Scooter Braun

Scooter Braun is one of the most consequential figures in the history of the modern music and entertainment industry. The founder of SB Projects and Ithaca Holdings, he built a diversified entertainment empire spanning artist management, record labels, publishing, film, television, and technology — and led it from a single talent discovery in 2008 to a company acquired by South Korean entertainment giant HYBE for a deal valued at over a billion dollars. Before building that empire, Braun cut his teeth organizing after-parties for Eminem and Ludacris’s Anger Management Tour while still a student at Emory University, then served as executive director of marketing at So So Def Records under Jermaine Dupri, and brokered a $12 million campaign deal between Ludacris and Pontiac — all before turning 25.

The pivot that would define his career came in 2008, when Braun accidentally clicked on a YouTube video of a 13-year-old Canadian kid singing covers in his hometown. He recognized something immediate and irreducible in Justin Bieber, spent months convincing Bieber’s mother to bring him to Atlanta, and within a year had co-signed him with Usher and signed him to RBMG Records. That instinct — to see talent before anyone else, and to act on it with total conviction — became the defining pattern of Braun’s career. He went on to sign and develop Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, J Balvin, The Kid LAROI, Dan + Shay, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Martin Garrix, among others, breaking more new artists than any other music executive of his generation. In 2013, TIME named him to its list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Building at Scale: Ithaca, HYBE, and Beyond

In 2019, Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group, accelerating Braun’s expansion from management into ownership of one of Nashville’s most storied labels. In 2021, HYBE — the South Korean powerhouse behind BTS — acquired 100% of Ithaca Holdings, bringing Braun into one of the largest entertainment companies on earth as co-CEO, and later sole CEO, of HYBE America. During his tenure he led the $300 million acquisition of Quality Control Music, home to Lil Baby, Lil Yachty, and early Migos, and secured a landmark distribution partnership with Universal Music Group. He stepped down from the CEO role in 2025 and remains a board director and senior advisor to HYBE’s chairman, as well as one of the company’s largest individual shareholders. Beyond music, Braun’s philanthropic record is extensive: he organized the “One Love Manchester” benefit concert and the “Hand in Hand” hurricane relief telethon in the same year, worked with the founders of March for Our Lives, and chairs the advisory board of Pencils of Promise. He received both the Harry Chapin Memorial Humanitarian Award and Save the Children’s Humanitarian Award in 2018.

As an entertainment speaker, Scooter Braun delivers one of the most compelling keynotes available to corporate and creative audiences alike. Drawing on 23 years of building at the intersection of culture, commerce, and technology, he speaks to what it actually takes to identify and develop transformative talent, scale a business beyond conventional limits, lead through adversity and public scrutiny, and build organizations that endure. His “10x Mindset” framework — the philosophy that drove SB Projects from a single client to a billion-dollar enterprise — gives audiences of executives, entrepreneurs, and creative leaders a replicable model for thinking and acting at a scale most never consider. Billboard ranked Braun and HYBE chairman Bang Si-Hyuk jointly at #17 on the 2025 Power 100 list, cementing his standing as one of the most influential forces the industry has ever produced.