Fundraising Fox

Usestir

4 known investors

Stir builds business and payment tools that let digital creators track income across platforms and split revenue with collaborators.

Also known as Stir

Investors · 4

Also in the syndicate · 3

Jack ConteLi JinXYZ Capitallead

Company profile

researched Aug 2026

Stir, operating at usestir.com, develops financial and business software for digital creators who monetize across multiple platforms, a segment its founder describes as "multi-SKU" creators earning from sources such as YouTube advertising, Patreon and merchandise sales. Its core product consolidates income from different platforms into a single dashboard, provides a calendar view of income streams, and enables creators to split revenue with other creators and form collectives. Coverage has compared the product to Square or Mint for creators.

The company also ships "drops" — monthly one-off software projects outside its core business, released in pursuit of its stated aim of helping creators run businesses, own their content and build direct relationships with audiences. Named drops include OnlyTweets (paid access to a premium Twitter account), Presubscribe/FYP.RIP, and MergWith, which paired 22 creators into two-person teams to design a COVID mask with profits split 50/50. Another drop was used by the YouTube creator Airrack, who reportedly gained 225,000 subscribers in five days on the way to one million.

Founding story

Co-founder and CEO Joe (Joseph) Albanese previously worked at Yik Yak, was a product designer at Facebook on Messenger and Facebook Groups, and was Head of Product and Design at Bitwise. He attributes his interest in tools that bring people together to growing up in a large Italian-American family, and while at Facebook concluded that it had become easier to build a business on top of platforms like Facebook and YouTube while the people doing so were community builders and content creators rather than traditional entrepreneurs. He bought the usestir.com domain to run roughly ten low-fidelity, no-code experiments, ranging from a marketplace connecting manufacturers to creators for branded merchandise to a creator tax product, filtering ideas by whether they would "create more creators" and carry network effects. The MVP came after an accountant asked whether Stir could split roughly $100,000 from a complex brand deal; the team built it in two days and made revenue splitting the core of the product.

Business model

Stir supplies software to creators for consolidating and splitting earnings across platforms; the sources do not specify pricing or fee structure.

Traction

Hundreds of thousands of digital creators have used Stir's main product and its drops, with named creator customers including Freddie Wong (9.1 million subscribers), Mythical (16.9 million subscribers) and Peter Hollens (2.6 million subscribers).

Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies

Market position

Described in creator-economy press as a prominent startup serving multi-platform creators, backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Homebrew.

Focus on revenue splitting and collectives as the entry point rather than single-creator monetization, combined with a cadence of publicly released side products (drops).

Technology

A dashboard aggregating creator revenue from multiple platforms, a calendar view of income streams, revenue-splitting and collaboration tooling for collectives, plus customer verification and money-movement infrastructure.

Go-to-market

Growth relies on the network effects of revenue splitting between collaborating creators, direct daily contact with creators via FaceTime and text to guide the roadmap, and attention generated by its monthly software drops, including on Twitter.

Digital creators monetizing on multiple platforms, including YouTubers and other content and community builders, and creator collectives.

Geography

Listed with headquarters in San Francisco and Los Angeles, California.

History

After the domain-based experimentation phase, Stir launched a public beta of its core product in late October 2020 alongside a $4 million seed round. As of February 2021 the product remained in private beta while the team focused on verification, money movement and readiness to scale, and it continued its monthly drop releases, of which seven had shipped by that point.

Risks & controversies

The founder cites difficulty earning trust from creators skeptical of technology companies, and the decentralized, heterogeneous nature of the creator population, which makes a one-size-fits-all product hard to build.

Compiled by commissioned research from 6 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.

Key figures

latest reported
Creators who have used Stir's product and dropsFeb 2021hundreds of thousands
Drops (one-off software projects) shippedFeb 20217 projects
EmployeesJan 20212-10

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

Timeline · 2

launches, deals, and filings
Oct 2020
$4M seed round announced

Stir announced a $4 million seed round led by Homebrew, XYZ Capital and Ludlow Ventures with participation from creator-economy angels including Casey Neistat, Jack Conte and Li Jin.

$4M source ↗

Oct 2020
Public beta of core creator finance product

Stir launched a public beta of its core product, including a revenue dashboard, income calendar and collaboration tools, alongside its seed round announcement.

source ↗

Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.

Research sources · 6

primary sources listed

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

Frequently asked questions

What does Usestir do?
Stir builds business and payment tools that let digital creators track income across platforms and split revenue with collaborators.
Who are Usestir's investors?
Usestir's investors include Atelier.