From content to commerce, these creators have built the blueprint for creator-led empires
Mr Beast
In Greenville, North Carolina, a 13-year-old Jimmy Donaldson started a YouTube channel and spent years uploading gaming clips and trialling experiments while obsessively studying what made videos stick.
The breakthrough came in 2017 during an almost daylong stunt where Jimmy filmed himself counting to 100,000, it blew up very quickly. Within the first few days it had already crossed hundreds of thousands of views, and by the end of that month it had surpassed a few million.
It was that moment that really changed his trajectory, helping his subscriber count surge past 100,000 subscribers to 1 million in 2017, and hasn’t slowed down since.
Scaling into a full studio, his HoldCo, Beast Industries, runs YouTube’s most-subscribed channel at ~442 million, which he’s leveraged to build chocolate brand Feastables (2022), Lunchly (Sept 2024) and the Amazon Prime series Beast Games (Dec 2024).
Ryan’s World (Ryan Kaji) — Toys & TV
In 2015, 3-year-old Ryan watched toy channels and asked his Mom why he wasn’t on YouTube like those kids.
To answer, his parents, Loann and Shion, launched Ryan ToysReview, filming simple unboxings at home in Texas.
Early uploads snowballed, helped by a Huge Eggs Surprise clip that racked up billions of views, and helped the channel hit 1 million subscribers by January 2016 and 10 million by December 2017.
To manage the pace, the family formed Sunlight Entertainment in 2017 and signed a long-term partnership with PocketWatch to expand beyond YouTube into books, apps, licensing, and original shows.
Today, the main channel posts near-daily, sits around 39.9 million subscribers and 62+ billion views, and anchors a franchise spanning toys, TV, mobile games, and more, built so the audience can meet Ryan in stores and on screens, not just in a single feed.
Logan Paul & KSI — PRIME
With a combined global following of more than 67.6 million across platforms, KSI and Logan Paul first leveraged their audiences during the early days of YouTube boxing, selling out arenas in Manchester (2018) and Los Angeles (2019).
The fights proved they could mobilize millions beyond YouTube.
What began as spectacle soon turned into shelf space when the two launched PRIME, a hydration brand that skyrocketed into a phenomenon.
Fast forward, and PRIME has surged past $1.2 billion in annual sales, cementing their status as the most successful creator-CEOs. In September 2024, they teamed up with MrBeast to launch Lunchly, boxed kids’ lunches pairing PRIME with a Feastables bar, expanding their portfolio from drinks into food.
Together, KSI and Logan have shown that influence, when scaled, can move not just audiences but entire industries.
Emma Chamberlain
Emma Chamberlain began vlogging in high school, and by the summer of 2017 her humor and signature jump-cut editing style propelled her into viral fame.
By 2018, she had passed 1 million subscribers, and moved to Los Angeles, where she helped redefine the genre of chatty, lo-fi YouTube.
Coffee quickly became part of her personal brand. Known for her daily ritual of iced coffee with plant milk, Emma’s love for coffee was real, as it was for her audience. So in 2019, she transformed her ever-present coffee into Chamberlain Coffee, launching with online beans before expanding into canned drinks, grocery shelves, and even a café.
Today, her channel sits around 12.1 million subscribers, serving as both a creative outlet and a natural extension of her coffee empire.
