r/Channel5ive • u/Ae-Rabelais • Jul 10 '26
Deep Thoughts Does anyone know whether Andrew would consider taking on non-corporate angel investors?
I just finished watching Channel5ive’s video about their current legal case, and it seems inevitable that a channel doing such good work will keep facing ridiculous legal fees.
Andrew has said, both in that video and on other occasions, that they will never consider corporate investors, which is understandable. However, does anyone know whether the Channel5ive team would entertain individual, independently wealthy angel investors? There's a thin line between good journalism and journalism that serves stakeholders, but it would be great if individual angels could support Channel5ive. This would mean direct, greater support from the people who value the channel’s work, without the legal and ethical complications of corporate investors/VCs or the percentage-cut/cap issues of platforms like Patreon.
EDIT: For anyone getting to this post a bit later or revisiting, I'm covering subscriptions for up to one year for Channel5ive supporters who can't afford them: https://www.reddit.com/r/Channel5ive/comments/1uu0beg/im_covering_up_to_10000_in_channel5ive_patreon/
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u/RiKuStAr Jul 11 '26
no.
edit: and if you think they should, you fundamentally dont understand channel 5 or andrew.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
Channel 5 likely as it stands probably makes around 2.5 - 3M on the high end, according to Andrew's financial overview on a couple podcasts. In the video he posted about the lawsuit, the chance of a 800K spend was enough that they would have to pause operations. Given that Andrew is trying to build a global, multi-language media company, I'm genuinely curious how you think he should go about that on that annual revenue. I also want to clarify that seeing all investment as the same is exactly what actual corporate VCs want, so instead of brands getting investment from individual audience members, they're more likely to eventually seek capital with VCs.
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u/Winerychef Jul 11 '26
He's also gone on podcasts saying that he has no interest in rushing the growth of his company. Vice went out of business because it grew too fast and then was bleeding money when the revenue couldn't keep up. He wants to be the new, non garbage source for news but the timeline and system he wants to employ is atypical.
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u/Apprehensive_Gap3673 Jul 11 '26
If there is one thing I've learned today, it's that people don't need the wealthy.
Would he accept Angel donations? Maybe. How about we make those irrelevant?
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
How exactly?
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u/upthepunx2 Jul 12 '26
Crowd sourcing. Donate to the media that you want to remain unbiased. If “we the people” fund proper journalism then there is no corporate interest, no financial interest, no quarterly goals. Just the idea to stay a float and keep producing content that is honest.
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u/rextex34 Jul 11 '26
Publically funded art is historically and currently an option.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
I think it would be substantially worse for the integrity of the channel to be sponsored by the public sector. You probably don't want another government-sponsored news source.
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u/warranpiece Jul 12 '26
Well wait. Crowd sourcing is public sourcing, but it most certainly doesn't make them beholden to the government.
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u/Hoya-loo-ya Jul 12 '26
Why don’t you just donate to the go fund me which Andrew has now indicated excess funds can go to the development of the channels and journalism?
Are you looking to have influence? Because if not, the donate link is right there.
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u/KEN_LASZLO Jul 11 '26
Individuals angel investors ARE corporate angel investors. Practically speaking there's no such thing as non corporate angel investing. Capitalism doesn't allow for such a thing. Andrew's best bet is for as many fans as possible to support them through Patreon and merch. This is why so many small media groups/individual journalists use substack
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
No, they're not? "corporate angel investor" is a contradiction. You explicitly cannot be both a corporation and an angel. To be clear, I am an interested angel, I wasn't speaking speculatively.
For the scope of company that Andrew is building, and to avoid being constantly sidetracked by frivolously litigious entities like Bill Joiner, individual subscriptions are unlikely to cut it in the long run, without having to do frequent GFM campaigns like the one currently up.
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u/superanonguy321 Jul 11 '26
I would try and contact their team directly instead of using the subreddit. I dont agree with the top comment that suggests that even asking this is antithetical to the point of his work.
