Irishman Jamie Elliott has partnered with The Sidemen, Europe’s largest YouTube collective, to establish a venture capital firm that plans to invest $25 million (€22.34 million) in consumer-focused tech startups over the next four years.
Speaking to the Business Post, Jamie Elliott, general partner at Upside VC, said the firm, which is just coming out of stealth, intends to back up to 40 companies overall with a number of pre-seed and seed investments already completed.
This includes participating in a raise for the Irish startup Ceartas.
The Sidemen is a collective founded in 2013 that consists of KSI, Miniminter, Zerkaa, TBJZL, Behzinga, Vikkstar123, and W2S,. The internet personalities as a group rival Mr Beast in terms of popularity with more than 150 million followers and 50 billion views across their social media channels.
In addition to providing investment to fledgling startups, portfolio companies will be actively promoted across The Sidemen’s channels, bringing their products and services to a huge typically hard-to-engage audience.
Elliott said Upside will typically invest between $100,000 and $500,000 in each deal with the possibility of further investments “into the millions” for some companies.
The VC has to date co-invested with a number of top-tier VCs on these deals, including Sequoia, Harry Stebbing’s 20VC, and Left Lane Capital. Its backers meanwhile include exited founders from companies such as Twitch and Unity, senior investors from the likes of UBS and Blackrock, as well as Thema, a London-based ‘fund of funds’.
Elliott, who hails from Dublin, previously co-founded New York-headquartered fintech Layup with Owen Monagan.
A chance meeting with Sam Uwins, one of the Sidemen’s managers’, two years ago, led him to setting up Upside, which he said he intends to be a “multi-generational business”.
He said the timing of the meeting was fortuitous as it came as members of The Sidemen were getting frustrated at being able to bring consumer brands to huge audiences but increasingly keen on prioritising those they have a close affinity with.
The timing is also good for startups because while consumer tech firms often deliver the biggest returns to investors, B2C companies often struggle to securing funding.
“Less dollars have flowed into VC over the last three years with fundraising down 80 per cent compared to 2021. Consumer tech funding has typically only been a fraction of total funds deployed and is now down to just 6 per cent of all investment despite having some of the biggest tailwinds behind it,” Elliott said.
“The consumer space is where the real money is to be made in VC and with partners like The Sidemen and access to hundreds of millions of people, we know we can outcompete and win the best deals,” he added.
Elliott said Upside’s unique selling point is its ability to deliver customers to portfolio companies, thereby significantly enhancing their competitiveness while also reducing acquisition costs.
The firm is open to backing firms operating in different segments but is particularly interested in AI-driven products, preventative healthcare, and companies catering to consumers with shrinking wallets.
He said the company has a number of other investments near to being finalised, and that it is actively considering Irish startups, as well as early-stage companies in mainland Europe, the UK and the US.
“We are getting invited into the most interesting deals, partly because of the strength of The Sidemen’s brand but also because we’re partners with many of the biggest VCs in the world. I’m hopeful I can get some Irish startups in front of these people,” Elliott said.
Elliott added that Upside is also keen to collaborate with other creators to further scale.
“There are a large number of creators who like The Sidemen really want to promote brands that hey have an affinity with and I think that we can help them do it in a way that gives a big helping hand to consumer startups,” he said.
