A startup serving the creator economy had market traction but not a lead investor. Tiffany Kelly of Curastory succeeded in raising an oversubscribed seed round anyway
Her conversations with athletic directors and coaches in her network made Tiffany realized just how difficult it would be for student-athletes and others to create, edit, sell, and distribute their content. Curastory allows content creators, individuals, and small media companies to do what they do best—create content.
Advertisers like Beyond Meat and StockX told Curastory they didn't have time to go through the videos to find the best content providers for their brand. They wanted to be automatically matched. By Q3, that functionality was added. Now brands enter their budget and audience-targeting criteria and Curastory matches them with content creators, Kelly explained. Brands can submit a script if they want the creators to film ads about their products.
As a woman of color, she couldn't find a lead investor for the seed round even with market traction."I'm crushing it," Kelly declared. She couldn't raise the $5-7 million that well-connected founders raise without having revenue. "That was a huge proof of concept!" exclaimed Kelly."They typically don't invest until Series A." With Lightspeed as an investor, Curastory raised $500,000 on Republic. Kelly paused fundraising. She had gotten into Techstars Sports and wanted to focus on the program. Her goal was to close the seed round shortly after Techstars Demo Day. She did that and then some, but she had to do it in a nontraditional way.
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