Because the creator economic system is rising quickly, model partnerships stay one of many prime methods creators can earn cash. Different providers like link-in-bio apps with affiliate hyperlinks or Pateron-like subscriptions develop into secondary methods to extend creators’ revenue. For platforms and startup, the most important 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 International, with different buyers 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 equivalent to 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 Progress at Anthropic.
Earlier than launching Passionfroot, Phan launched a tech publication in 2020 for tech professionals with immigration backgrounds. She thought of leaving her VC function and going full-time on the publication.
“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 artistic freedom is interesting, the enterprise facet—particularly model partnerships, which function a main income stream—stays fragmented and inefficient,” Phan advised TechCrunch.
She added that the choice to construct Passionfroot additionally stemmed from manufacturers struggling to seek out related creators, managing the schedule of campaigns, and co-ordinating payouts.
Zain Khan, who’s the founding father of AI-focused publication Superhuman, mentioned one of many greatest challenges for creators is chasing pending funds from manufacturers and companions.
“In our early days, we had this one $40k fee that didn’t present up for months. We needed to chase banks for ages to trace and resolve the problem. We have been paying salaries out of our private financial savings and got here very near going out of enterprise,” he advised TechCrunch over an e mail.
Passionfroot lets creators construct a storefront for advert or model partnership slots they’ve on their completely 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 present examples of previous sponsorships on their Passionfroot web page.
The toolkit additionally makes it straightforward for manufacturers to e book a marketing campaign with creators by way of automated scheduling. Creators can share their pages with manufacturers — identical to a link-in-bio web page. The startup counts Hubspot, Notion, and Freshbook as a few 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 by way of the community are at present equal to offers booked by way of particular creators’ storefronts.
Passionfroot has a 15% take price for any model partnership that materializes by way of its community, together with fee charges. The corporate takes 5% in fee charges if a model books a partnership with a creator by way of 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 perfect creator fitted to a specific marketing campaign. Within the coming months, the startup will construct a dashboard with marketing campaign insights and higher assist for advertising and marketing groups — reasonably than a person — to make use of Passionfroot.
Sabina Wizander from Creandum belives that Passionfroot has a novel benefit with its concentrate on the B2B phase.
“The corporate is beginning with the B2B market each from creators and such corporations. On this market, there’s nothing known as being 50% related. So the startup has the fitting product-market match from the get-go,” she advised TechCrunch over a name.
In keeping with an eMarketer report, US influencer advertising and marketing spending in 2024 is about to be round $7.14 billion, with a 15.8% year-on-year development, signaling that entrepreneurs need to attain customers by way of completely different channels.
Gina King, a associate at Supernode International, 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 driving a single development however is well-positioned to learn from a number of concurrent developments within the creator economic system, B2B advertising and marketing, and know-how,” she mentioned.
King additionally added that 87% of Passionfroot companions are organically, proving that the corporate has a powerful 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. Massive-scale social networks like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have additionally experimented with constructing platforms round matching manufacturers and creators.