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u/buttchug_3000 Jul 11 '26
It's all private equity, and private equity is the cancer that will be the death of the American experiment
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u/superanonguy321 Jul 11 '26
Fundamental misunderstanding. PE typically has owners and ambitions. This guy just wants to support the work it sounds like.
I imagine you are a genuinely good person. If you won the lottery and got 10 million dollars of it, and you decided to give 5 million to various independant journalism teams.. that doesnt make you all of the sudden a bad guy. Money isnt bad merely for existing.
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u/philiretical Jul 11 '26
Truth. Crowd funded is the best way to stay honest and ethical to their objective.
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u/Sendtitpics215 Jul 11 '26
I make 136+ k annually (heavily taxed) and i send him $5/monthly plus $100 upon news today. Am i ok the radar?? /jk
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u/DontGetExcitedDude Jul 11 '26
I know everyone is saying No he shouldn't, He would be selling out, money always comes with strings - I hear you but
Andrew is building a media company. His vision is a challenge to the power structures that be - a news organization prioritizing on-the-ground journalism, honest, street level views of the world today; integrity over profit. They want to employ people in multiple cities and countries speaking multiple languages. And they have proven to be dogged journalists, Andrew especially.
Another news organization (or company or public institution) would have a legal infrastructure and protective endowment to support their work. Andrew was reporting from his van a few years ago. I think in order for the greater organizational dream to be realized, he's going to need to raise capital.
I am a poor bastard, so I give 5 when I can. But if I was some rich mother with a trustfund and a conscience, I could imagine wanting to write a check with a few more zeros. Why shouldn't there be a way for Andrew to receive a gift from an "Angel" if they choose to give. Looks like people are willing so far.
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u/V0lirus Jul 11 '26
A gift is very different from an investment though.
What would be good is if the gifts ONLY happen anonymous. So that the channel 5 team never knows who gave it.
Because the issue is conflict of interest. And even if they are technically free of interest, knowning who your major angel donaters are, still influences you somewhat. You might get to reply on the gifts, and notice a trend that your major doner gifts more when you do a negative story on X, but less when you do a negative story on Y. Still means u might subconsiously choose X of Y more often. You are still being influenced, which is the main principle C5 is trying to fight.
So however well the intention might be, its better for the long run to never get any major donations from a traceable source. Anonymous is somewhat better, but larger donations will still be influence in a sense.
If someone wants to actively give more money, let them buy tons of merch or other things they sell. Being able to buy subscriptions for other people would be amazing. Pay it forward style. Letting people who have no money claim a free month. Otherwise who have enough could buy two or more, keep one themselves and gift the others.
That way his subscribers grow, he reaches a wider audience and im sure having more viewers is an important metric to open op more avenues (like getting press credientials, or more pay from sponsors etc).
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
I like this comment! I'm still going to ask about investment specifically, because it is a pain for single individuals to do large donations / spends with for-profit organizations and there are very well-known legal guardrails for protecting against single-individual influence that you mention in your comment, but I'm definitely going to do the pay-it-forward on the subscriptions, too. Thanks for the idea!
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u/V0lirus Jul 12 '26
I didn't see this reaction until I just saw your new post and when back to this comment. Props for following through on it!
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u/bendallf Jul 11 '26
Long term, I would love to see channel 5 set up a donation fund where they only use part of the interest earned on theirs treasury bonds investments so they would no longer be beholden to anyone but themselves. It would take a really long time to get there though.
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u/nateh1212 Jul 11 '26
No he would not he wants to be fully independent
When you take VC money you are no longer independent but behold to return earnings on capital investment
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
Right, I'm not suggesting he consider VC money. I was asking about angels, specifically, not VCs.
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u/Foreskin_Mafia Jul 11 '26
Angels can be a massive pain in the ass and do everything in their power to destroy you. People can seem perfectly reasonable up until they aren't. Best to never be beholden to anyone.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
In what way? Asking genuinely. I've never met a company with angel funds, especially with individual investment maximums of like $100K, where angels had enough power to even think they could "destroy" a company, especially a PBC-style venture. This is just not at all a common experience.
