We are building Feed to be the go-to marketing tool powering the growth of millions of creators in the passion economy.
Our story:
Joshua had been heading up digital marketing campaigns at record labels, and had seen the trend in the industry towards more independent artists (mirrored in other parts of the economy). Nick had an investment background, coming from the world of finance, and was a musician before that. We had been friends for years, and believed that the fast growing cohort of independent artists was under-served. This was confirmed through our research and we began working on Feed together in 2019. As our first (music) users began to refer non-musicians, we realised the huge potential of Feed to help many different types of creators.
We are now building Feed for the growing number of creative entrepreneurs that generate income from a direct online relationship with their fans. They tend to be Gen Z and millennials and while they can speak with their audience online (Instagram, TikTok) and distribute their products (Spotify, YouTube, Shopify) they still need help with reach, building an audience and finding more customers.
Purpose factor:
The passion economy (Instagram fashion brands, musicians, podcasters, other creators) is underserved when it comes to marketing technology due to small budgets and limited marketing knowledge. Other tools are built for bigger budgets and/or professional marketers.
Creators are great at 'creating' and content, they just need help with the technical part of ads, from a solution that addresses their pain points.
Feed lets creators run an entire marketing funnel with a budget starting at £2 per day. A mobile first design means it's incredibly easy to use. Our first integration is with the Facebook and Instagram ad network.
The platform generates 3–10x better ad results than users’ other ads on a like-for-like basis (depending on the metric) and 20% of users refer others with no incentive.
Commercial impact:
There is a clear route to Feed being a sustainable, commercial success. Feed is currently in closed beta. Over 400 users have spent >£80,000 of their own budget through Feed (£200 each on average) and 20% refer others with no incentive. Our business model is to take 10% of the ad spend through Feed as a service fee.
Disruptive factor & the potential.
There are huge ramifications of empowering more creators to grow - we want to democratise the world of marketing so it’s possible for any individual creator to find their audience. Not just those who can afford to hire a marketing agency.
The potential for a product like Feed is big. 29% of top US graduates now want to become creators, rather than go down traditional professional career paths. We want to help these people build sustainable creative businesses. There are 50m creators alone on YouTube today, and some estimates see that figure growing to 100m by the end of the decade.
After we have done that, we have several other disruptive follow-on product ideas - including a funding product where we can identify strongly growing creators via the insights we get through Feed and offer them funding to continue growing their business.
What we can gain from CIC:
We are well connected within the world of music, but we’d love to help more creators and people working in the passion economy beyond music (25% of our user base are already non-musicians as a result of musicians referring their non-music creator friends).
The exposure and connections CIC can bring would be hugely helpful in achieving this.
