Dude Perfect Raises $100 Million from Private Equity Firm Highmount

From left: Coby Cotton, Cody Jones, Tyler Toney, Garrett Hilbert and Cory Cotton of Dude Perfect attend the 2021 ESPY Awards on July 10, 2021, at Rooftop at Pier 17 in New York City.

Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

One of the biggest brands on YouTube is planning a significant expansion, and has locked up a massive investment to do it.

Dude Perfect, perhaps best known for their elaborate trick shot videos on YouTube and other video platforms, have 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.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though a source pegged the value of the investment at greater than $100 million, a huge number for a brand originally built on YouTube.

“We’ve had a lot of dreams and big visions that we haven’t yet been able to tackle with the size team that we have, or the amount of capital that we’ve had so far, and so this was something that we’ve been looking into for the past year, and we were really excited when Highmount came along,” says Coby Cotton, one of Dude Perfect’s co-founders, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

In addition to expanding the group’s content output, Cotton says that Dude Perfect wants to create more live experiences, as well as explore more consumer product opportunities. “We really want to expand what we can create for families to actually use in their own homes, and we feel like the possibilities there are endless.”

“A nine-figure investment is significant, but I think it’s because there’s such huge potential for what the Dudes are doing,” says Jason Illian, co-founder and general partner at Highmount Capital. “I mean, you’re talking about the creator economy being at $250 billion and doubling in the next couple of years.

“When you when you talk to teenagers and kids and people that watch the Dudes, they’re all being influenced, and three out of four kids said they want to be an influencer and a creator, so I don’t think they’re gonna call this the creator economy in the near future, they’re just gonna call it media, because that’s really what it is, and the Dudes are at the front end of that,” he adds. “We thought a significant investment made sense just because when you look at all the things that they have in front of them working with sports teams, and retailers and opportunities for events, we want to make sure there’s enough capital there to do it really well.”

Founded in 2009 by five friends (twins Coby and Cory Cotton, Tyler Toney, Cody Jones and Garrett Hilbert) at Texas A&M, Dude Perfect has become one of the most popular YouTube channels, with more than 60 million followers. Dude Perfect previously had a TV series on CMT and Nickelodeon, has done alternate broadcasts for Amazon’s Thursday Night Football, and has also done nationwide tours, with plans to build a new headquarters in Frisco, Texas, where visitors can create content and participate in live events.

They also plan to bring in new talent, something that they have already quietly started doing through their free Dude Perfect app and streaming service, which lets users submit their own trick shots to be featured.

“[Highmount] really caught the vision of this being a brand that lasts long beyond just the five of us dudes — as fun as it would be for the five of us to still be doing water bottle flips when we’re in our 70s — we do agree that we really are excited about bringing in new talent and showcasing other talent from across the world of creators, so that this can be something much bigger than just the five of us,” Cotton says.

The goal is to ultimately create a Dude Perfect brand that will continue on for decades, with Illian comparing the Dudes to Walt Disney.

“When they drew the first Mickey Mouse, I’m not sure they saw at the time that there was going to be Disneyland and movies and all these other things,” he says. “But I see the Dudes doing the same thing in this family-friendly space. I just drove by the other day and there was a line outside of Smoothie King — I’ve never seen a line at Smoothie King — but nine out of 10 kids walked out with a Dude Perfect smoothie [as created in a recent video by the dudes]. And I think that just speaks to what they’re doing, and whether that goes to an animated series or a television series or movies as well as the product lines and things that go with it. There’s a lot of things on the table and you’re gonna need capital and resources, and we’re just here to serve them and get behind them.”

In a world with family-friendly entertainment in high demand, Highmount and the Dude Perfect team think that there is a significant opportunity to grow.

“Our mission is to create the most trusted entertainment on earth,” Cotton says. “Families are constantly looking for ways to come together and actually have shared moments and memories.”

CAA Evolution served as the exclusive financial adviser to Dude Perfect and King & Spalding acted as its legal adviser. Highmount Capital was represented by Stinson LLP.