Founder: Steven.com The Creator Economy Company, home to FlightStory & FlightCast.
United Kingdom
3M followers
500+ connections
3M followers
500+ connections
About
Steven Bartlett is a 33-year-old British entrepreneur, investor in more than 100 companies, speaker, author, and media owner. He is the founder of Steven.com - the creator media company. Through it's podcast creator "label" called FlightStory, they create and scales new media podcast IP and commercialise that IP through brand partnerships, programmatic revenue, events, book publishing, newsletters, e-commerce, and new product development.
He is also the co-founder of thirdweb, a developer platform powering over 100,000 teams to build and launch web3 applications, and FlightCast, a video-first podcast hosting platform used by some of the world’s largest shows.
Steven first gained recognition as the co-founder and CEO of Social Chain AG, a social media marketing and e-commerce company he launched at 21 and took public on a European stock exchange by the age of 27 via reverse merger. Social Chain AG became a globally recognised business with hundreds of employees across London, Manchester, Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles, working with major brands including Amazon, Apple, and Coca-Cola.
Through his Fund and personal investments, he has backed companies including SpaceX, Huel, ZOE, Whoop, MrBeast, Groq, KetoneIQ, Cadence, PerfectTed, and over 60 others - focusing on businesses that improve human health, happiness, and performance.
Steven is also the creator and host of The Diary of a CEO, currently the world's most downloaded / watched podcast and the fastest-growing podcast in the world. He is the youngest-ever investor on BBC’s Dragons’ Den.
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Commercial & Speaking: commercial@stevenbartlett.com
Press: press@stevenbartlett.com
Podcast Enquiries: bookings@stevenbartlett.com
Events: events@stevenbartlett.com
Fund & Venture Investments: www.flightfund.com
Articles by Steven
Activity
3M followers
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Steven Bartlett shared thisHe infiltrated criminal networks in Colombia because normal life was boring. This is Shawn Ryan. He joined the US Navy at 17, became a Navy SEAL, went on to work as a CIA contractor, and has since built one of the biggest podcasts in the world. When we sat down, I told Shawn that it feels like he has lived several different lives. And I don’t think I’ve ever meant that more literally. One of the most unexpected parts of his story is what happened to his faith. He told me about an experience where he believes he saw hell, describing it as complete emptiness, fear and the absence of God. For someone who has spent so much of his life around war, danger and intelligence, it was this experience that seemed to have changed him in a completely different way. And that is only one chapter of his life. We discussed things like: - Why he went to Colombia and embedded himself inside criminal networks. - Why he says he went to hell and came back seeing faith differently. - What he saw across Haiti, Afghanistan and Iraq that he still remembers today. - How podcasts could be used to manipulate millions of people. - Why politicians lying to his face changed how he sees politics. - Why he thinks China benefits every time America weakens itself. What makes Shawn’s perspective so interesting is that he hasn’t just studied these worlds from the outside. He has lived inside many of them. There were things in this conversation I probably would have dismissed several years ago. But doing this podcast has made me far more careful about assuming I understand what is possible. You don’t have to agree with everything Shawn believes. But his perspective is absolutely worth hearing. Out now on all platforms ❤️👊🏾 The Diary Of A CEO
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Steven Bartlett shared this13,000 employees became 3 in the space of one week. It’s quite difficult to comprehend what that would do to a person. Adam Neumann is the co-founder of WeWork. He grew the company to a $47 billion valuation before its failed IPO, his departure as CEO and one of the most public corporate collapses in recent history. I’ve met hundreds of extraordinary people doing this podcast, but within a few minutes of meeting Adam I realised he was quite unlike almost any founder or CEO I’ve met before. There’s a depth, philosophy and perspective to him that is incredibly rare. So I wanted to understand where that came from and what the last few years had actually done to him. We talked about: - His relationship with money and where it went wrong. - The friends who disappeared when everything changed. - The mistakes he made as a leader. - Why he now surrounds himself with people willing to tell him no. - Why he disconnects from technology for 24 hours every week. One thing that stayed with me is how easy it is to believe in yourself when everything is going up and everybody wants to be around you. The more interesting question is what you believe when everything is crashing. You can have your own view on Adam and WeWork. That tension is partly why I found this conversation so interesting. I wanted to know what all of it taught him. Out now on all platforms ❤️👊🏾 The Diary Of A CEO
