Hassan Youssef is the classic rags-to-riches story. Born in Quebec, Canada, to immigrant Lebanese parents, he climbed his way to vast wealth by building a digital empire — first in porn, and now in entertainment news.
The founder and CEO of Valnet, based in Montreal, owns Screen Rant, Collider, MovieWeb and the comic book news site CBR, which according to the company, collectively drives 260 million page views every month.
In the past decade, Valnet has scooped up most of the independently owned fan-facing news sites and is constantly seeking to acquire more, regularly sending pitch emails to independent content owners to buy them out and add traffic to its online juggernaut.