LTK raised $300 million for its fashion influencer marketing platform, hitting a $2 billion valuation: - **The company is a pioneer of the creator economy,** having constructed influencer marketing strategy as we know it. Its new funding round opens
LTK raised $300 million for its fashion influencer marketing platform, hitting a $2 billion valuation:
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The company is a pioneer of the creator economy, having constructed influencer marketing strategy as we know it. Its new funding round opens up new opportunities for founders in fashion, fitness, content, and home decor.
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Several social media platforms have now added the ability to externally link to your own website. Here's how you can use this to your advantage!
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Founder Mike Slaats hit $20,000 monthly with his user feedback tool, Upvoty. Below, he talks hitting $1 million annually with his previous SaaS (acquired), and his key to juggling several side projects at once.
Want to share something with nearly 85,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
👚 The $2B Fashion Influencer Platform
from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch
LTK, formerly rewardStyle and LikeToKnowIt, raised $300M for its fashion influencer marketing platform. LTK's new funding will open up new opportunities for indie hackers and creators in fashion, fitness, content, and home decor.
Fashion forward
The news: SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 dished out $300M to LTK, bringing the firm to a $2B valuation. The Dallas-based company created an influencer marketing platform that connects content creators, brands, and shoppers.
LTK 101: LTK’s shopping app is similar to Instagram Shop, offering a visual feed that users can scroll, and a seamless way to purchase clothing, fitness products, home decor, accessories, and more. Brands on LTK set their own commission rates, and creators typically earn between 10% and 25%. LTK takes a cut from the brand’s sales. The company has 350 employees across the globe, and works with more than 5K retailers and 1M brands.
LTK’s influence: LTK has dubbed itself the pioneer of the creator economy; back in 2011, the company was instrumental in constructing influencer marketing strategy as we know it. In 2020, consumers purchased more than $3B in fashion, beauty, fitness, home, and lifestyle products from LTK creators via the company’s e-commerce platform, creator shops, blogs, and social media.
Minting millionaires: LTK cofounder and president Amber Venz Box said that at least 130 influencers have become self-made millionaires through the platform. The company reported that retailers have spent more than $1B in influencer marketing campaigns on the platform in 2021 alone.
Speaking of millionaires... LTK’s wild success, and SoftBank’s funding, has made Amber one of the richest self-made women in the US, per Forbes. Forbes estimates that the 34-year-old’s net worth is about $315M.
Live-shopping next? Social media platforms from Instagram to Facebook to Pinterest are launching live shopping features. That’s because live shopping, also known as social commerce, generates more than $300B a year. Don’t be surprised if LTK follows suit with its own live offering.
Fashion files: The global fashion and textiles industry is worth $3T, per Fashion United’s annual report. That corresponds to 2% of the world’s total gross domestic product.
The value of influence
Creator confusion: We’ve previously discussed how amorphic the creator economy is, and how difficult it is to quantify. For example, is an indie developer part of the creator economy, and should their SaaS revenue be tallied as such? Many researchers analyzing the creator economy say no. Others, like Matt Rickard, disagree. Regardless, you can see that our shared understanding of this space continues to be very hazy.
Money moves: Despite the nebulous nature of the $100B creator economy, fashion and beauty may be among its most lucrative segments. Top fashion influencers can make more than $150K per sponsored post. The Hustle recently reported that a Chinese internet star known as “The Lipstick King” sold $1.7B during a 12-hour livestream in October.
Influencer marketing: Influencer Marketing Hub estimates that brands will spend about $13.8B on influencer marketing in 2021, up from $9.7B in 2020.
Trends in bloom: The influx of spending on influencer marketing confirms an important trend that SignalFire is watching in the creator economy. Creators are gaining power in the media ecosystem, as more fans aim to connect with “individual personalities rather than faceless publishers."
What do you think of the fashion creator economy? Share below!
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Indie Economy for more.
📰 In the News
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
💰 The metaverse will have its own virtual economy.
🏛 This new campaign wants to create copyright marks for humans.
⬛️ Square is changing its name to "Block."
🎬 A new startup wants to produce the first Hollywood feature film funded by NFTs.
