Fundraising Fox

GRIN

Founded 2014 · 104 employees on LinkedIn · 14 known investors

Find your way into GRIN

145 people in our graph share verified history with the GRIN team — schools, employers, funds. One of them is your warm intro.

Camilla Hellgrenunlockedknows Brandon Brown · together at California State University, Chico (overlapped)
×4knows the team · via California State University, Chico
×7knows the team · via University of Utah - David Eccles School of Business

GRIN is a creator marketing platform for brands, offering tools to discover influencers, manage relationships, handle payments and shipping, run affiliate programs, and track campaign performance. It also provides Gia, an AI assistant that automates creator marketing tasks such as prospect discovery and outreach.

Also known as GRIN · Grin.co

AI & Machine LearningMarketing TechSaaS

Founders & leadership

GRIN was founded in 2014 by Brandon Brown and Ryan Brown.

BBBrandon Brown
Brandon BrowninCo-Founder, Board MemberBrandon Brown co-founded GRIN, a creator marketing platform, which he scaled to a $1B valuation before stepping down as CEO in late 2024. He previously worked in sports marketing at Red Bull North America.
RBRyan Brown
Ryan BrowninCo-Founder & CTO2016–2023Ryan Brown is the founder of Search Party, an AI visibility platform that helps brands track and analyze how they appear in answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.
RDRyan Debenham
Ryan DebenhaminCEOHe worked as a professional snowboarder in his late teens and founded GRIN to build tools for influencer discovery, relationship management, and campaign performance tracking.

Investors · 14

Base Venture Management, Inc.Oakland · $100K – $700K
Bullpen CapitalSan Francisco · $2M – $4M
Escalate Capital PartnersAustin
Eudemian VenturesSan Francisco
Forefront VentureSeattlevia Phil Nadel · inferred
Good FriendsSan Francisco · $250K – $1Mvia Alexandra Cowie · inferred
Moneta VenturesFolsom · $1M – $5M
PLUS CapitalVenice · $100K – $1M
The CouncilSan Francisco · $10K – $100K
BONDreportedSan Francisco
Interplay Ventures Early Stage Management LlcreportedNew York · $1M
MAGIC FundreportedLos Angeles · $50K – $5M

Also in the syndicate · 2

Imaginary VenturesLone Pine Capitallead

Funding

SEC filings, press & company announcements
  • Undisclosed amountSeries BOct 2021

    Lone Pine Capital (lead), BOND, Imaginary Ventures

    Source ↗

Source: company announcements and press reports — follow each round's link for the claim.

Company profile

researched Aug 2026

GRIN offers a creator (influencer) marketing platform that combines a creator CRM with an AI agent called Gia, which the company positions as operating a brand's creator program rather than simply providing software for a team to run manually. The platform spans the full program lifecycle described by the company as find, launch, negotiate, pay, track and report: guided setup in which Gia learns a brand's goals, audience criteria and performance benchmarks; creator discovery based on audience and content fit; relationship management and outreach sequences; payments to creators; performance tracking; and reporting through configurable outputs the company calls Artifacts. Gia also supports recurring automations (for example a scheduled weekly program review or daily creator review) and proactively surfaces flags, opportunities and creator updates, while approvals and final decisions remain with the brand's team.

A second component is the GRIN Marketplace, which connects brands to an opted-in network of more than 700,000 active creators. Creators use a free app to manage partnerships, track performance and find brand opportunities, while brands that join the Marketplace become visible to the network and receive Gia-generated creator recommendations for planned campaigns. The company states its recommendations draw on creator-marketing performance data accumulated over more than ten years, including vertical-specific engagement benchmarks across categories such as beauty, fitness, food, tech and apparel, and market rate benchmarks intended to inform negotiation.

Business model

GRIN sells access to its creator marketing platform on a freemium, self-serve basis. Brands can start free with no credit card or sales call, with paid plans beginning at $200 per month. Simple affiliate programs, including unlimited creators, links and codes, carry no commissions; the company charges instead for higher-value Gia work such as managing top-tier partnerships, running gifting workflows or building custom Artifacts. The creator-facing app is free for creators.

Subscription software with a free tier and paid plans from $200 per month, plus usage-based charges for specified high-value Gia capabilities; no commissions are taken on simple affiliate programs.

Traction

The company reports more than 700,000 creators in its network, over $1 billion in creator-driven partnerships and more than $215 million paid to creators. Customer case studies cite nearly 3x content output (Uber), more than 8,000 pieces of content in under two years (Stio) and more than 1.4 million monthly impressions.

Latest developments

GRIN's current positioning centers on Gia, an AI operator that runs creator programs end to end with human approval, alongside the GRIN Marketplace and free self-serve onboarding with paid plans from $200 per month.

▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market

Market position

The company describes itself as the AI-operated creator marketing platform and states it has been ranked #1 in influencer marketing on G2 for a decade.

