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“We’re watching, in slow motion but also very quickly, the unbundling of institutions,” The Diary of A CEO’s Steven Bartlett told the audience at the Forbes Creator Upfronts this week. “When media attention shifts from, say, the old institutions of the past, to people just like you in your bedrooms with microphones, everything changes.”
He’s speaking about the boom of the creator economy, and his role within it. What started in 2017 as a podcast interviewing people from his flat in London perfectly exemplifies that change: It’s now an attention-grabbing, conversation-starting, thought-shaping show that’s attracted over a billion streams for his four hour-long episodes on everything from life as a CIA agent to the gut microbiome. He’s hit the top of podcast charts (currently at No. 2 on the U.S. business list), and turned down $100 million deals to run his show his way. The bold bets have worked so far: The franchise earned $20 million in revenue in 2024. But neither the money, nor his business ecosystem, is stopping with The Diary of A CEO.
This week, Bartlett announced that Steven.com closed an 8-figure investment deal led by Slow Ventures and Apeiron Investment Group—valuing the company at a whopping $425 million. (And Bartlett still owns more than 90%.) Steven.com is the holding company for multiple branches of the business including media studio FlightStory (including shows like Begin Again with Davina McCall and We Need to Talk with Paul C. Brunson, along with The Diary of A CEO), podcast production and technology platform FlightCast, and the investment arm FlightFund.
The investment is indicative of the shift in capital allocation that Bartlett says also stems from the attention on the creator economy. “It’s why we’re seeing every creator is becoming a VC,” he said, adding that: “Especially in a world with AI, where the cost of producing software or content drops, the game actually becomes who’s got distribution? Who’s got an audience, who can acquire customers?”
With multiple channels of distribution at his disposal, he’s set on building the “Disney” of the creator economy. What does that mean? “I think creators come in all shapes and sizes, and all mediums and platforms, so we’re super agnostic to that,” he said. Today at FlightStory, that includes teams for newsletters, short form, longform, speaking engagements and events (Bartlett himself just finished an Asia tour in September), book publishing and products.
Though so much has changed thanks to creators, we’d be remiss not to mention AI’s impact on today’s businesses, too. But for Bartlett, it’s just another opportunity to grow.
“The biggest opportunity at the moment as a content creator is translations,” he said. “Now in a world of AI, you don’t need to hire a human dubbing team in South America or Spain to translate your content into Spanish.”
These new technologies are critical for his goal of global growth. After all, only 10% of the world is fluent in English. “The other 90% can’t get your content,” he said.
Bartlett and team are also using AI to bring animation, and even cartoons, into the mix. For instance: Taking a multi-hour episode with a guest, determining the key lesson from the conversation, and turning it into a 20-minute animated series to upload to YouTube Kids.
When asked about what will be required of creators in the future, he left us with this: “It doesn’t matter what I’m doing now in terms of tactics. It matters that you have a system or principle that will allow you to find the right answer in six months when what I say now has expired,” he said. “The answer is, I don’t know, but my team is running so many tangential experiments that we’re about to find out. We’re going to continue to stay ahead of the curve.”
See you next week,
Alex and Zoya
Why VideoAmp Thinks It Can Bust Nielsen’s TV Ratings Monopoly
Media companies large and small are up against massive change in the face of AI. TV ratings and analytics company VideoAmp says it can be a tech-forward alternative to outdated incumbents. “They’re whipping the horse to get the buggy to move forward; we’re trying to figure out how to get our Ferrari to go over 200 mph,” VideoAmp CEO Peter Liguori told Forbes.
Lister Lowdown
-2025 Under 30 AI company Mercor this week announced its secured $350 million in new funding in a round led by Felicis Ventures. Mercor is helping players like Anthropic, Meta and OpenAI recruit talent to train and improve their AI models. The new round, which saw participation from existing investors Benchmark and General Catalyst, values the company at $10 billion, and makes the three cofounders (Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha) the world’s youngest self-made billionaires. CEO Foody previously sat down with Forbes to discuss how the startup found the white space in the AI universe—read it here.
-More on the AI boom: Cartesia, a startup working on ultra-realistic voice AI models, this week announced a $100 million raise from Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Lightspeed and Nvidia. With the new funding, Cartesia also announced its new model called Sonic-3 which functions in 42 languages and has “full emotional range,” including laughter. Under 30 listers Arjun Desai and Brandon Yang are two of its five cofounders.
–Under 30 alum Ziad Ahmed hosted ZCon—a conference bringing together Gen Z minds to discuss everything from the entertainment landscape to politics—in Los Angeles last week. Ahmed was previously the cofounder of JUV Consulting, a firm that helped other brands understand what the younger generations want. JUV was acquired by United Talent Agency in 2024, and the two now host ZCon as part of the deal.
On Our Radar
-VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, is reportedly raising $10 billion across four funds. Cofounded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the firm has been pivotal in backing some of the highest valued startups like Databricks, which is worth some $100 billion. The new funds will each target distinct areas: about $6 billion will go toward late-stage startups such as Databricks; two $1.5 billion funds will focus on AI, one in the consumer sector and the other in compute and data infrastructure, and more than $1 billion will be dedicated to defense technology. (Financial Times)
–OpenAI is reportedly preparing to file an initial public offering that could value the startup at some $1 trillion, according to Reuters. According to sources, OpenAI could be filing in the second half of 2026, while the Wall Street Journal reported the company could go public as early as 2027. An OpenAI spokesperson told Reuters “An IPO is not our focus, so we could not possibly have set a date.” (Reuters)