The fintech service Fundmates, founded in the United States by a team with Russian roots, has raised $2 million from Russian and American private investors. This was reported to RB.RU by a representative of the startup.
The project funds YouTube bloggers in exchange for a portion of their income from the platform.
Fundmates investors include Alexey Dovzhikov’s D&P syndicate (eLama founder), Grow Food founder Daniel Galper, AI Factory founder (bought by Snap Inc. for $166 million), Grigory Tkachenko and others.
Fundmates funds American YouTube bloggers with an active audience of 500k subscribers in the United States. Creators invest funds from the service in developing their channel, hiring a team, launching new formats and increasing the quality of content.
In exchange for an investment, bloggers transfer a portion of the video service’s revenue to Fundmates for 1 or 2 years. It should be noted that this model provides the startup with a profitability twice that of traditional financial instruments.
Fundmates has already supported over 30 creators worth $1.5 million. In 2024, the startup aims to fund influencers with another $10 million. According to the company, the funds raised will allow creators to grow an average of 40% during the first 12 months.
The startup’s key technology is its own scoring system, which analyzes 50 metrics for each channel to predict a YouTube blogger’s cash flow and decide whether to grant equity to the author.
- The US service was founded by Ilya Dronov in 2022. Before moving to the US, Dronov was CPO at Grow Food and developed social services at VK. There are currently 15 people on the Fundmates team.
- The investments attracted were the first for the project. They will be used to detect bloggers, finance their activities and reinforce marketing. The team plans to target the YouTube creator market in the US and then scale to other countries.
Author:
Anastasia Marina
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
