Affiliate marketing is not new to the influencer industry, but a newer name in the space, ShopMy, thinks it has a chance to become a leading platform.
The startup, cofounded by Harry Rein, Tiffany Lopinsky, and Chris Tinsley in 2020, lets creators build shoppable landing pages and earn commission from products they link.
In March, ShopMy announced it had raised an additional $18.5 million for its Series A after raising $8 million in 2022, bringing the total round to $26.5 million.
ShopMy describes itself as a “creator-first” platform, since it built out its tools primarily for the use case of creators and slowly added brands onto the platform. The company also highlights its creator focus as a selling point to both influencers and brands — namely, in the form of higher commission rates than some competitors.
Brands on ShopMy offer creators commission rates typically between 15% and 30%, a spokesperson for the company said.
“A lot of brands have this idea that they’re just paying influencers for content as opposed to partnering with them as a sales force of the company,” Lopinsky told Business Insider.
While affiliate earnings can typically be a smaller percentage of a creator’s entire revenue (brand deals are often a big chunk), Lopinsky said she wants to help creators ink better commission terms and secure long-standing sponsorships with ShopMy’s brand partners.
But to build an attractive and competitive network of brands, ShopMy needed to expand. This is why it has continued to raise venture capital from firms like Inspired Capital and AlleyCorp, as well as angel investments from creators on its platform.
“We’ve continued to really focus on fashion the earlier part of this year, and now we’re focusing on other verticals as well,” Lopinsky said. “But it takes money to hire a team and to fund marketing efforts to get our name out there and do that.”
ShopMy shared a version of the investor pitch deck it used to raise its Series A add-on. The company updated and redacted some figures in the deck.
Check out the 23-page pitch deck ShopMy used to raise $18.5 million: