Slow Ventures partners Sam Lessin and Megan Lightcap.
Courtesy of Slow Ventures.
VC firm Slow Ventures has raised $60 million to invest in content creators.
The firm will make $1 million to $3 million bets in exchange for a 10% cut in creator businesses.
The firm targets creators with niche audiences, superfans, and big ideas about where to innovate.
YouTubers are the new Stanford dropouts.
Slow Ventures, an early-stage VC firm, launched a new $60 million fund focused on investing in content creators.It's looking for creators with the "DNA of a YC founder," Megan Lightcap, a partner leading Slow's creator fund, told Business Insider, referring to Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator.
"Everyone has looked at creators and the businesses that they're building and been like, 'Oh, it's cute. It's like a little lifestyle business,'" Lightcap said.
However, Lightcap poses that some of these businesses are venture scale.
"There's going to be a subset of creators that are very entrepreneurial, have deep trust and expertise in a specific vertical, and are builders," Lightcap said. "They're founders."
Investing in creators' businesses isn't new for Slow. The firm has been testing the model for a few years. Other companies like Jellysmack and Spotterhave also offered capital to creators with a focus on licensing their content catalogs. But this is the first time Slow is setting up a dedicated fund for creator deals with participation from institutional investors like MIT and the University of Michigan.
For Slow, investing in a creator does not mean simply getting a cut of their media business built on YouTube ad revenue and brand deals. It's about getting a share in the profits of whatever spin-off businesses they launch, such as a gardening influencer selling rakes or a food creator publishing a cookbook.
The company said it will invest between $1 million and $3 million to get a 10% stake in creator holding companies. Those holding companies will house all the different business lines an influencer might dabble in.
Lightcap said the capital allows for flexibility, letting creators "test and experiment" with content and production, hiring teams, and building broader businesses.
Where Slow's money will flow
What type of creators is Slow looking for? Not a generalist like MrBeast, but rather, a content creator passionate about a specific niche who understands what products are missing from that category.
Slow's target creator sees that opportunity, knows that their audience feels similarly, and says, "'I'm going to build it,'" Lightcap said.
While some creators may be more focused on platform ad revenue or brand deals, Slow is looking for creators whose businesses are outgrowing the traditional influencer career.
"They look at the media not as the end, but as the means to an end, and think of their content and community, really, as this strategic asset on which they can launch other types of companies," she said.
Creators with a substantial YouTube business are top of mind for Slow.
"There's many ways these creators can emerge," Lightcap said. "Most of them end up in some way, shape, or form on YouTube."
Lightcap highlighted Slow's previous investment into YouTube creator Marina Mogilko's business as an example of a successful deal.
Creators as a new type of founder
Investing in a YouTuber could seem risky to a traditional VC. After all, your return leans on the performance and durability of one individual.
But Lightcap said the situation isn't much different than betting on a startup founder, who often carries the future of a company on their back for years.
She said creators can actually be much easier to conduct due diligence on than a startup that's just getting off the ground. A creator's audience, the presence of superfans, and the ways they make money are easy to vet.
"As seed investors, we're so used to looking at an opportunity with zero data," Lightcap said. "When you're looking at creators at this level, there's actually a ton of stuff to diligence."
At the end of the day, there's precedent for media figures growing niche content into big businesses, with lucrative exits.
"You don't have to squint very hard to be like, 'Would a creator holding company ever IPO?'" Lightcap said. She pointed to Martha Stewart and the Oprah Winfrey Network as examples of media players that successfully scaled. "It's not something that we're necessarily underwriting today, but it's going to be very interesting to see how this all changes."
At the Sax Restaurant and Lounge on the eve of Donald Trump's second inauguration, it seemed like business as usual for TikTok.
The wildly popular video app was sponsoring a Washington, DC, party for a gaggle of conservative influencers sporting bright-red Make America Great Again hats. Bryce Hall wandered around in a black bow tie as other creators sipped cocktails and danced to Don Omar's "Danza Kuduro." Guests combated the frigid temperatures outside with TikTok-branded beanies and earmuffs.
Amid the gaiety, it was easy to forget that just 24 hours earlier, the ByteDance-owned social media platform had briefly gone dark for its 170 million American users.