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Steven Bartlett shared thisHe's never spoken about this side of his life. Most people know Druski as one of the funniest people on the internet. His videos have been watched over a billion times, and more than 40 million people follow him. But it all started in Georgia, making funny skits on his phone. Those videos eventually went viral and eventually caught Drake’s attention. Since then, Druski has gone from making people laugh online to building his own production company, hosting major awards and working alongside people like Kevin Hart. But I wanted to know where the funny came from. Because when you go back far enough, you find a story I don’t think most people would expect. From a young age, Druski learnt to read the mood of a room incredibly quickly. When things became difficult at home, comedy became a way of changing the energy around him. As we spoke, I realised he was doing the same thing with me. He would notice tiny changes in my expression, stop mid-answer and ask what I was thinking. After nearly 700 conversations on this podcast, very few people have done that. It made me understand his comedy differently. We spoke about: - The message from Drake (@champagnepapi) that transformed his career. - What was really happening inside his childhood home? - Why his brother’s life went in a very different direction. - Having a gun pointed at his head and deciding to change. - Netflix and Amazon rejecting him but then came crawling back. - How comedy saved him from prison. There’s a moment in the conversation where I tell Druski that our dark sides are often connected to our light sides. I think his story is an extraordinary example of that. The awareness that helped him navigate difficult moments as a child became part of the thing that millions of people now find funny. Behind the person you see online is someone far more thoughtful, ambitious and complicated than I expected. This conversation changed the way I see Druski. Out now on all platforms ❤️👊🏾
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Steven Bartlett shared thisHe knows what your favourite artists don’t tell you. I’ve been waiting 8 years to sit down with the person who has spent his life quietly helping some of the greatest artists in the world make some of their greatest work. That person is Rick Rubin. Rick co-founded Def Jam at 21 and has gone on to work with people like Jay-Z, Kanye West, Adele, Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The reason I’ve wanted to speak to him for so long has much less to do with the names. Rick is a master of creativity and collaboration, and I wanted to understand how he sees things. How can someone sit in the room with that many extraordinary artists, across completely different generations and genres, and continue to be useful to them? What surprised me most about this conversation was how little Rick talks about success. He talks about paying attention. Listening to yourself. Being willing to make something other people might not understand. Protecting the part of you that was creative before the world started telling you what was good, bad, sensible or successful. We discussed things like: - Why Kanye’s fearlessness makes him such an interesting artist. - What he saw in Jay-Z’s process that he had never seen before. - Why Rick believes creativity is gradually being beaten out of us. - What does he notice that other people miss? - Why some of the best creative decisions make very little logical sense at the time. This was one of those conversations that went much deeper than I expected. Rick has spent decades thinking about creativity, taste, collaboration and what allows people to make their best work, and there’s a real depth to the way he understands all of it. Towards the end I asked Rick a very simple question: “What is your job?” His answer was, "Support people in making their beautiful things.” After waiting 8 years to have this conversation, that answer probably explains Rick better than any list of records, awards or famous names ever could. If you’ve ever wanted to understand how your favourite artists actually think and work, or how to protect more of your own creativity, I think you’ll take a lot from this conversation. Out now on all platforms ❤️👊🏾
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Steven Bartlett reposted thisI felt SO emotional after this pitch and I have loved getting to know Eugene Patterson ever since...what an honour it is to do this show! ❤️
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Steven Bartlett shared this214 million people saw this AI warning. So we called an emergency debate. The warning came from someone who had worked at both Anthropic and OpenAI. Then a current Anthropic employee backed it publicly. It had spread so far beyond the tech world that a friend of mine who cuts hair and has never really cared about AI messaged me asking, “What the hell is going on?” I then realised a lot of people were probably asking the same question. The problem is, when you speak to people who have spent years studying AI, you get completely opposing answers. So I brought four of them around the same table. Roman Yampolskiy is a computer scientist who coined the term “AI safety” and has spent years studying whether increasingly intelligent systems can remain under human control. Nate Soares leads the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and has spent more than a decade working on AI alignment. He believes we are moving too quickly towards systems we don’t yet know how to reliably control. Ed Zitron thinks much of the AI conversation has become detached from what the technology can actually do today. He believes the industry is overhyping it while distracting us from financial, environmental and social consequences already happening. Andrew McAfee is an MIT researcher and economist who takes a very different view. He thinks we spend so much time talking about what could go wrong that we barely talk about what AI could make better. And that disagreement is what made this conversation so interesting to me. We discussed things like: - How do you control something that eventually becomes smarter than you? - Are the biggest warnings about AI based on evidence or assumptions? - What happens to work and human purpose if AI becomes better at more cognitive tasks? - Are we ignoring problems AI is already creating