Ben Relles (born 1975) is an American businessman.

Biography

He was formerly the Head of Comedy at

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

, as part of the company's

YouTube Originals YouTube Premium (formerly Music Key and YouTube Red) is a subscription service that provides advertising-free streaming of all videos hosted by YouTube, offline play and background playback of videos on mobile devices, access to advertising-fr ...

program. In this role, he oversaw development of new content from YouTube's top comedy talent. Currently, he is working with

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

co-founder

Reid Hoffman Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman is the co-founder and former executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily ...

. Prior to joining YouTube, he was Vice President of Programming at

Next New Networks The YouTube Next Lab and Audience Development Group, founded as Next New Networks, is a company based in New York City. Next New was launched in March 2007 by founders Fred Seibert & Emil Rensing, and co-founders Herb Scannell, Timothy Shey and ...

. Relles was the creator of the comedy network Barely Political, whose content had been viewed over 2.5 billion times. Ben started the channel when he created the "Obama Girl" series of videos. He continued to oversee the Barely Political comedy network, which featured the shows

The Key of Awesome The Key of Awesome (formerly Barely Productions and Barely Political) is a YouTube channel that produced comedy videos starring writer/performer Mark Douglas. "The Key of Awesome" was created by Mark Douglas and Ben Relles and is the channel's m ...

, Super Therapy, and

Auto-Tune the News ''Songify the News'' (known as ''Auto-Tune the News'' for the first thirteen episodes) is an American Musical film, musical web series popularized by Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn musician The Gregory Brothers, Michael Gregory, and later his band T ...

. He also developed the

Vsauce Vsauce () is a YouTube brand created by educator Michael Stevens. The channels feature videos on scientific, psychological, mathematical, and philosophical topics, as well as gaming, technology, popular culture, and other general interest su ...

network with Michael Stevens which had a combined 1 billion views across Vsauce1, Vsauce2, and Vsauce3. He received his MBA in Marketing from the

Wharton School of Business The Wharton School ( ) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. Established in 1881 through a donation from Joseph Wharton, a co-founder of Bethlehem Steel, the Wharton ...

References

External links

Obama Meets With YouTube Advisors On How To Reach Online AudiencesFOX Business: The Willis ReportUW Alumni Association: Ben Relles, 2013 Forward Under 40 Award HonoreeFast Company: How the Next Lab Can Quadruple Your SubscribersNATPE Daily: Developing for DigitalAnderson Cooper Show: YouTube Guest Ben Relles20/20: The Key of AwesomeCurrentTV: The Obama GirlC-SPAN: Interview with Ben RellesOn Wisconsin Magazine: E-lectorateABC News: Obama Girl, Caught
1975 births University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Living people Wharton School alumni 21st-century American businesspeople {{US-business-bio-1970s-stub