Vocap partners with today’s disruptive technology companies to provide capital, operating experience, and critical relationships. Our team is comprised of experienced entrepreneurs who can relate to the everyday challenges of building a great company.

Vocap Partners

Service Provider Capital is a venture capital fund that co-invests in series A deals led by institutional venture funds. It was founded in 2014 and is based in Golden, Colorado.

Service Provider Capital

Craft Ventures is an early-stage and growth venture fund specializing in the craft of building great companies. Craft Ventures aims to support and scale innovative companies in various sectors including consumer, enterprise, and financial services. They often invest in companies with a strong founding team, a clear vision, and a scalable business model.

Craft Ventures

Since 1999, the team at Stonehenge Growth Equity Partners has been investing in growth stage businesses. Stonehenge aims to catalyze rapid growth of companies in up-and-coming markets by backing passionate entrepreneurs solving business problems.   Stonehenge Growth Equity Partners spun out of Stonehenge Capital Company in 2013. Prior to founding Stonehenge Growth Equity Partners (SGEP), the investment team managed the growth equity investment activities of Stonehenge Capital Company (SCC). Executive management and key professionals from Bank One Capital Markets formed SCC in 1999 as a spinoff from Bank One. SGEP maintains a proprietary deal flow network based on deep relationships in Florida and the Southeast, and continues to receive deal flow support from SCC’s eight regional offices. SGEP also benefits from SCC’s institutional financial and regulatory infrastructure.  The geographic markets that Stonehenge Growth Equity Partners serves enjoy very compelling growth dynamics and a friendly business climate. Yet, competition among growth capital providers is limited both at the stage of company and the dollar amount we are willing to invest.  With a nationwide network of relationships, Stonehenge plays an active role in leading growth stage investments, introducing other financial partners and identifying and recruiting talent. Our rich investment history enables us to collaborate with entrepreneurs to achieve success.

Topmark Partners

Escalate Capital Partners is a leading mezzanine firm focused exclusively on providing capital to venture-backed expansion and late-stage companies within technology, life sciences and service based industries. The Escalate team combines experience in venture capital and commercial finance to deliver a broad array of senior, subordinated and mezzanine debt solutions that are less dilutive than equity and provide more flexibility than conventional debt from banks or asset-based lenders.  As a company expands operations on a path to profitability, it should also look to broaden sources of capital beyond equity and traditional debt to achieve an optimal blend between overall cost and capital flexibility. Escalate's facilities are tailored to finance permanent working capital requirements, acquisitions and buy outs.  Escalate can also structure syndicated transactions incorporating equity and debt through an extensive network of venture capital and debt financing partners.  As a private debt fund with over $495 million in cumulative capital commitments, Escalate offers patient, stable capital tailored to each company’s unique needs. The Escalate investment team has 80+ years of combined experience and has invested more than $2 billion in over 500 companies.

Escalate Capital Partners

Overline VC is a seed-stage venture capital firm that invests in and supports exceptional founders. The firm's goal is to foster and grow a vibrant, inclusive community that becomes a launchpad for the next generation of local entrepreneurs. It leads seed rounds, sets terms, and aims to speak for the entirety of a financing round. Founded in 2020, Overline VC is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

Overline

Soundstripe

Soundstripe is a provider of unlimited, royalty-free music, stock video, and sound effects for use in videos, podcasts, and other media projects. It is driven by a unique subscription model that lets content creators pay a fee for usage of all the media in Soundstripe’s catalog, with a la carte licenses also available. This approach has led to over 6 million licenses being issued for tens of thousands of customers in over 140 countries since Soundstripe’s inception in 2016.  The company is based in Nashville and was named to the Top 100 of the 2020 Inc. 5000 list, cementing its place as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. It was selected for The Tennessean’s Top Workplaces list in both 2019 and 2020, winning special awards for Values and Best in Leadership for co-founders Travis Terrell, Micah Sannan, and Trevor Hinesley. Soundstripe also won the Game-Changing Startup award in the Entertainment, Sports, and Media category at The Nashville Entrepreneur Center’s 2019 NEXT Awards, and was named one of the city’s Top 10 startup cultures by Powderkeg. For more information, visit soundstripe.com.

