Jeff Harmon

 

Jeffrey is Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer of Angel Studios (see description below). Jeffrey, and his co-founders, are the unlikeliest of candidates to be executives at a movie studio. They grew up working the potato farms of southern Idaho with just three TV stations. In a Babylon Bee interview (2022) Jeff recalled he could count the films he had seen in the dollar theater on one hand. Making movies wasn’t even on his radar as a child.

 

Prior to Angel Studios, Jeffrey co-founded Orabrush, Inc. in 2009 and served as its CEO from 2009-2010. (Orabrush won startup of the year in 2010.) While at Orabrush, Jeffrey is credited with having helped Google/YouTube invent the “skip ad” button allowing viewers, for the first time, to skip ads after 5 seconds, but also enabling advertisers to create ads not limited to 15 or 30 seconds. The “skip ad” invention paved the way for Harmon Brothers, an ad agency Jeffrey and his brothers co-founded, which used 2-5 minute viral ads to launch brands for Poopourri, Purple, Squatty Potty and Lume to hundreds of millions in sales. Harmon Brothers pioneered an entirely new category in advertising.

 

 

In December 2016, a predecessor company to Angel Studios, VidAngel, was undergoing a lawsuit. To raise money for operations and lawsuit costs, the company conducted a Regulation A+ securities offering with a goal of $5 million in investment. It met its goal after 28 hours and had crowdfunded over $10 million after five days. 

 

In 2017, the company conducted another Regulation A+ securities offering to crowdfund Season 1 of The Chosen. Neal Harmon and Jeff Harmon worked together with Dallas Jenkins and Derral Eves to produce and stream a multi-season television series about the life of Jesus and his disciples. After a pilot episode was developed, the company raised $13 million in equity crowdfunding to finance the first season, the largest amount ever crowdfunded for a TV show.

 

Also in 2017, a third foray into equity crowdfunding came from the launch of Dry Bar Comedy, a series of 52 original stand-up comedy sets that are generally clean and performed by lesser-known comedians. Much of its content went viral, with Dry Bar Comedy videos receiving over two billion views as of 2021.

 

The success of Dry Bar Comedy and The Chosen gave way to a new business model that would allow the company to produce and distribute original content. The founders decided to focus on developing original content using its equity crowdfunding model and rebrand as Angel Studios.

 

In 2021, Angel Studios launched an investment portal called Angel Funding that offered investment opportunities through Regulation Crowdfunding securities offerings. Several productions were successfully funded through the investment portal after its launch in March 2021. Tuttle Twins, a show for children with educational themes on economic freedom raised $4.6 million in equity crowdfunding for its production. The Wingfeather Saga, an animated series based on the award-winning book collection of the same name raised $1 million in the first 48 hours and $5 million in 20 days.

 

In April 2021, The Chosen, which was originally distributed through the VidAngel platform, was made available on Angel Studios for the launch of Season 2. The show became a viral hit with renowned success worldwide.

 

In 2022, Angel Studios raised $47 million in an investment round led by a Gigafund, a venture capital company. In May 2022, the studio reported that it had $123 million in revenue, and that 50,000 people have invested over $100 million for production of new original content on its platform.

 

As of 2022, Angel Studios had 50,000 individual investors and had over $100 million worth of original content, including 12 titles, in production.

 

The Angel Guild, launched in 2023, is a  group of approximately 1 million members who review and vote on completed episodes and movies to help Angel Studios decide if they should take on a project. If a film or show's voting results meet the Guild's minimum eligibility requirements, the project enters into a due diligence process to determine its potential for distribution.

 

Angel Guild members pay a monthly or annual membership fee to receive exclusive benefits such as access to Angel Studios’ entire library, new monthly releases, merchandise discounts, two complimentary movie tickets to every release, and more. The Angel Guild supports Angel Studios’ mission to share stories that amplify light.

 

Notable films greenlit by the Angel Guild include His Only Son, which earned $13 million at the worldwide box office, and Sound of Freedom, which grossed $250 million after Angel Guild members voted for its distribution. On February 7, 2025.