Pearpop, a marketplace for social collaborations, is expanding to Instagram after previously only being available to TikTok creators. The platform, which launched last year, allows creators and brands to buy collaborations with celebrities and larger creators. Pearpop will also become available on Twitter later this month, and on Twitch in December.
The official rollout on Instagram follows a soft launch at the beginning of October. Pearpop says that in less than a month, more than 10,000 Instagram creators have joined the platform. It notes that Instagram availability was the most requested feature among Pearpop users, as over 90% of existing Pearpop creators are already active on the platform. Early adopters of the new Instagram offering include Post Malone, Jake Paul, Paris Hilton, Swae Lee, Tom Felton and Noah Schnapp.
Pearpop CEO and co-founder, Cole Mason, says the initial concept for the platform came out of an obvious gap within the space, as no marketplace existed for creators of all sizes to monetize through simple collaborations that are mutually beneficial.
“I built Pearpop as the social capital marketplace that helps creators grow, earn and promote across all platforms,” Mason told TechCrunch in an interview. “The overall vision is to move the industry away from platform-driven awareness marketing towards people-driven influence.”
The idea brought in a slew of musicians, athletes, actors and entertainers, including The Weeknd, Amy Schumer, The Chainsmokers, Diddy, Gary Vaynerchuk, Griffin Johnson, Josh Richards, Mark Cuban, Marshmello, Moe Shalizi, Snoop Dogg and more.
Pearpop announced $16 million in funding in April, which was split between a $6 million seed funding round co-led by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures and Slow Ventures, with participation from Atelier Ventures and Chapter One Ventures; and a $10 million additional investment led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six with participation from Bessemer.
Since Pearpop’s last funding announcement, the company has added several new angel investors, including Swae Lee, Noah Schnapp, Lil Nas X, Dre London, King Bach, Gabrielle Union, Jake Paul, YG, James Corden and Paris Hilton.
Since its launch, Pearpop has been compared to Cameo, which is an app that allows users to pay celebrities to create personalized videos. When asked about the comparison, Mason stated that “other platforms offer personalized video messages that are largely used for gifting, and that’s about it. This isn’t what Pearpop competes with. Pearpop is a powerful social media tool that can help brands and creators reach big goals like driving people-driven influence.”
In terms of the future, Mason says Pearpop will continue to expand to other platforms and focus on refining its current features, such as “Challenges,” which allows artists to offer rewards to creators who reach a certain number of followers while promoting a song. Mason also noted that the real goal for Pearpop is to see everyone as a creator.
“Pearpop believes everyone is a creator. Right now, when you think of a creator, you would typically think of someone with 50,000 followers or more. But when you are posting something creative and getting viewership on it, there’s no way to monetize that right now. We think if you have 100 followers or if you have 50 million followers, you should be making money from your content,” Mason said. “We’re just trying to empower that and that’s what we’re building all of our product features around.”