The rise of Jake Paul, the former Vine star who got married in a wild and crazy Las Vegas wedding to fellow YouTuber Tana Mongeau
Jake Paul was born on January 17, 1997, and grew up in a suburb of Cleveland with his parents and older brother (and fellow YouTuber), Logan.
The two brothers started making videos as children after their father gave them a video camera one year for Christmas.
Jake, who was 10 at the time, said he and his brother would film "comedic bits" around the house.
"We were posting them to YouTube and just generally having a good time, and the people at school thought we were funny," he told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer in 2016.
As a sophomore in high school, Jake Paul joined the wrestling team. He got "really serious" about it, and video making with his brother took a back seat.
Source: Cleveland Plain-Dealer
However, that changed when the video-sharing app Vine came out in 2012.
Paul said he downloaded it "the first day it came out," and he gradually rose in popularity on the app. By the time Vine shut down in early 2017, Paul had 5.3 million followers and nearly 2 billion video plays.
Source: Insider, Cleveland Plain-Dealer
"We didn't care what people thought. We were the loud brothers from Cleveland, kind of crazy, and that made us relatable," Paul said in a 2016 interview. "We were in the right place at the right time, and we were making more money than our parents before we knew it."
Source: Cleveland Plain-Dealer
When it came time for his senior year of high school, the younger Paul brother decided to finish his diploma online and move to Los Angeles with his older brother.
"We knew we had to move to Los Angeles if we wanted to pursue this as a full-time thing," Jake Paul said. "We immediately started taking acting and improv classes and making connections, while still doing the video thing."
Source: Cleveland Plain-Dealer
Paul's first film role came thanks to YouTube: He was cast in "Dance Camp," a movie the platform debuted on its paid streaming subscription service, YouTube Red.
He also scored small roles in films like "Mono" and "Airplane Mode," in which his brother was the main character.
Source: Mashable, Cleveland Plain-Dealer
Paul entered the mainstream when he was cast in 2015 as the main character in a Disney Channel show called "Bizaardvark."
Paul said his character, Dirk Mann, was "a perfect fit" for him. In the show, Dirk was an online video star that hosted a channel where he performed crazy stunts and challenges.
Source: Cleveland Plain-Dealer
As his acting career took off, Paul formed Team 10, a group of social media influencers that he essentially took under his wing to make content with and groom into even bigger stars.
The earliest members of Team 10 members included social media stars like Alissa Violet, and Lucas and Marcus Dobre. Team 10 moved into an $18,000-a-month rented house in Los Angeles' Beverly Grove neighborhood in August 2016.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Alongside acting, Paul continued to create content on YouTube, where his channel now has nearly 20 million subscribers.
His channel hosts videos of over-the-top stunts, wild vlogs, and Jackass-style challenges.
One of his earliest attention-grabbing stunts took place when he was invited to the White House in January 2017 for a social media event, along with other online stars.
Paul proceeded to sneak away from the crowd, hideout for hours in the White House bathroom, and sneak out in the middle of the night without being caught by security.
Source: The Sun
That same month, on his 20th birthday, Paul officially unveiled TeamDom, a creative talent agency aimed at helping influencers grow their audience and secure brand deals.
Paul announced TeamDom had raised $1 million in venture capital, and Team 10 as the agency's talent roster.
Source: TechCrunch
It didn't take long before Team 10 started to get more attention — but not the positive kind.
Team 10 member Alissa Violet was kicked out of the squad's house in early 2017 after Paul publicly accused her of cheating on him, and feud between the former couple ensued across social media.
Source: Seventeen
In July 2017, neighbors living around the Team 10 house complained that Paul had turned their quiet community into a "living hell" and "war zone," and that it was frequently invaded by screaming teenage fans because Paul publicized his address online.
Source: KTLA
Neighbors were debating whether to file a class-action public nuisance lawsuit against him, but Paul and Team 10 had moved out of the neighborhood and into a new home in Calabasas by October 2017 (pictured below).
That didn't stop the landlord of the former Team 10 house from filing a $2.5 million lawsuit against the YouTuber in 2018 for allegedly trashing the rented house.
Source: KTLA, Tubefilter
Paul felt the fallout from the incident with the Team 10 house and its neighbors. Disney announced that Paul would not return to his role on "Bizaardvark" for the second season.
"At this point in time I am wanting to focus more on my personal brand, my YouTube channel, business ventures, growing Team 10, and working on more adult acting roles," Paul wrote on Twitter.
Source: Variety
Beyond Team 10, Paul has also ventured into music and has released a flurry of songs over the years. One the music videos for his song called "It's Everyday Bro" is the third-most-disliked video on YouTube, with over 4.4 million thumbs downvotes.
Source: Business Insider
Paul's music has also been a source of controversy.
In a video leaked in January 2018, Paul dropped the n-word twice while freestyle rapping. A source told TMZ at the time that Paul had "matured a lot" since the video was recorded.
Source: TMZ
Around this time, Paul started dating YouTuber and model Erika Costell.
Costell was briefly Team 10's chief operating officer after the former COO left in May 2018. The couple broke up at the end of 2018, and Costell also departed from Team 10.
Source: Crunchbase, Famous Birthdays
Team 10 is still around today, but with a whole new set of members.
Paul has also drawn negative attention in 2019 for actions both on and off of YouTube.
Paul was criticized for advertising "mystery boxes" on his channel derided as scams, and is reportedly the subject of a police investigation related to reports that a woman was drugged at a party held at Paul's Team 10 house in May.
Source: Insider, Business Insider
Most recently, fans have followed Paul along his wild ride of a relationship with fellow YouTuber, Tana Mongeau.
The couple started dating in May in what many speculated was a joke, but the couple has maintained that the relationship is real.
Source: Insider
The following month, Paul proposed to Mongeau on her 21st birthday. He also bought her a car worth more than $120,000 to celebrate.
The sudden engagement sparked even further rumors that the relationship was inauthentic.
Source: Business Insider
Paul and Mongeau got married in July in a Las Vegas wedding that reportedly cost $500,000.
Photos of the wedding showed Paul, Mongeau, and their friends flying in on a private jet, a brawl breaking out seconds after the couple was pronounced husband and wife, and Paul cutting the wedding cake with a "Game of Thrones" replica sword.
Source: Business Insider
It's since come out that Paul and Mongeau's marriage isn't legally binding on paper, but they insist that the love between them.
"Any wedding I have, if I have three more f---ing weddings, I really wouldn't want to do it on paper because I think that legally binding yourself to someone takes away the love," Mongeau said.
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