Sequoia is a venture capital focused on energy, financial, enterprise, healthcare, internet, and mobile startups. The firm helps a small number of daring founders build legendary companies. It spurs them to push the boundaries of what’s possible. The firm seeks to invest in all sectors with a focus on energy, financials and financial services, healthcare and healthcare services, Internet, mobile, outsourcing, and technology.

Sequoia Capital

Index Ventures is a venture capital firm based in London, San Francisco, and Geneva, helping entrepreneurs turn bold ideas into global businesses.  Since 1996, Index has partnered with exceptional entrepreneurs who are using technology to reshape the world. The companies they’ve started include Adyen, Deliveroo, Dropbox, Farfetch, King, Slack, and Supercell.

Index Ventures

Cowboy Ventures is a generalist seed-stage fund focused on supporting extraordinary founders of all backgrounds to build legendary technology companies. Cowboy Ventures was founded in 2012 and based in Palo Alto, California, United States.

Cowboy Ventures

Upside Partnership is a venture capital firm that provides seed-stage investment to founders creating high-profile companies. The firm was founded by Kent Goldman in July, 2014 and is headquartered in Mill Valley, California, United States.

Upside Partnership

Dream Machine is an oppotinistic seed fund, interested in AI, voice, AR, VR, IoT, and blockchain. It is founded by Alexia Bonatsos, the former co-editor-in-chief of TechCrunch and one of the earliest reporters to write about Whatsapp, Uber, Airbnb, and Pinterest. With Dream MAchine, she hopes to help exceptional founders make science fiction non-fiction.

Dream Machine

NEWNESS

Newness is focused on building differentiated tools and features that work well for the beauty streamer market in particular.

<div>Newness, a startup co-founded by former Twitch employees, offers a livestreaming platform for the beauty community, where beauty creators can share content with their fan communities. The platform focuses on providing tools and features specific to the beauty streamer market, with both public and private streaming options. It rewards positive contributions, offers moderation features, and fans can earn free beauty products by positive community participation. Creators can also host professional and exclusive live events privately, which they can monetize with admission and VIP ticket sales. Viewers can also tip creators using the in-app tipping mechanism named “gifting.” In beta, the company claims that around 66% of its viewers communicate during live streams on average, proving the success of the positive reward system as of February 2021.</div>

Giving creators the power of content monetization and audience engagement.

Creator Economy

Newness

<div>
 
 Newness, a startup co-founded by former Twitch employees, offers a livestreaming platform for the beauty community, where beauty creators can share content with their fan communities. The platform focuses on providing tools and features specific to the beauty streamer market, with both public and private streaming options. It rewards positive contributions, offers moderation features, and fans can earn free beauty products by positive community participation. Creators can also host professional and exclusive live events privately, which they can monetize with admission and VIP ticket sales. Viewers can also tip creators using the in-app tipping mechanism named “gifting.” In beta, the company claims that around 66% of its viewers communicate during live streams on average, proving the success of the positive reward system as of February 2021.
 
 
 In February 2021, the company raised USD 3.5 million in a seed funding round. The funds will be used to build its iOS app, hire engineers, and increase the headcount of its currently 14-person team across San Francisco, New York, and L.A.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Patreon provides a platform for creators to offer numerous types of content (videos, text, podcasts, images, etc.) for which fans can subscribe to a monthly membership without any ads or algorithms. Patrons (Patreon subscribers) can pay monthly or per post for content access, in addition to the pay-what-you-want option. Creators are paid monthly or for every new post uploaded. They can offer rewards for different tiers, including meeting patrons or custom work upon the patron&rsquo;s request. Creators are offered three packages: Lite, Pro, and Premium. Lite offers basic creator tools for a membership business with no tiers for fans; Pro offers additional tools and perks (e.g., workshops) with unlimited membership tiers; Premium caters to established companies with a large following, earning a monthly income of USD 5,000 or more, offering Pro services in addition to advanced features and Dedicated Partner Manager services. Creators can start for free and are charged a monthly commission based on their plan when they start earning: 5% (Lite), 8% (Pro), and 12% (Premium), as well as payment processing fees. 
 