<div>Soundstripe provides unlimited royalty-free music, stock video, and sound effects for creators to use in podcasts, videos, ads, and other creative projects. The company launched a mobile app in July 2022 which allows creators to discover, save, stream and download unlimited music while they&rsquo;re away from their computers. The app consists of features such as a scrollable waveform that speeds up the process of examining and selecting the right track and simultaneous searching and filtering of songs. The company operates a subscription-based model, where users are charged a fee to access its catalog. Per month pricing options included Creator (USD 10), Pro (USD 20) and custom pricing for enterprises.</div>

Giving creators the power of content monetization and audience engagement.

Creator Economy

QUICK HITS: Soundstripe adds $9M • Chordal launches collaborative rights platform • Elektra promotes marketers

<div>
 
 Soundstripe provides unlimited royalty-free music, stock video, and sound effects for creators to use in podcasts, videos, ads, and other creative projects. The company launched a mobile app in July 2022 which allows creators to discover, save, stream and download unlimited music while they&rsquo;re away from their computers. The app consists of features such as a scrollable waveform that speeds up the process of examining and selecting the right track and simultaneous searching and filtering of songs. The company operates a subscription-based model, where users are charged a fee to access its catalog. Per month pricing options included Creator (USD 10), Pro (USD 20) and custom pricing for enterprises.
 
 
 Soundstripe owns more than 200,000 digital content assets, including 8,000+ songs, and has distributed more than 10 million licenses to users across 140 countries.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has partnerships with Adobe Premiere, Frame.io and Twitch to integrate its music directly into those platforms. Soundstripe has further partnerships with Microsoft, Amazon, Spotify, Samsung and&nbsp; Puma, while its customer base also includes Virgin, Volkswagon, and Whole foods.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In August 2022, the company raised USD 9 million in a Series B funding round led by Topmark Partners. Soundstripe&rsquo;s music catalog had a growth of 23% in 2021 while its video offerings grew by 45%. 
 
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<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. 
 
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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>
 
 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

<div>
 
 Disciple Media, headquartered in the UK, offers bespoke community media apps for creators to privately share and own their content while having control, especially regarding monetization. Creators can use the platform to promote their brand, increase reach and engagement with fans, and monetize by charging fans a monthly subscription for access in addition to in-app purchases, sponsorship, and advertising. The company claims that the app-creating process had been reduced to 10 minutes since 2017.
 
 
 The company reported 200% revenue growth and recurring revenue growth of 160% in 2020. As of July 2021, the platform has reached over 500 global communities (up from 200 in May 2020) with 2 million members using the platform. The company claims that the growth of recurring revenue by more than 850% in 2019 was driven by monthly growth of 15% in new communities and 20% in members.
 
 
 Disciple Media raised USD 6 million in a Series A funding round in July 2021, led by previous investors including Nick Mason (Pink Floyd drummer) and Rob Pierre (founder and CEO of Jellyfish), among others. In addition to the company&rsquo;s fundraising, Eirik Svendsen&mdash;an expert in online marketplaces, SaaS, and the publishing and media industry&mdash;has come on as Chairman of the Board.
 
</div>

Disciple Media

Platforms that allow creators to share several types of content. Some platforms also offer fan engagement/ interactions with the creative artist via videos/ live streams.

Platforms that offer exclusive content to signed up members.

Platforms that allow creators to share their written works and blogs.

Platforms that provide tools to discover relevant analytics, produce content, engage with the audience, and help with the overall process.

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

Blockchain-based Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) allow creators to transfer ownership of their content via platforms that share proceeds with buyers, sellers, creators, and platforms via smart contracts.

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

NFT platforms segment uses metaverse concepts

Soundstripe

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