GRIN contrasts itself with legacy creator marketing platforms that supply software for teams to operate, and with general-purpose AI assistants that lack access to a creator CRM, program workflows and network performance data. It also emphasizes a vetted, opted-in and active creator network rather than inactive accounts, and cites a decade of category-specific performance data underpinning recommendations.

Technology

An AI agent (Gia) built on top of a creator CRM and the company's creator-marketing dataset. Gia scores creators against 180 performance attributes drawn from more than $1 billion in creator-driven partnerships to produce qualified shortlists within 24 hours, and executes workflows across discovery, outreach, negotiation, payments, tracking and reporting, with human approval steps.

Go-to-market

Product-led, self-serve acquisition (free start with no credit card or sales call, roughly ten-minute setup) supported by customer case studies and testimonials, plus a two-sided marketplace in which brands become discoverable to the opted-in creator network.

Brands and in-house creator/influencer marketing teams of varying sizes, from self-serve starters to large consumer brands; named customers include SKIMS, ColourPop, IPSY, Uber and Stio. Creators are the other side of the marketplace.

Compiled by commissioned research from 1 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.

Key figures

latest reported
Average self-serve setup time to build a brand profile and start a first programJan 2026About 10 minutes
Creator-driven partnerships valueJan 2026$1B
Creators in networkJan 2026700,000 creators
Entry price for paid plansJan 2026$200
Performance attributes scored for creator matchingJan 2026180 attributes
Time to deliver qualified creator shortlistsJan 2026Within 24 hours
Total paid to creatorsJan 2026$215M

Company-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.

Founder mafia

2 people who came through GRIN went on to found or lead other companies.

Cory CummingsInvestorFounded Pack DigitalBrandon BrownFounderFounded Joymore

Competitors · 10

by search overlap
Sprout Social1340 shared keywordsSprout Social offers a social media management platform with AI, automation, integrations and analytics tools for marketing teams. The product helps teams manage social content, customer interactions, workflows and performance reporting from a single platform.
Hootsuite1269 shared keywordsHootsuite is a social media management platform that helps organizations manage, analyze, and optimize their social media presence across multiple networks. The company serves businesses of all sizes, from small companies to enterprises, providing tools for social marketing, listening, employee advocacy, and customer service.
Later958 shared keywordsLater is a platform for influencer marketing, social media management, and creator commerce that helps brands plan content, run campaigns, and track performance alongside creators.
Buffer818 shared keywordsBuffer is a social media management platform that enables small businesses, creators, and individuals to schedule posts, analyze engagement, and manage their presence across multiple social networks. The company provides tools for organic marketing and content distribution beyond publishing, including analytics and micro-site building capabilities.
Upfluence796 shared keywordsUpfluence provides a platform for influencer marketing that helps brands connect with content creators and manage campaigns. The platform serves brands and marketing teams across multiple geographies.
Modash750 shared keywordsModash provides a platform for influencer marketing teams to automatically track creator content and campaign performance across social media, with integrated Shopify sales attribution to measure ROI without manual data collection.
HypeAuditor718 shared keywordsHypeAuditor provides an influencer marketing platform for brands, offering automated tools to analyze, plan, track, and report on campaigns. Features include competitor campaign analysis, brand safety vetting of influencers, audience affinity analysis, brand-mention search, and influencer relationship management.
Metricool679 shared keywordsMetricool is a social media management and analytics tool that helps professionals schedule content, measure performance, and manage their presence across social platforms. It serves content creators, marketers, and businesses managing multiple social media accounts.
Clickanalytic619 shared keywordsClickAnalytic is an influencer marketing platform that helps brands and agencies discover creators and analyze audience quality, engagement, and brand fit. The platform uses data across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to enable evidence-based creator selection rather than follower-count-driven decisions.
Stack Influence506 shared keywordsStack Influence operates a micro influencer marketing platform that matches brands with creators using psychographic, demographic, and geographic data, handling product shipping, creative briefs, and campaign management. It generates user-generated content and testimonials for brands, provides full UGC rights and real-time analytics, and converts top creators into ambassador or affiliate programs.

Companies competing with GRIN for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.

In the news

Creator Management Platform Grin Raises $110 Million in Series Bthesaasnews.com · Oct 2021Grin raises $110 million in growth capital in new investment round - Sacramento Business Journalbizjournals.com · Oct 2021Grin Raises $14M in Funding - FinSMEsfinsmes.com · Apr 2021

▸Research sources · 1

primary sources listed

1 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.

Frequently asked questions

What does GRIN do?
GRIN is a creator marketing platform whose AI agent, Gia, operates brands' influencer programs end to end.
Who founded GRIN?
GRIN was founded by Brandon Brown, Ryan Brown in 2014.
Who are GRIN's investors?
GRIN's investors include Base Venture Management, Inc., Bullpen Capital, Escalate Capital Partners, Eudemian Ventures, Forefront Venture, Good Friends, Moneta Ventures, PLUS Capital and 4 more.