Three-Person Creator Firm What's Trending Hits Seven-Figure Revenue

A three-person media company with roughly four million followers is generating low-seven-figure revenue in strong years, according to Digiday's interview with Shira Lazar, founder and host of What's Trending. In weaker years, the business still pulls in mid-six figures.

The numbers matter because they come from one of the oldest bets on creator-led media. Lazar launched What's Trending in 2011 after noticing that internet personalities were drawing large audiences without dedicated outlets covering them. The company started with video coverage of online culture on YouTube and then adapted to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok as audience behavior shifted.

What does the revenue mix look like?

According to the Digiday interview, What's Trending's income spans five streams:

• Advertising
• Brand partnerships
• Licensing
• Distribution
• Live events

Distribution relationships with MSN, Spotify and Screenvision push the company's content beyond the social feeds where its audience was first built. That changes what a creator-led brand can sell. The product is no longer a single post, video or sponsorship slot — it is access to a host, an audience, a format and a network of cultural relationships.

Why does a lean team cut both ways?

Three people can move fast and keep the brand coherent. The same structure limits investment in audience acquisition, sales, programming and new products. Lazar's next phase, as Digiday frames it, is less about finding another platform and more about building infrastructure that makes the model consistent.

The platforms changed repeatedly after 2011. The central asset did not: a recognizable host, a clear editorial point of view and a subject area that travels across formats. What's Trending treats the creator not as talent inside a media business but as the starting point for one — a reversal of the traditional pipeline where platforms distributed attention and brands paid for access.

What does this mean for practitioner budgets?

For brands and agencies, the case illustrates a shift in deal structure. Creator businesses with repeatable formats, licensing deals and distribution partners can sell multi-channel packages rather than one-off sponsored content. For creators, the lesson is about risk: businesses that remain platform-dependent stay exposed to algorithm changes and unstable deal flow.

There is a useful tension in the model. Creator businesses get praised for being personal and lightweight, yet their long-term stability depends on systems that do not rely on one person doing everything. What's Trending is attempting to keep the recognizable creator at its center while adding the commercial and editorial structure of a media company — influencer marketing, branded creative services, licensing and events layered on top of publishing.

Lazar's official site describes the company as part of her broader work as a host, founder and digital-media creator, consistent with the identity-driven structure Digiday reports.

The strategic takeaway for the sector: the next generation of creator businesses will not simply monetize influence. They will package identity, editorial judgment and distribution into media companies of their own — and What's Trending's move to build infrastructure suggests the shift from creator to publisher is already underway.