SurvivorNet is a New York-based digital media company built to be a trustworthy, expert-vetted source of cancer information. Founded by former ABC News producer Steve Alperin and healthcare venture capitalist Tim Langloss, it pairs broadcast-quality video and survivor storytelling with content reviewed by oncologists at leading cancer centers. The platform reaches roughly 2.5 million people a month and operates an AI-powered Clinical Trial Finder built on clinicaltrials.gov to connect patients with relevant studies.
Dagogo Altraide is the creator and narrator behind ColdFusion, a YouTube channel with over 5 million subscribers known for deep-dive documentaries on technology, science, and business history. Born in Mumbai to Nigerian parents and raised across multiple countries before settling in Perth, Australia, Altraide built ColdFusion from a 2007 smartphone review channel into one of the internet's most respected educational documentary platforms - all while remaining largely faceless on screen. He is also a published author, music producer (under the alias Burn Water), and co-host of the Through The Web Podcast.
Brandon Li is a nomadic filmmaker who turned a Sony mirrorless and a one-way ticket into a career. Former MTV 'True Life' producer turned solo travel-doc director, his short films for clients like Nike, BMW and Cathay Pacific have been picked by Vimeo Staff, BBC, National Geographic, TIME and the Smithsonian. He runs Unscripted Studio, an online film school built around the idea that you learn cinema by shipping films, not by watching tutorials.
Johnny Harris is an Emmy-winning American journalist, filmmaker, and YouTuber with over 7.5 million subscribers, known for visually-driven explainer videos on geopolitics, history, and international affairs. A former Vox senior producer and creator of the acclaimed 'Borders' documentary series, Harris left legacy media in 2020 to build an independent journalism operation that now employs 30+ people. In February 2026, he and his wife Iz co-launched Newpress, an algorithm-free creator journalism platform designed to give audiences a direct role in the journalism process.
Philipp Dettmer is the founder, CEO, and head writer of Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, the Munich-based animation studio and YouTube channel with over 25 million subscribers and 3.6 billion views. Starting as a university passion project in 2013, Kurzgesagt has grown into a 70-person studio that transforms dense scientific, philosophical, and technological ideas into visually stunning, widely-shared short films. Dettmer is also the author of 'Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive' (2021) and co-creator of the video game Star Birds, launched in early access in September 2025.
Matt D'Avella is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, YouTuber, and podcaster who turned a $97,000 debt crisis into a Netflix documentary career. Best known for directing Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things and The Minimalists: Less Is Now on Netflix, he now runs one of YouTube's most visually distinct self-improvement channels with over 4 million subscribers, combining cinematic production quality with sharp, skeptical takes on hustle culture, habits, and modern life.
Shane Dawson (born Shane Lee Yaw) is one of YouTube's original superstar creators, a Long Beach kid who turned a camera and a knack for characters into 4.8 billion combined channel views. Over nearly two decades he pivoted from sketch comedy to celebrity documentary deep-dives, co-authored two New York Times bestselling memoirs, won multiple Streamy Awards, and launched a record-setting makeup collaboration with Jeffree Star. After a high-profile controversy and YouTube demonetization in 2020, he returned in 2021, relocated to a Colorado farm with his husband Ryland Adams, and in 2023 welcomed twin sons. By 2025 he was back with another Jeffree Star docuseries, rebuilding quietly but unmistakably.
Derek Muller is a Canadian-Australian physicist turned YouTuber who runs Veritasium, a channel of 20+ million subscribers built on the idea that learning science starts with admitting you got it wrong. His PhD thesis argued that confusion is a feature, not a bug, and he has spent fifteen years engineering that confusion on camera.
Wendover Productions is the edutainment empire built by Sam Denby out of Aspen, Colorado. What started in 2015 as a one-person YouTube channel about how airlines route planes has metastasized into a multi-channel studio, a hit travel-competition show (Jet Lag: The Game), and a creator-owned streaming service (Nebula) where Denby now serves as Chief Content Officer. The throughline: take logistics, geography, and economics and make them feel like a thriller.
Jeff Seibert is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor best known as co-founder and CEO of Digits, the world's first AI-native accounting platform, and previously co-founder and CEO of Crashlytics — the mobile crash reporting platform acquired by Twitter for over $100 million just 14 months after founding. A Stanford computer science graduate who taught himself to code at 12, Seibert also served as Twitter's Head of Consumer Product, appeared in the Emmy-winning Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, and has made 100+ angel investments. He is based in San Francisco, California.
Ashlee Vance is a South Africa-born, Texas-raised journalist, author, and documentary producer who spent 14 years at Bloomberg Businessweek before launching Core Memory in January 2025 - an independent sci-tech media company. He is the author of two New York Times bestselling books including the definitive pre-Isaacson biography of Elon Musk, producer of HBO's Wild Wild Space and Netflix's Don't Die, and creator of Bloomberg's most-watched video series Hello World. In 2025 he is writing a forthcoming book on OpenAI and Sam Altman with exclusive access, and already sold the film rights.