Hollywood's Big-Money YouTube Hit Factory

When Brian Robbins first told people he was going full time into the YouTube business, his colleagues in Hollywood were incredulous. “My agent, my lawyer, my dad—people thought I was crazy,” he says. For decades, Robbins had worked in the traditional entertainment industry, first as a teenage actor starring in the ABC sitcom Head of the Class, then as a producer of TV shows about teenagers, such as Smallville and One Tree Hill, and finally as a director of feature films catering to teenagers, including Good Burger, Varsity Blues, and Norbit, a comedy starring Eddie Murphy in multiple roles, among them an obese woman. It was steady and lucrative work, if not always the most prestigious.

Watching the ways in which his two teenage sons consumed media, Robbins became convinced that the future of youth entertainment wasn’t in broadcast or cable TV but in short-form digital videos, particularly on YouTube. He thought big media companies had been slow to adapt, leaving a void that he could fill. And so, in 2012, the former teenage star set up a business to recruit, manage, and capitalize on the teenage stars of tomorrow.