Simple Pickup was once one of the top channels on YouTube for young red blooded males looking to learn about picking up women. The trio entertained millions approaching random girls on the street and social experiments. Despite their success, the guys are no longer friends and are all pursuing their own ventures.
Their antics helped them gain over 2.5 million subscribers, but not everyone saw the videos as harmless fun. Critics accused them of harassing young women and encouraging copycat behaviour, leading to a Change.org petition with 32,000 signatures calling for the channel to be removed. They later deleted the videos, and Kong kept the account as a personal channel.
Jason Roberts leaving
Jason Roberts was the first to leave the group, he was kicked out by Kong and Jesse as he wasn’t very business savvy. Roberts didn’t possess the same passion for making money. Jason started his own YouTube channel, Simple Misfits. It was a prank channel that was successful for a while but the views later dried up. According to his Linkedin profile, Jason has worked in real estate and was a life coach for a brief spell. Currently, he works as a Client Success Manager at Nexxen in LA.
Project GO
Simple Pickup became a million-dollar business after launching Project GO, a community for those interested in improving their game. For $37 per month, they taught members how to build self-confidence, overcome anxiety and communication skills.
Jumpcut
After a while Jesse and Kong wanted to move onto a new challenge. They couldn’t keep creating pickup related content and achieved everything they possibly could. The guys started Jumpcut to teach others how to become full-time YouTubers. Jumpcut went through Y Combinator’s Summer 2016 batch and raised around $2 million in seed funding from investors including Maveron, Y Combinator, ZhenFund and others.
The flagship product, Viral Academy, sells for a one-time payment of $997 (or paid in installments) and covers everything from creating original content and social media strategies to legal issues and vlogging.
The business made millions over the years, with one early student estimating that Jumpcut had generated well over $15 million from courses alone. As of early 2026, Jumpcut still operates with a small team and Kong listed as CEO, though it is much smaller than at its peak.
Kong’s pivot to Sam & Colby and District
Kong Pham eventually moved away from Jumpcut as his main focus. He spent time as a Partner at CreatorDAO, a decentralised, member-owned organisation that closed a $20 million funding round and supported channels including Sam and Colby and The Icing Artist. He also founded Blu Yam, a creative agency producing viral ads for startups, which the company says has generated well over $50 million in sales for its clients.
His biggest current role, however, is as Chief Operations Officer at Sam & Colby Enterprises, a position he has held since 2023. Sam Golbach and Colby Brock are YouTube horror and exploration creators with over 14 million subscribers whose business generated roughly $20 million in revenue in 2024, including a $13 million apparel line and a feature-length film that debuted at No. 6 at the domestic box office. According to Business Insider, Kong has been “instrumental in building the team” as the company scaled from 8 employees in early 2024 to 16.
In 2024 Kong also launched District, a member-owned community for founders, operators, and venture capitalists, pitched as a next-generation YPO with elements of decentralised ownership inspired by his Y Combinator and Harvard Business School networks.
Jesse Jhaj
Jesse Jhaj is no longer close friends with Kong. After Jumpcut he launched Endless Options, a $197 online course teaching men how to succeed on dating apps, built from over two years and a reported $250,000 of personal testing across hundreds of Tinder profiles.
He has since positioned himself in the high-end dating consulting space under the moniker “Hitch For the Rich,” working with wealthy clients through his firm JDS & Associates. Long-running rumours have circulated online about a personal falling out between Jesse and Kong, but neither has publicly confirmed the cause of their split. According to his Linkedin profile, Jesse is a co-founder at TRUFFLE PIG VENTURES LLP and is involved in the AI/AGI industry.
1 Comment
After paying $1,000 for the JumpCut course, the first thing they did was urge me to take an “ad bootcamp” course for another $1,000. I was all in until I saw this. They offer a “365 day guarantee” if you are not satisfied, but you have to do all the assignments through to the end to get it. People don’t work like that. It pays them well to run a course like this. At $1K per student, and 15,000 students so far, they’ve made ~$15 million from courses.