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 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.
GGContent (GC Social Media marketing Inc.) is a global influencer-marketing firm that connects game publishers and consumer brands with creators across Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok. Founded in 2017 and led by CEO JH Kim, the company pairs a hands-on gaming background with an AI insights platform, ContentFlux, that mines live streams, videos, and social posts across YouTube, Twitch, CHZZK, and SOOP to identify trends, sentiment, and the influencers actually moving a market. With 600+ campaigns and a database of hundreds of thousands of global creator channels, GGContent has helped launch titles like Dave the Diver and Blue Archive.
1stCollab is a San Francisco-based, AI-powered influencer marketing platform (YC W23) that automates the entire creator-campaign workflow - sourcing creators, outreach, negotiation, contracts, payments, and taxes - while optimizing for ROI. Founded in 2022 by ex-Pinterest leaders Leon Lin, Varun Bansal, and Andrew Liu (with Carina Cater leading influencer strategy), it connects thousands of creators each week with brands like Notion, Character AI, Quora, Framer, and Gamma, letting marketers do in hours what once took teams months.
Chronicle Studios is an AI-driven entertainment company building the growth platform for global franchises. It reverses the traditional Hollywood development model - instead of betting on a script and hoping audiences show up, its agentic AI platform finds emerging creators and IP, tests audience demand early, and automates audience discovery, distribution and monetization across social platforms. Founded in 2025 by tech entrepreneur Aaron Sisto and former DreamWorks Animation president Chris deFaria, the company raised an oversubscribed $11.6M seed round to back creators across animation, gaming, music, comedy and podcasts.
Andrew Rowland is the founder and CEO of Classkick, a Chicago-based education technology company whose real-time digital notebook lets teachers see every student's work as it happens and respond instantly with notes, audio, or chat. A former Chicago high-school math teacher known to his students as 'Mr. Roro,' Rowland taught through Teach for America and started a school robotics program before retraining in computer science and working at Google and YouTube. He built Classkick to scale the thing he loved most about teaching: the 'aha' moment and the fast feedback loop. The platform now reaches more than half of U.S. schools and students in 180-plus countries, running on Firebase infrastructure.
Auden Ehringer is the Chief Technology Officer of Pave Finance and CEO of its technology subsidiary, Pave Labs. A Stanford-trained electrical engineer and computer scientist, he spent the early part of his career keeping some of the world's largest systems running - building Alexa sports features at Amazon Lab126 and serving as a Site Reliability Engineer on YouTube Discovery at Google. In 2023 he traded planet-scale infrastructure for the messier world of money, joining the New York fintech Pave Finance to build software that lets independent advisers automate and personalize portfolio management across thousands of client accounts. The platform he leads now helps oversee billions in assets, and in 2025 the company closed an oversubscribed $14M seed round.
Jarret Myer is the founder and CEO of UPROXX Studios, the independent youth-culture media company he rebuilt by buying UPROXX, HipHopDX and Dime Magazine back out of Warner Music Group in 2024 alongside will.i.am and former Complex chief Rich Antoniello. Three decades earlier he co-founded Rawkus Records, the late-'90s independent label that signed Mos Def and Talib Kweli and became the home of conscious, underground hip hop. Between those bookends he built and sold Uproxx Media and launched the YouTube talent shop Big Frame, making him one of the rare operators to ship culture-defining ventures across records, web publishing and online video.
UPROXX is a Los Angeles-based digital media and entertainment company that grew from a music and pop-culture website into a connected-TV and social-video powerhouse reaching more than 160 million monthly viewers. Founded by Jarret Myer and Brian Brater, it owns brands including UPROXX, HipHopDX and Dime Magazine, produces original music and culture programming, runs a content studio for brand campaigns, and - after going independent again in 2024 alongside will.i.am and Rich Antoniello - sells media across YouTube and CTV while folding AI into how it makes and monetizes content.
Adriene Mishler is the Austin, Texas-based yoga instructor, actress, and entrepreneur behind Yoga With Adriene, the largest yoga channel on YouTube with over 13.4 million subscribers and 1.7 billion views. Since launching the channel in 2012 with business partner Chris Sharpe, she has democratized yoga through her philosophy of 'Find What Feels Good,' building a global community around accessible, authentic practice. In 2015 she co-founded the FWFG subscription platform, and in 2026 launched Veta, her own yoga gear brand.