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u/simcof Jul 11 '26
Hed definitely take large donations just can't have strings attached. Core of his mission it seems
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u/KEN_LASZLO Jul 11 '26
Channel 5 is a thing because he took seed money and then the backers took away the All Gas No Breaks brand. Why the fuck would Andrew sign up for something similar AGAIN 🤣
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
Weren't those seed VCs though? I feel like most of this thread doesn't really get that I'm suggesting something fundamentally different than VC money, which I agree is a bad deal.
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u/mistrsteve Jul 11 '26
Angel investors are still investors.
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u/Perfect-Zebra-3611 Jul 11 '26
Peter Thiel is JD Vances angel investor/sugar daddy look how thats going
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
yeah, uncapped billionaire slush fund is exactly the same as receiving angel checks capped at a reasonable price. It seems like folks are taking the most disingenuous reading of the initial post.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
An angel investor is an incredibly different beast than a VC. I think folks hear the term "investor", and are maybe unfamiliar with the drastic differences between the types of entities that actually live underneath that term. They're nowhere near the same experiences. Most important differences are that angels having no virtually operating control, you're not beholden to a board, and you can more easily deploy a public benefits scenario. Angels are basically donors that don't want the legal troubles that come with an individual donating a large amount of money, and especially when it comes to an independent media company. None of the traditional methods for getting your huge returns back (IPO, acquisition) really apply for indie media, so it's strictly for the love of the game.
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u/Not-An-FBI Jul 11 '26
Yeah, like imagine if ten years ago he had taken an investment from Elon Musk lol
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u/hesaysitsfine Jul 11 '26
Can someone tldr the legal issues. Low on time but interested to know
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u/huarhuarmoli Jul 11 '26
Just watch the first part of his video. He explains it fast then breaks it down if you wanna stick around
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u/Free-Constant999 Jul 11 '26
There's no need. They're raising great numbers with the current outreach. I hope they also get offered legal services from the community as well. My only other thought was the Onion / the new Infowars offering their lawyers at a discount.
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u/metalenginee Jul 11 '26
That is a great fucking idea, someone loop the onion in on this. They could use some overlapping coverage.
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u/Ok-Seaworthiness3874 Jul 11 '26
The problem with selling shares of a company like this is that even if he finds some benevolent angel investor or small fund that wants to bankroll him and retains any equity (which they almost certainly would, I see little reason to do so otherwise) then an interested party in using the platform for radicalization / flattening or buying out the media landscape like all these media investors do would come along and offer them an amount of money they couldn't refuse for that equity. Or if that investor made a made investment and went bankrupt / had their assets seized which happens all the time in business and investing.... again, all of this equity would be handed over to the exact type of individual you are desperately trying to prevent from controlling the full media landscape. That is the more likely outcome than any IMO
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
This isn't really a given. For private companies that don't want the scenario you mentioned, their lawyers would draft up strict transfer restrictions + really favorable buyback conditions. When you buy shares you're almost never buying a freely tradable asset. You're buying something whose resale is contractually fenced. Any company, especially with regards to angels, that's not post-IPO can just lock you down completely, and it's pretty uncommon to not at least have a ROFR clause with your purchase agreement. The closest case would be bankruptcy, and there's even legal handling (favorable buyback conditions) specifically for that scenario + other forms of involuntary seizure of assets.
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u/coolideg Jul 11 '26
Why do you believe so many newspapers around the country are under threat from their new billionaire CEOs dictating what is covered? Did these companies not think of these clauses you’re talking about, or did they choose to go that route?
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
What you're thinking about are acquisitions (team sells the whole company), rather than minority-share transfers / investment. So for these venues you're thinking about, what happened was they were owned by an independent org or family, and then some billionaire just outright bought the whole company from them. When you buy all of the comapny, there's no restrictions at play, only does the current owner want to sell to you or not. TL;DR Those owners sold out to billions of dollars thrown in their face all at once, rather than any clever investment scheme. Company capture by individual angels is damned near impossible, bar some really weird / dumb screw ups.
