Steven Bartlett
Steven Bartlett is a British entrepreneur, podcaster, and investor who co-founded the social media marketing company Social Chain at age 21 and hosts The Diary of a CEO, which Spotify Wrapped ranked as the second most popular podcast globally in 2025.10 In 2021, he became the youngest-ever investor on the BBC One programme Dragons' Den at age 28.2 His holding company, Steven.com, was valued at $425 million in October 2025 after a funding round led by Slow Ventures and Apeiron Investment Group.8
Early life
Steven Cliff Bartlett was born on 26 August 1992 in Gaborone, Botswana, to a Nigerian mother and an English father.3 His mother left school at age seven and could not read or write; his father worked as a structural engineer.1 The family moved to Plymouth, Devon, when Bartlett was two years old, where he is the youngest of four siblings.1
Bartlett grew up in what he described as financially difficult circumstances in an otherwise middle-class area, an experience he later wrote about in his first book.1 He attended Plymstock School but was expelled during sixth form.3 He enrolled at Manchester Metropolitan University to study business management but dropped out after attending a single lecture, later saying he looked around the room and "realised this wasn't going to take me to where I needed to go."1
Even as a teenager, Bartlett showed an inclination toward business. He organised school trips, brokered deals with vending machine companies for a cut of the revenue, and by his own account stole food from corner shops and foraged for loose change during periods when money was scarce.1 He unsuccessfully applied to be a contestant on Dragons' Den at age 18, a decade before joining the show as an investor.1
Social Chain
After dropping out of university, Bartlett founded Wallpark in 2013, an online forum where students could meet and organise groups around common interests.3 The venture earned him the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2014, in association with Lloyds Bank.4 That same year, he sold Wallpark and co-founded Social Chain in Manchester with Dominic McGregor.4
Social Chain was a social media marketing agency that aggregated networks of influencers and community-run social media accounts to create coordinated viral campaigns for brands.4 The company used a technique it called "The Thunderclap," in which all its affiliated accounts pushed the same hashtag simultaneously, often making it the number-one trending topic on Twitter within minutes of launch.4 Early clients included 20th Century Fox, Spotify, Uber, Coca-Cola, and Haribo, with campaign fees starting at 20,000 pounds and typical spends reaching six figures.4
Within 11 months of founding, Social Chain had grown from two employees to more than 50, operating out of a Manchester office that Forbes described as containing a slide, a ball pit, and two office puppies named Louie and Bruce.4 By 2015, the company had achieved a post-money valuation of $8 to $9 million after receiving backing from investors including the founders of Sky Germany.4
In 2019, Social Chain merged with German online retailer Lumaland to form Social Chain AG, listing on the Xetra electronic exchange and the Dusseldorf Stock Exchange at a valuation of 186 million euros.113 The merged entity was headquartered in Berlin with additional offices in Manchester, Munich, London, and New York.11 In November 2021, Social Chain AG moved to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange's prime standard, reaching a peak valuation of $600 million.3
Bartlett stepped down as CEO in 2020, telling The Times he disagreed with the direction of the company.3 His departure created confusion around his connection to the company's later valuations. The Times reported that Bartlett had left the business by the time of the $600 million second listing, though Bartlett stated he retained a "significant" shareholding and was under contract to work on strategic matters at that time, including the up-listing, for which he received a package of virtual shares and options.3 Bartlett's original subsidiary, Social Chain Ltd., was ultimately acquired by digital media group Brave Bison in February 2023 for 7.7 million pounds, with the possibility of additional payments tied to earnings targets.6
The Diary of a CEO
Bartlett launched The Diary of a CEO in 2017 as an audio podcast focused on interviewing entrepreneurs within the UK business world.7 In 2019, he shifted to a video-first format on YouTube, which accelerated the show's growth.7 The podcast expanded its guest roster beyond business figures to include public personalities such as Simon Cowell, Jada Pinkett Smith, Boris Johnson, Richard Branson, and Thierry Henry.7
By November 2024, The Diary of a CEO reached one billion combined views and listens across Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, becoming the first UK-produced podcast to reach that figure.7 Apple confirmed it as the UK's top podcast for the third consecutive year in terms of downloads.7 In Spotify's 2025 Wrapped, the show was ranked as the second most popular podcast globally behind The Joe Rogan Experience, and the number one podcast in the UK.10 The show's YouTube channel had surpassed 15.2 million subscribers and 1.27 billion views as of March 2026.3
The podcast has drawn criticism for hosting guests who promote alternative medicine claims and medical misinformation without those claims being consistently challenged by Bartlett.3 The show publishes twice weekly and is produced by Flight Studio, a media company co-founded by Bartlett with Georgie Holt and Christiana Brenton.7 As of late 2024, the production team numbered around 50 people.7
In March 2026, The Diary of a CEO won the award for Best Business and Finance Podcast at the 8th annual iHeart Podcast Awards.3
Dragons' Den
In May 2021, the BBC announced Bartlett as the newest investor on Dragons' Den, replacing Tej Lalvani.2 At 28, he was the youngest person to join the panel in the show's history, sitting alongside Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Touker Suleyman, and Sara Davies.2 Bartlett described the appointment as coming full circle from watching the show as a 12-year-old in Plymouth: "It's like the first time you go to New York City after seeing it in films for your entire life."1
On the show, Bartlett invested in companies including PerfectTed, a matcha energy drink brand; Omni, a plant-based dog food company; and Kitt Medical, an allergy-response startup.3 His investment in PerfectTed began with 25,000 pounds for 5 percent equity, followed by an additional 1 million pounds after the episode aired; by 2025 the company had reached a valuation exceeding 140 million pounds.3
Bartlett's time on Dragons' Den was not without controversy. In 2024, he was criticised for investing in "Ear Seeds," an acupuncture product that claimed to cure myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. The BBC subsequently added a disclaimer to the episode stating the product was not intended as a cure.3
Investments and ventures
After leaving Social Chain, Bartlett built a portfolio of companies and investments spanning media, Web3, and venture capital.
