Our investment in Kre8.TV — A billion unique voices monetizing directly
Benson Oak Ventures invests with the goal to support big ideas led by visionary and execution-focused entrepreneurs aiming to build transformative companies. We invest through a multi-stage and high-conviction model in our companies.
An investment in Kre8.TV is part of our thesis around the huge growth of the passion economy in which entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes can build businesses directly with consumers and fans, and thus investing in platforms that enable the operation and growth of such businesses.
Kre8.TV is a platform that incentivizes people to create content that provides value to others, not just gain exposure. Within 30 seconds, anyone can sign up and start monetizing their knowledge, insights, or talent digitally, through content.
Roy Hermann is the sole founder of the company and brings a decade of experience in building out bootstrapped consumer apps. He’s an incredibly well-rounded “athlete” encompassing skill-sets in product, design, marketing and as a quad stack developer singlehandedly built Kre8.TV. He started the company as a local influencer “greetings platform”, generating early traction and revenue after launching during Covid. At the same time Roy noticed a broader opportunity to build a global destination site creators, celebs and ordinary people alike can engage with their followings/followers and deliver personalized, authentic, original, and exclusive content. The team is building out the super app for creators, many of which have thousands or millions of followers — but today no simple way to instantly and simply personalize & monetize content based on user engagement.
The next decade of content will be marked by a billion unique voices monetizing directly
The past decade was marked by an explosion of influencers on social platforms amassing massive followings, but required to monetize mainly through ads and product promotions. The coming decade is shaping up to be one of direct monetization between influencers, creators and their followers. Li Jin from Andreessen Horowitz wrote a great post about The Passion Economy & the Future of Work — “Users can now build audiences at scale and turn their passions into livelihoods, whether that’s playing video games or producing video content. This has huge implications for entrepreneurship and what we’ll think of as a “job” in the future.”
Covid has amplified these trends across the board with small businesses and individuals building digital distribution and monetization. There’s been a huge spike in SMBs opening up stores via Shopify and other e-commerce platforms and with content, we’re seeing successes of direct monetization in newsletters (Substack), paywalled content (Patreon) and (mostly) adult entertainment (Onlyfans).
Kre8.TV will transform content into quality over quantity and give creators the ability to instantly monetize “their hearts and minds”. Changing habits around content creation and consumption is a hard, ambitious, worthy goal. We’re excited to back Roy and team and let them capitalize on an opportune market at a time when (i) Covid is leaving millions in their houses and (ii) there is clear movement away from content quantity, popularity and views towards high quality exchange of value.
Keep reading for more details on how we view Kre8 though the prism of our 4 question methodology
IS IT A B2M² COMPANY?
The influencer and creator economy is a global growing trend with no end in sight. According to a study of internet creators across 9 digital platforms (including Etsy, Twitch, and YT), 17M Americans earned nearly $7Bn in income from their independent creations in 2017. Countries around the world have local creators and influencers with reaches across the world. The ongoing shift towards direct monetization only accelerated the move to digital distribution and monetization platforms. Kre8.TV is making this accessible and frictionless by enabling creators to generate $ value through seamless and innovative core features. The platform then incentivizes high value content creation and strong creator — community engagement all leading into a virtuous cycle of engagement around high value content in exchange for an income for the creator. Shopify enabled anyone to set up an e-commerce store instantly and is today valued at over $50B. Kre8.TV is doing the same for creators with a vision to build the highest quality content discovery platform for the next decade of creators and influencers.
HOW THEY WIN?
The team is building out their broader offering based on learning from their successful launch in Israel and are now ready for the US with an eye on a global strategy. In the US the platform is open to everyone with a focus on launching with handful of big names — useful for the platforms legitimacy, brand and accelerate creator demand. They are engaging these direct as well as approaching longer tail creators directly and establishing promising partnerships with talent and influencer agencies which can now offer their clients an immediate monetization channel. The platform delivers through direct monetization which is quantifiable and easy for creators to test its value.
Kre8 is positioning itself and building out a platform that is enabling the exchange of value for value between creators and their engaged following. This is in stark contrast to the recent and ongoing issue raised in the recent “The Social Dilemma” documentary and the ad based model behind the proliferation of the content and its attached monetization. This is an important, global and timely message and even more so, necessary product.
PRODUCT
The experience is straightforward. Creators have their public profiles and a button for users to make a specific request or to subscribe to creator premium content for a recurring subscription. This gives creators the ability to build multi layered paywalls and in this way incentivize and compensate different tiers of followers. The personalized content requests — 1 time payments — are broad and range from happy birthday wishes to business, fitness or DIY advice. The subscriptions provide a consistent revenue stream creators can depend upon as their main income or side hustle. There’s a already a good number of creators in Israel generating thousands of dollars a month and the app shows them a breakdown of their revenues and stats helping them stay on top of their business with more to come in assisting creators.
The apps home page lets users discover different creators, mostly Israeli celebrities, creators, comedians and some with global reach. The team is working on exciting product features for their US launch enabling creators to work together on the platform, share ideas and give their followers new and exciting forms of content and engagement
IS THE BUSINESS MODEL SCALABLE AND SELF SUFFICIENT?
The market is moving away from ad based models to direct monetization. The old view of content as a commodity to be advertised against is evolving into content to be “sliced & diced” and packaged into various components, monetized through subscription services, on-demand, early & premium access, private collaboration and much more.
Kre8 is giving creators the tools and platform to directly monetize and engage with their audiences. This exchange incentivizes both sides to create and consume higher value content and enables creators to build consistent, dependable revenue streams. They initially launched locally and were generating over $10K+ within a few months. The team building key features for their US launch which include:
- Digital presence: frictionless, auto updating, responsive and modern
- Exclusive monetized content: direct monetization through subscription and 1 time requests (with different subscription tiers coming). Creating tailored content for fans, businesses and brands — paying for and ordering personalized is seamless.
- Channels: creators can text, snap, and record their thoughts or feelings to their premium followers. The can invite other users or creators to spark conversations and help cross market themselves and others.
- On Demand Content: receive content requests for personal or commercial use.
- Insights and analytics: Kre8 supplies creators with a beautiful, easy to use dashboard, that shows a clear, transparent overview of how things are going.
BOV LEADING THE ROUND
We decided to lead the investment on the basis of exceptional founder and opportune market timing. With the rapid onset of the Passion Economy, spurred by transformational changes caused by Covid, we’re in the early stages of a shift away from the ad model towards direct monetization and we term it in our latest blog “The End of the Workforce Era”. Kre8 has traction, growing revenue and we’re excited to back the team on their mission for the future of creators and high value content. The round has strong value add co-investors such as Eyal Waldman (CEO and Founder of Mellanox), Cory Levy (SF Founder and early stage investor), Edward Lando and other company founders that previously worked with Roy and recognize the talent and potential.
