At the center of this story is Steve Bartlett, the British entrepreneur, investor, and media creator. Since 2014 Bartlett has founded, managed, and invested across fields of social media, health sciences, web software development, and space exploration. In December, 2020 Bartlett started The Diary Of A CEO, an audio/video podcast that claimed 35-million downloads per month.
Today Bartlett announces Flight Studio, a global podcast media and tech company. The PR is aspirational: “Flight Studio is launching to disrupt and refine the global podcasting industry, with the aim of being the most valuable podcast media company in the world.”
Under-the-hood details are sparse, but today’s information does mention translation into multiple languages. On the business side, the new company promises “an innovative commercial offering that will include multi-platform brand partnerships and equity opportunities.”
“I truly believe that we have every core component ready to redefine the global podcasting industry with this new company.” –Steven Bartlett
Former Acast execs Georgie Holt and Christiana Brenton join Bartlett as founding principals. Holt’s executive resume shows roles at Hearst UK, The Stylist Group, Acast (Managing Director Americas until last year), and Co-Founder of Telling Media. “One late night email led to one insane, life changing opportunity with Steven Bartlett and Christiana Brenton,” she said.
“Our ambition is to create the most valuable podcast brands and technology in the world.” — Georgie Holt
Christiana Brenton’s executive background in sales and brand partnerships has given her seats at NOVA Entertainment, Acast, and Telling Media.
“The launch of Flight Studio comes with the most compelling proposition to our partners in the entire podcast industry.” — Christiana Brenton
Beyond the three founders, Flight Studio has signed a half dozen podcast luminaries, whose shows will naturally join Flight Studio:
- Davina McCall, one of the UK’s most loved and trusted broadcasters and authors.
- Paul C Brunson, a global leader in relationship science, author and broadcaster. A
DOAC guest on two occasions, Paul has amassed over 3M views and some of the
highest engagement data to date. - Dr Tara Swart, MD, neuroscientist, advisor and author whose DOAC episode has +11M
views to date – the highest performing guest of all time. - Africa Brooke, author, consultant, coach and international speaker whose DOAC
episode had one of the biggest impacts across social metrics after its release. - Kristen Holmes, Global Head of Human Performance and Principal Scientist at WHOOP.
The Diary Of A CEO will sign exclusively to Flight Studio, DOAC now has over 5.5million - YouTube subscribers and over 350 million views.
The goal is to “maximize the IP expansion” of participants. In this way, it appears that Flight Studio’s key differentiation in a world of podcast studios and networks is to treat participating podcasts a startup businesses, and the announcement language repeats the phrase “IP expansion,” and asserts that product, e-commerce, live events, and publishing, and rights teams are in place.
Flight Studio will have offices and production studios in London, Manchester, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles.