Steven Bartlett’s company Steven.com has reached a $425 million valuation following a significant new investment round led by Slow Ventures and Apeiron Investment Group. Other notable backers in this round include Philipp Freise (KKR), Second Sight Ventures, Tom Profumo (Active Partners), Magnus Grimeland (Antler), Gary Vaynerchuk, Kevin Rose (founder of Digg), Will Ahmed (Founder of Whoop), Bryan Johnson, Alex Hormozi, and Codie Sanchez. The raise marks what is believed to be Europe’s largest funding round for a creator holding company.
The fresh capital will accelerate Bartlett’s vision of building a global creator ecosystem that integrates creator media, ventures, and technology under one platform. Through established divisions such as FlightStory, FlightCast, and FlightFund, Steven.com aims to empower creator-driven companies while maintaining full independence. Bartlett continues to hold more than 90% ownership of the business.
Steven.com’s strategy is centered on combining creator intellectual property, capital, and infrastructure to develop what Bartlett calls “the Disney of the creator economy.” The company’s proprietary tools enable creators to scale their reach, monetize content efficiently, and build media empires around their personal brands.
With the global creator economy projected to exceed $528 billion by 2030, Steven.com is well-positioned to lead in this fast-growing space. Its media arm, FlightStory, collaborates with high-profile creators such as Trevor Noah, Davina McCall, Paul C. Brunson, and Bartlett himself. The company employs over 100 people between London and Manchester, with offices also in Los Angeles and New York to strengthen its U.S. presence.
Earlier this month, the company launched FlightCast.com, billed as the world’s first podcast hosting platform built for video with integrated AI and analytics tools. The platform builds upon the success of Bartlett’s flagship show, The Diary of a CEO (DOAC), which now ranks as the world’s second-largest interview podcast, boasting more than 13 million YouTube subscribers, 70 million monthly views/downloads, and over one billion YouTube views as of October 2025.
Other popular shows within the Steven.com media portfolio include “We Need To Talk with Paul C Brunson” and “Begin Again with Davina McCall,” both consistently ranking among the top UK podcasts.
To strengthen its leadership structure, Bartlett has recently recruited an experienced executive team, including Amy Golding (CEO, Steven Bartlett Private Office), Niki Aryana (Chairman, Media Division), Claire Blunt (CFO, Steven.com), Ian Rosenblatt OBE (Legal Counsel), Jules Davies Marriott (Chief of Staff), Georgie Holt (CEO, Media Division), and Christiana Brenton (CRO, Media Division). Each brings extensive experience in venture capital, media, and business growth to the company’s next phase of expansion.
Beyond Steven.com, Bartlett is recognized as a dynamic entrepreneur and one of the most influential figures in modern media. The youngest-ever Dragon on BBC’s Dragons’ Den, he has invested in more than 40 companies, including SpaceX, Whoop, Lovable, Replit, MrBeast, Cadence, Groq, and PerfectTed. Notably, PerfectTed, one of Bartlett’s Dragons’ Den investments, recently achieved a valuation exceeding $190 million, becoming the show’s most successful investment to date.
KEY QUOTES:
“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.”
Steven Bartlett, Founder and CEO, Steven.com
“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.”
Megan Lightcap, Partner, Slow Ventures
“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. I have known Steven for several years now, and he is one of the brightest visionary entrepreneurs I’ve ever worked with – a true and rare asset to British entrepreneurship. Him and his world class management team are building the infrastructure to transform individual creators into institutional-grade businesses through an integrated ecosystem of media, ventures, and technology. We are backing the company that will define the creator economy by proving that the individual, properly capitalised and supported, can build empires that rival the entertainment conglomerates of the last century. Europe needs to take the creator economy very seriously and we need more platforms like Steven.com to build their empires right here in Europe.”
Christian Angermayer, Founder, Apeiron Investment Group
