Money Talks: Inside the New Wave of Social Video Investment

Good afternoon, everyone.

So just to kick things off, we're seeing a new generation of investors betting big on the future of social video, and this is having a big impact on the market.

In fact, three of the speakers that have, uh, participated in this event already have taken on investment in the last few months.

Uh, The Fellas has been bought by Global Media.

Arcade Media, who are the holding company for The Sidemen, has taken on investment from Luna, which is a next-generation media company.

And Flight Story, which, uh, operate Diary of a CEO, has taken on a nine-figure investment.

Nine figures, that's over $100 million, valuing the company at over $400 million from a fund called Slow Ventures.

It specializes in funding creator businesses.

So these are big, new investments.

In fact, billions of new money is flowing into the sector.

So in this panel, what we're going to do is unpack what is behind the current wave of investment, who's investing, uh, how and where they're deploying capital, and what this means for creators and social video, uh, businesses here today.

I'm delighted to be joined by three of the leading investors in this space, Electrify Video Partners, uh, Vutur, and LunaX.

They're all based in the UK, and collectively they're deploying hundreds of millions of dollars into this space.

So big investors who've got money to spend.

So what I'd like, uh, each of you to do is to introduce yourself with a quick summary of how your company is investing in this space.

So Indy, over to you.

Sounds good.

Thanks, Daniel.

Hey, everybody.

My name's Indy.

I've been an investor in the creator economy, and specifically YouTube, for the last six years now.

Currently working at a company called LunaX, where we invest in leading YouTube channels in the non-kid space.

And at a high level, kind of the way that our model works is that we're investing to basically acquire equity within the business, um, and then depending on the creator's, uh, long-term goals, whether they want to remain part of the business for the long term or have some type of potential route to exit, uh, we'll work with them to effectively achieve their goals in a way that we think is sustainable and, and possible.

Um, so I've been doing that for three years, and before that, um, was also investing in the YouTube space for three years, uh, but in the kid space at a company called Moonbug Entertainment.

Um, and some of the parents in here may dislike me [laughs] for the, the fact that we, um, I ended up working on some of the really biggest investments in the space, uh, on brands like Cocomelon and, and so on.