Because the creator economic system is rising quickly, model partnerships stay one of many prime methods creators can earn cash. Different companies like link-in-bio apps with affiliate hyperlinks or Pateron-like subscriptions grow to be secondary methods to extend creators’ earnings. For platforms and startup, the largest problem stays to match manufacturers and creators for collaboration.
Berlin-based startup Passionfroot is constructing a toolkit and a market for enterprise, productiveness, and thought leadership-focused creators for model collaborations.
The corporate, based by Jen Phan, who had a profession in early-stage investing, has raised $3.8 million in a seed funding spherical led by VC Supernode World, with different traders together with Miro CEO Andrey Khusid’s s16vc, Sequoia, Accel’s Scout Fund, and Creandum additionally taking part — Creandum beforehand invested within the firm’s $3.4 million pre-seed spherical too. The seed spherical included angels resembling former Zapier CMO Kieran Flanagan, ex-community and creator lead at Notion Ben Lang, Linktree CPO Jiaona Zhang, and Austin Lau, who takes care of Development at Anthropic.
Earlier than launching Passionfroot, Phan launched a tech e-newsletter in 2020 for tech professionals with immigration backgrounds. She thought of leaving her VC position and going full-time on the e-newsletter.
“Amid this evolution, a brand new breed of business-focused creators emerged, producing thought management content material throughout platforms like LinkedIn, newsletters, and podcasts. Nevertheless, after talking with dozens of creators, I noticed that whereas the inventive freedom is interesting, the enterprise facet—particularly model partnerships, which function a main income stream—stays fragmented and inefficient,” Phan informed TechCrunch.
She added that the choice to construct Passionfroot additionally stemmed from manufacturers struggling to search out related creators, managing the schedule of campaigns, and co-ordinating payouts.
Zain Khan, who’s the founding father of AI-focused e-newsletter Superhuman, mentioned one of many largest challenges for creators is chasing pending funds from manufacturers and companions.
“In our early days, we had this one $40k cost that didn’t present up for months. We needed to chase banks for ages to trace and resolve the difficulty. We had been paying salaries out of our private financial savings and got here very near going out of enterprise,” he informed TechCrunch over an e-mail.
Passionfroot lets creators construct a storefront for advert or model partnership slots they’ve on their totally different channels, together with newsletters, YouTube, LinkedIn and TikTok. Creators can construct a media package for manufacturers highlighting their model collaboration charges, engagement charges of their channels, and schedules. Creators may also present examples of previous sponsorships on their Passionfroot web page.
The toolkit additionally makes it simple for manufacturers to e-book a marketing campaign with creators via automated scheduling. Creators can share their pages with manufacturers — similar to a link-in-bio web page. The startup counts Hubspot, Notion, and Freshbook as a number of the model companions.
On the opposite facet of {the marketplace}, the startup has additionally constructed a community the place manufacturers can uncover related creators on the platform. Phan mentioned that offers booked via the community are at the moment equal to offers booked via particular creators’ storefronts.
Passionfroot has a 15% take fee for any model partnership that materializes via its community, together with cost charges. The corporate takes 5% in cost charges if a model books a partnership with a creator via their storefront.
The corporate is launching its revamped web site with higher creator search and matching performance for entrepreneurs. The platform additionally exhibits a match rating to entrepreneurs, serving to them choose the very best creator suited to a selected marketing campaign. Within the coming months, the startup will construct a dashboard with marketing campaign insights and higher help for advertising groups — moderately than a person — to make use of Passionfroot.
Sabina Wizander from Creandum belives that Passionfroot has a novel benefit with its deal with the B2B section.
“The corporate is beginning with the B2B market each from creators and such firms. On this market, there may be nothing known as being 50% related. So the startup has the appropriate product-market match from the get-go,” she informed TechCrunch over a name.
In accordance with an eMarketer report, US influencer advertising spending in 2024 is ready to be round $7.14 billion, with a 15.8% year-on-year development, signaling that entrepreneurs want to attain shoppers via totally different channels.
Gina King, a accomplice at Supernode World, mentioned Passionfroot is constructing its product at a really opportune time.
“Passionfroot is well-timed to capitalize on a number of market shifts. The corporate is not only using a single pattern however is well-positioned to profit from a number of concurrent developments within the creator economic system, B2B advertising, and know-how,” she mentioned.
King additionally added that 87% of Passionfroot companions are organically, proving that the corporate has a robust community impact.
Startups like VSCO for photographers, Agentio for YouTubers, and Catch + Launch for licensable belongings have tried to formalize transactions and partnerships between manufacturers and creators. Giant-scale social networks like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have additionally experimented with constructing platforms round matching manufacturers and creators.