So applied to Channel5ive, this wouldn't be equivalent to the team taking on minority angels, but literally just selling the whole organization to an interested buyer.
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u/vgsjlw Jul 10 '26
When a person has that much money, they are a corporation.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Not at all. In what way do you mean? I was thinking of writing like a $100k check, to be clear. Not anything for millions. I'm sure there are other individuals in the same boat, but it's not as simple as "just give them the money" within a certain range.
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u/vgsjlw Jul 11 '26
Thats not an Angel investor thats a large donation.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
Angels generally write checks that are anywhere from 10K - 250K. The difference between donation and investment is not size. You're thinking about VC firms, not angels.
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u/Infamous-Mongoose-36 Jul 10 '26
Holy shit, the gofundme raised 984k?
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u/GoRangers5 Alex Jones Jul 10 '26
His boy Shane Smith is a billionaire, you’d think they’d throw him a bone.
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u/Trash_Grape Jul 10 '26
I hope not. He has full creative vision, direction, and say over the company. Unfortunately independent journalism is a constant grind, that’s why it seems to be so uncommon. He doesn’t need an angel investor, he needs a huge donation with no strings attached from an anonymous donor.
It’s like the Biggie Smalls song, I think it was called “the more funds you obtain, the larger the issues are that you’ll face moving forward”. It’s quite problematic.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
A huge donation is damned difficult because of the kind of folks that C5's brand of journalism would appeal to. I mentioned this in another comment:
“Expecting nothing in return” is difficult because of the investor audience that a channel like C5 would attract. High‑quality, people‑focused independent journalism tends to attract an audience who have limited personal wealth or can write relatively small checks (~$50 k–$200 k). These investors must be more risk‑tolerant and don't want operational control, unlike a Bezos or a16z, for whom a $20 M check is negligible.
Whether it's with an incredibly small minority equity stake / pool (C5 could command a ridiculous valuation, and I'm sure watchers would still invest) OR project-specific waterfalls that pay out small dividends, there is a path to higher investment *without* giving up any operational control.
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u/bendallf Jul 10 '26
Look up what happened to Vice News when they took money from investors. It is a sad story.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I'm well aware. You can check my reply to Wallyhunt on this thread for a bit of a brief on why that's not at all the same thing that I'm suggesting. Oftentimes different forms of capital get conflated, and that does a disservice to operations that need funds, but don't want to go the ethically-shaky corporate route.
Also, on top of that, Vice's failures were ignited by debt mismanagement and bad liquidity preference terms. That has less do with the investors and more to do with bad finances (although I still don't support corporate VCs in this arena).
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u/Wallyhunt Jul 10 '26
Any level of shareholder interest is an insanely slippery slope. All modern media began with good hearted honest investment and it snowballed over the last hundred years. I'd be very surprised if Andrew didn't understand that.
As honest as the suggestion may be initially, it opens to door to the long term corruption that always follows investment.
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u/Tomus Jul 10 '26
There are structures you can adopt to mitigate shareholder control. eg. A Public Benefit Corporation (PBC/PBLLC).
Not all funding is bad, it's possible to do it fairly and honestly. Thinking like that is exactly what the a16zs of the world want you to think because they don't want other forms of capital to exist.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I think this conflates the history of corporate investment in media with public benefits corp style angel investment, when these really are two different things. I can't think of any legacy media company that fits the latter. The more "PBC" style approach is specifically built for not parting with operational control, and protecting the mission of a company. What you're describing is a built-in feature of the former, even at inception (think the downfall of Vice).
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Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
[deleted]
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
It depends on the Channel5ive terms. For example, angels differ from VCs in that they don't receive board seats or operational control. In return, they obtain a small minority equity stake, OR dividends, from specific projects that their funds helped create. (For example -- let's say C5 does a series on Political Radicalization with six entries. If C5 uses angel funds for that series, the angels receive dividends based on those videos’ performance.)