💼 23% of Americans plan to quit their jobs in the next 12 months.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
🔗 The Return of the External Link
from the Growth & Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko
There's a new, hot social media trend: The ability to externally link to your own website. Here's how you can take advantage of this feature!
It all started with Clubhouse
On October 25, Clubhouse announced its "Pinned Links" feature, allowing you to add an external link at the top of a room:
Instagram followed suit
On October 27, Instagram announced that all users can now use "Link" stickers to add external links to their Stories:
People hopped onboard fast
Let's do an experiment.
Visit five random, active Instagram business pages and click on their Stories. You'll almost certainly see at least one Story that uses the Link sticker feature.
Clubhouse reported on November 23 that there have been 5.5M clicks to Pinned links from rooms in less than a month. This makes it one of the platform's fastest growing features.
Will other platforms follow suit?
Historically, social networking platforms have been very stingy when it comes to allowing you to link to external websites.
Not only that, but social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been known to limit the reach of your posts if they contain links.
The rise of the creator economy has pushed these social networks to include more options for external linking. Let's hope that old-fashioned links finally make a comeback.
Will you use this new feature? Why or why not?
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Growth & Acquisition Channels for more.
🌐 Best Around the Web: Posts Submitted to Indie Hackers This Week
😔 Failed soft launch. Posted by Jacob Beckerman.
🧐 What's interesting this month? Posted by Rosie Sherry.
🖱 How we built our SEO clicks. Posted by Wojtek Krzciński.
🗓 Accountability for founders? Posted by Alex Karezin.
🤯 Rejected from YC. Posted by Wentin.
🎉 What's your biggest goal for the last weeks of the year? Posted by Lisa Dziuba.
Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.
⬆️ Mike Slaats Hit $20K MRR With Upvoty
by Mike Slaats
Hey, fellow indie hackers! I'm Mike Slaats, founder of user feedback tool Upvoty. I bootstrapped Upvoty to over $20K MRR after I sold my previous startup, which was doing over $1M ARR.
I'm working on several side projects as well:
AMA!
How did you get your first 100 paying customers?
I would say a decent percentage came from communities such as Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, Makerlog, and platforms like BetaList. Besides that, we launched a couple of e-books, went all-in on content marketing through a blog, and did a lot of interviews. The interviews not only boosted our brand, but also our SEO rankings.
Feel free to check out my interview on the Indie Bites Podcast.
How do you work with developers?
At my previous startup, I gave them a percentage of each sale. Now, I'm just hiring them on a freelance basis. I'm working with devs from Holland, so they're pretty expensive ($75 per hour), but I fully trust them. That's my go-to for now, since I can't code at all!
What are your top user acquisition channels?
We're mainly focused on content marketing (blog, e-books, interviews, etc.), which represents almost 40%. We're doing a little bit of search engine advertising (SEA), mainly targeting competitors. This represents 10%. Also, we recently started experimenting with sponsoring podcasts.
But the most important acquisition channel is our own software. Our customers have our software installed, and there's a little "Powered by Upvoty" mention in the software. This gets us referrals because the customers of our customers also want to use it for their feedback. Works like a charm!
How did you validate your idea?
We just used a simple landing page with an explainer video and signup form for the idea validation. We advertised on a couple of platforms, BetaList being one of them, to attract some beta users.
For the product validation, we ran a private beta, and listened to our users really carefully. We managed to launch a decent first version, which resulted in over $1K MRR within just a couple of months.
Would you sell again?
Upvoty is different from my last business, which it was more like a marketplace, not a subscription business. I've had some potential buyers reach out for Upvoty, but at this point, I'm not sure what it's worth, and it's not relevant at the moment anyway. I want to scale to at least $50K MRR before even considering it.
What's next for your content?
We absolutely want to take our content marketing to the next level with audio (podcast) and video (YouTube), but since this is something we have to outsource, we can't do it right now.
With the YouTube channel, I haven't done any cold outreach. It's grown by just sharing the word in Facebook groups and various maker platforms.
How do you manage all your projects?
Outsourcing and delegation are my two best friends!
Discuss this story.
🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick
by Tweetmaster Flex
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, Priyanka Vazirani, Darko, and Mike Slaats for contributing posts. —Channing
