HBCU Alumni-Led Breakr Raises $1.9M To Fuel Three-Sided Marketplace Revolution In Creator Economy
Breakr, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) alumni-founded music platform, has raised an additional $1.9 million.
Breakr is reshaping influencer collaboration through its SaaS platform designed explicitly for record labels, artists, and brands.
By enabling creator-to-creator relationships at scale, labels and brands can move at the speed of culture, and creators can get paid fairly for making it happen.
The Three-Sided Marketplace
Breakr’s unique selling point is that it effectively treats the basic concept of connecting creators to build influencer campaigns as a programmatic opportunity.
The company recently came out of closed beta as a self-service SaaS platform, starting with a more hands-on approach.
The SaaS platform is underpinned by a wallet that acts as an escrow account, meaning money can be paid in and out of the wallet for services that are being engaged and rendered.
The platform is said to be set up like a three-sided marketplace.
On the creator side, individuals submit their profiles to the platform to be considered for campaigns.
On the music side, artists submit music for a particular campaign, and if the music gets selected, it gets promoted to new audiences.
Lastly, on the marketing side, brands look for influencers to run promotions and access 40 data points on each influencer.
They can also view those influencers’ past content and engagement rates and run some diagnostics to vet for brand safety and to see whether the influencer in question dabbles in fake followers.
Breakrs Funding Rounds
Breakr closed a $4.2 million round in 2021, and in the past two years, it has onboarded more than 30,000 influencers and managed more than $3.5 million in creator transactions.
Breakr’s artist roster includes Nas, Kanye West, Young Thug, Megan Thee Stallion, Rick Ross, Future, Gunna, and others.
Slow Ventures – an early-stage focused venture capital firm – led the extension, which the company will use for hiring and product development.
“Breakr wants to be the Google Ad Words, powered by creators,” said Anthony Brown, Breakr’s co-founder, according to TechCrunch.
“The creator economy, especially in music, is rapidly evolving with a shift towards direct, curated, and scalable relationships between digital marketers and creators. Traditional management tools are becoming obsolete, paving the way for more efficient, relationship-focused technologies.”
Breakr has raised $8.9 million to data from a list of investors, including Marc Benioff, a16z/Txo, ex-CEO of Tik Tok Kevin Mayer, RGA Ventures, Charles Hudson, Complex founder Rich Antoniello, Lo Toney, Anthony Selah, and Quiet Capital.
According to TechCrunch, Breakr eventually wants to tap into other fields like film and television.