Bartlett co-founded Thirdweb, a Web3 development platform that provides SDKs and smart contracts for building blockchain applications.9 The company raised $5 million in seed funding and an additional $24 million in a 2022 Series A round led by Katie Haun's Haun Ventures, which valued the startup at $160 million.9 Other investors in that round included Coinbase Ventures and Shopify.3
In January 2023, Bartlett announced Flight Story Fund, a $100 million investment vehicle backed by roughly 30 entrepreneurs rather than institutional capital.5 The fund targets high-growth startups across blockchain, biotech, health, commerce, technology, and space, investing between $1 million and $10 million per deal in exchange for stakes of less than 5 percent at discounted valuations.512 Bartlett has stated that the fund publishes annual diversity statistics on its investments, citing the fact that only 0.24 percent of UK venture capital went to Black founders in the decade prior to 2019.5
In 2024, Bartlett made a seven-figure investment in Groq, an American AI chip startup specializing in large language model inference technology.3 In December 2025, Groq entered into a $20 billion acquisition deal with Nvidia.3
In May 2025, Bartlett became co-owner of Stan Store, a US platform for creator entrepreneurs, which reported $30 million in annual recurring revenue at the time.3 In September 2025, he became co-owner of Ketone-IQ, a US ketone drink company distributed through Target and Sprouts.3 In October 2025, he and Roxcodes, a former engineer, launched Flightcast, a podcast hosting platform built for video with integrated AI tools.3
In October 2025, Bartlett's holding company Steven.com closed an eight-figure investment round led by Slow Ventures and Apeiron Investment Group at a $425 million valuation.8 Other backers included Philipp Freise of KKR, Gary Vaynerchuk, Kevin Rose, Will Ahmed, Bryan Johnson, Alex Hormozi, and Codie Sanchez.8 Bartlett retained more than 90 percent ownership after the round.8 The company employs over 100 people across offices in London, Manchester, Los Angeles, and New York.8
Advertising guideline breaches
The BBC reprimanded Bartlett in 2022 for breaching its advertising guidelines after he wore jewellery on Dragons' Den from a brand he was promoting on social media.3 Bartlett called it "a genuine oversight" and removed the relevant social media posts.3
In August 2022, the UK Advertising Standards Authority ruled against Bartlett for advertising Huel on his Diary of a CEO podcast without clearly disclosing it as an advertisement, breaching CAP Code rules 2.1, 2.3, and 2.4.3 The ASA ordered the advertisement not to appear again in its current form and advised Bartlett and Huel to make the commercial intent of podcast advertising content clear in future.3
In August 2024, the ASA banned further advertisements featuring Bartlett by Huel and Zoe, a nutrition testing company, because they failed to disclose Bartlett's financial involvement with those companies.14 Bartlett served as a non-executive director on the Huel board from December 2020 until stepping down in February 2025.3
Books and public recognition
Bartlett published his first book, Happy Sexy Millionaire, in 2021; it became a Sunday Times bestseller.3 His second book, The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life, was published in 2023 and became the fastest-selling personal development book since records began, earning a shortlisting at the British Book Awards for Book of the Year.3
In 2019, he was inducted into the Manchester Hall of Fame.2 In 2020, he was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.3 In 2025, Time magazine named him to the inaugural Time 100 Creators list recognising the most influential people on the internet.13 Also in 2025, Bartlett was listed on the Powerlist 2026, which recognises the most influential individuals of African, African Caribbean, and African American heritage in the United Kingdom.3
In September 2023, Bartlett accompanied Prince William on royal visits in Bournemouth after being named an advocate of the Prince's Homewards foundation, which works on homelessness prevention.3 In September 2025, he appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.3