Gary Vaynerchuk, the serial entrepreneur, VaynerX chairman, and internet personality widely known as "GaryVee," has built his career on a foundation of diverse and highly profitable business ventures. From the early days of Wine Library and the strategic growth of his digital agency, VaynerMedia, to investments in platforms like Resy and the development of Empathy Wines, Vaynerchuk has long been a fixture in the business world. However, much of his professional output has historically been rooted in B2B services and impersonal corporate growth. That trajectory shifted in 2021 with the introduction of VeeFriends, a creative project that Vaynerchuk describes as the business he has wanted to build since his childhood.
At its core, VeeFriends is a storytelling universe and brand designed to address a perceived gap in the collectibles market. As founder and CEO, Vaynerchuk has curated a massive ecosystem that currently includes over 280 original, hand-drawn characters. Each character is intentionally crafted to serve as a vehicle for teaching kindness, empathy, and essential life lessons, aiming to resonate with audiences spanning multiple generations. Influenced by the creative legacies of icons like Jim Jenson and Walt Disney, Vaynerchuk often characterizes the brand as a stylistic blend of the immersive world-building seen in Pokémon and the educational, character-driven charm of Sesame Street. Since its inception, the brand has expanded significantly, moving beyond initial digital concepts to encompass a wide array of media, including comic books, physical collectibles, digital content, and high-end trading cards.
For Vaynerchuk, who commands a massive digital audience with nearly 5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, VeeFriends represents more than just another portfolio company. It is a long-term strategic play that he believes will define the latter half of his career. "From a business standpoint, I think it’s the biggest business I’m building. I believe intellectual property is the winner of the next half century," Vaynerchuk told Variety. He notes that the company has already reached an eight-figure revenue milestone through its expansion into physical trading cards and collectible coins.
Vaynerchuk’s ambition for the brand is nothing short of global, viewing it in the same league as established powerhouses like Disney, Marvel, or the Pokémon franchise. "I’d be surprised if this isn’t where I end up at some point in my career," he said. "With all my 13 different businesses, if you ask me, you have to pick one—the restaurant group, all these alternative sports, the advertising agency is huge, the wine business—if I had to pick a horse where I think I’m riding on just one in my 60s, 70s, and 80s, I think it’s VeeFriends."
Expanding the Universe at New York Comic Con
The brand’s evolution was on full display this week at New York Comic Con, where Vaynerchuk unveiled the most significant product expansion in the company’s history. The highlight of the event was the introduction of VeeFriends issue #22, titled "Gentle Giant." This release serves as a prime example of how the brand is moving into more sophisticated narrative storytelling.
Featuring cover art by industry veteran Rob Liefeld, "Gentle Giant" moves into the realm of speculative fiction. Set against the atmospheric paranoia of the Cold War, the story follows a secret government initiative aimed at creating the ultimate supersoldier using ancient giant DNA. The narrative tension centers on a 20-foot-tall creation that awakens only to find that his innate, gentle disposition is in direct conflict with the violent purpose for which he was engineered. The comic serves as a genre-blending experiment, combining elements of a sci-fi thriller with the classic, cautionary themes of a Frankenstein narrative. It explores profound questions regarding what happens when a weaponized entity begins to display more humanity than its creators.
"Gentle Giant is fighting against this character, Mindful Minakawa, that we set up a couple of episodes of comic books ago," Vaynerchuk explained. "This is made for 35- to 65-year-old history nerds who like characters. That’s fitting good old classic comic book nostalgia: King Kong versus Godzilla, Superman, Cold War-era storytelling."
However, Vaynerchuk emphasizes that the brand is not wedded to a single genre or target demographic. He is already looking ahead to future projects, such as the upcoming "Considerate Cowboy," which he notes will take the form of a romance novel. By establishing a vast roster of over 280 characters, Vaynerchuk has effectively given himself a permanent canvas for storytelling. "One of the cool things I did, and it was very selfish, but it was also on strategy, is by creating 280-plus characters, I will never run out of time telling my stories," he remarked.
A Multigenerational Approach to Branding
As VeeFriends grows into a robust transmedia and merchandise entity, Vaynerchuk is careful to clarify that he is not attempting to make every single character appealing to every single consumer. Instead, he is looking to create a diverse ecosystem where each individual can find a specific character or execution that resonates with them personally.
"VeeFriends, as a whole, is looking to be a brand for ages six to 106. But each individual character and each individual execution may be looking at different demographics," Vaynerchuk said. He drew a parallel to the Batman franchise, noting the vast tonal difference between the child-friendly Lego Batman movie and the dark, gritty, R-rated tone of The Dark Knight. "That’s how I think at VeeFriends. I want it to truly be six to 106. All genders, races, income levels, regions in the world. Not everything is going to be based on just English or Americana. So, it’s an incredibly vast playground of creativity that I’m enjoying."
This strategy of building a broad, diverse intellectual property aligns with the way Vaynerchuk has managed his own personal brand. He views VeeFriends as his ultimate passion project—a venture that is simultaneously "selfish and selfless." The selfish aspect lies in the immense financial upside and the satisfaction of building a legacy-defining property. The selfless aspect, he argues, is the brand’s mission to provide positive, uplifting content in a media landscape often dominated by negativity.
"I built my personal brand as a business move 15 years ago before people saw it, and it was the most selfish and selfless thing," Vaynerchuk said. "It’s led to a lot of economic opportunity, but it’s also led to me impacting millions of people in a very positive way. I think there are just a lot of people out there spewing a lot of hate and negativity, and I know that people consume my content for a reprieve from all this darkness."
Navigating the Future of Media and AI
While there are ambitious plans for continued content expansion, Vaynerchuk is taking a measured approach to how the brand scales. He remains acutely aware of consumer sentiment, particularly regarding the use of emerging technologies like generative artificial intelligence. For the moment, the creation of the VeeFriends universe remains a human-led effort.
"We ourselves have not really fully executed [with generative AI]," Vaynerchuk noted, pointing out that all characters released to date have been the product of his own creative efforts and those of his core team. While he uses AI for internal project management and efficiency, he is hesitant to integrate it into the creative output itself because of the current consumer stigma surrounding the technology.
"A lot of the consumer doesn’t want you to," he acknowledged. "We more use it for project management and efficiencies more so than the output. But I do predict very easily that the stigma will go away within the next decade, and we’ll be prepared to make content at scale with it once we think the world would appreciate it."
As Vaynerchuk continues to navigate the complexities of building a modern entertainment franchise, his focus remains on the long game. By balancing the nostalgia of classic comic book tropes with a forward-thinking, inclusive approach to character development, he is positioning VeeFriends to remain a significant player in the media landscape for years to come. Whether through the pages of a comic book or the development of new merchandise lines, the project stands as the definitive culmination of his decades of experience in marketing, community building, and business strategy.