It was just one twist during a whirlwind January weekend that featured everyone from Neil Gorsuch to Trump to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What began with a bombshell Supreme Court decision on Friday morning culminated in TikTok CEO Shou Chew as a guest at Trump's inauguration, hobnobbing with tech leaders like Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai.
As TikTok continues to navigate a divest-or-ban law designed to target the company's connections to China, the app is back β for now. But the weekend left some feeling unsettled.
"This situation showed how quickly you can have something and then that something can be taken away," said creator Kyle Barber.
How quickly? Let's turn back the clock.
Friday, 10 a.m. ET: A decision comes down
After months of buildup, including a last-ditch attempt by the app to preserve its US presence, the Supreme Court dropped its opinion on TikTok Inc. v. Garland on Friday morning, ruling that a law forcing a sale of the app was constitutional.
TikTok then had 38 hours to broker a sale of its US assets or "go dark" when its service providers cut ties to avoid hundreds of billions of dollars in potential fines.
From the moment the court publicized its ruling, fear set in among some of the app's creators and partners. TikTok is often more than just a tool for mindless scrolling: It can be a source of substantial income for small businesses selling products or a platform to rocket-launch a career as a creator.
In spite of this, many TikTokers, advertisers, and other businesses had spent months shrugging off the threat of a shutdown. Internally, it was "business as usual," as one current TikTok staffer put it. The Supreme Court ruling changed all that.
"After the Supreme Court ruling hit and they still hadn't announced a buyer, it's like, OK, this thing could be gone," said Barber, who has around 40,000 followers on the app. "So immediately I had to go into emergency mode, and I was spending all this time trying to archive my content."
Some influencers had contingency plans in their contracts that dictated they would move sponsorships to other apps in the event TikTok went dark. Others spread out across different social platforms, like Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, and newcomers like RedNote.
To many in the TikTok community, it was still unclear what would happen next. A week earlier, a lawyer for the company told the Supreme Court that the app would "go dark" and essentially "stop operating" on January 19 without legal or political intervention.
When Chew finally emerged with a TikTok message around 12:30 p.m. on Friday, he didn't say what would happen over the weekend.
He said TikTok had been fighting to "protect the constitutional right to free speech" for Americans who use the app. "On behalf of everyone at TikTok and all our users across the country, I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States," he said.
Users flooded the comments section of Chew's video. One pleaded with Chew not to sell the app: "[I]t won't be the same."
"TikTok has gotten me through some of my darkest moments in the past 5 years," another commented. "I'm eternally grateful for my time here and will miss it π"
In the hours after the ruling dropped, some staff told BI they felt unclear about what would happen next. The company told US employees a few days earlier that their employment, pay, and benefits were secure, and offices would remain open even if the situation wasn't resolved before the January 19 deadline. The company sent a message on Friday that linked to Chew's video and included some assurances about their employment, an employee said. (A TikTok spokesperson told Business Insider the company communicated regularly with employees throughout the weekend.)
The other TikTok employee felt there was no work to be done that day with the app's future hanging in the balance. (The staffers asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak about their employer. Their identities are known to Business Insider.)
At 8:36 p.m. ET, the company issued a written statement about its plans β and said much of the uncertainty lay with the Biden administration.
"Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19," the statement read.
Saturday afternoon: Confusion swirls
On Saturday, TikTok's global e-commerce team sent out an "important notice" to its Shop agency partners, a group of vendors that work with merchants to sell products on the app.
The app would be suspended at 8:30 p.m. ET, according to a copy of the memo reviewed by BI, though agencies could continue to check orders and access other platform data. Some e-commerce partners who had spent weeks preparing for a potential app shutdown β with what they said was little guidance from TikTok β began chattering about the app's imminent demise, one Shop partner told BI. (They asked to remain anonymous to protect business relationships. Their identity is known to BI.)
But the memo appeared to be inaccurate. A few hours later, in a follow-up email, the company informed its partners that "an unauthorized individual sent an erroneous email about TikTok Shop's business service" and it would share "official company communications with users, creators, and partners when plans are finalized."
"No idea what is going on honestly lol," the Shop partner messaged BI after the second email went out.
Saturday around 10:30 p.m. ET: 'Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now'
On Saturday night, users were greeted with a pop-up when they opened the app: "We regret that a U.S. law banning TikTok will take effect on January 19 and force us to make our services temporarily unavailable. We're working to restore our service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned."
