Dude Perfect
YouTube group Dude Perfect has secured a nine-figure investment from Highmount Capital in "a play to build out their business in new areas, and to expand their core programming." A source pegged the value of the investment at greater than $100M. In addition to expanding the group’s content output, Dude Perfect "wants to create more live experiences, as well as explore more consumer product opportunities." Dude Perfect has become one of the most popular YouTube channels, with more than 60 million followers (HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, 4/9). The team’s future has been dubbed "Dude Perfect 2.0" and consists of "plans to open a retail store, to launch a streaming platform, introduce a line of toys and games in Walmart, and even envisions" a $100M theme park (CNBC.com, 4/9).
CAA Evolution served as the exclusive financial advisor to Dude Perfect and King & Spalding acted as its legal advisor. Highmount Capital was represented by Stinson LLP. Dude Perfect has only about 20 employees on its staff, but Tyler Toney, one of the group’s five founders, said that will change after Highmount’s investment. “Up until this point, Dude Perfect has been a very lean-run company for the last 15 years,” Toney said. “We've purposely kept it that way because we liked that smaller team, family feel, but we knew that in order for us to take that next step of growth that we would need somebody like (Highmount) that could help take us to that next level.”
David Hawkins, co-founder and General Partner at Highmount Capital, called Dude Perfect’s expertise in family-friendly entertainment a big opportunity. “There's definitely an open lane. Entertainment that both kids and adults can enjoy together is pretty unique,” he said. “Our goal is not just to maximize short-term profits; we have a long-term structure and we’re going to be partners with these guys for hopefully many decades, to where we’re doing all sorts of stuff from live experiences, to new content, to bringing on new talent over time” (Erik Bacharach, SBJ).
