Steven Bartlett raised 10s of millions...

Steven Bartlett just closed an eight-figure funding round valuing his company Steven.com at $425 million.

And his stated ambition? "To build the Disney of the creator economy."

The funding round, led by Slow Ventures and Apeiron Investment Group, is reportedly Europe's biggest ever for a creator economy company.

And Bartlett's keeping over 90% ownership, which means he's not selling out - he's scaling up.

Bartlett is building infrastructure.

Steven.com houses his media assets, including FlightStory, which produces video podcasts for Trevor Noah, Davina McCall, and others.

He just launched Flightcast this month with Roxcodes (former MrBeast engineer) - a platform specifically to help video podcasters grow their audiences.

He's got over 100 full-time employees across London, Manchester, LA, and New York.

This is vertical integration.

Production, distribution, technology, and talent all under one roof.

That's the Disney playbook.

But instead of fictional characters as IP, it's creators as franchises.

Bartlett's pitch is basically this:

"For the last century, Disney demonstrated the power of a single piece of intellectual property. They took Mickey Mouse and built a universe around him - films, theme parks, merchandise. In our world, the IP is not a fictional character. The creator is the new franchise."

That framing matters.

He's not thinking about creators as talent to manage.

He's thinking about them as IP to scale.

And if you look at what he's building - media production, audience growth technology, venture investments - he's creating the infrastructure to do exactly that.

What he's building is significant because someone was going to do this eventually.

Someone was going to build the vertically integrated creator company with production, distribution, technology, and talent.

Someone was going to be the Disney of the creator economy.

Bartlett's making a very serious run at being that someone.

His investor list backs this up - KKR, Gary Vee, Kevin Rose, Will Ahmed (Whoop founder), Alex Hormozi.

But regardless of whether Steven.com becomes the actual Disney of creators, this funding round proves something important: the creator economy is mature enough for someone to credibly pitch building Disney.

That alone is wild.

Remember, the creator mindset is all you need to grow 🌱

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