Delirious is one way to describe the app's final hours.
"This is not OK," Alix Earle told her 7.2 million followers in a video posted from bed before the shutdown, wiping tears from her eyes. "Someone's gonna have to, like, check me into a mental hospital."
Barber said he was struck with a feeling of, "What am I supposed to do?"
"You're scrolling through TikTok and you're seeing everybody saying their goodbyes in tears," he said.
Others confessed their secrets to millions on the app, while some took to comedy.
"They want to laugh up until the last second and I want to laugh, too," said Victoria Paris, a lifestyle content creator who has about 2 million followers. (Her content leading up to the ban included several videos in which she licked Jawbreaker candy.) "I've cried a million times on this app. You don't need to go out watching me cry. Let's go out watching some stupid shit. That's why we love this place."
Finally, around 10:30 p.m. ET, TikTok called it quits.
"Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now," a second pop-up read. "A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!"
Paris described the cutoff as "shocking and jarring."
Lukas Battle, a comedy creator with around 620,000 followers, said his feed was frozen on a video of Jane Goodall. "Every time I accidentally opened it," he said, "it would just be Jane Goodall and a piece of glass and a gorilla, and I was like, I love this. I kind of feel like this is a good representation of what's going on."
"Minutes before I was going to post my goodbye video, I couldn't, the app wouldn't let me," Barber said.
Sunday: TikTok's game of chicken
For about 14 hours, TikTok was dead.
Then, around 12:30 p.m. ET, it rose again.
"In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service," TikTok said in a statement, referring to partners like Oracle that it works with to store data and deliver videos. The company thanked Trump, whose inauguration was set to begin roughly 24 hours later.
Earlier that morning, Trump posted on social media that he would "issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law's prohibitions take effect."
The general feeling for users and creators was: Welp, that was a waste of energy.
"I thought it was going to be at least a full day, or even a week," Battle said.
"We all have whiplash from it coming back," Paris said.
Advertisers received an email from TikTok on Sunday that reaffirmed the app was coming back to a majority of US users and ad campaigns would resume over the course of the day. The email, a copy of which was reviewed by BI, also noted there may be some "temporary service instability" as things came back online.
Hours later, TikTok was sponsoring the glitzy MAGA crowd in the nation's capital.
"President Trump saved TikTok," CJ Pearson, a cochair of the Republican National Committee Youth Advisory Council, who helped organize the party, told CNN. "We have a lot to celebrate tonight."
Monday and beyond: What's next?
On Monday morning, Chew attended the inaugural festivities along with fellow tech executives including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. He sat on the dais next to Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's nominee to be the next director of national intelligence.
That night, around 8 p.m. ET, Trump dropped a new executive order instructing his future attorney general to delay enforcing the TikTok ban for 75 days. It was a sharp departure from his first term, when he signed an August 2020 executive order attempting to force TikTok out of app stores.
At the time, Trump said he was concerned that TikTok could become a disinformation tool for the Chinese Communist Party. He also feared that US user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government. Members of Congress raised similar concerns when they passed the 2024 divest-or-ban law. (TikTok has previously said that it does not share information with the Chinese government and that a US-based team operates its content-moderation work "independently from China.")
The next few weeks will be critical for TikTok and ByteDance as they fight for a deal that keeps the US and China happy β without destroying their business.
Trump has proposed a joint venture that would give a US entity 50% ownership in the company. Various potential bidders have also emerged, including the AI startup Perplexity, the former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, and the YouTube creator MrBeast.
Bill Ford, the CEO of General Atlantic, a ByteDance investor, told Axios a deal would get done that's "in everybody's interest" but that may be "short of divestiture." But if the whirlwind weekend is any indication, the final resolution is still up in the air.
While TikTok's app is back online, new users still can't download it from Apple or Google's app stores. Legal analysts say it may not return to stores anytime soon as the companies weigh the risks of working with ByteDance.
After a weekend of chaos, TikTok has once again gone back to "business as usual," one of the TikTok staffers told BI.
Even if Trump does manage to broker a deal with the blessings of ByteDance and the Chinese government, the chaos of the weekend has given many of TikTok's creators and partners pause.
They're back, but some say they have one foot out the door.
