Influencer marketing has grown to be a $13.8B industry annually according to one estimate; nearly doubling in size every two years. Despite the massive popularity, there is still a lack of transparency, fraud, payment friction, and lack of metrics that plague portions of the industry. Brybe is a self-service marketplace that connects brands and influencers built to be transparent and easy-to-use every step of the way both for brands and influencers. As the types of influencers vary greatly, the platform focuses on the mid-tier and lower influencers whose needs are often overlooked by larger platforms or those larger platforms that come in at inaccessible pricing. For brands, as influencer marketing gets more specialized, Brybe gives the option to work with a few smaller influencers that have loyal followings that generate a better return on investment than working with mega influencers. The platform handles payment, deployment, and analytics in an easy-to-use intuitive centralized location.
LA TechWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Igor Fedenkoff to learn more about the inspiration for the platform, the company’s future plans, experience moving remote during the pandemic, recent round of funding, and much, much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Self-funded from the beginning, Brybe has experienced organic growth during the first year of its existence. As we were scouting the space for the best ideas and tech to make this solution easy and habitual for our users, the need for larger financing presented itself, and we began fundraising. In a matter of 4-6 months, we were fortunate to raise the Seed Round of $1.3M led by the institutional investor, Luxiena.
Tell us about your product or service.
Brybe disrupting the Online Advertising industry by democratizing Influencer Marketing with Brybe Marketplace designed for the underrepresented Lower to Mid-level Brands and Influencers to communicate and run every aspect of influencer marketing campaigns in a secure and user-friendly environment. Like Fiverr did in the past, our self-service platform minimizes fraud via escrow-like deal flow, streamlines orders via influencer-created preset service packages, and even allows for additional income streams via integrated statistical and affiliate revenue modules. Known for the current audience views reach of over 10 billion worldwide, this is the only marketplace offering the full value chain from organic discovery and analysis to post-transactional statistics and reviews.
What inspired the start of Brybe?
As a Marketing Director of a tech company three years ago, I designed and ran a number of marketing campaigns, involving influencers of various sizes, following, and engagement. It very quickly became obvious that despite multiple platforms in the space, it was still quite a cumbersome process that called for multiple parties involved, lots of influencer fraud, confusing payment arrangements, untrackable ROI and ROAS, lack of simplicity, and ease. During one of the marketing meetings, an idea shaped – why not design our own platform by learning from our own experience, as well as analyzing a plethora of existing solutions. This is how Brybe came to serve as a transparent, easy-to-use marketplace that validated the participants, controlled the flow of funds, and simplified running social media marketing campaigns down to a few clicks.
How is it different?
The hazards and inefficiencies of the influencer marketing industry (set to exceed 10 billion in 2020) have made it difficult for brands and influencers to achieve their goals efficiently. Due to the entry barriers, the majority of lower- to mid-level Brands and Influencers still don’t understand what Influencer Marketing is and how to use it profitably, while the existing solutions are costly, agency/membership based, poorly built, and confusing.
- Crowded Influencer Marketing Space.
- Large Brands like Nike and Mega Influencers like Kardashians are dominating the market.
- Platforms are complex and cost money.
- Hard Entry for lower- to mid-level Brands and Influencers.
- Lack of knowledge and understanding of what Influencer Marketing is and how it works.
- No solutions for beginners.
Brybe introduces an innovative, transparent platform that gives brands and influencers the peace of mind they deserve, with the opportunity to engage authentically and create profitable advertising campaigns.
How we address the problem:
- MINIMAL FRAUD using escrow-like control of order execution and payment for services
- SAFE, spam-free direct communications between verified Brands and verified Influencers
- FREE, secure, user-friendly SaaS Marketplace/mobile app listing both Brands and Influencers
- Integrated AFFILIATE PLATFORM with revenue share for Brand and Influencer Referrals
- NO MIDDLEMEN/agencies
What market are you targeting and how big is it?
Our Mission is to be the ultimate marketplace that sets global business flow standards for the influencer marketing industry worldwide by inspiring creativity, increasing accessibility, and curating transparent, safe, and data-driven solutions.
Social media marketing industry has created one of the widest markets on this planet with over 500,000 active influencers on IG alone, and tens of millions across other platforms, almost 2 Billion creators, and 582 Million entrepreneurial companies in the world, I’d say we’ll have our hand full 🙂
Realistically, despite being a global platform, Brybe is currently focusing on lower to mid-level influencers and enterprises primarily in North America.
What’s your business model?
As Brybe is growing and adding functionalities, our business model is still transaction-based, deriving revenue from the fees applied to the deals that take place on the marketplace. Free to join and use, Brybe is open to any verified brand or influencer to maximize engagement and capitalize on influencer demand with minimal friction. Once a brand identifies an influencer capable of achieving their campaign goals, within their budget, an offer is sent to the influencer for review. After reaching an agreement, the two parties work together until the campaign’s close, upon which the influencer receives payment.
Looking at the existing variety of social media campaigns, and trying to accommodate various users, we have introduced subscriptions for the companies that are looking to run in-kind campaigns, compensating influencers by their products/services rather than monetary payment.
Started as a built-in functionality, Brybe Affiliates grew into a separate software application for our affiliate partners resulting in an additional revenue stream for the company.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business?
