[ad_1]
With the rapid growth of the creator economy, brand partnerships remain one of the most important partnerships The main ways content creators can make money. Other services like bio link apps with affiliate links or subscriptions similar to Pateron become secondary ways for creators to increase their income. For platforms and startups, the biggest challenge remains matching brands and creators to collaborate.
Berlin-based startup Passionfruit It’s building a toolkit and marketplace for business, productivity, and thought leadership-focused creatives to collaborate with brands.
The company, founded by Gene Fan, who has had a career in early-stage investing, has raised $3.8 million in a seed funding round led by VC Supernode Global, with other investors including Miro CEO Andrey Khusid’s s16vc, Sequoia, and Accel’s Scout fund Fund, and Creandum is also participating – Creandum previously invested in the company’s $3.4 million pre-seed round as well. The seed round included angels like former Zapier CMO Kieran Flanagan, former community and creative lead at Notion Ben Lang, Linktree CPO Jiaona Zhang, and Austin Lau, who looks after growth at Anthropic.
Before launching Passionfroot, Fan launched a technology newsletter in 2020 for technology professionals with immigration backgrounds. She considered leaving her venture capital role and going full-time into newsletters.
“Amid this evolution, a new generation of business-focused creators has emerged, producing thought leadership content across platforms like LinkedIn, newsletters, and podcasts. However, after speaking with dozens of creatives, I realized that while creative freedom is attractive, the downside Commercial – especially brand partnerships, which serve as a primary source of revenue – remains fragmented and ineffective.
She added that the decision to create Passionfroot also stemmed from brands struggling to find the right creators, manage a campaign schedule, and coordinate payments.
Zain Khan, founder of the AI-focused newsletter Superhuman, said one of the biggest challenges creators face is chasing pending payments from brands and partners.
“In our early days, we received a single payment of $40,000 that did not arrive for several months. We had to chase banks for ages to track down the problem and fix it. “We were paying salaries from our personal savings and came very close to going out of business,” he told TechCrunch via email.
Passionfroot allows creators to create a storefront for ads or brand partnership slots they have on their various channels, including newsletters, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Creators can create a brand media kit that highlights their brand’s collaboration rates and engagement rates on their channels and timelines. Creators can also showcase examples of past sponsorships on their Passionfroot page.
The toolkit also makes it easier for brands to book a campaign with creators through automated scheduling. Creators can share their pages with brands, just like a link page in a bio. The startup counts Hubspot, Notion and Freshbook among its brand partners.
On the other side of the market, the startup has also built a network where brands can discover relevant creators on the platform. Fan said deals booked through the network currently equate to deals booked through specific creator storefronts.
Passionfroot has a 15% acceptance rate for any brand partnership achieved through its network, including payment fees. The company gets a 5% payment fee if a brand books a partnership with a creator through its storefront.
The company is launching its revamped website with better search for creators and matching functionality for marketers. The platform also displays the matching score to marketers, helping them choose the best content creator for a particular campaign. In the coming months, the startup will build a dashboard with campaign insights and better support for marketing teams — rather than individuals — to use Passionfroot.
Creandum’s Sabina Wizander believes Passionfroot has a unique advantage through its focus on the B2B sector.
“The company is starting with a B2B market whether from creators or companies like this. In this market, there is no such thing as being 50% relevant. So the startup has product-market fit from the beginning,” she told TechCrunch over a phone call.
according to E-marketing reportinfluencer marketing spending in the US in 2024 is set to reach approximately $7.14 billion, with 15.8% year-over-year growth, indicating that marketers are looking to reach consumers through different channels.
Passionfroot is building its product at a very opportune time, said Gina King, partner at Supernode Global.
“Passionfroot is at the right time to capitalize on multiple shifts in the market. The company is not just following one trend, it is well-positioned to capitalize on many simultaneous developments in the creator economy, B2B marketing, and technology,” she said.
King also added that 87% of Passionfroot partners are members organically, proving that the company has a strong network effect.
Startups like VSCO for photographers, Agentio for YouTubers, and Catch + Release for licensable assets have tried to formalize transactions and partnerships between brands and creators. Large-scale social networks such as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have also experimented with creating platforms around matching brands and creators.
[ad_2]