One TikTok Shop seller said on Sunday they were focused on diversifying their business to other platforms, as TikTok temporarily coming back online was just "kicking the can down the road again."
"This is definitely a changing moment," Paris said.
Will TikTok ever have the same juice? Will it be a zombie of its former self?
"I know it's going to be different somehow," Battle said. "This is a new chapter."
TikTok is hurtling toward a US shutdown after the Supreme Court rejected its appeal of a divest-or-ban law. The app may "go dark" entirely on Sunday.
Ahead of a likely ban, TikTok influencers and their teams are offering contingency plans to assure brands and marketers that sponsored posts can move elsewhere if TikTok abruptly closes.
"We haven't seen anybody try to kill a contract, thank goodness," said Jennifer Powell, a talent manager who works with creators like Tezza and Ty French. "The good news is that most of the brands came into this year cautious about putting all their eggs into the TikTok basket, knowing that this judgment was looming."
Songfluencer, a platform that facilitates influencer campaigns for music marketers, has a "platform uncertainty" guarantee that promises marketers that creators will automatically repost TikTok content to Instagram or YouTube shorts if TikTok goes down.
"We want to make sure clients are not scared to run campaigns on TikTok," Songfluencer's CEO Johnny Cloherty said. "All of the creators in our network must agree to this new policy during this uncertain season."
Talent-management firm CFG has also been proactive in including clauses in its contracts with brands that ensure campaigns can migrate to a creator's "next highest-engaged" platform.
Powell, similarly, said her team has offered to move content to an "equal value" social platform if a sponsored TikTok post disappears.
Some of these preparations began months ago.
Gregory Littley, a freelance creative director and content producer, has been working with brand partners and clients on campaigns that aren't so tied to TikTok since November, he said.
"The language has shifted," Littley said about campaign deliverables. "It starts to really focus on the content as opposed to where you're posting it."
"Many of our current campaigns in progress that involve TikTok are preparing contingency plans for changing deliverables to different platforms," said Barbara Jones, founder of Outshine Talent.
Arthur Sadoun, the CEO of Publicis Groupe, announced the company's acquisition of the influencer-marketing firm Influential in 2024.
JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images.
It was a busy year for M&A in the creator economy.
Startups in influencer marketing, talent management, and podcasting became acquisition targets.
Companies also sought to expand globally by acquiring creator startups in new regions.
Dozens of merger and acquisition deals were signed between companies across the creator economy in 2024.
Two M&A experts told Business Insider that one of the most impactful sales was Publicis Groupe's purchase of Influential for $500 million, signaling that one of the world's largest ad holding companies viewed influencer marketing as a must-have offering.
"If influencers are the new gatekeepers and authority within these digital channels, then they're going to command audiences," Chris Erwin, the founder of the M&A advisory firm RockWater, told BI. "Advertising revenue dollars are going to flow towards them."
Goldman Sachs analysts highlighted influencer-marketing spending as a primary driver of growth in the creator economy when they valued the industry at $250 billion last year.
A few other clear trends emerged this year around deals. Outside influencer marketing, popular acquisition targets included talent-management firms and podcasting tech. Non-US firms also pushed to build out creator businesses globally through purchases.
BI combed through data from PitchBook and Crunchbase and connected with M&A insiders to understand some of the key deals in 2024. Here are four takeaways:
Influencer marketing was a big focus among acquirers in 2024. The category has a proven business model compared with some of the more experimental parts of the industry. Beyond Publicis' deal with Influential, other large advertising brands brought in influencer expertise through acquisitions.
A few noteworthy deals in this category:
The marketing firm Stagwell announced in July that it had acquired the influencer-marketing agency Leaders.
The Canadian talent agency Dulcedo Group acquired the influencer-marketing app Node in July.
The creator economy is maturing globally. Several companies made strategic deals across markets like India, Japan, and Australia. Publicis highlighted Influential's global reach in its announcement about the deal.
"Creators really can be global from day one," said Ollie Forsyth, a former senior manager at the investment firm Antler who now writes the newsletter New Economies. He pointed to technologies like AI-powered audio-dubbing and video-editing tools as helping creators distribute content to a global audience.
A few noteworthy deals in this category:
The French influencer firm Ykone announced in March that it had acquired a majority stake in the Indian influencer-marketing firm Barcode to build a business in the Indian influencer market.
