NEW YORK & TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#paid, a creator marketing platform that connects brands with content creators, announced it secured $15 million in Series B funding. Sands Capital, a long-term investor in leading innovative businesses globally, led the round with a $9 million investment. Ascential (who own Cannes Lions), Vanedge, and BDC Capital participated in this round and eCommerce experts Arati Sharma, Web Smith, and Nik Sharma. Notable content creators and celebrities have also joined as new investors, including Murda Beatz, Jasmine Lorimer, Ryan Millier, Alen Palander, and The XO Crew.
With this investment, #paid will continue to develop its platform offering and market expansion to new digital channels. This will allow brands to scale their creator marketing efforts, and reach new audiences with creator-generated content that is more relatable to their customers. This also empowers creators to monetize more channels and increase their brand collaborations and income.
“Creators are at the forefront of everything we do," said Bryan Gold, CEO, and Co-Founder of #paid. “We make it easier for creators to partner with top-tier brands and help those brands create content that better resonates with their audience. With the support of Sands Capital—and our other investors—we can continue to scale our platform offerings, to allow even more creators to find brand partnership opportunities that drive impact and ROI.”
#paid is a creator marketing platform that sits at the intersection of brand and creator collaboration. They help direct-to-consumer and Fortune 500 brands like Philips Hue, Everlywell, Unilever, and Sephora activate creators to drive growth. As the leader in the creator marketing space, #paid offers end-to-end workflow management, including easily matching brands with creators, approving content, automating payments and legal agreements, and reporting on sales impact and ROI.
“#paid is accelerating the influencer marketing industry in a way that is authentic to both creators and brands,” said Scott Frederick, Managing Director, Strategic Initiatives, Sands Capital. "The creator economy is flourishing, with influencer marketing spend set to pass $3 billion this year. Creators, who are at the center of this industry, are looking for ways to monetize their work and earn a bigger piece of overall revenue. We look forward to #paid’s continued platform developments, as well as the company’s advocacy for the creators to monetize within their networks.”
This fundraising follows the launch of #paid’s Creator Licensing Tool, a first-of-its-kind feature that allows brands to license creator content and gain advertising access to creators’ social media profile for whitelisted ads, to efficiently drive more brand awareness and sales.
About #paid
#paid is a creator marketing platform that sits at the intersection of brand and creator collaboration. Founded in 2014, #paid helps direct-to-consumer and Fortune 500 brands like Phillips Hue, Everlywell, Unilever, and Sephora, activate creators to drive growth. They are building the platform of record that powers content creation and distribution for brands globally. The better they do that, the better they can serve their creator community and provide them with the best place on earth to do what they love—create.
For more information, visit www.hashtagpaid.com.
About Sands Capital Management
Sands Capital Management (“Sands Capital”) is an investment firm with $70+ billion AUM located in Arlington, Virginia, minutes from downtown Washington, DC. Sands Capital Ventures is an affiliate of Sands Capital, an investment firm founded in 1992 that manages long-only, concentrated public company portfolios. Sands Capital Ventures principally manages Funds that invest globally in private businesses in the information technology, healthcare, financial services, and consumer sectors.
