#24 — Evan Britton on creating a Wikipedia for a new generation and bootstrapping an ad-based business

Evan Britton is the founder of Famous Birthdays, the de facto celebrity wikipedia offering 200,000 biographies with a focus on Gen Z social media stars and creators.
Evan founded Famous Birthdays in 2012 and has profitably bootstrapped operations through ad revenue. Currently, the site registers 30 million unique monthly visitors, with versions in Spanish and Portuguese.
Famous Birthdays also creates original content with celebrity creators by hosting Q&As, games, and challenges. The site’s content on all four of its social channels (YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram) has been receiving more than a 100 million views every month.

In this interview, we talked to Evan about:

- The origin of Famous Birthdays
- Identifying the phenomenon of digital creator fame
- Why he chose not to compete with Cameo
- Which platforms and content drive Famous Birthdays searches
- Why user curiosity has migrated from traditional celebrities to digital creators
- What creators can learn from what’s popular on Famous Birthdays
- The risks posed by deplatforming
- Why he’s not interested in outside funding, and how he managed to bring an ad-based business model to a bootstrapped business
- His advice to founders who want to bootstrap a business

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