because we’re obsessed with hypothetical future ones? - Why have Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Geoffrey Hinton all warned us about AI? The question I kept coming back to was simple: What is actually true? Depending on who you listen to, AI is either one of the greatest opportunities humanity has ever created or something we’re racing towards without understanding the consequences. Both claims deserve to be challenged. There were moments in this debate where I genuinely found myself moving between the arguments. That’s the value of putting people who fundamentally disagree in the same room. I didn’t want four people telling me the same thing. I wanted each of them to explain where the other side was wrong. If you’ve watched the last few months of AI news wondering what you’re actually supposed to believe, this conversation is for you. Our emergency AI debate with Ed, Roman, Nate and Andrew is out now ❤️👊🏾
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Steven Bartlett shared thisI felt SO emotional after this pitch and I have loved getting to know Eugene Patterson ever since...what an honour it is to do this show! ❤️
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Steven Bartlett reposted this💥 ANNOUNCEMENT: Today we (Steven.comSteven.com) and Authentic Brands Group announced a new joint venture built to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in creators! Several years ago I bought a $100 microphone from the Apple Store, plugged it into my laptop and started talking. I recorded the first episode of The Diary Of A CEO that day, alone in my bedroom in Manchester… I could never have imagined how much that decision would change my life. That podcast became a media company, and has now expanded beyond me. We now serve more than 500 creators across our platform and technology. We employ almost 200 people at Steven.com and we're building the definitive company in the creator economy - the one the highest-potential creators choose as their partner as they scale. And today, all these years later, I stood on stage in New York with Jamie Salter, the founder of Authentic Brands Group - a company that operates in more than 150 countries and does about $40 billion a year in retail sales - to announce we were going into business together. Our new joint venture “OBSN” (Obsession) brings together everything we know about building a creator business; audience growth, data, content and commercialising digital media with what Authentic knows about retail, product, licensing, IP and global distribution, so a creator has the optimal partner to help them scale their global business. This deal has taken us the best part of a year to finalise, and it wouldn’t have happened without the relentless work of so many of my colleagues at Steven.com and our partners Authentic Brands Group 👏🏾 Finally….thank god I hit “publish” all those years ago… even though I was worried I might embarrass myself… Maybe it’s time you hit publish too! ❤️👊🏾
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Steven Bartlett shared this💥 ANNOUNCEMENT: Today we (Steven.comSteven.com) and Authentic Brands Group announced a new joint venture built to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in creators! Several years ago I bought a $100 microphone from the Apple Store, plugged it into my laptop and started talking. I recorded the first episode of The Diary Of A CEO that day, alone in my bedroom in Manchester… I could never have imagined how much that decision would change my life. That podcast became a media company, and has now expanded beyond me. We now serve more than 500 creators across our platform and technology. We employ almost 200 people at Steven.com and we're building the definitive company in the creator economy - the one the highest-potential creators choose as their partner as they scale. And today, all these years later, I stood on stage in New York with Jamie Salter, the founder of Authentic Brands Group - a company that operates in more than 150 countries and does about $40 billion a year in retail sales - to announce we were going into business together. Our new joint venture “OBSN” (Obsession) brings together everything we know about building a creator business; audience growth, data, content and commercialising digital media with what Authentic knows about retail, product, licensing, IP and global distribution, so a creator has the optimal partner to help them scale their global business. This deal has taken us the best part of a year to finalise, and it wouldn’t have happened without the relentless work of so many of my colleagues at Steven.com and our partners Authentic Brands Group 👏🏾 Finally….thank god I hit “publish” all those years ago… even though I was worried I might embarrass myself… Maybe it’s time you hit publish too! ❤️👊🏾
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20h
Watch the full conversation here:
https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/6wOw7FL
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Steven Bartlett reacted on thisSteven Bartlett reacted on thisPINCH ME: I met Steven Bartlett backstage at Bits & Pretzels!! 