How BuzzFeed, Vice, and Bill Simmons followed the same path to success

BuzzFeed is going all-in on video.
Vice is openly talking about being a $50 billion company.
Bill Simmons has a new show on HBO.
These seemingly disparate media brands have a few things in common. They are primarily digital entities. They have enormous scale and an attractive audience.
But how we came to use each of these brands — and make no mistake, "Bill Simmons" is a brand, not just a name — as shorthand for media success in 2016 is really just about one thing: They were eac