COVID-19 definitely had its impact on the company by not only endangering our team’s health but shaking up the industry as a whole, because a large percentage of known influencers specialized in travel and public campaigns. Well, as we quickly had to switch to the remote model, I must give tremendous credit to our team members, who went through all the necessary adjustments in their own personal and professional lives, and were able to sustain the same if not the higher level of self-management, organization, creativity, production, while maintaining an incredible team spirit and positivity. The industry quickly adjusted to the new normal and exploded with new opportunities, an increased number of creators now working from the comfort of their homes, creativity spiking through the roof, and all this talent and content ready to be picked up by the interested brands. The brands on the other side, have taken a bit longer to adjust to the changed landscape, and although the sad truth of cutting budgets usually results in marketing/advertising budgets being cut first, companies definitely are realizing now that for a fraction of the prior spending they can run much more effective and efficient campaigns via social media and influencers, thus creating a never-before-seen synergy of influencer marketing collaborations.
What was the funding process like?
We were quite fortunate to have Cooley, LLP as our advisors and legal representation for this round. Their expertise definitely made navigating through the complexity of the Seed Round much more acceptable, and I will most definitely not advise anyone to do this on their own. No matter how smart or educated you may be – there are clauses, and implications, and investor-specific details, and agreements/amendments, and don’t forget about making sure that your business is protected… Forget about it! Legal spending for your round, no matter what it may look like to you, is an intricate part of the process and matters volumes to you and your company. In Brybe’s case, an institutional investor led the round, which made it possible to work through mainly one package of documents, which were also vetted by their legal counsel. I can’t tell you how many nights I spent reading the most fascinatingly confusing, sometimes deadly boring, but at times highly enlightening pages upon pages of legal and financial language, revision after revision, sometimes with one-word substitution that changed the meaning of the whole document. Having legal counsel does not remove the need for understanding what you will be signing, because the initial funding round docs will guide your life from the moment that wire hits your account, and will impact any subsequent financing or reporting, all the way to the exit. Now that it’s behind us, I must say that the due diligence process, although tedious and nerve-racking, is a huge blessing in disguise. It gives you a chance to add to or build from scratch the image of your business that will make sense to the investors, but ultimately, will give you a clean, ordered, and legitimate picture of what you have done and provide tools to move forward. Many founders will probably agree with me, when I say that startups focus on their idea, tech, MVP much more than the board resolutions, meeting minutes, amended articles, and bylaws revisions that are of vital importance nonetheless.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
I will not surprise anyone if I say, as a founder of the company, taking a part of my focus from the company’s core competence and directing it to the fundraising process is the biggest challenge. This is where the amazing energy of our team really came through. The development continued, the milestones were met, sprints were completed, and now that we can work with larger budgets, we have the fundamental base and the core of the project to build on.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
We didn’t re-invent a bicycle … but we built a really cool one with all the pros of the current solutions and very few of their cons. The problems in the current space and our solution make sense. As do the enthusiasm, expertise, and drive that our team has in making sure we make it happen. Frankly, any investor will tell you that they ultimately invest in the team first, and then the product. I believe our investors saw the commitment and the drive as some of the key factors in their decision.
We didn’t re-invent a bicycle … but we built a really cool one with all the pros of the current solutions and very few of their cons. The problems in the current space and our solution make sense. As do the enthusiasm, expertise, and drive that our team has in making sure we make it happen. Frankly, any investor will tell you that they ultimately invest in the team first, and then the product. I believe our investors saw the commitment and the drive as some of the key factors in their decision.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
As with any true marketplace, the most fundamental development goal is to build a sophisticated and versatile platform that is transparent and super easy for the end-user. But the biggest business goal is to maintain the growth of demand (buyers) and supply (sellers) that breathe life into the marketplace. Our goal at this point is scaling the user base exponentially while curating an effective multi-level worldwide marketing campaign and making Brybe a “household” brand for the audiences in the Influencer Marketing space.
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh
injection of capital in the bank?
Never give up! The law of attraction is not a myth – your energy and drive will produce the results. I like the old saying that successful people are not lucky, they just work 10 times harder than the rest. Limited funds should not stop the project, there are options that can be considered nonetheless: you may be eligible for a small business loan, especially considering the current situation with SBA loans. Your business may be eligible for a grant from larger companies like Google, or YC. And I would definitely not knock the crowdfunding or crowd investing that is revolutionizing the fundraising world for the past number of years. But with all that in mind – you must know your core competence, and you must demonstrate to your target audience the importance, ease, and convenience of your solution to their problem. Your customers are out there, you just need to get your product/service in front of them and let them love it and promote it.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Global-scale is definitely one of our main priorities. along with growing the user base, and polishing the platform, making it the marketplace of choice for the best of our target audiences while remaining on the edge of the current technological and analytical developments.
What’s your favorite outdoor activity in LA?
I’d have to say spending time at some of the more secluded beaches with my wife and daughters, when I am with them 100%, which is a tough bargain when you run a startup. And definitely riding my motorcycle on the Malibu canyons. Southern CA has some of the most beautiful views and roads in the US, that are even more enjoyable while having all your 5 senses attacked on two wheels.
