Meet the CEOs behind the biggest stars of YouTube

Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox are perhaps the faces of the Comédie Youtube, Smosh collective, but behind the cameras, someone else helps to manage his team of 64 people.

Padilla and Hecox have appointed Alessandra Catanese, longtime director of Padilla, CEO in 2023. This allowed the pair to focus on the creative side of their YouTube channels.

Catanese manages the daily operations of the company and the global commercial strategy.

“I certainly do not believe that each creator needs a CEO, but I believe that all creators are not a CEO,” Catanish told Business Insider.

Smosh is not the only operation led by creators to put an external framework in a leading role in recent years. In 2023, the popular sports creator Embesser hired Zach Miller, a Spotify and Nbcuniversal alum, as the first president. In 2024, the most subscribed creator in Youtube, Jimmy “Mrbeast” Donaldson, hired Jeffrey Housenbold to direct his CEO and president.

Donaldson Among a generation of creators from YouTube who came to glory at a young age. He did not attend the university or even worked on a regular job before participating in the creation of content. Exterior leaders can help creators like MRBEAST fill the skills gaps and build teams as they seek to compete with Hollywood studios.

Some of the largest youtubers are now based on CEOs, presidents and other C-Suite executives to help them make smart business movements and manage sprawling production teams. They exploit leaders of talent management, Hollywood and startups from Creator economy.

“Many creators have reached a scale where they know they need operational support,” said Sean Atkins, CEO of Dhar Mann Studios. Atkins, a former MTV leader, joined the company of the creator Dhar Mann last year.

Help creators create a business to compete with Hollywood

The new class of heads of management of YouTuber helps creators to create teams, to develop mergers and acquisition strategies, to raise funds or to increasing pain.

Timothy Salmon was promoted last year to the president of Catface, the company behind Youtuber Aphmau, which has 23.6 million subscribers and made videos on Minecraft. Salmon joined the company in 2018 and has post-production training for television and cinema.

He helps manage a team of 93 people in Austin, releasing designer Jessica Bravura to focus on creative tasks, such as writing scripts and video planning. He keeps the team at the top of the constantly evolving algorithm of YouTube.

“YouTube is a constantly evolving beast,” said Salmon. “If you are not flexible and you cannot adapt, it will leave you behind.”

Catanese, on the other hand, works at the Los Angeles office in Smosh, where she spends most of her time meeting staff or business partners. She helped Smosh hire to adapt to television screens and take the battle of YouTube with streamers. Catanese raised Kiana Parker to the role of executive vice-president of programming, supervising this strategy for Smosh.

Atkins, who works in New York and Los Angeles, studies the public Dhar Mann. He analyzes measures such as the viewer, the time of the watch and the click rates and uses them to assess the strategies of the company.

“I wake up in the morning and I look at the figures immediately,” said Atkins.

He also oversees operations, such as hiring, and new brand initiatives, such as tours and mergers and acquisitions. In February, his team hired a strategy director to work alongside Atkins on the supply, negotiation and structuring of mergers and potential acquisitions.

Meanwhile, the group of creators MEC Perfect brought the former director of the NBA Andrew Yaffe as CEO at the end of last year. It helps to hire talents in front and behind the camera, to establish partnerships with brands and to manage the long -term strategy.

Hounbold, CEO of Beast Industries, heads the company MRBEAST while it increases fresh capital. Hounbold compared the company to Disney for the next generation during the presentation of potential investors, as previously reported Business Insider.

Some creators are reluctant to yield control

For a creator, calling on a CEO or a president also means abandoning certain control.

“It is difficult because the creators come from an industry rooted in all of this,” said Catanish.

At the end of the day, their name and brand are at stake. Salmon in Catface said that there had been times when the team in general was set on a strategy, such as a brand agreement or how a sponsor was presented in a video, but the creator said he did not feel well.

“Working with content creators can be very fascinating, frustrating, exciting and exhausting,” said Salmon. “This company is a representation of who they are. It is understandable that they are picky about the brand and the way it is seen.”

But the greatest risk for a creative company is professional exhaustion, and CEOs and other managers can help remove part of the creators’ pressure.

“I always tell creators to build systems and teams around them so that they can continue to evolve without exhausting,” said Atkins. “The n ° 1 thing that I see for many creators is that they have done everything in the past, so they continue to try to do everything themselves without taking a break.”

Part of the work of a CEO is to make the creators comfortable that they will not spoil what works. For most creative companies, the creator is at the center of the content, and it really does not work without them.

“Let’s not forget who built this,” said Atkins. “My job is to improve it, not change it.”