Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.
Name: Varun Rana
Instagram: 102K Followers
Youtube: 14.1K Subscribers
Who is Varun Rana?
Varun Rana spent years working in tech before realizing that making fun of the industry might be more entertaining than working in it.
Originally from Michigan, Rana studied computer science at the University of Michigan before landing a job at Amazon and eventually working at several startups. Along the way, he became familiar with the strange rituals of corporate life, from performative productivity and endless meetings to startup founders convinced they’re changing humanity with another software platform.
In 2021, he began posting comedy sketches on TikTok, initially drawing from his experiences growing up Indian American before expanding into workplace humor. By 2024, after losing his job, Rana decided to pursue content creation full-time.
His comedy is typically deadpan, with characters who treat completely ridiculous situations as perfectly normal. Whether he’s portraying an overly enthusiastic recruiter or a self-important startup employee, there’s a familiarity to his performances that makes the jokes work and feel authentic.
His work has attracted partnerships with Zoom, Notion, Zapier, Rippling, and OpenAI, companies that recognize the value of reaching audiences through someone who understands their culture and knows how to make them laugh.
Outside his sketches, Rana has been experimenting with longer YouTube videos, comedy music, and writing. In a 2025 essay titled You Have Too Much Free Time, he reflected on growing up making videos, recording music, and pursuing creative projects that rarely reached anyone beyond his immediate circle. Those interests eventually took a back seat to a conventional career, only to become the foundation of his work years later.
There’s something interesting about how that early creative curiosity has resurfaced now that he has an audience. The skills he developed making things for fun have become commercially valuable, while the platforms he’s using give him the freedom to explore ideas that might not fit neatly into one format.
For someone who was once told he had too much free time, he’s found a pretty good way to spend it.
Three Things We Love About Varun Rana
His characters feel familiar: Rana has a knack for capturing the personalities and awkward interactions that define modern professional life. His deadpan delivery makes even the most ridiculous characters feel believable.
He makes brand partnerships entertaining: Working with companies like Zoom, Notion, and OpenAI, Rana incorporates sponsors into original comedy rather than relying on conventional advertisements. His approach keeps the entertainment at the center of the partnership.
He turned a career setback into an opportunity: After losing his job in tech, Rana committed to creating content full-time. Rather than starting from scratch, he built on years of creative experimentation and found a way to turn something he genuinely enjoyed into a career.