Zoie Burgher gamed the YouTube celebrity system hard. It took her just a few months to rack up her first million subscribers, something that has taken other aspiring YouTubers years. Burgher’s next challenge will prove a bit more difficult: becoming a successful media CEO. She’s launching a new company that will be part gaming team, part media brand, and part talent agency. She’s got a lot more riding on this one, too: she’s convinced a group of women to drop everything and join her, and she’s thrown her own money behind it.
So far, Burgher’s company, Luxe Gaming, has one main project: Luxe House. Team members (right now there are six of them, including Burgher) live together in a house and post episodic vlogs of their daily lives to YouTube. While many reality shows sequester their contestants away from the outside world, on YouTube, Luxe offers the opposite approach: constant, real-time fan feedback.
Basically, Burgher says, Luxe House will be like The Real World, but populated only by young women, with a little bit of Call of Duty.
“Social media stars are made from reality TV shows,” Burgher said. “We decided that [making our own reality program] would be the best way to showcase ourselves and draw attention to our personal brands and help us gain recognition.”
