Steven Bartlett (businessman)

Steven Bartlett (businessman)
Steven Cliff Bartlett (born 26 August 1992) is a British-Nigerian entrepreneur and podcaster. He is the founder of Thirdweb, Flight Story and Flight Story Fund. He was the co-founder and co-CEO of Social Chain AG, but stepped down as CEO in 2020. In 2019, he began appearing as an investor on the BBC One show Dragons' Den. He also runs The Diary of a CEO podcast.
Early life and education
Steven Cliff Bartlett was born on 26 August 1992 in Botswana to an English father and a Nigerian mother. His mother left school aged seven and could not read or write; his father is a structural engineer. He moved to Plymouth, England at the age of two, where he grew up, attending a secondary school, Plymstock School, and a sixth form. He went to study at Manchester Metropolitan University, but dropped out after one lecture.
Career
In 2013, Bartlett founded Wallpark. In 2014, Bartlett co-founded Social Chain, a social media marketing company based in Manchester, UK, with Dominic McGregor. In 2017, he created a podcast series called The Diary of a CEO,. Bartlett's claims in his podcast have brought scrutiny, with James Marriott of The Telegraph describing him as "a businessman in the tradition of Donald Trump: better at building media hype than actual companies".
In 2019, Social Chain and German online retailer Lumaland merged to become The Social Chain AG, listing on XETRA and the Düsseldorf Stock Exchange. The listing valued the business at over $200 million. Bartlett's website initially claimed that he took Social Chain public at age 27, before leaving the company after it reached a valuation of $600 million. These claims were subsequently retracted after The Times reported that Bartlett had left the business more than a year before the floatation, and was not named in its prospectus. In February 2023, Social Chain was acquired by Brave Bison for an initial consideration of £7.7 million.
In 2019, he featured in the Channel 4 series The Secret Teacher, going undercover at a school near Liverpool as a teacher.
In December 2020, he created the private equity company Catena Capital, then joined the board of directors of Huel, a £72 million food replacement company. Bartlett, joins the nutrition company as a non-executive director. In 2021 Bartlett joined the BBC investment show Dragons' Den.
In 2022, Chloe Bowen writing in Cosmopolitan reported that Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast was receiving "a mixed reaction from listeners" after Bartlett had critiqued Gen Z work ethic, with Bartlett saying that "I fear that when I'm hiring people that are in that generation I almost need to go to an extra length to check that they can cope with a high intensity culture".
In 2023 Steven Bartlett accompanied Prince William on Royal visits in Bournemouth after being announced as an advocate of his foundation homewards.
Projects
Thirdweb
Thirdweb, a Web3 startup founded by Bartlett, raised $5m in seed investment and an additional $24 million in a Series A funding round. The funding round valued the startup at $160 million. The funding was led by Katie Haun's $1.5 billion crypto fund, with participation from investors including Coinbase Ventures, Shopify, and Polygon. The company aims to simplify the process of building decentralized applications on the blockchain.
Flight Story Fund
Bartlett launched a $100 million fund called Flight Story Fund for tech investment. The fund claims to support diverse founders and high-growth startups in blockchain, biotech, health, commerce, technology, and space sectors. The fund had a stated goal to invest in around 20 companies, offering small stakes at discounted valuations in exchange for support from previous founders who are LPs in the fund.
Critics
Breaching guidelines on advertising
The BBC, which currently airs The Dragons' Den, reprimanded Bartlett in 2022 for breaching BBC guidelines on advertising. In a statement, they told The Radio Times: "We have clear guidelines around talent's commercial activity while working with us. Steven has been reminded of the guidelines." In a statement, Bartlett addressed the issue, adding: "This was a genuine oversight on my part. The posts have now been taken down. The Advertising Standards Authority took action against Bartlett in August 2022 for breaching the CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 2.1, 2.3 and 2.4 in which he covertly advertised meal replacement firm Huel. The ASA ruled that the advertisement must not appear again in its current form and subsequently advised Bartlett and Huel to "ensure that they made clear the commercial intent of advertising content in podcasts in future, for example by including a clear and prominent identifier such as "advertisement" and making sure the break from editorial content to the ad was clearly and audibly identified."
Exaggerated valuation claims
In 2019, the Financial Times reported that Steven and Wanja Oberhof would jointly manage Social Chain AG which was valued at €186m at the time that it floated on the Dusseldorf Stock Exchange.
Steven has been critiqued by Sarah Manavis, writing for the New Statesman, as an entrepreneur who "styles himself as a business guru but beneath the clichés lies a thinly veiled craving for celebrity".
James Hurley, Enterprise Editor of The Times, said in his investigation that "the rise of Social Chain AG to a nine-figure valuation may owe more to mattresses and a wealthy 65-year-old media tycoon than Bartlett’s leadership." In February 2023, The Times reported that Bartlett is not the tycoon he claims to be built and floated Social Chain with a market valuation in excess of $600 million. Bartlett noted to The Times that he retains a “significant” shareholding in Social Chain AG and that he was under contract to work for the company “on a range of strategic matters” at the time of the $600m valuation, including the up-listing to the Prime Standard of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, for which he received a “further package of virtual shares/options”.
Books
In 2021, Bartlett released his first book, Happy Sexy Millionaire, which was a Sunday Times bestseller. In 2023, Bartlett released his second book, The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life, where he recollects the knowledge gained through the podcast of the same name and condenses it into a published print version. In a review of his 2023 book, The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life, Private Eye described Bartlett as "the king of self-mythologisation", summarised the book as "a grisly minestrone of every other management book you’ve even read", and concluded that "His real business, clearly, is Brand Bartlett".
Recognition
In 2018, Econsultancy named him "The most influential figure in the industry." In 2020 he was inducted into the Manchester Hall of Fame. In the same year he was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Bartlett is regularly booked for public speaking engagements.
References
External links
1992 births
Botswana emigrants to the United Kingdom
Botswana businesspeople
British company founders
British people of Botswana descent
British people of Nigerian descent
Businesspeople from Plymouth, Devon
Living people
Mass media people from Plymouth, Devon