🥨🖤 I was genuinely so happy to finally meet Steven Bartlett backstage yesterday. I’ve followed his journey for quite some time, so getting to talk to him in person and then listening to his keynote afterwards was a special moment for me. And what impressed me most was actually not The Diary of a CEO itself. It was the way Steven thinks about what comes next. He said something that really stayed with me: “We don’t want to be Mickey Mouse. We want to be Disney.” He doesn’t want to build a company that is forever dependent on Steven Bartlett being the main character. His ambition is to build the factory behind the creators… the infrastructure, teams and systems that allow many other creators to build extraordinary things. I really admire that. There is something powerful about wanting to create something that eventually becomes bigger than yourself. And maybe that also explains why he is so obsessed with focus. Steven talked about the difference between signal and noise, and how founders themselves can often become the biggest source of noise inside their companies. You share an exciting new idea and, because you are the founder, your team hears an instruction. His answer is to constantly strengthen what he calls your “no muscle.” Sometimes the hardest thing to say no to isn’t a bad idea. It’s a brilliant idea that simply isn’t the thing you should be working on right now. That is why he has a “someday shelf.” Ideas can sit there until the timing is right and The Diary of a CEO itself was once one of them. Another thought I loved was his approach to long-termism. Steven said he thinks about what he is building on a 50-year horizon. “When you change the time horizon on what you’re building, today’s behavior changes.” If you only have 60 seconds to build with bricks, you stack them as high as possible. If you have a year, you start by building the foundation. That image says a lot about business and probably life too. And in a world where AI makes creating, building and producing easier every day, his final point might have been my favorite: bet on what you know won’t change. Nobody knows exactly what AI will look like in ten years. But Steven said one thing we can probably be certain of is that no human being will say: “I just wish I had less human connection.” That combination stayed with me: obsess over the signal, think in decades rather than quarters, build the right foundation but never lose sight of the deeply human things that technology cannot replace. Really loved meeting you, Steven. And I admire the ambition to build something that one day might be known for far more than the person who started it… ✨
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Steven Bartlett reacted on thisSteven Bartlett reacted on thisSeptember, from the speaker management side 👇 → Nordic Business Forum, Helsinki → Oslo Business Forum, Oslo → Amsterdam Business Forum, Amsterdam → Fortuna One, Sydney and Perth → Happiness Camp, Porto → Bits & Pretzels, Munich One month, seven cities, and a lot of time zones. It was my first time on the road with Steven Bartlett and the amazing team who travel with him for the Nordic tour and Bits & Pretzels in Munich this week since joining FLIGHTSTORY. It was truly an honour. Seeing it all from the side of the stage changed how I think about the job. Every event was different - different rooms, different audiences. What stayed the same was the work behind it: the briefs, the timings, the calls, and the incredible event teams who take it all and make it real. The best events feel effortless from the audience. That's never an accident. Thank you to every team who had us this month. On to October 🚀 June Sarpong OBE, Karim Jalbout, Christoffer Omberg, Ludivine Costanzo, Olivia Kinghorst, André Noël Chaker, Lillian Gjerulf Kretz, Ikenna Azuike, Hans Janssen, Anine Willums Karp, Andreas Storsveen Kustås, Julian Nebel, Felix Haas, Ann-Kathrin Kühnle
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Steven Bartlett liked thisSteven Bartlett liked thisTwo weeks ago we hosted our first Flightcast enterprise dinner in NY to say thank you to our current and future partners. I’ve been in the podcasting industry for over 10 years now and 3 years ago my life changed when Georgie and I met Steven Bartlett. He shared a similar restlessness to make the podcasting industry better. Flightcast was actually born out of Steven's lived frustration using podcast hosting platforms that were built for the past - so he built a better one with Rox Codes. In case you're new to this part of our business: Flightcast is an AI-powered distribution platform built for video podcast creators. It automates publishing, optimises content for each platform, and gives creators the infrastructure to grow without the operational overhead. It's now used by many of the world's biggest shows and enterprise businesses. This is the best solution on the market for video podcast creators (and their monetisation teams). The Diary Of A CEO just hit 20 million subscribers on Sunday. If you’re in the business of podcasting and growing shows, trust me. Thank you to the amazing team behind Flightcast and Steven.com for making things better and easier for podcasters. Our mission is to build the most advanced creator technology in the world... and we're only just getting started.
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Bridget Greenwood FRSA
DEADLINE FOR APPLICANTS AT IDEA STAGE IS 23RD OCTOBER Delighted to be leading this programme along with our fantastic partners. It’s about changing the success rates for underrepresented founders by improving how they and the investor ecosystem connect, prepare, and collaborate. Through the Breakthrough Founders programme, founders receive tailored investor readiness support designed to lead to real investment outcomes — from angels, VCs, and other funding routes. Alongside their tailored pathway, founders will also have the chance to benefit from: Pre-Investment Boards — giving you strategic guidance while growing a new generation of women angels. Investor Readiness Scorecards and MIT frameworks — data-backed tools to show where you are now and what to focus on next. A shared investor portal — opening doors to VC, angel, and operator networks across the consortium. Access to non-equity funding routes — support to explore alternatives when equity isn’t the right fit. A national community — open to all applicants, with up to 150 founders on pathways, plus wider alumni and peer networks that continue beyond the programme.
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