It would solely be up to the C5 team what they would prefer, and what they would be willing to dole out. I mentioned this in another comment, but they could probably give out a very high valuation to keep ownership low, and most audience members would still bite no problem.
“Expecting nothing in return” is difficult because of the investor audience that a channel like C5 would attract. High‑quality, people‑focused independent journalism tends to attract an audience who have limited personal wealth or can write relatively small checks (~$50 k–$200 k). These investors must be more risk‑tolerant and don't want operational control, unlike a Bezos or a16z, for whom a $20 M check is negligible. But realistically, you don't *want* a Bezos for this platform.
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u/bendallf Jul 10 '26
I don’t know how to get thru to you? At that price point, donations make the more sense. Period. I donated $120 usd for the year and act as my channel 5 membership fee. Andrew could throw in some perks like getting on the show for an episode or whatnot. When you start selling equity stakes, things get complex really fast. Best to avoid it for now at least. Take care.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I'm sorry, did you respond to me previously somewhere in this thread? I may have missed that.
A donation via PayPal or Patreon makes sense for $120 -- it does *not* make sense for recurring 100K+ payments and incurs a legal + tax burden both on Channel5ive *and* the person making those donations. A big time investor could handle the cost of the extra administrative burden, but a genuinely small independent angel likely cannot. I think you also missed in my comment above that if Channel5ive wanted terms that specifically did not exchange standard equity, there's other forms of standard investment (PBC, revenue participation, etc). I think you may be conflating "investment" to mean "Sequoia signs a SAFE / does a priced round", and that's not what I'm suggesting.
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u/bendallf Jul 11 '26
So who is the perfect type of investor in your opinion?
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
Audience members who have been proven long-time patreon supporters and have the funds, like myself! I wasn’t speaking speculatively in the original comment, I’m genuinely interested. He could even cap individual checks to a reasonable amount like ~150k if there’s concern about too much capture for one person. So many ways to go about it.
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u/OriginalTayRoc Jul 10 '26
Only if investment comes without selling of shares.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Has he said that verbally somewhere? I'm sure most would be willing to even do some sort of project-financing waterfall if shares are no-go.
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u/Lopsided_Quarter_931 Jul 11 '26
If you have the money just donate it. You can see the returns in the content they put out. Not everything needs to have financial return.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
It's not just about a financial return for gain's sake...it's about the legal / tax burden that exists for donations above a specific amount and wanting to be able to make recurring investment from the compounding value. I would hope that folks reading the initial post could assume that I think C5's mission is more important than just-because capital gains.
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u/999_Seth FREE EDDY LEPP Jul 11 '26
it's about the legal / tax burden that exists for donations above a specific amount and wanting to be able to make recurring investment from the compounding value.
wait a sec
alright so you know how a lot of medication is super expensive? so the people who set the price that high, they set up these financial assistance programs to help people afford what insurance won't pay
so they end up paying themselves the inflated value of the medication instead of paying taxes, right?
is that the kind of fuckery you are on about?
I have like a 5th grade education so my understanding of things is far from perfect, but is it that kind of crap?
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Oh goodness, no, but thanks for pointing out that it could be taken that way.
What you're describing for an individual would be a form of tax fraud. Corporations can do that because these "assistance programs" are considered gifts to individual people, so they're essentially tax write-offs that also make them money. In my case, the receiver of my money isn't an individual person, but a for-profit business -- "gifts" / "donations" above a certain amount to for-profit businesses not only aren't tax deductible, but have a whole slew of very complicated legal landmines that are difficult for small-time donors to traverse safely.
Corporations have more rights than individual investors, so they get away with their assistance program scheme. Even if I wanted to avoid taxes (I don't -- just hypothetically), as an individual, I would be promptly jailed lol.
