Eh to me when your channel is smaller, everything's a lot more random and up to chance. It's just once one of your videos starts making a connection to some type of search result or related video, thats when the views (and subs) start to come it. It just sounds like he has hit that with one or two of his videos. Look at his channel and see what videos in particular are doing well.
After that perhaps check your own tags and meta data. Getting in with the search results gang means putting time into your tags to see what works, what doesn't, as well as making your own youtube searches for videos relating to your own and seeing what searches are recommended and what videos are related.
Perhaps he may have a more delicious thumbnail as well. Try improving yours for eye catchiness. Who knows? Could lead to a fluctuation of viewers from a related search you didn't know your video was in.
In any case, it's way too soon to start getting down about it bud ^_^ It's most likely just luck given how many factors are involved.
Just keep pumping out the videos, improving each time, and sharing around. You'll be good to go
