Success Stories in the Digital Commerce Space
Greetings, Pulse Subscribers!
We’ve sorted through all the news (yep, all of it) and found the stories you need to know. Here’s the agenda:
Whop-ing it up
A unified online storefront
OnlyFans, but without the NSFW
A nationwide farmer’s market
The AI sidekick for SMBs
Shopping live streams
Get it? Got it. Good!
Let’s go!
Startup Deals
Digital Product Marketplace | Most marketplaces for digital creators focus on selling their pictures and videos, but where can creatives go to generate even more revenue streams? Think of products like branded software, e-books, and instructional courses. Whop aims to be that one-stop shop. In addition to the centralized distribution that Whop enables for its sellers, it also provides a robust suite of reporting and analytics tools and immediate payment processing. For buyers, Whop can be a discovery engine for all things digital, connecting them with unique products and a centralized portal for managing purchases with ease and confidence. With over $110 million in gross merchandise value, Whop was able to close a $17M Series A round with big-name tech investors like Insight Partners and Peter Thiel, as well as big names in entertainment like The Chainsmokers, NBA All-Star James Harden, and TikTok star Josh Richards.
Creator Commerce Platform | Now imagine something similar to Whop but for celebrities (TikTok stars included)...let’s take Lizzo, for example; she had one online store for her tour merch and another for her shapewear line, Yitty. Her loyal fans had to bounce around between two sites to get their desired products. With Komi, fans can get it all in one place. Komi allows fans to browse merchandise from their favorite creators and celebs across multiple stores, adding products to a single cart and checking out all on the same page. For the creators, Komi not only enables a single integrated storefront but also the integration of content across TikTok, Instagram, and other socials into one overarching branded hub. Komi also plans to connect brands and creators for product promotions and a set of data capture tools to provide fans with instant benefits in exchange for their information. In addition to Lizzo, celebs like Usher, Meghan Trainor, and Jessica Alba have also recently joined Komi, as well. Komi recently announced a $12M Series A led by VC investors RTP and Third Prime, as well as corporate innovators Sony Music and Live Nation.
Paywall-Protected Content Platform | Sites like Patreon and OnlyFans are great for creatives because their fans can support them directly; however, because of the NSFW content on these platforms, brands and credit card companies have been reluctant to embrace them. Enter Passes, an invite-only platform that supports creators in monetizing one-to-many and one-to-one content a la OnlyFans. The catch? NSFW content is not allowed. The formats for fan engagement remain mostly the same: subscriptions for premium content, tipping and gifting during live streams, 1:1 video calls, and 1:1 live text messaging. Creators also have access to a built-in customer relationship management system, allowing them to tailor their Passes content to their highest-paying fans without the stigma and brand-reluctance associated with other platforms. Passes recently raised a $9M seed round led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from “blue-chip” firms like Gradient Ventures, Craft Ventures, and Menlo Ventures.
Specialty Food Marketplace | When it comes to wild and specialty foods, the only option for most consumers is their local farmers market, and the selection is definitely limited. And frankly, that’s not often the best channel for wild and specialty food foragers and farmers anyway. But what is? Foraged offers a solution to both consumers and sellers via digital marketplace. On the consumer side, Foraged makes it easy for consumers to find and buy wild and specialty foods from independent foragers and farmers across the country. On the producer side, Forage offers an end-to-end, turnkey solution that handles everything from shipping (especially for perishable goods) to a mobile app for displaying products and messaging customers for local pickups. Over the past year, Foraged has experienced more than 400% revenue growth from customers in all 50 states, and the number of repeat customers has increased more than 1,000% year over year. Foraged recently raised $3M in Seed funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio, and a series of impressive angels such as Yelp co-founder / CEO Jeremy Stoppelman.
Essential Reads
Some entrepreneurs are lucky to have mentors who can share their experiences and guide them along the journey of starting and growing a business, but the reality is that most of these entrepreneurs are actually on their own. Shopify aims to close this knowledge gap. In this video, Shopify Founder / CEO Tobi Lütke introduces Sidekick, an AI-powered assistant for merchants on Shopify. With the ability to interpret your data and even pull in Shopify’s own knowledge base to answer some of your key strategic questions, Sidekick is designed to help anyone with their entrepreneurial journey.
Learn more about Sidekick here.
We’ve featured livestream shopping before at Pulse, but this essential read offers a twist: last month, US-based digital media and entertainment site, Refinery29, announced a pilot for a live shopping stream on its Twitch channel – the first time a third-party company or brand has organized a live shopping experience on the platform. Social commerce and live streaming have been buzzwords for a while now, but could this partnership signal the start of broader adoption here in the U.S.?
Read more about this live shopping experiment here.