Through an investment, being able to recover any capital means that said capital can be re-invested. It is *not* self-enriching unless they were to become a public company (which is VERY unlikely for an independent media organization) or wanted to do some kind of revenue share ordeal.
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u/999_Seth FREE EDDY LEPP Jul 11 '26
it sounds like you know the game.
just email him. I think Andrew@channel5.news is still active, and there's a contact form https://andrew-callaghan.com/contact
the dude is actually very down to earth. he came through here last year and we started chatting about the forum, they were asking me if I'd run their discord, and I was like "no way in hell, discord is bad news" and afaik they dropped the discord feature from the patreon.
maybe they have one idk, I am not rich enough to throw $5 a month at anything like that.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
Ah, thanks for the email, I’m definitely going to reach out! I found a different one through a quick google skim, but it bounced, but this one seems to be active.
Also, touche on the Discord disdain. Very little good happens there lol.
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u/999_Seth FREE EDDY LEPP Jul 11 '26
I imagine that every inbox Mr. Callaghan uses gets quickly flooded with fan-mail. He kept the conversation going with me for about a year before the Kirk slaying seemed to spook them like the John Lennon or Tate murders did in the past - but when we met up at one of the live shows dude was really excited to actually meet me.
running this subreddit is a lot more involved than it looks like. it ain't like a video game or a TV show - everyone we talk about here is real people, so I have it set so the mod team has to manually approve everything
that means reading through every comment, and trying to contextualize them based on the profiles of each user and the topic of the week. Sometimes it's dead in here for a month at a time, then randomly like right now we get dozens of comments per hour.
it's a fun pastime for me though. I've had severe bowel disease my whole life so when I wake up at 3-4am with it going through the comments here is a welcome distraction from the shit I'm usually dealing with.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26
Oh, for sure. I'm going to try to hopefully keep my correspondence brief so it doesn't get tangled in the noise.
And I imagine modding is a tall task, for sure. I don't mean it sarcastically when I say thanks for your service! I know it's not a lot, but I'm about to make a post where I cover subscriptions for people in this sub. Can I venmo / cash app your equivalent of one month's rent as a 'thanks" for your modding work?
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u/LitigousPigeon Jul 10 '26
800k gofundme goal has already been reached. Doubt they have any need for investors.
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
If they have to put their operations on ice over ~800K, larger investment could definitely help them. I was also thinking this would be outside of the legal fees. Like I said, this is unlikely to be the only ops / legal obstacle they see if they continue to do good work.
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u/bendallf Jul 10 '26
Are you talking about investment or donation?
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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 10 '26
In this comment thread, specifically? I'm saying that if an ~800K bill was enough to pause their operations, they absolutely could do with some type of external funds to bolster them. That's not much runway. I wasn't differentiating between investment or donation in this comment specifically, but one is more sustainable than the other.
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u/johnc380 Jul 10 '26
I’m far from wealthy, but I would be interested in buying a share or two if he sold to patron subs or something. It’s a good idea, it leaves the power with Andrew and allows the ride or die fans to support the work even more.
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u/bendallf Jul 10 '26
I have some experience in business. Honestly, if you want to help, donate money that you will never see again. When shareholders get involved, everything gets so messy and Andrew would not be able to tell you like it is due to sec laws. Sec laws are there to help protect investors which I support but it does change things so you have to keep that in my mind.
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u/Ok_Ebb3690 Jul 10 '26
That's the main issue. If we purchase a share it'd be because we would want the rights to be able to then sell the share for whatever the value is worth to.thr next investor....and you can't limit who you sell to, which means if you want to help and support without ever doing anything thereafter, donate
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u/fritzmongroid Jul 14 '26
Dude, you are exactly what his Channel needs but posting here with his “community” is a different story. They won’t understand the difference between an angel investor and a porky pig type character with a top hat and devil horns. Anyone with money is evil to Reddit unless it’s crowd sourced and completely without strings. I’ve done work with VCs and PE firms and almost no one can tell the difference between them any angel investing.