Steven Bartlett has built a holding company around his podcast, which investors valued at $425 million. After the round closed, he kept more than a 90% stake in the company, and summed up his goal in a single sentence. “My ultimate ambition is to build the Disney of the creator economy,” Bartlett said. The investment round from October 2025 was led by Slow Ventures and Apeiron Investment Group, and according to the press release it is the largest round ever raised by a European holding company built around a creator.
Just under two months later, Georgie Holt, chief executive of Bartlett's FlightStory, posed six questions on LinkedIn ahead of the upcoming Cannes Lions festival. One of them asks whether the creator economy's operating system is being born right now.
What Steven.com contains
Steven.com was founded in 2023 and brings Bartlett's media, technology and investment activities together under one roof. The company has two sides. One is creator media, with a podcast and intellectual property. The other is creator ventures, with e-commerce, investments and infrastructure tools. The FlightStory, FlightCast and FlightFund divisions operate under the holding.
The engine of the whole structure remains The Diary of a CEO podcast. As of October 2025 it had more than 13 million subscribers on YouTube, and in the same month it passed the milestone of one billion views. According to the press release, it is number one in the United Kingdom and in Europe. The show illustrates the logic of the whole holding. An audience around one creator becomes a company that can be financed like a technology startup.
FlightStory invests in Hot Smart Rich
In December 2025 the holding showed how it wants to grow. FlightStory put a seven-figure sum into Hot Smart Rich, a media and investment platform founded by Maggie Sellers Reum. Hot Smart Rich describes itself as a platform at the intersection of content, community and capital. In less than its first year it gathered more than 1.8 million downloads and roughly 500,000 audience members.
The investment terms speak the language of venture capital. The parties set a target of tenfold revenue growth and a tenfold expansion of the team across content production, marketing, sales, product and community. Bartlett justified the investment with an observation about gender imbalance in the podcast world. “I was shocked to hear as little as 7% of business podcasts are fronted by women, and yet it is estimated that women control a huge proportion of consumer spend in the US,” he said. Sellers described the investment more broadly. “This partnership is more than an investment in me, it's an investment by Steven and his team into the future of women taking control of their businesses and lives.”
Sellers began as a creator with more than 250,000 followers on TikTok, and built a media and investment platform around her audience. Through HSR Ventures she now holds stakes in more than 18 consumer startups.
Creator economy at Cannes Lions
Holt's post points towards the Cannes Lions festival, where both Bartlett and Sellers will take to the stage and host their own events. This year's festival gives the creator economy its own space. The LIONS Creators section runs from 22 to 26 June 2026 at the Palais Beach in Cannes. For the first time, Adobe is its main partner, and a creator ticket costs €1,245 plus tax. For that, a creator gets access to the beach with a stage, a production studio, an editing suite and meeting space for brand partnerships.
How much the creator economy is worth
In its 2023 analysis, Goldman Sachs estimated that the global creator economy, about $250 billion in size, could approach $480 billion by 2027. At the time, the bank put the number of creators worldwide at 50 million and annual market growth at 10% to 20%.
Against that background, Bartlett's company valuation of $425 million is a concrete market signal. Capital that until now has moved around creators deal by deal is beginning to consolidate into holding structures.
Georgie Holt asks whether influence is moving away from institutions to individuals. Steven.com shows a concrete form of that answer. A creator now raises an investment round, buys other creators and runs a holding with divisions. The creator becomes an institution in their own right.
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