When a Czech brand runs a campaign with a YouTuber, it is buying a person. The entire channel stands or falls with one face in front of the camera, and that dependence is exactly what keeps institutional investors away from the creator economy. The London-based Electrify Video Partners has turned this into a business model. It buys majority stakes in established independent YouTube channels and rebuilds them as operations that do not rest on a single face.
What Electrify actually buys
Electrify was founded in London in 2021. According to Forbes, it has bought majority stakes in at least nine flagship YouTube channels, which it calls “creator-founder knowledge brands”. Alongside capital, it adds operational support to help the channels scale. It picks established leaders in narrow niches, from programming through aviation to Lego. Its largest asset is the educational channel Veritasium, with 21 million subscribers and more than four billion views.
The portfolio also includes, for example, the science channel Astrum and SpitBrix, which builds with Lego. According to tech.eu, in 2023 Electrify had five channels with more than 30 million subscribers combined and ten billion views over their lifetime.
A bet on content that does not age
Co-founder Ian Shepherd bases the selection on content that does not age. “There’s lots of viral trend-led sugar rush type content and we really want to focus on thoughtful informative content that has a positive place in the world,” he told Forbes, adding that documentary channels hold a more stable “evergreen” value than news or viral content. The firm targets brands whose videos “inform and inspire”, that is, mini documentaries for millennials and Gen Z viewers who are curious but have short attention spans.
An educational video about physics or aviation keeps earning for years after publication, while a viral hit fades within a week. Electrify therefore buys catalogues with a long lifespan and a more predictable advertising income.
Who funds the experiment
According to PitchBook data cited by Forbes, Electrify has attracted around $185 million from private equity firms. Its investors include London’s Capital D, and New York’s Equable Capital and MEP Capital. Capital D itself put $85 million into Electrify back in 2023. The investors are betting that these brands can live on beyond their original creators.
Forbes frames the whole creator economy as a $250 billion market. Institutional money nevertheless came in cautiously, because the value of an individual brand hung on one person in front of the camera. Electrify offers an answer in the form of less conspicuous niches and well-staffed production and development teams.
A channel that outlives its creator
Advertising money continues to flow into creators. The fifty highest-earning creators on Forbes’s list passed the $1 billion mark for the first time, together earning $1.02 billion in a year, an improvement of 20% on the previous year. Forbes published the ranking at the Cannes Lions festival. Those figures, however, belong to particular people.
Electrify works from the opposite end. It separates the value of a channel from the person in front of the camera and lets the brand run on production and development teams. The bet of European capital is that a YouTube channel can be an asset that outlives its founder.
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