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Spotter to Invest $1 Billion Dollars in YouTube Creators
Los Angeles, February 16, 2022
Spotter, the creator platform, today announced $200 million in Series D financing at a valuation of $1.7 billion, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. This follows an additional $555 million that Spotter has raised across three previously undisclosed rounds of financing. With this new capital and through reinvestment, Spotter will invest $1 billion directly into YouTube creators, allowing them to further grow their businesses.
“This latest investment from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 is a testament to the creator economy maturing into a new era”, said Aaron DeBevoise, Founder and CEO of Spotter. “Following years of development in technology and data collection, we’re proud that Spotter has emerged as the market leader in this progression—building the bridge that allows creators to transform their channels into their own individual enterprises. This new investment allows us to continue being the preeminent partner to creators.”
Founded in 2019 to help YouTube creators scale their brands, channels, and revenue, Spotter provides creators up-front cash to license existing content. To date, Spotter has deployed hundreds of millions of dollars into some of the most watched YouTube creators including Mr. Beast, Dude Perfect, Like Nastya, Aphmau, and Smokin’ & Grillin’ wit AB. Spotter has licensed content that consists of hundreds of thousands of videos, generating over 40 billion monthly watch-time minutes.
“#YouTube has built a thriving community for creators by providing them with a platform to reach new audiences at scale in novel and creative ways”, said Kristin Bannon, Investment Director at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “We believe that Spotter is supercharging the growth of this ecosystem by equipping creators with the capital, network, and technology tools to grow their businesses from solopreneurs to enterprises. We are thrilled to be partnering with the Spotter team to support their mission of accelerating creative potential.”
The latest funding round enables Spotter to deploy additional capital to creators and also roll-out a new and innovative offering in the form of upfront funding for new video production. The demand for Spotter’s offerings continues to increase, including an acceleration in both repeat deals with existing creator partners and deals with new creators. Additionally, Spotter will enhance its analytic offerings to creators, providing prescriptive data-driven tools to improve future video performance through optimized production recommendations and publishing best practices.
“I have been a partner of Spotter’s for several years. Specifically, I recently worked with them on financing my Español channel because the cost of dubbing is expensive and the revenue on YouTube is delayed—you don’t get it instantly. By partnering with Spotter, I was able to keep dubbing videos and uploading,” said Jimmy Donaldson, a.k.a. Mr. Beast. Since expanding his channel and language offerings with the help of Spotter funding, Donaldson has added 375 videos, gained 123 million new subscribers, and increased his viewership by ~300%—to 1.35 billion monthly views across all his channels.
Another multi-deal partner of Spotter’s, Dude Perfect, shared, “Since partnering with Spotter last year, we’ve been able to take the invested capital and put it towards growing our business and production team—as we have some big plans for the future of Dude Perfect. We value greatly the strategic partnership with Spotter and how we’ve already teamed up together to navigate the future of YouTube. We’re excited about the projects we are working on, and the opportunity to create even more trusted family friendly content for our incredible subscribers and viewers”, said Garrett Hilbert from Dude Perfect.
“We’ve built long-term partnerships with a diverse pool of creators through multiple deals and unique structures designed around specific creator goals”, said DeBevoise. “YouTube is the number one platform that enables creators to turn their passions into careers and Spotter’s purpose is to provide creators with the capital necessary to scale, all while maintaining complete creative freedom.”
Nic Paul, Chief Operating Officer of Spotter said, “Our success as a company to date is merely a derivative of the success of our creator partners. Seeing creators use our capital to drive unparalleled growth with investment in their channels is the true execution of what we’re building. Spotter only succeeds as a company if our creators succeed.”
In addition to Softbank Investment Advisers, Spotter’s investors include Access Industries, CoVenture, Crossbeam Venture Partners, GPS Investment Partners, and HighPost Capital.
About Spotter
Spotter provides cash to creators to grow or diversify their business while retaining their freedom. Dedicated to empowering creators and growing the creator economy, with Spotter, creators receive cash for their catalogs through licensing their existing videos (and/or future video uploads) and receive a payout instantly. Creators then use the funds to fuel their growth through spending, investing, or anyway they choose, all while remaining independent. Today, Spotter works with creators across YouTube and hopes to expand platforms in the future. In addition to funding, Spotter provides creators with in-depth data insights into the performance of all existing content to further help educate the creator on the value of their library, the value of future uploads and how they can improve performance in the future. With over 1.2 billion subscribers and over 40 billion monthly watch time minutes, Spotter also provides brand-safe content for advertisers. For more information, please visit https://www.spotter.la.
