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Aaron DeBevoise and the second life of a video
Before a YouTube archive became something you could finance, Aaron DeBevoise had to learn why people kept watching. His career runs from film deals and gaming networks to a wager on creators becoming their own television business.
Rich Raddon and the value of a second look
He started out working for John Hughes. After film festivals and Movieclips, the Zefr co-founder is still studying what a moving image means - and why the answer changes with its surroundings.
Zach James and the business hiding in the movie clip
Zach James started with Hollywood scenes and a simple question: what if the fans uploading them were helping? The answer carried him from Movieclips to Zefr, and from film rights to the finer points of the social feed.
Rob Gabel and the trouble with a billion views
Rob Gabel built Tubular Labs to help people understand online video audiences. At Spotter, and in a pair of local events projects, he keeps returning to the same question: what can you do with what you know?
Momchil Kyurkchiev and the education of a Google engineer
He left Google knowing how to test software. Building Leanplum taught Momchil Kyurkchiev to question almost everything else - from who his customers were to what a company owes its people.
Maneet Khaira and the Trouble Before Play
A Google intern’s gaming presentation helped set Backbone in motion. Years of controllers, case adapters and tiny adjustments reveal what Maneet Khaira thinks stands between people and a good game.
Owen Maher and the months behind a moment of curiosity
The Electrify co-founder came from finance. His work now sits behind educational videos, where an audience’s moment of discovery can take months of preparation.
Ian Shepherd and the business of being replaceable
A daughter watching YouTube helped change Ian Shepherd’s view of media. Now Electrify’s co-founder is building businesses that give creators more room to choose what they do next.
Daniel P. Maloney Followed the Traffic
A wedding-planning site led Danny Maloney to Pinterest, and Pinterest led him to Tailwind. His career turns on a practical habit: noticing what people need, even when it changes the plan.
Bettina Hein and the business of changing her mind
She built speech software, followed video onto YouTube, and learned when to hand over the keys. For Pixability founder Bettina Hein, the company can change - the ambition to create useful work stays.
Robert Kyncl and the price of pressing play
He helped bring Hollywood to Netflix and creators to the centre of YouTube. At Warner Music Group, Robert Kyncl is trying to make the next technological upheaval pay the people who make the songs.
Bing Chen and the business of showing up
At YouTube, he helped give creators a way to build a living. At Gold House, he is applying a related idea to Asian Pacific talent: bring the audience, build the connections, and make the next opportunity easier to finance.
Jiten Vaidya and the art of handing over the keys
He helped keep YouTube’s databases running, then co-founded PlanetScale to bring that experience to other developers. His next chapter puts the founder, rather than the database, at the center of the work.
Alaa Fadan and the audience hiding in plain sight
Before Telfaz11 made films for Netflix and Saudi cinemas, Alaa Fadan saw gifted people treating their best work as a hobby. He helped build a company where that work could become a living.
Rob Sandie and the art of changing the game
He built a video platform, lost his operating role, and returned with a company built around YouTube. Rob Sandie’s route to vidIQ runs through football, Flash, and a persistent interest in helping other people find an audience.
Herbert Ong and the art of watching what happens next
Before he became “The $TSLA Milestones Guy,” Herbert Ong built companies and products. His second act puts that experience to work on camera, following Tesla through interviews, timelines and the occasional ride in the back seat.
DEFY Media had the audience. Who had the money?
Smosh, Clevver and Honest Trailers made DEFY Media hard to ignore. Its 2018 collapse exposed the awkward economics of owning the show while somebody else owns the screen.
Zefr knows what your ad is sitting next to
A business born around movie clips now helps advertisers judge the company their ads keep. Its wager: understanding one video is more useful than fearing an entire channel.
Rene Ritchie Learned YouTube From the Outside. Now He Explains It From Within.
An Apple editor turned independent creator turned YouTube insider, Ritchie spends his days translating between the people who make videos and the company that hosts them.
Roberto Blake Built a Business Beyond the Upload Button
He started by answering camera questions online. Now Roberto Blake teaches creators to turn a useful body of work into a business that can outlast any one platform.
Nick Chapsas Learned to Code When the Wi-Fi Went Off
A teenager in Greece learned to tinker with code because his father switched off the Wi-Fi. Years later, Nick Chapsas turned a London engineering career into a classroom with customers in 144 countries.
Tom Scott Learned When to Stop Counting Mondays
For ten years, a new curiosity arrived every week. Now the British presenter is driving through 39 historic counties, giving each story more room - and keeping the ending in sight.
Varun Mayya Keeps Building the Next Stage
A college T-shirt venture led to recruitment software, a community platform and, eventually, a media operation with its own AI lab and game studio. The through-line in Varun Mayya’s work is a restless question: what can an audience help build next?
Jeff Geerling and the Art of Taking Things Apart
From radio towers with his father to Raspberry Pi clusters on camera, Jeff Geerling has spent a career opening the box and showing how the wires connect.
Humphrey Yang Learned to Make Money Make Sense
A former financial adviser turned a month of short videos into a vast audience. The trick was to make intimidating ideas feel like a conversation between friends.
Electrify buys into YouTube’s brains trust
Behind Veritasium, Mentour Pilot and fern sits a company buying stakes in curiosity. Electrify’s wager: a creator’s audience can support a bigger business without losing the voice that built it.
YouTube
Twenty years after three ex-PayPal employees uploaded a clip from the San Diego Zoo, YouTube pays creators more than any studio and gets watched more than any TV network. Here is how the video site became infrastructure.
The company that indexed the web is now betting everything on an AI it calls Gemini - and for the first time, the search box has competition it built itself.
Telfaz11
Telfaz11 is a Riyadh-based creative media studio that pioneered Arabic online video in the early 2010s and has since grown into one of Saudi Arabia's leading film and content producers. Founded in 2011 by Alaa Fadan, Ali Al Kalthami and Ibraheem Alkhairallah, it began as a YouTube-first network aimed at Saudi youth and evolved into feature films, streaming originals and branded content. Its 2022 wrestling comedy 'Sattar' became the highest-grossing Saudi film ever, and the studio holds a multi-picture deal with Netflix.
Daniel Blackman
Daniel Blackman is the founder and CEO of Smashcut, a next-generation online learning platform built for real-time, media-based education in the visual and media arts. An NYU Tisch film school graduate, he spent years in executive roles at Google, YouTube, The Daily Beast, Barnes & Noble.com and HarperCollins before co-founding the instructional video company Howcast and, later, Smashcut. Backed by a $7M Series A from Pearson Ventures, Smashcut partners with universities like NYU Tisch to bring collaborative filmmaking and documentary education online.