 
 The company revealed in November 2021 that it is building a video hosting platform with a native player to eliminate the reliance of third-party video hosting platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo for creators to share video content with their patrons.
 
 
 Memberful, a Patreon-owned membership software platform for independent creators, launched a newsletter feature in October 2021, allowing creators to send news emails to their subscribers. In the future, creators will be able to make posts publicly viewable and schedule and send targeted emails to specific groups of subscribers. Notably, Memberful&rsquo;s paid plans (charged monthly) retain 4.9% of creator revenue, while competitor Substack retains 10%.
 
 
 Patreon acquired tech recruiting firm, Clear Talent, in August 2021 to scale up talent and build its engineering, product, and design team. The company seeks to accelerate the introduction of new features and platform capabilities and double the total monthly revenue its creators earn to around USD 200 million. In October 2023, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22877">
 acquired Moment,
 </a>
 a digital events platform, to strengthen event management solutions for creators.
 
 
 Key 
 customers
 and partnerships
 
 
 As of August 2022, Patreon had more than 250,000 creators, over 8.5 million active subscribers, and had paid out more than USD 3.5 billion to creators. 
 
 
 In June 2021, Patreon partnered with shesaid.so, an international community of women and gender minorities, to co-present the Alternative Power 100 Music List 2021 (#AltList) with the theme &ldquo;The New Creative Economy.&rdquo; Patreon and shesaid.so aim to make the music industry more inclusive and will co-host a series of virtual and physical events (including panel discussions and creator networking). The company has also partnered with third-party services, including Vimeo (to host videos) and Discord (for community chats).
 
 
 Funding
 
 and
 financials
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s most recent funding round was a Series F round worth USD 155 million in April 2021, led by new investor Tiger Global Management. This round triples Patreon&rsquo;s valuation to USD 4 billion. The funds are to be used to further develop its platform for mobile and desktop, increase content consumption tools, and accelerate its international footprint.
 
 
 The total cumulative payouts to creators via the platform surpassed USD 2 billion as of September 2020, and the company expects annual payouts to pass USD 1 billion in 2021. 
 
</div>

Patreon

<div>
 
 Substack offers a publishing platform that encompasses design, analytics, and payment infrastructure to assist newsletter subscriptions. The platform enables writers to focus on content creation and monetization via subscriptions. Writers can build their own paid newsletter subscription businesses and may choose to start with free newsletters for lead generation. Newsletters can be published to the web in addition to individual email addresses and its mobile app.&nbsp; The platform has a dedicated discovery section ranking the top newsletters, which are then promoted based on &ldquo;internet points&rdquo;. The platform supports podcasting by allowing writers to embed MP3s into their newsletters.
 
 
 The company launched multiple product improvements over the years, including video creation and editing features (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24569">
 November 2023,
 </a>
 the capacity to publish video podcasts, create interactive AI-generated transcripts, and customize shareable video clips
 ), AI-powered audio transcription tools (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21412">
 August 2023,
 </a>
 featuring transcript generation and audiogram creation capabilities), Private Substacks (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15987">
 January 2023,
 </a>
 where readers can request to subscribe to read users posts) Substack Grow (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4243">
 August 2021
 </a>
 , to help writers add paying subscribers in), Substack Local (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/3163">
 April 2021
 </a>
 , an initiative to support the local news ecosystem), Substack Pro (to offer advance payments for certain writers), Substack Defender (July 2020, to offer legal support to writers in).&nbsp;&nbsp;
 
 
 Writers have to bring in their own readers, and once they start earning (at a minimum of USD 3 per month), a commission of 10% (plus the Stripe payment processing fee) will be charged on the writer&rsquo;s income. Additionally, Substack stated that it has no plans to include advertisements as an additional revenue stream within the platform. By July 2021, the company reported its top 10 publishers bring in more than USD 20 million per year in combined subscription revenue. Moreover, the company has attracted famous journalists such as Andrew Sullivan, Casey Newton, and Edith Zimmerman. Substack had more than 500,000 paid subscribers as of March 2021.&nbsp;
 
