London, UK –  Media pioneer and entrepreneur Steven Bartlett today announced his company Steven.com – the company that owns his creator media assets and creator ventures – has closed a major eight-figure investment, at a $425 million valuation, led by renowned investors Slow Ventures and Apeiron Investment Group. This is believed to be Europe’s biggest ever creator holding company fundraising round. Bartlett has secured investment from some of the world’s most forward-thinking investors and founders. This 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. The investment also enables Bartlett and his company – incorporating established divisions FlightStory, FlightCast and FlightFund – to maintain full independence, with Bartlett holding majority ownership of more than 90%.

Bartlett – who is also the creator and host of global phenomenon Diary Of A CEO (DOAC) – 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. 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.”

With the creator economy projected to reach more than $528 billion by 2030 and more than 207 million active creators worldwide,* Steven.com is perfectly positioned to harness this momentum by combining investment, media expertise and technology infrastructure under one roof.

Bartlett already works with some of the most prominent creator talent through his media division, FlightStory. This includes Trevor Noah, Davina McCall, Paul C. Brunson, Bartlett himself and many more. The company acquires, scales and builds commercial infrastructure around top creator media IP, whilst investing in and incubating creator ventures. Steven.com now employs more than 100 people full time in the UK between London and Manchester and has offices in Los Angeles and New York as he cements his US footprint.

Bartlett has also built a suite of public and proprietary tools that use creator audience data to remove guesswork from strategy and growth decisions on creator IP. Earlier this month he announced the public launch of one such tool called FlightCast.com – the world’s first podcast hosting platform built for video, with in-built AI and testing capabilities.

Bartlett has also already illustrated the use of proprietary tools to stunning effect himself. DOAC – which he created and also presents through FlightStory – is now the world’s second biggest interview podcast with more than 13 million YouTube subscribers and 70 million monthly views/downloads. It had achieved more than one billion streams across all platforms by late 2024 and this month (Oct 2025) it surpassed one billion views on YouTube alone. It also remains the No1 Podcast in the UK and Europe and is currently adding 600K new YouTube subscribers each month – making it the fastest growing show in the world – with a 500% compound annual growth rate. Previous guests include Michelle Obama, MrBeast, Matthew McConaughey, Louis Tomlinson, Simon Cowell, Boris Johnson and, most recently, former Liverpool FC manager Jurgen Klopp.

Additionally, ‘We Need To Talk with Paul C Brunson’, another show built under Bartlett’s media company has been a mainstay at the top of the podcast charts since it launched in 2024 – making it the UK’s fastest growing new show. And ‘Begin Again’ with Davina McCall – which debuted in 2024 – has seen similar success also becoming an ever-present in the UK podcast charts.

This announcement comes in the wake of Bartlett radically bolstering his executive team with world-class media and operational talent including Amy Golding, CEO of Steven Bartlett Private Office, who brings venture capital and recruitment expertise as founder of a VC fund and former CEO of a 9-figure firm; Niki Aryana, Chairman of Steven.com’s media division and Bartlett’s personal advisor, with 25 years in global media leadership at Boston Consulting Group and a decade at Procter & Gamble; Claire Blunt, CFO of Steven.com, with 25 years’ experience driving growth across Guardian where she was international CEO, Future PLC and Hearst Europe; Ian Rosenblatt OBE, Legal Counsel at Steven.com, a veteran lawyer and founder of Rosenblatt Solicitors; Jules Davies Marriott, Chief of Staff at Steven.com, who spent 25 years transforming entertainment brands including working as Simon Cowell’s COO for a decade; Georgie Holt, CEO of Steven.com’s media division, a former Hearst and Bauer executive who scaled Acast Americas into the leading US podcast network; and Christiana Brenton, CRO of Steven.com Media, with 15 years’ experience leading commercial operations in global media, including as Global VP of Sales at Acast.

Bartlett has also become renowned as a visionary entrepreneur and one of the most influential voices in modern business and media and the youngest-ever Dragon on BBC’s Dragons’ Den (Shark Tank’s equivalent).

He has invested in more than 40 companies, including SpaceX, Whoop, Lovable, Replit, MrBeast, Cadence, Groq, and PerfectTed. This month (October 2025) PerfectTed also became Dragon’s Den’s most successful ever investment with the company now being valued at more than $190m less than three years since the founders appeared on the long-running TV series.