‘Netflix of standup’ announces latest financing round

NextUp has announced the opening of a new financing round. 

The British SVOD was founded by former BBC Worldwide director of comedy Stuart Snaith and the team behind YouTube channel ComComedy. It is available for £4.99 (€5.56) per month and plays home to over 130 stand-up comedy specials. The company claims it is the only platform solely dedicated to stand-up comedy specials.

This latest round of investment is seeking £600,000 (€668,223), with £250,000 (€278,426) remaining at the time of writing. Since its previous round in 2018 the company’s value has increased by 175%.

NextUp CEO Daniel Berg said: “A few years ago, NextUp was just an idea on paper that we hoped would let comedy shows be preserved and enjoyed worldwide like never before – benefiting both fans and comedians. Thanks to incredible support from the comedy industry, our current investors and of course our members, it’s become a reality and we can’t wait to take NextUp to the next level. Plans are still being finalised but without giving too much away – next year we’re hoping to launch in a country that’s run by a strange man with even stranger hair (and it ain’t North Korea)!’

Raj Saxena of Velocity Capital Partners who are leading the investment round said, ‘We’ve seen the inner-workings of NextUp since we first invested in 2017. They have an incredibly capable team, a fantastic product and are facing perfect market conditions to grow NextUp into something very special indeed.”

The platform features specials from celebrated comedians including Ed Byrne, Rachel Parris, Lou Sanders, Miles Jupp, Stewart Francis, Tiff Stevenson and Richard Herring. It recently announced the doubling of content uploads from one to two per week.