Innovator, Entrepreneur Carter Sharer Engineers Viral Content
By Elizabeth Speed
Media Inquiries- Interim Director of Communications, MCS
- 412-268-9982
Carter Sharer thought after he graduated from Carnegie Mellon University that he would be making robots or working on self-driving cars. Instead, he is making wildly successful videos that engage millions of viewers worldwide.
Featuring oversized toys, wacky endurance competitions with big prize money, funny gimmicks, adventures, harmless-but-hair-raising stunts and his car collection, Sharer’s YouTube videos are joyful, imaginative and popular.
Sharer graduated from the Mellon College of Science in 2016 and today has more than 10 million subscribers on @CarterSharer and millions more for his channels devoted to shorts, his vlog and other affiliated creators.
Behind the scenes, it’s not all fun and games. There is some serious science behind it.
A member of the swim team and a participant in buggy, he started as a physics student and graduated with a student-defined major in physical and digital systems. The strategy to make his content popular relied on his knowledge of algorithms and solving difficult problems that he also used while working on mechatronics, robotics and automation engineering.
“I applied those lessons to reverse-engineer entertainment,” Sharer said. “I methodically went through aspects of video engagement because YouTube is just an algorithm, and I wanted to figure out how it worked. We cracked the code and had explosive growth.”
Today, his channel is just one of the entities that comprise his content creation company, Team RAR. The company focuses on making “Rare and Ridiculous” social media for various Team RAR channels or clients.
“I created a whole business model by bringing in other people, training them on the skills to share my success and jump-start other careers,” he said. “I’m driven by a need for pushing the boundaries and a love for thinking outside the box.”
Training for Influencing
“If I didn’t go to CMU and had started YouTube four years earlier, I don’t think I would have had the same level of success,” Carter said. “CMU shaped me as a person, set me up to jump into this huge opportunity and make the right decisions along the way.”