The Finnish influencer firm Boksi announced in February that it had acquired the German influencer-marketing company The Influencer GmbH to grow its business in Central Europe.
Podcasting is a hot category. As platforms like YouTube and Spotify drive listenership (and viewership) of longer content, advertisers are paying close attention. EMARKETER expects US ad spend for podcasts to hit $2.28 billion this year, a roughly 16% increase from 2023. Meanwhile, M&A deals in the category focused on podcasting tech and IP in 2024.
"It's a publisher play of rolling up these popular networks of shows," said James Creech, an M&A advisor through Quartermast Advisors who founded Creator Economy Jobs. "I think that'll continue because you're likely to see a handful of winners in this space."
A few noteworthy deals in this category:
Triton Digital said in March that it had acquired the podcasting-adtech firm Sounder to boost its targeting and brand-safety tech.
Night announced in April that it had acquired The Roost, a podcast network that includes shows from Theo Von and other popular creators.
Creator-focused talent firms are continuing to consolidate. There's no shortage of talent managers and agencies looking to represent creators. But a smaller number are prepared to support the businesses of top creators who aim to book deals, exclusive podcast agreements, and Hollywood roles.
A few noteworthy deals in this category:
The talent-management firm Wasserman announced in September that it had acquired the talent-management agency Long Haul to grow its gaming and sports creator business.
The influencer-marketing and creator talent company Whalar announced in October it had acquired the influencer-management firm Sixteenth.
Looking ahead to 2025
Erwin and Creech are expecting the next year to be fruitful for creator-economy companies.
"We're going to see more activity next year," Creech said.
The two M&A advisors are watching closely whether consumer-packaged-goods companies will continue to shop for creator-owned businesses, such as Hershey's purchase of Maxx Chewning's Sour Strips brand in 2024.
Companies that raised new funding in 2024 may also signal where M&A activity is heading next in the industry. Creator startups with offerings in artificial intelligence, newsletter tech, influencer marketing, and e-commerce drew in investor dollars in the past year. Among the big rounds were the creator-marketing platform Agentio, the newsletter app Beehiiv, the social shopping app Flip, and the AI firm ElevenLabs. Startups flush with funding could become acquirers in 2025.
"If you are looking to sell or to raise capital now, it's a good time to do it," Erwin said.
In 2024, 17 creator startups raised at least $10 million in new funding, totaling over $900 million. A large amount of that investment went toward creator companies whose work overlaps with trendy categories, such as artificial intelligence or social shopping. But tried-and-true business models like influencer marketing and newsletter subscriptions also scored new rounds.
"For the second year in a row, the trends kind of stayed the same. AI, community, and revenue diversification for all creators," said Ollie Forsyth, a former senior manager at the investment firm Antler who now writes the newsletter New Economies.
Startups that offer automated dubbing, AI editing, or generative AI features β such as Captions, ElevenLabs, and OpusClip β all raised hefty rounds this year. Social-commerce startups like ShopMy and Levanta captivated venture firms, alongside newsletter companies like Beehiiv, Workweek, and Substack.
A few startups β Agentio, Beehiiv, and Captions β that raised capital in 2023, when creator-economy investments were at a low ebb, also raised again in 2024. Meanwhile, some venture firms have consistently tapped into the creator space, such as AlleyCorp, Inspired Capital, and Volition Capital.
Investor interest in the creator economy surged when social-media consumption spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, but then fell off dramatically. It's now steady, Forsyth said.
"We're no longer in the hype cycle," he said. "Maybe it has lost its trendiness a tiny bit, but it's stabilizing, which is needed."
Business Insider worked with data providers PitchBook and Crunchbase to sort through fundraising data in order to highlight big creator startup rounds from 2024. We focused on companies whose products significantly impact the businesses of creators and their partners.
Here are 17 of those companies, listed in alphabetical order:
Agentio, an ad platform streamlining creator-brand marketing on YouTube, raised a $12 million Series A. The round, announced in November, was led by Benchmark and included returning investors Craft and AlleyCorp (the latter firms co-led Agentio's $4.25 million Seed investment last year). Agentio's Series A is being used to scale the startup's go-to-market teams and expand its product offerings beyond YouTube creator ads.
