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Podcaster and entrepreneur Steven Bartlett has closed an eight-figure investment round in his company Steven.com as he bids to build “the Disney of the creator economy.” He secured the funding, at a $425 million valuation, in a round led by renowned investors Slow Ventures and Apeiron Investment Group. It is believed to be Europe’s biggest ever creator holding company fundraising round. The new funding will accelerate Bartlett’s mission to empower creator media companies and creator ventures to scale globally and develop world-class creator IP and creator commerce eco-systems. Bartlett founded the social media marketing company Social Chain in 2014 and in 2017 started the Diary of a CEO podcast, which has more than 13 million YouTube subscribers and 70 million monthly views and downloads. Since 2021, Bartlett has appeared as an investor on BBC One series Dragons’ Den. Following the funding, Bartlett will maintain majority ownership of more than 90% in Steven.com, which houses his various creator media assets and ventures, such as media division FlightStory, which produces video podcasts fronted by the likes of Trevor Noah, Davina McCall and Paul C. Brunson. Bartlett said: "By bringing together creator IP, capital and our infrastructure, Steven.com is positioning itself to lead in the next era of the creator economy. My ultimate ambition is to build the Disney of the creator economy – and the strategic partners this funding round has brought on board has enabled me to take a big step in that direction. “For the last century, companies like Disney – from its starting point with Walt Disney himself – has demonstrated the power of a single piece of intellectual property. He and his successors built a global empire by taking a character like Mickey Mouse and building a universe around him: films, theme parks, merchandise and more. “This created a flywheel of immense, compounding value which resulted in a generational company. With my team, I think we are building the modern version of this model. But in our world, the IP is not a fictional character. “The creator is the new franchise. Our mission is to build the defining company of the creator economy by constructing an ecosystem that scales a creator's influence across two core pillars: creator media and creator ventures, while powering this flywheel with our proprietary creator technology”. Megan Lightcap, Partner, Slow Ventures, said: “At Slow Ventures, we’ve long believed that creators are the next great entrepreneurs — and Steven Bartlett is a first-rate example. He isn’t just one of the fastest-growing and most trusted voices in the world; he’s a meticulously data-driven entrepreneur whose content, deep community, and portfolio of companies create a powerful flywheel that fuels system-wide growth. We couldn’t be more excited to back him through the Slow Creator Fund as he scales Steven.com across media, products, and technology.” Christian Angermayer, Apeiron Investment Group, said: “Influence is flowing to individuals at unprecedented speed and scale. When the architecture of attention changes, it rewrites the rules for how capital moves, how culture forms, and how value is created. For a century, Disney proved that a single piece of intellectual property could anchor a multi-hundred-billion-dollar empire. The creator is the modern franchise, and AI is the critical catalyst that makes this transition possible, enabling individuals to operate with the production capabilities and scale that once required entire institutions
