What does it mean to be a disruptor? There is much talk especially on professional networks like LinkedIn about ‘disruptors’ in business. Depending on your viewpoint, disruptors are either fresh-thinking innovators who aren’t afraid to shake-up how things are done, or they are people who simply think ‘the rules’ don’t apply to them. We meet one young man who has been labelled a disruptor to make up our own mind. Brandon Relph is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Studio BE, a media production company that cross boundaries between digital and traditional media and focus on an under 24-year-old audience. TV for young people made by young people, you might say. At just 20 years old, that’s already quite a rule-breaking achievement but there’s more: this is Brandon in his own words. “It’s probably fair to say that Studio BE is my third career – so far. When I was really young, about 11, I wanted to be a cyber spy so I taught myself to code and then stumbled on the game ‘Minecraft’. Now it’s one of the world’s largest games with 150 million people playing it, but back then there were
50
Make The Future Yours! Issue 2
only a few thousand of us. Minecraft is a bit like digital Lego and I enjoyed building things within the game and getting to know people online who were playing it too. “By the time I was 13, a client was paying me and a fellow player to build stuff within the game. As the game’s popularity grew, so did we. Over the next few years, we became the largest Minecraft studio in the world, employing a team of 37 people across numerous countries. We were running several Minecraft YouTube channels and streaming at 9pm every night to millions of people across the globe.” “Of course, I was still at school at this point and juggling studies with Minecraft and the business.