 
 Other notable events include the acquisition of subscription-based social networking app Cocoon in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5113">
 August 2021
 </a>
 , the acquisition of Australian public correspondence startup Letter in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4601">
 July 2021
 </a>
 and the funding of podcast network Booksmart Studio&rsquo;s launch in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4390">
 July 2021
 </a>
 .
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s most recent funding round was Series B funding worth USD 65 million in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/3156">
 March 2021
 </a>
 . The round was led by return investor Andreessen Horowitz, valuing Substack at approximately USD 650 million. The funds are to be utilized to rapidly expand the Substack Pro program alongside the implementation of other features.&nbsp;
 
 
 Substack reported a net loss of USD 22.9 million in 2021, having grown from a net loss of USD 2.3 million in 2020.
 
</div>

Substack

<div>
 
 Overview
 
 
 OnlyFans offers a platform in which creators can share videos, photos, and one-on-one chats (live streams) for a price. The platform’s creators mainly include musicians, actors, models, influencers, and physical fitness experts. It allows creators to post explicit content that would get them banned on other mainstream content-sharing platforms. The content shared on this platform is protected from sharing to other platforms or being copied/recorded. Fans can pay on a monthly subscription or pay-per-view basis, in addition to tipping the creators. 
 
 
 Monthly subscriptions are priced between a minimum of USD 4.99 to a maximum of USD 49.99, while tips or the price for paid private messages are USD 5 and upward. The platform takes a 20% commission on the revenue earned by creators. In March 2021, OnlyFans launched “OnlyFans Creative Fund,” the platform’s inaugural accelerator program for emerging artists in the music industry. The program aims to equip four musicians with a grant of GBP 20,000 (approximately USD 28,000) each to support their careers.
 
 
 In August 2021, OnlyFans launched an app “OFTV” that displays videos from a library of more than 800 videos, featuring popular OnlyFans creators including Mia Khalifa, Bella Thorne, Holly Madison, as well as original videos from pilates instructors, chefs, and podcasters. As Apple and Google did not allow OnlyFans in their app stores, the platform was previously available only on its website. The new OFTV app is allowed in the app store as no adult content will be displayed and creator content will not be monetized. As of November 2022, the OFTV app is free to use and does not include advertising. The app, available on all major devices including iOS, Roku, and Amazon Fire, was first released in January 2021 but was not promoted. OnlyFans has since begun marketing its app to new potential users as part of its strategy to rebrand itself as more of a mainstream media platform and lower its reputation for sexually explicit material. In the same month, OnlyFans announced that it would prohibit sexually explicit content effective October 1 2021, in an attempt to “ensure the long-term sustainability of the platform and to continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans”, while complying with the requests of its banking partners and payout providers. Nude content will continue to be allowed. However, just days later, the platform suspended the ban following a widespread backlash by its users. The platform stated that it had “secured assurances necessary” to support creators and will “continue to provide a home for all creators" regardless of genre.
 
 
 The company claims that the number of creators has increased to over 1.25 million creators, has over 130 million registered users (up from 85 million users reported in December 2020) and that its growth rate exceeds 100% in 2021 as of June 2021. As of August 2021, it has more than seven million paying users.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
  In November 2022, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14759">
 partnered 
 </a>
 with Spring to allow creators to sell personalized merchandise to their followers.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 The company reported that in 2020 it had generated USD 2.3 billion in total transactions (seven-fold growth) with 120 million registered users, with the platform generating a net revenue of USD 375 million and a free cash flow of USD 150 million. Moreover, 300+ creators earn more than USD 1 million annually. Sales and net revenue are forecasted to be USD 5.9 billion and USD 1.2 billion in 2021, respectively. As of March 2021, OnlyFans has paid out more than USD 3 billion to creators in total and the platform’s top 40 biggest music-focused accounts in the US generated USD 2 million in income in February 2021, an average of USD 50,000 per account. 
 