Beehiiv, a newsletter platform competing with Substack, raised a $33 million Series B this year β $32 million from venture capital investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, and Sapphire Ventures, and $1 million from a crowdfund. Beehiiv will use the money to expand hiring, build its ad network, and continue its M&A strategy (the startup acquired Typedream in May).
Cameo, a video shout-out platform for celebrities and creators, raised $28 million with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Valor Siren Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, and cofounders Steven Galanis, Devon Townsend, and Martin Blencowe. The aim of the raise was to build out Cameo for Business, an offering focused on connecting its creators with brands for promotional content, per a company spokesperson.
Already on its Series C round after launching in 2021, AI video startup Captions closed a $60 million round in July led by Index Ventures. The round included returning investors like A16z and Sequoia Capital, as well as new investments from Adobe Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, and Jared Leto. Captions will use its funding to grow its machine learning team and in-house research, and also shared plans to invest $100 million into generative video research.
ElevenLabs closed an $80 million Series B round at the start of the year, led by A16z, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross. Other firms, like Sequoia Capital, Smash Capital, and SV Angel, joined the round. The startup announced at the time that the raise would be used to "refine" its products and safety measures in the deployment of AI.
Flip, a social-shopping platform set up in a TikTok-like feed, raised $144 million in a Series C round led by Streamlined Ventures with participation from advertising firm AppLovin, the companies announced in April. Flip planned to integrate marketing tech from AppLovin as part of the deal.
Infinite Reality, a tech company that owns talent-management firm TalentX, Drone Racing League, and other holdings, closed a $350 million fundraise from an undisclosed family office, the company said. The investment was meant to support efforts in hiring, with a focus on tech and product, as well as allow the company to pursue M&A opportunities.
Influur, an influencer-marketing platform, closed a $10 million Series A in November, led by Point72 Ventures and HTwenty Capital. The startup will use its funding to develop products like AI tools to help brands predict campaign performance and fintech tools for its users.
Levanta, an affiliate-marketing company that connects Amazon sellers with creators and other affiliates, raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Volition Capital. The company said the round would help it grow its business development team and improve its user experience.
OpusClip, an AI video editing platform that helps creators turn long videos into short clips, closed its Series A in April, bringing total funding to $30 million, per the company. Millennium New Horizons led the startup's Series A with participation from other investors like AI Grant, DCM Ventures, Samsung Next, GTMfund, and Alpine VC, among others. The company said it plans to use the funding to build its products and grow its team.
Passes, a subscription and memberships platform for creators, raised a $40 million Series A round in February from Abstract Ventures, Crossbeam Venture Partners, and individuals like Alexandra Botez, Emma Grede, and Michael Ovitz. The funding will be used for hiring and product, CEO Lucy Guo told BI.
Podcastle, a content-creation platform for podcasters, closed a $13.5 million Series A round led by Mosaic Ventures, with participation from returning investors Sierra Ventures, RTP Global, and Point Nine, among others. The company is using the funding to expand its AI and video products and grow its team with a new base in London.
ProRata.ai, a startup focused on helping creators and media firms get compensation for contributing to generative AI products, raised $30 million in a rolling Series A that closed in Q4, led by Mayfield Fund and other investors like Revolution Ventures, Prime Movers Lab, and Calibrate Ventures.
ShopMy, an affiliate and influencer-marketing company, raised an $18.5 million add-on to its Series A in March, closing the round at $26.5 million. The startup previously told BI that it raised from firms like Inspired Capital and AlleyCorp to grow the platform and attract more brand and creator partners.
Slushy, an adult-content platform competing with OnlyFans, raised a $10.2 million seed investment that closed in June. The round included investments from The Chainsmokers' Mantis VC, Electric Feel Ventures, and individuals like Jon Oringer (the former CEO of Shutterstock) and Sean Rad (the former CEO of Tinder). Slushy will direct its new funds toward developing its product, onboarding more content creators to the platform, and expanding into new markets.
Substack closed an investment round of about $10 million (the company directed BI to Axios' reporting on the matter) in the fall. Substack recently announced that it had 4 million paid subscriptions on its platform. It has worked to ramp up in-person events this year.
Workweek, a business-focused newsletter startup, announced a $12.5 million Series A round in June led by Next Coast Ventures. It's using the investment to build out a professional networking service for Workweek's subscribers.
