1stCollab

Alumni Q&A

How did your company get started? (i.e., How did the founders meet? How did you come up with the idea? How did you decide to be a founder?)

Varun and Leon spent three years building creator products at Pinterest and, after speaking with many creators about monetization, focused on helping brands discover creators for campaigns. They were connected with Carina, who was working on a similar idea, and Andrew, a former Pinterest colleague of Varun and Leon, also joined to form the team.

What is the core problem you are solving? Why is this a big problem? What made you decide to work on it?

The founders are addressing a two-sided marketplace problem. For brands, existing influencer platforms cost over $30k per year and offer limited discovery; they cite Grin.co as not surfacing Instagram influencers. For creators, they note that 99% do not receive brand deals because there is no way to apply to relevant campaigns. The company plans to build a network of authenticated creators and discovery algorithms, plus an open platform where creators can apply to brand campaigns.

What is your long-term vision? If you truly succeed, what will be different about the world?

The founders aim to simplify and automate influencer marketing, drawing on their experience that users engage more with sponsored creator content than organic ads. They want to expand the amount of ad spend directed to influencer marketing and, by extension, to creators, making full-time content creation viable for more people.