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Nfluence, Targeting ‘Micro-Influencers,’ Raising $4M

Content Creator Platform Counts Notable Backers

Nfluence, an Irvine content creator marketing platform, is raising $4 million for its current seed round.

Backers and advisers to the software company include Choon Aun Quek, former U.S. head of cloud platform for Google and Mike Gleason, who founded Walter Cruttenden-backed micro-investing app ATM.com in Newport Beach.

The funding will support Nfluence in onboarding creators to its platform and hiring engineers and designers. The firm currently counts eight employees.

Nfluence has already taken steps to increase its user base; it’s currently forming partnerships with two tech companies that, once secured, will bring about 250,000 users to Nfluence’s platform, officials anticipate.

Nfluence has already raised $3.8 million in funding to date.

The company is led by co-founder and CEO Brian Kim, a California State University, Fullerton alum who founded Damage Esports, a gaming-focused marketing agency.

While serving as the chief operating officer at Damage, Kim said he did influencer marketing for the largest chipmaker in the world.

He found that reviewing posts and streams—to ensure they met branding requirements—to be extremely labor intensive, which is a challenge all companies face when working with social media creators.

“They all did this manually, like cavemen,” Kim told the Business Journal.

That lack of efficiency birthed Nfluence, which uses AI to automate the content reviewing process and save companies labor costs when making brand deals with influencers.

Co-Founder Passing

The startup is now ramping up after undergoing two pivots and the sudden death of co-founder and CTO, Khalid Malik.

“That was pretty rough for the company,” Nfluence Head of Product and Finance Ethen Yao told the Business Journal. “Not just for myself,” he said, adding that Malik was a good friend.

Malik died in 2020 at age 45 after contracting COVID-19. He started Nfluence in 2019 with Yao, a fellow Harvard University alum, and Kim and Chief Operating Officer Ed Kiernan.

Kiernan, who counts 25 years of experience in sports entertainment, founded Engine Shop marketing agency, which was acquired by Bruin Sports Capital in 2015.

Double Pivot

Nfluence started out as a marketplace catering to content creators from the likes of Twitch, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

After deciding that the traditional media space was potentially more lucrative, the company then pivoted out of focusing on social media content creators, hoping to use its technology to help brands make the most out of their media sponsorships.

The company utilized its existing AI technology to analyze viewer engagement data for major media sponsorships. Officials said they completed projects with numerous Fortune 50 companies, including major sports and esports leagues and insurance conglomerates, courtesy of Kiernan’s industry connections.

Nfluence, however, shortly switched back to serving social media content creators after it found the media industry too difficult to penetrate.

“People still wanted to do their deals on the golf course, smoking their cigars, rather than using math,” Yao said. “It’s hard to disrupt a very antiquated market.”

Q1 Launch

Nfluence plans to launch its platform first quarter of this year.

The startup is targeting micro-influencers, who will be able to browse the site for brand deals that feature a company’s viewer requirements and payment rewards. After a creator selects a campaign, Nfluence then analyzes the creator’s post or stream to ensure all branding requirements, from visuals to verbal script, are met.

Using the company’s platform, “brands have the ability to create campaigns in minutes, and creators can monetize their influence by participating in these brand campaigns,” the company says.

“We’re supercharging influencer marketing by giving advertisers a way to purchase
authentic social influencers at scale,” Yao said. “Micro-influencers have a better
engagement rate on a per viewer basis compared to big influencers like Kim Kardashian or Lebron James.”

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