Andrew Huberman is a tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine and the host of the Huberman Lab podcast - regularly ranked the #1 health and science podcast in the world with over 400 episodes. His Stanford lab investigates visual system repair, neural plasticity, and stress resilience, publishing in Nature, Science, and Cell. A former skateboarder who once wrote for Thrasher magazine and lobbied the Palo Alto city council to build a skate park at age 13, Huberman translates complex neuroscience into actionable protocols for millions of listeners globally.
Andrew Schulz is a New York-born stand-up comedian, podcaster, and actor who upended the comedy industry by self-distributing his specials directly to fans — selling out Radio City Music Hall twice in a night and Madison Square Garden multiple times — while co-hosting the hit Flagrant podcast with Akaash Singh. His 2022 special 'Infamous' and 2025 Netflix special 'Life' cemented his reputation as one of the most commercially independent voices in modern comedy.
Arun Maini, known online as Mrwhosetheboss, is the UK's largest tech YouTuber with over 22 million subscribers and 8+ billion views. Born in Nottingham to Indian-origin parents, he turned down a PricewaterhouseCoopers offer after earning a First Class Economics degree from the University of Warwick to pursue YouTube full-time. He holds a Guinness World Record for the largest smartphone replica, has won two Streamy Awards for Technology, and is recognized globally for his witty, authentic reviews of smartphones and gadgets. He married Dhrisha Mehta in June 2024 and the couple are expecting their first child in August 2026.
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.
Graham Stephan is an American personal finance YouTuber, real estate investor, and entrepreneur who turned a real estate license at age 18 into a multimillion-dollar media brand. Known for his signature 20-cent home-brewed coffee philosophy, he has amassed over 5 million YouTube subscribers by making money talk approachable, transparent, and relentlessly actionable. He also co-hosts The Iced Coffee Hour podcast, founded Bankroll Coffee, and built a rental property portfolio in the Los Angeles area before relocating to Las Vegas.
Jay Shetty is a British-Indian author, podcast host, and former monk who turned three years of monastic life in India into the world's #1 health and wellness podcast, 'On Purpose,' which has surpassed 1 billion listens. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and TIME100 Creator, he is the author of two bestsellers, Chief Purpose Officer at Calm, and co-founder of multiple ventures including a production company and a talent agency. In May 2026, Netflix and Spotify signed a deal worth up to $100 million to exclusively carry video versions of his podcast.
Jeff Delaney is the creator of Fireship, a YouTube channel with over 4 million subscribers known for delivering fast-paced, entertaining programming tutorials - most famously the '100 Seconds of Code' series. Based in Phoenix, Arizona, he turned a side project teaching Firebase and Angular into one of the most influential developer education platforms on the internet, complemented by his course platform fireship.io and an 8,000-member developer Slack community.
Lewis Hilsenteger is the Canadian creator behind Unbox Therapy, one of YouTube's largest technology channels with over 25 million subscribers and nearly 5 billion total views. Known for his authentic, unscripted reactions to gadgets and consumer electronics, he rose to global fame in 2014 with the viral 'iPhone 6 Plus Bend Test' video that sparked the worldwide 'Bendgate' controversy. Beyond YouTube, he runs a second channel 'Lew Later,' founded Latercase — a minimalist smartphone case brand using aerospace-grade aramid fiber — and has collaborated with brands including Samsung, Apple, Google, and Intel.
Lewis Howes is a former professional athlete turned media entrepreneur, best known as the host of 'The School of Greatness' podcast - one of the world's top podcasts with over 500 million downloads. A three-time New York Times bestselling author, Howes transformed a career-ending wrist injury and a spell sleeping on his sister's couch into a multi-platform media empire spanning podcasts, books, television, and the Greatness Network. Recognized by the Obama White House as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under 30, he has interviewed everyone from Tony Robbins to Alanis Morissette.
Linus Sebastian is the co-founder and Chief Vision Officer of Linus Media Group (LMG), the Canadian digital media company behind Linus Tech Tips - one of YouTube's most-watched technology channels with 16+ million subscribers and 9.2+ billion views. A college dropout who turned a side gig filming product videos for computer retailer NCIX into a media empire, Sebastian built LMG into a ~120-person company operating multiple YouTube channels. Known for his ADHD-fueled energy, hands-on gear reviews, and the occasional on-camera equipment drop, he stepped back from the CEO role in 2023 to focus on creative vision while his wife Yvonne Ho co-runs the business.
