MisFans, a platform that seeks to improve the monetization of creators, was born in one of the social networks that has proven to be bad for them: Instagram.
In 2019, Alex Ramírez contacted Hiram Altamirano via direct message to find out if he was interested in a collaboration. They didn’t know each other personally, but after learning about OnlyFans, an increasingly popular subscriber platform, they had an idea.
Seeing its potential, Ramírez and Altamirano turned to look at the Mexican and Latin American creator economy industry; an economy that is rooted in new technologies such as NFTs and the possibility of decentralizing large companies. There was nothing like OnlyFans in this market.
The two founders started working on various prototypes, learning about the creators’ needs to create a perfect MVP. In 2021 they got it right and entered the Silicon Valley 500 Latam accelerator.
In 500 Startups, they raised their first round of investment of US$60,000 and had a four-month training. With this first round, MisFans already had 160 creators. Now they have a waiting list.
For a couple of months, MisFans has been becoming a vehicle for content creators (a very broad term that includes designers, writers, dancers, actors, artists and countless other categories) to make a living from their creations. They do this by allowing them to monetize with the platform’s tools.
Instead of leaving social networks like YouTube, TikTok, Twitch and Instagram, creators can add all their profile links to their MisFans account and earn money from there. It is the solution for the link-in-bio.
We talked to Alex Ramírez at Contxto to find out more about this innovative proposal that is undoubtedly becoming more relevant. This is thanks to the fact that it has included figures such as Lolita Ayala to monetize with her own collection of NFTs.
Contxto (C): Where did you see the area of opportunity that MisFans has to grow as a startup?
Alex Ramírez (AR): We saw the success story on a foreign platform that made an actress (Bella Thorne) produce more than a million dollars in a single day. We saw it in the media and we wondered: why do we not hear these things in Mexico and Latin America? And we built based on that; thinking of Latin American creators, since there are more and more, and they are very good.
C: With so many changes in the creator industry, what did you decide to focus on?
AR: For us it has been a journey to understand that we are a creator first company; that is to say that we are really on the side of the creators. One of the greatest tools we use is doing surveys within our community.
This is how we listen to our market and analyze if they are really using what we are building for them. It is the most valuable feedback we get to continue building MisFans with new features.
C: How are you dealing with the new tools offered by social networks similar to what MisFans can offer?
AR: At the beginning of 2021 we received messages from three different investors who sent us the news that Instagram would be updating its platform to be able to offer exclusive content and subscriptions.
Honestly, we totally get it. Social networks right now are testing and adapting what they are seeing in the market at the same time. We feel that this helps us to also improve and create our own communities, which we know better.
C: What growth plans and ideas do you have for MisFans?
AR: We recently launched a collection of NFTs with Lolita Ayala and this has done amazingly within the creator ecosystem. Many have arrived wanting to have their own collection, which shows us what both the creators and the market are looking for. So we plan to grow this segment.
C: How do you see the ecosystem of creators in LatAm? What’s coming next?
AR: There are more than 60 million creators globally, and 10 million in Latin America. For us that figure is very important because of its potential. The region is number one in digital consumption worldwide: we spend 14 hours a day consuming content, 1 in 3 internet users follows a creator and ends up buying their recommendations, and so on.
So the panorama of the entrepreneurial ecosystem focused on creators is just waking up in Latin America. That is why it has not been easy to build a startup based on the creator economy.
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