What's Trending Founder Scaled Digital Brand With Lean Team
Digital media operators can learn how to hit seven-figure revenue by maintaining a lean team and diversifying income streams.
Updated on Sept. 30, 2026 in Media
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Shira Lazar has successfully grown her digital media brand, What's Trending, to seven-figure annual revenue while operating with a lean three-person staff. The company leverages a 4 million-follower social presence to secure income through advertising, partnerships, and licensing.
Why it matters
Lazar's model highlights the operational efficiency of avoiding heavy infrastructure and outside investment in the creator economy. By integrating editorial, data, and events, the brand maintains sustainability in a volatile media environment.
What's Trending operates with a team of three people to support 4 million followers across social platforms, including 2 million on TikTok. The business has achieved seven-figure annual revenue after a 15-year career trajectory for founder Shira Lazar.
The players
Shira Lazar
Founder of What's Trending and an advocate for creator labor rights and mental health with a 15-year career in digital media.
Ro Khanna
A U.S. Representative who partnered with Lazar to introduce the Creator Bill of Rights in January 2026.
What's Trending
A digital media brand that generates revenue through platform advertising, brand partnerships, licensing, and events.
The details
The firm operates by diversifying its revenue model across platform advertising, brand partnerships, content licensing, and event management. By avoiding significant outside capital and infrastructure costs, the brand maintains a high degree of operational agility. Lazar is now looking to scale the business further by integrating editorial and data distribution with her existing event-based revenue streams.
Timeline
Shira Lazar launched What's Trending in 2011.
Lazar helped launch the Creator Bill of Rights in January 2026.
Lazar was named to the TIME 100 creators list in 2026.
Market Landscape
The firm's focus on creator welfare aligns with the growing push for the Creator Bill of Rights, which seeks to formalize labor protections in the digital media space. This trend highlights how media operators are increasingly tethering their brands to industry-wide policy advocacy.
Operators in the media space should evaluate whether their infrastructure overhead is necessary for their current revenue scale. Diversifying income across events and licensing can help lean teams maintain stability even when platform-specific partnerships, such as the one previously held with CBS News, end.
The takeaway
Lazar's career proves that building a high-revenue brand does not require large-scale investment if the operator maintains low overhead and diverse revenue streams. Business owners should look to prioritize lean staffing models while advocating for industry-wide policy reforms.
Further reading
For more on the changing landscape of digital content, see our Media section.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Digiday.
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Should digital content creators be entitled to formal labor and workplace protections by law?
