Podcast personality Steven Bartlett is partnering with Authentic Brands Group to put up to $400 million toward helping other creators expand their businesses.
Through his holding company, Steven.com, the host of The Diary of a CEO podcast announced OBSN, pronounced obsession, on Monday. The initiative is designed to give creators funding, infrastructure, and professional expertise to establish enduring businesses through media, products, partnerships, and other channels.
OBSN also features a creator-economy media platform operated by Bartlett’s company, offering news, analysis, and live events. Authentic will oversee brand development, products, licensing, strategic partnerships, and worldwide distribution.
The venture aims to merge Bartlett’s experience creating media led by personalities with Authentic’s expertise in managing brands and intellectual property. Authentic invests in intellectual property and cultural assets, with a portfolio that includes more than 50 brands and figures such as Reebok, Shaquille O’Neal, Sports Illustrated, and Elvis Presley.
Bartlett described the initiative as a response to what he calls the problem of “fragmentation vultures”: partners who assist creators with various parts of their businesses but may have conflicting interests.
“Can one partner be genuinely integrated?” he asked onstage while introducing the initiative. “We believe the answer is yes.”
Jamie Salter, Authentic’s executive chairman, said the company offers creators more than traditional representation.
“Can we apply to the creator economy what we have done with David Beckham, Marilyn Monroe, or Shaquille O’Neal and move your brand across all these different pillars?” Salter said. “We are a one-stop shop.”
The number of creators who will receive funding has not yet been decided, and the companies did not specify a detailed schedule beyond saying the capital will be deployed “over the coming years.”
Bartlett is best known for The Diary of a CEO, a nine-year-old podcast that has gathered roughly 20 million YouTube subscribers, come close to Joe Rogan’s audience, and become the top business podcast on Spotify in the United States.
This is not Bartlett’s first effort to use his own social-media success to help other creators build their businesses.
Through one of his companies, FlightStory, he has been signing and developing additional talent. He has tried to apply his own approach to their operations, including extensive preparation before recordings and the use of social-media clips to expand their audiences. His first major test case is Hot Smart Rich host Maggie Sellers Reum, whom he recently invested seven figures in through FlightStory.
His company operates a speakers division called FlightSpeakers, as well as a unit that assists creators with social-media distribution. FlightStory is also considering a paid membership program to engage its most devoted fans.
Bartlett recently secured an eight-figure investment round to grow the company, which employs about 150 people and generated approximately $47 million in revenue last year.