The Sidemen are coming for venture capital
Is nothing sacred anymore? Having ruined the TV industry, the innocent prank, and children's attention spans, the Youtubers are coming for venture capital. And, according to Will Hayward, CEO of Private Media, they might just turn out to be good at it.
The news broke this week that Europe’s biggest YouTube collective, the Sidemen, were launching their own venture capital firm called Upside.
It isn’t totally clear what the initial fund size is (perhaps by design), but The Times of London reports the team has already deployed capital ranging from £100,000 to £500,000.
Their first round of investments are an interesting mix of consumer and technology businesses including Nimbi, a plastic-free razor brand; Ceartas DMCA, a digital rights management tool for creators; Howbout, a social scheduling app; and Mile, a luxury membership service.
The Sidemen
Their pitch is an interesting combination of capital and distribution. Where other funds might just invest and join the board, the Sidemen are offering access to their 150m+ subscribers across YouTube and their various other platforms. Capital plus a massive global marketing funnel is a pretty compelling proposition.
There is clearly strong precedent here. The Sidemen themselves are led by KSI, co-founder of Prime, which reportedly achieved sales of $1.2b in 2023. Some have been very keen to point out that this revenue reportedly declined by over 50% in 2024. If you speak to those in the consumer drinks category, they will tell you that many brands remain hot for only a couple of summers. Few reach the temperature of more than US$1 billion though.
We’ve seen many others capitalise on a similar proposition.
Ryan Reynolds has been involved in multiple consumer brands – Mint Mobile, which he went on to sell to T-Mobile for $1.35B, and Aviation Gin, sold to Diageo for $610M in 2020. Gwyneth Paltrow famously launched Goop (notorious for those candles). Both of these were probably more about the added value of inbuilt celebrity endorsement. A closer comparison might be Mr.Beast’s Feastibles range, which you can buy in pretty much every food store in Australia.
In media, we love thinking about trends, and this launch brings together a whole bunch of interesting ideas. Video, influencers, distribution, venture capital. It really has it all.
Will it succeed? I suspect if they focus on products that they can sell to their own audience, they could make a proverbial killing. Launching and scaling technology products, whilst promising much higher potential exits, is much harder. So it will be interesting to see where else they focus their capital.
Will Hayward
But distribution isn’t destiny. Earlier this month, Nine finally untangled itself from Domain – a business it once hoped to turbocharge with their own in-built media muscle and influence. In the last five years, Domain rose 50%. Rival REA Group, backed by News, soared five-fold. It turns out execution matters a great deal.
The Sidemen have the audience. Whether they can pick – or build – billion-dollar businesses remains to be seen. But I suspect a few VCs are quietly wondering if they should start trying their hand at prank videos.
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