Funny or Die

Funny or Die launched on April 12, 2007, as a comedy video website with a simple pitch: let Hollywood stars get silly. The idea came from Michael Kvamme, whose father Mark was one of the four co-founders alongside Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and Chris Henchy. The site's first video, "The Landlord," showed Ferrell arguing with a beer-drinking toddler and pulled in over 84 million views. That single sketch set the tone for everything that followed: irreverent, self-deprecating, and willing to let big names look ridiculous.

Within months, Sequoia Capital backed the venture, and the company expanded beyond the web. It produced TV shows like Billy on the Street, @midnight, and the web series Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. HBO partnered for Funny or Die Presents... in 2010, and IFC later ran a programming block called Funny or Die TV from 2017 to 2018. The roster of guest stars read like a who's who of Hollywood: Don Cheadle, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Selena Gomez, and many more.

The digital media landscape shifted hard in the mid-2010s, and Funny or Die felt it. In 2016, the company laid off 30% of its staff and closed a California office. Then, in 2021, Henry R. Muñoz III, a businessman and former Democratic Party finance chair, bought the company from AMC Networks, WarnerMedia, and Sequoia Capital. Today, the brand calls itself a "premium independent studio in LA" and still posts regularly across YouTube, Facebook, X, and Instagram. Its influence on online comedy is hard to overstate, even as the website's traffic has faded from its peak. [edit]