Sam Habibi
Co-founder, New York
Sam leads strategy and business development. He was a TikTok creator before he started the agency, and studied public policy, data analytics and applied data science at USC.
An extension of your team on TikTok Shop
Spotlight Media is an official TikTok Shop Partner agency, and TikTok Shop is all we do. We work alongside your team and run your shop day to day.
Our story
From LA to New York
Los Angeles
Where it started and our West Coast base.
New York City
Our HQ today.
Spotlight Media was founded in Los Angeles in early 2023 by Sam Habibi and Jaeho Lee. Sam came to it as a creator. He had been posting on TikTok since 2019 and had grown a sneaker account to around 30,000 followers. Jaeho brought a background in business and product.
In the early days, the two of them helped brands work with creators. They tested college ambassador programs, UGC programs and performance-based influencer marketing for brands on TikTok. Although they were generating tens of millions of impressions on TikTok, the biggest challenge was attribution. There was simply no good way to measure how many sales their content was driving. When TikTok Shop launched in the U.S. in 2023, a single video could finally lead straight to a sale inside the app, so every sale could be traced back to the video that drove it. Sam and Jaeho saw what that meant for brands and committed to it fully, and Spotlight became one of the first TikTok Shop Partner agencies in October 2023.
Today, Spotlight is a team of more than 30 people and remains fully bootstrapped, with its home base in New York City and Los Angeles. Sam and Jaeho are still closely involved with every brand the team works with.
Meet the founders
Jaeho Lee
Co-founder, New York
Jaeho leads our operations. He studied computer science and business at UC Berkeley and the Haas School of Business.
Our foundation
The four beliefs behind every partnership we take on.
Every brand deserves its own plan
Some things work for almost every brand on TikTok Shop, like great content and getting product into the right creators' hands. The rest comes from your story, your founder and your customers, and that is the part we build with you.
Good ideas earn their place
Nobody can say for sure what will catch on. We try a few ideas, give each one a fair amount of time, then put more behind the ones your customers respond to.
Moments bring people together
A product launch, a creator webinar or a LIVE event gives creators a reason to show up. Over time, those moments grow a community of creators who genuinely enjoy posting about your brand.
You always know who to call
You work with a dedicated Spotlight team. We meet every week to go through the numbers together, and you can reach us any time in a shared channel.
Recognized by TikTok Shop
Rising Star Partner Agency
TikTok Shop, September 2026
Awarded by TikTok Shop at its partner awards in New York. It recognizes the agencies driving the fastest, most meaningful growth for brands on the platform.
How we're different
TikTok Shop changes fast. So we don't work to a fixed scope or promise results. We join our clients as full-time growth partners.
Shop operations, affiliates, paid creators, content, ads, LIVE and Meta, run by one team.
Typical agencies cover one piece: affiliates, ads or content.