 
 The company was reported to be in discussions in June 2021 for a new funding round, which would raise the platform’s valuation above USD 1 billion. OnlyFans, reported to be profitable, is looking for new backers to become more of a mainstream media platform and reduce its reputation for sexually explicit material. It also plans to attract a broader range of celebrities and athletes as creators as well as more advertisers. However, OnlyFans has been reportedly struggling to find outside investors to raise funds. 
 
</div>

OnlyFans

<div>
 
 Cameo offers a platform where creators, such as influencers, celebrities, athletes, artists, and musicians, can provide personalized videos and shout-outs to fans as per their request, charging for each video from USD 5 to as high as USD 2,500. Creators who have a minimum of 20,000 Instagram followers are automatically admitted onto the platform, where they set their own price and can choose to accept a fan request or not within seven days. The creator must fulfill the request within a week, which the fan can download and share. Additionally, Cameo provides a messaging option for less expensive creator/fan interactions. Cameo takes a 25% commission on each transaction on the platform.
 
 
 As of September 2020, Cameo had more than 30,000 creators across multiple industries. Cameo reported that it generated around USD 100 million in video transactions in 2020, with more than 2 million video messages being shared on its platform since launch, of which 80% were gifts for others. Furthermore, the company reported its creators and fans are based in 138 and 178 countries, respectively, with almost 20% of Cameos being purchased from outside of the US as of March 2021. For example, Cameo entered into a commercial partnership (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8576">
 February 2022
 </a>
 ) with Softbank, an existing investor of Cameo, to add more Japanese creators and expand its platform in Japan as a culturally fluent localized version.
 
 
 Cameo acquired marketing and merch company Represent (October 2021) whose clients include Jennifer Lopez, Ed Sheeran, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matthew McConaughey, among others. The acquiring company will onboard the Represent team as well as Represent&rsquo;s existing client relationships. In the near term, Cameo plans to allow fans to purchase &ldquo;gift bundles&rdquo; that pair a Cameo video with related merchandise from the creator. The company hopes to introduce new forms of creator-fan engagement, establish new creator revenue opportunities, and offer non-profit organizations a new way to raise funds.
 
 
 Funding and financials 
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s most recent funding round was Series C funding worth USD 100 million in March 2021, which valued the company at over USD 1 billion, achieving unicorn status. The funds are to be utilized to enhance the Core Cameo experience and capabilities, create new creator-fan engagement products (including Fan Clubs and Cameo Calls), and develop Cameo's B2B business. The company also plans to continue its international expansion.
 
</div>

Cameo

<div>
 
 Buttondown offers a publishing platform for writers to create and distribute newsletters on a subscription basis (price set by the writer) or for free. The platform does not charge writers until they reach 1,000 subscribers, after which they are charged a monthly fee of USD 5 per thousand subscribers. Buttondown also offers advanced features for professionals at a monthly fee of USD 29. Writers can send multiple separate newsletters from the same account, catering to different audiences by maintaining separate mailing lists.
 
 
 The platform also provides writers with user-specific analytics and insights, including features such as side-by-side comparisons of multiple emails. Buttondown has integrated with numerous third-party providers, Ghost and Medium (blogging platforms), Squarespace and Weebly (website building and hosting service providers), and web application integrator, Zapier.  As of December 2020, the company is run entirely by the CEO and founder, Justin Duke, and reported to have a monthly cost base of around USD 1,100. Furthermore, the CEO has made a commitment to donate at least 10% of profits to the software that enables it.
 
</div>

Buttondown

Web3 enables creator monetization by providing decentralized platforms for creators to engage with their audience

NFT platforms segment uses metaverse concepts

Platforms that allow creators to share one of either videography, live streams, photos, music or audio podcasts with fan engagement capabilities.

Newness

Creator Economy

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