and

then find it strange when

suddenly there are fewer and fewer videos with me

. But the reality is

simply that I now have a huge

amount to do behind the scenes, and that's

not going to change in the foreseeable future

. Quite the opposite, the

trend is actually that

you'll see me less and less over time. And

I want to be completely honest, not

because I have to, but because the topics

I'm currently working on are just

incredibly fun for me. After

11 years of making videos, it's really

refreshing to be able to

deal with entrepreneurial topics or other topics in general, such as product development

. For example, consider

Silentware. We released some really powerful

CPU coolers, which I personally

tested extensively. And

then it's just extremely awesome and

extremely fulfilling to see when

people like Roman or Ben write

reviews and they also think the stuff is

awesome. That's what's

really driving me right now, and that's why,

for me personally,

at least as the face of the company, the videos have

taken a bit of a backseat, which of

course doesn't mean that I'm not keeping up with a

lot here and

not thinking along with many topics.

And I think it was simply

important to tell you what's been going on with me,

and especially what's been going on for the

last two years, because in the

end you only see that I

'm in the videos less often and you're

probably wondering, has he lost interest

or is Manu in a monastery? And as I

said, that's obviously not the case. My

heart still beats for this

YouTube channel, where it all

began. That's obvious, isn't it?

This video is currently airing on

Manu's channel. I set that up years ago

for everything that does

n't quite fit into the hardware deals category

. So, for example, for a video

that I just quickly record, like this one,

for a real talk video,

or simply for things that are a bit more

personal. And I have a

feeling that I might do this more often in the future

, simply because it's not so

time-consuming and you might then

get a little more of an idea of ​​what's going on with me and at the

company. So, basically,

a little more Manu content. If you're interested, feel

free to

subscribe to this channel

. And otherwise, I simply hope

that you can now

understand the whole thing a little better,

because it was quite a lot and

that the question of where Manu actually is has

now been answered for the time being. My

dears, I hope you enjoyed the video

. We'll definitely see each other again soon

, either here on the

Manu channel or of course in a

Hardware Deals video. Of course, you'll still

see me there at least occasionally.