How an Instagram meme page became a social-first entertainment empire

Podcast: The Business of Content with Simon Owens · Simon Owens

Opublikowano: 2026-09-03

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/ In 2015, Reid Hailey started an anonymous Instagram meme page called Shithead Steve, mostly as a way to joke around with his friends. But once he began creating original memes, the account took off, eventually reaching a million followers and generating meaningful advertising revenue. Hailey soon teamed up with Derek Lucas, who was running his own fast-growing social accounts, and the two began building a portfolio of meme and user-generated-content pages across different niches. That collection of accounts eventually evolved into Doing Things, a social-first entertainment company behind shows and b...