Logan Alexander Paul is an American content creator, professional wrestler, boxer, entrepreneur, and podcaster who built one of the internet's most recognizable brands from a YouTube channel in Ohio. Co-founder of the billion-dollar PRIME Hydration beverage brand alongside KSI, current WWE World Tag Team Champion (with Austin Theory), and General Partner at Anti Fund — a $30M+ AI and robotics-focused venture capital firm — Paul has methodically transformed viral fame into durable enterprise. His Impaulsive podcast has surpassed 4 million YouTube subscribers, and his total social media following exceeds 96 million across platforms.
Marques Brownlee, known as MKBHD, is the internet's most-trusted voice on consumer technology. Starting his YouTube channel at 14 while still in high school, he built a 20+ million subscriber empire on the back of obsessive production quality and a consumer-first perspective. Beyond reviewing gadgets, he co-hosts the Waveform podcast, serves as board member and chief creative partner at Ridge, is a 2022 WFDF World Champion in ultimate frisbee, and was named to TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2024.
Patrick Bet-David is an Iranian-American entrepreneur, author, and media personality who fled Iran as a child refugee, served in the 101st Airborne Division, and built PHP Agency into a 40,000-agent life insurance firm before selling it for roughly $250 million. He founded Valuetainment, one of the most-watched business YouTube channels in the world, and hosts the PBD Podcast - a long-form show spanning politics, culture, and business with millions of listeners. A Wall Street Journal bestselling author of 'Your Next Five Moves' and 'Choose Your Enemies Wisely,' Bet-David is known for blunt straight talk, a relentless work ethic forged in a German refugee camp, and a genuine belief that every refugee or immigrant story can have a second act.
Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal are an American comedy duo and lifelong best friends who have built one of YouTube's most enduring empires — Good Mythical Morning — into a daily talk show with over 19.5 million subscribers and 10.8 billion views. Operating out of Burbank as Mythical Entertainment, they create shows, podcasts, merchandise, books, and live experiences, ranking #4 on Forbes' 2025 highest-earning creator list with $36M in annual earnings.
Sean Evans is the co-creator and host of Hot Ones, the YouTube phenomenon where celebrities eat increasingly spicy chicken wings while answering impeccably researched questions. Since launching the show in 2015 with First We Feast, Evans has turned a deceptively simple format into over 4 billion views, a Daytime Emmy nomination, TIME100 Creators recognition, and a co-ownership stake in First We Feast after the brand was acquired for $82.5 million in December 2024.
Steven Bartlett is a British entrepreneur, investor, author, and podcast host who dropped out of university after a single lecture to build Social Chain - a social media marketing company that went public at a $200M+ valuation before he turned 28. He hosts The Diary of a CEO, the second most-listened podcast globally on Spotify Wrapped 2025, with over 15 million YouTube subscribers. He is the youngest-ever Dragon on BBC's Dragons' Den and the founder of Steven.com, a creator holding company valued at $425 million.
Tom Bilyeu is a serial entrepreneur, media founder, and podcast host who co-founded Quest Nutrition - achieving 57,000% growth in three years before selling for $1 billion - then pivoted to build Impact Theory, a media company generating over 1 billion views through content centered on entrepreneurship, mindset, AI, and geopolitics. A USC-trained filmmaker turned business builder, Bilyeu channels his obsession with human potential into daily content, courses, live events, and a graphic novel series, positioning himself as one of the most prolific voices in the creator-entrepreneur space.
Prachi Gupta is VP of Engineering at Google, leading the Workspace Communication & Time Management portfolio - Gmail, Chat, Calendar, and Tasks - for hundreds of millions of users worldwide. A graduate of IIT Roorkee and Ohio State University, she spent over eight years as VP of Engineering at YouTube before moving to Workspace, where she now sits at the intersection of Google's AI transformation and its most-used productivity tools. Her current mandate: turning Gmail into a Gemini-powered personal proactive assistant.
Sean (Hyun Wook) Park is Vice President and Head of Marketing for YouTube Asia Pacific and Global Shopping at Google, based in Singapore. With over 18 years at Google across Seoul, Tokyo, San Bruno, and Singapore, he has been a foundational architect of the creator economy - co-creating VidCon, launching the YouTube Creator Awards (the iconic gold and silver play buttons), and building the YouTube FanFest franchise across 60+ events in 15+ countries. He oversees YouTube's marketing strategy across Asia Pacific and leads global shopping initiatives for one of the world's largest video platforms.
Saureen Shah is a San Francisco based founder and engineer. He was an early engineer at YouTube, co-founded Instawork (YC S15) and served as its CTO, advised Mozart, and now leads Nudge AI as founder and CEO. Carnegie Mellon graduate in business administration and computer science.